• It is almost 1.000 years old.
• Around 1515 Albrecht Dürer published the "Stabiussche Weltkarte", the first perspective drawing of the terrestrial globe.
• Together with Prague and Cologne it was one of the biggest cities of the Holy Roman Empire.
• The main part of Nicolaus Copernicus’ work was published in Nuremberg in 1543.
• In 1632 Wallenstein had a military camp put up in the west of the town for more than 50.000 soldiers. However, it was never conquered.
• On Sept. 15, 1935 at the 7th rally the Nuermberg Laws were introduced.
• Today it has a “street of human rights”, an art installation created by Israeli artist Dani Karavan in 1993. It consists of pillars and an old oak, each of which has engraved an article of the universal declaration of human rights in thirty different languages.
• Since 1995 it is the venue for the annual International conference for human rights.
• Our library is the oldest German library with municipal funding.
• 18% of its inhabitants are citizens of foreign countries.
• It has fourteen international partner cities.
• In an international study by Mercer Human Resource Consulting about the quality of life in 215 cities worldwide it is on rank 23.
• In a recent referendum in Bavaria 63.4% of its citizens voted for the strictest anti smoking law in Germany.

Street of human rights and its languages

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Origami (from ori meaning "folding", and kami meaning "paper") is the traditional Japanese folk art of paper folding, which started in the 17th century AD and was popularized in the mid-1900s. It has since then evolved into a modern art form. The goal of this art is to transform a flat sheet of material into a finished sculpture through folding and sculpting techniques, and as such the use of cuts or glue are not considered to be origami. (Source: Wikipedia)

If you ever are in a situation where you only have some paper at hand and feel the need for let’s say a box or a medal (for whatever reason) those instructions might come in handy.

• A bookmark with a heart
• A CD case
• A crayon box
• A frame
• A photo album
• A bowl
• An envelope
• A box with lid
• A fan
• The alphabet
• A medal
• A checker board and pieces
• A basket

Have a look at what other Thursday 13ers are blogging about today.

Lost in Translation is a book about “Misadventures in English Abroad”, the “very best and worst instances of genuine grammar-gargling from around the world”.

Since I am working in the hotel business I was most interested in the hotel section of the book, but there are many more. Here is a selection of the hotel related “misadventures”.

1. Suggestive views from every window. (Amalfi, Italy)
2. Welcome to Hotel Cosys: where no one’s stranger. (India)
3. Guests are requested not to smoke or do other disgusting behaviours in bed. (Tokyo)
4. It is our intention to pleasure you every day. (Hamburg, Germany)
5. Measles not included in room charge. (Seoul)
6. If there is anything we can do to assist and help you, please do not contact us. (T’aipei, Taiwan)
7. The concierge immediately for informations. Please don’t wait last minutes. Then it will be too late to arrange any inconveniences. (Sorrento, Italy)
8. It is defended to promenade the corridors in the boots of the mountain in front of six hours. (Switzerland)
9. Not to perambulate the corridors in the hours of repose in the boots of ascension. (Austria)
10. If this is your first visit to the USSR, you are welcome to it. (Moscow)
11. If you want just conditions of warm in your room, please control yourself. (Japan)
12. You are invited to take advantage of the chambermaid. (Japan)
13. We highly recommend the hotel tart. (Torremolinos)

 

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Today I’m talking about films made from books. The kind that works. At least they work for me.

• The Lord of the Rings trilogy
  I don’t know how often I have seen it, I’ve seen it in the movie theatre and at home, the regular version, the director’s cut, with background comments of about every person thinkable and the making of. Love it.
• Misery
  About the only film after a Stephen King book that works, at least of the ones I have seen. Kathy Bates alone is worth watching it.
• Pride & Prejudice, the BBC mini series
  Well, Colin Firth is Mr. Darcy. I don’t need to say more, do I?
• Why didn’t they ask Evans? 
  A lot of Agatha Christie books have been turned into films that work, but I especially like this one. No Poirot, no Miss Marple, not even the Beresford couple, but two other sleuths. I could watch it again and again for its nice atmosphere, the landscape, the fashion, the clever plot and Leigh Lawson as Roger Bassington-ffrench (what a name!).
• Young Frankenstein
  I know, it is not exactly like the book (not quite), but it is so funny. Come on, who doesn’t like the scene with Abby Normal?
• Bram’ Stoker’s Dracula
  You know, the one with sexy Gary Oldman. My husband keeps telling me that Dracula is NOT a romance, but I don’t believe him.
• A room with a view
  The first film I saw Daniel Day Lewis in. Loved him. Oh, and the Italian setting and Julian Sands, of course. And the gorgeous Helena Bonham-Carter. James Ivory can do no wrong.
• A clockwork orange
  Malcolm McDowell as Alex – perfect.
• Dangerous Liaisons
  The book is great and so is the film. The cast is incredible. I loved John Malkovich as the Conte de Valmont.
• The unbearable lightness of being
  Book by Milan Kundera and Daniel Day Lewis in the film. This had to work for me. And it did.
• The Princess Bride
  Another Rob Reiner film. Who does not love The Princess Bride? And Cary Elwes as Wesley. Did you know that William Goldman who wrote the Princess Bride (book and screenplay) also wrote the screenplay for Misery?
• Rosemary’s Baby
  I loved the atmosphere in that building and Ruth Gordon as Minnie Castevet. Exactly like I pictured her when I read the book.
• The name of the rose
  Impressive castle, great cast, wonderful story. I think this was the first time I saw Christian Slater. But the character I remember best was Ron Perlman as Salvatore.

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I haven’t done a Thursday 13 for a long time. So this week I thought it’s time to join once more. Here are the best (in my opinion) 13 author vs. author put downs found at examiner.com.

Image by dropowtt at sxc.hu

1. How to read ‘Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone’? Why, very quickly, to begin with, and perhaps also to make an end. Why read it? Presumably, if you cannot be persuaded to read anything better, Rowling will have to do.
Harold Bloom

2. Am reading more of Oscar Wilde. What a tiresome, affected sod.
Noel Coward

3. I have been reading a translation of Goethe’s ‘Wilhelm Meister.’ Is it good? To me it seems perhaps the very worst book I ever read. No Englishman could have written such a book. I cannot remember a single good page or idea….Is it all a practical joke? If it really is Goethe’s ‘Wilhelm Meister’ that I have been reading, I am glad I have never taken the trouble to learn German.
Samuel Butler

4. His work is evil, and he is one of those unhappy beings of whom one can say that it would be better had he never been born.
Anatole France about Emile Zola

5. A hack writer who would not have been considered fourth rate in Europe, who tricked out a few of the old proven sure fire literary skeletons with sufficient local color to intrigue the superficial and the lazy.
William Faulkner about Mark Twain

6. I am reading Proust for the first time. Very poor stuff. I think he was mentally defective.

Evelyn Waugh

7. Have you ever heard of anyone who drank while he worked? You’re thinking of Faulkner. He does sometimes — and I can tell right in the middle of a page when he’s had his first one.
Ernest Hemingway

8. I grow bored in France — and the main reason is that everybody here resembles Voltaire…the king of nincompoops, the prince of the superficial, the anti-artist, the spokesman of janitresses, the Father Gigone of the editors of Siecle.
Charles Baudelaire

9. He is a bad novelist and a fool. The combination usually makes for great popularity in the US.
Gore Vidal about Alexander Solzhenitsyn

10. If it were thought that anything I wrote was influenced by Robert Frost, I would take that particular work of mine, shred it, and flush it down the toilet, hoping not to clog the pipes….a more sententious, holding-forth old bore, who expected every hero-worshipping adenoidal little twerp of a student-poet to hang on his every word I never saw.
James Dickey

11. I am at a loss to understand why people hold Miss Austen’s novels at so high a rate, which seem to me vulgar in tone, sterile in artistic invention, imprisoned in their wretched conventions of English society, without genius, wit, or knowledge of the world.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

12. To me he is an enormously skillful f#*&-up and his book will do great damage to our country. Probably I should re-read it again to give you a truer answer. But I do not have to eat an entire bowl of scabs to know they are scabs…I hope he kills himself….
Ernest Hemingway about James Jones

13. Paradise Lost’ is one of the books which the reader admires and lays down, and forgets to take up again. None ever wished it longer than it is.
Samuel Johnson about Milton’s “Paradise Lost”

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Today’s Thursday 13 is about extraordinary words in various languages.

 

1. “yuputka” (Ulwa, Nicaragua) means “having the sensation of something crawling on one’s skin”
2. “nggregeli” (Indonesian) means “to drop something due to nerves”
3. “’alo’alo kiki” (Hawaiian) is “to dodge the rain by moving quickly”
4. “ngetem” (Indonesian) means “to stop (a bus) longer than necessary at unauthorized points along the route to the terminus to look for more paying passengers”
5. “kopuhia” (Rapa Nui, Easter Island) means “someone who disappears instead of dedicating himself to work”
6. “nglayap” (Indonesian) is "to wander far from home with no particular purpos"
7. “umudrovat se” (Czech) means “to philosophize oneself into the madhouse”
8. “guzuguzu” (Japanese) is “to vacillate, procrastinate or stretch out a job”
9. “pandir” (Indonesian) is someone who is stupid, but innocent and honest
10. “seka seka” (Bemba, Congo and Zambia) means “to laugh without reason”
11. “uttori” (Japanese) means “to be enraptured by the loveliness of something”
12. “tadlis” (Persian) is “to conceal the faults of goods on sale”
13. “cazar” (Spanish) means “to kick one’s opponent and not the ball”

All words are from “The Meaning of Tingo and other extraordinary words from around the world”. I am somewhat doubtful that everything is 100% correct, since some of the German words in the book are slightly off. But nevertheless, they are fun.

Image from Hkuchera at flickr

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After the list of palindromes some weeks ago I decided to tackle pangrams next. Usually the shorter the better, but for my purpose it was nicer to choose pangrams that made some sort of sense. A 26 letter pangram for example would be “Glum Schwartzkopf vex’d by NJ IQ.” But does that sound like fun? So I decided to use longer ones that used letters more than once. Here I go… Disclaimer: I did not invent the pangrams, I only interpreted them in a way.

1. The quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog.
We all know this one and I’m sure everybody already speculated about why the fox (are foxes brown at all? I always thought they were reddish) jumps over a lazy dog. Why the fox would even get close to the dog after his experiences with fox hunting I don’t know. Maybe simply because the dog seems to be lazy. What if this is a feint? His goose will be cooked then.

2. Forsaking monastic tradition, twelve jovial friars gave up their vocation for a questionable existence on the flying trapeze.
Can’t say I blame them. However, from a monastic existence to the dangers of circus life in general (being eaten by lions, being trampled over by elephants, the ever present clowns) and the ones of the trapeze in particular is a big change. This proves without a doubt that living like a monk befuddles your mind in such a way that you can’t trust your own judgement anymore.

3. No kidding — Lorenzo called off his trip to visit Mexico City just because they told him the conquistadores were extinct.
OK, I thought people went to Mexico for sun bathing and jumping off cliffs. Not so Lorenzo. He obviously wanted to to meet some adventurers (also read: greedy bastards, in this case) and when he found out he is about 600 years too late he cancelled the whole trip. Bummer for him at the time of booking he was so determined that he forgot to pay for a travel cancellation insurance. Now he’s stuck with a 100% fee.

4. Jelly-like above the high wire, six quaking pachyderms kept the climax of the extravaganza in a dazzling state of flux.
It took me a while to even figure out what all those words mean. But now I got it. The quaking pachyderms on the high wire are a circus act (see no. 2). Every time the audience thinks that the last trick was the culmination of their unmet skills they go and do something even more astonishing, thus keeping the audience at the edge of their seat, never to be fully satisfied.

5. Ebenezer unexpectedly bagged two tranquil aardvarks with his jiffy vacuum cleaner.
John gave me a hint about this one. I’m no film buff and Dracula I only watch if it is done as a romance with a sexy Dracula (now you know I’ve never watched the one with Max Schreck). With his help however, I was able to pin the meaning of this one down. Ebenezer, the studio cleaner at Universal’s, was in charge of the tidying up of the set after filming Dracula with Bela Lugosi. By accident he vacuumed the aardvarks up (they had two, one the original one that appeared on screen and another one as a back-up). They were lying around dozing and he never thought to watch out for them. Thus their promising career came to a sudden and bitter end. So was Ebenezer’s when Universal found out their prize aardvarks were gone. Thankfully seven years later he found another job at RKO Radio Pictures as a leopard caretaker.

6. The explorer was frozen in his big kayak just after making queer discoveries.
What could he possibly have discovered that he was frozen in the kayak? Was he frozen because it was so cold or was he frozen because he was so stunned about his “queer” discoveries? I don’t want to go into that anymore, I’m afraid what I’m going to find out.

7. Jaded zombies acted quaintly but kept driving their oxen forward.
I know that zombies are all the rage at the moment, so I can’t resist having a few on this list as well. I know my fair share of zombies, after all I’ve read some Anita Blake books. Never have I heard of zombies harnessing oxen. Why would they need them? Zombies don’t eat veggies, so they wouldn’t need to plough the fields, would they? They only eat brains, as far as I know. On top of that, even quaint zombies would probably recognize the comfort of modern machines and use a tractor.

8. Amazingly few discotheques provide jukeboxes.
And why would they? Nobody in their right mind can be amazed about it. Jukeboxes are for ice cream parlours and diners of the fifties, not for modern clubs. You wouldn’t hear the jukebox music anyway over all that noise.

9. Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs.
The person is obviously planning for an outing. Over here it was father’s day only recently. I don’t know whether other countries have that same excuse for the men to go out with their buddies and get pissed. It is an old tradition where they take a handcart with a barrel of beer or two and wander through the countryside only to call their wives in the evening to tell them to pick them up from God knows where. The pangram is the original request for his wife to prepare his provisions.

10. Painful zombies quickly watch a jinxed graveyard.
Zombies and graveyards just belong together. I suppose the zombies are watching the graveyard to make sure they can still go back into their graves once they are done above the ground. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that Anita Blake has something to do with pain the zombies are suffering from OR / AND the jinxing. That woman can screw up anything!

11. Bored? Craving a pub quiz fix? Why, just come to the Royal Oak! 
Give the Royal Oak a wide berth! A pub quiz doesn’t sound like entertainment at all. It probably wouldn’t provide the necessary thrill to get you out of your funk. To give you an idea what to expect I found some pub quiz questions that might be asked.

From what book are the following first lines and who is its author?

It was love at first sight. The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him. Yossarian was in the hospital with a pain in his liver that fell just short of being jaundice.

What year was “Carry on Doctor” released?

What song and which artist won the Eurovision song contest in 1976?

Now, isn’t that fun? Didn’t think so either.

12. All questions asked by five watched experts amaze the judge.
There was this show when I was a kid where self-proclaimed “experts” had to answer questions to prove how well they knew their subject (however obscure it was). This is a different take. The experts ASK the questions and someone totally unknowledgeable has to answer them. The most original answer (it doesn’t have to be necessarily true, but rather original and imaginative) wins the prize.

13. The last one is a famous German pangram, which also leaves a lot of room for speculation.
Franz jagt im komplett verwahrlosten Taxi quer durch Bayern.
(Franz chases in the completely run-down cab straight across Bavaria)

I can imagine a couple of scenarios:

• Franz is a bank robber and an old shabby taxi is the only one he could hi-jack to escape. He robbed a bank in the North of Bavaria and now tries to get to Italy (a popular hide-away country for Bavarian bank robbers) as soon as possible.
• Franz is a taxi driver and a slob. He owns his taxi and has never bothered to clean it up properly. The taxi association has investigated after a number of complaints from passengers about the poor state of the vehicle. To evade a fee and other penalties he is getting out of the city as quickly as possible to settle down somewhere else (preferably Italy, a popular retirement country for cab drivers on the run).

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If you want to find out the answers to the intriguing pub quiz questions, turn the page upside down.

Today is about color. Don’t take my word on all the things that colors symbolize, I collected this from various websites and some were contradicting each other. I had the idea for this TT because of the Idée Labs that creates these images based on your color input from millions of pictures on flickr. Explore it, there are other search options as well, it’s fun!

Yellow

represents…

…age/aging, warmth, cowardice, caution, happiness, slow, sunshine, summer, the Orient, electricity, liberalism/libertarianism, Easter, wisdom, joy, happiness, Thursday

 

 

 

 

 

 

Orange

represents…

desire, warning, fire, flaming, Halloween, power, healing, vitality

 

 

 

 

 

 

Red
represents…

aggression, blood, stop, courage, guilt, energy, passion, anger, hell, hatred, fire, socialism, sacrifice, sin, violence, negativity, danger, warning, communism, blushing, honor, leadership, Christmas, Valentine’s Day, love, prosperity & joy (China), Tuesday, Mars

 

 

 

 

Pink

represents…

girls, love, health, breast cancer awareness, fairies, Valentine’s Day, homosexuality, bisexuality, spring, Easter, romance

 

 

 

 

 

Purple

represents…

royalty, imperialism, nobility, Easter, upper class, good judgment, peace of mind

 

 

 

 

 

 

  Light blue

represents…

good imagination, creativity, a practical approach to life, health, healing, tranquility, understanding, softness, Friday

 

 

 

 

 

Dark Blue

represents…

ice, water, sky, sadness, winter, royalty, boys, cold, calm, conservatism (universally), capitalism, communication, knowledge, power, integrity, seriousness, Saturday

 

 

 

 

 

Green

represents…

nature, growth, hope, youth, health, Islam, spring, envy, fertility, self-respect, well-being, learning, growth, harmony, Wednesday

 

 

 

 

 

Brown

represents…

nature, earth, soil, skin, classicism, ancient philosophy, knowledge, maple leaf, peace, repressed personality, laziness, stability, Sunday

 

 

 

 

 

Grey

represents…

boredom, reality, seriousness, neutrality, dullness, mediocrity, undefinedness, contentment, sorrow, security, maturity, dependability

 

 

 

 

 

Black

represents…

darkness, secrecy, and mystery; silence and concealment; death (including execution) and bereavement; (with orange) Halloween; end, chaos, and lack; evil, bad luck, and crime; conversely, elegance, , elegance

 

 

 

 

 
White

represents…

purity, lack, snow, ice, heaven, peace, life, clean, light, nothing, frost, good, air, innocence, kindness, Monday

 

 

 

 

 

 

Multicolor, just for the fun of it

Images all done with the help of Multicolr Search Lab

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Last Sunday there was a question on the Sunday Stealing meme about one’s favourite song at the moment and I mentioned song binging then. A coincidence, since I had already thought about doing a song binging TT this week. So, here I go.

Song binging is one of my vices. It is probably the one that annoys people the most. Whenever I’m in my car I pick one song and listen to it nonstop, for days or weeks on end. If the passengers happen to not like the song, tough luck. When I’m obsessed, I won’t budge an inch. So these are a few songs I’ve been binging on lately. Some are just songs I like, some are by my favourite artists.  If you’d like to explore a bit more, in most cases I’m linking to a cover version or two as well.

The “just happen to like it” category:

1. Crying Shame by Jack Johnson
I couldn’t find the video clip, if there is one at all, so I decided to link above to the original song, but with awesome drums from a Brazilian guy. Then there is this great cover version from twostep03. I like the way he puts his own spin on it.

2. Babylon by David Gray – and more or less the rest of “White Ladder”.
Cover version by podline6
On the album is also a great cover version of “Say hello, wave goodbye”. I very much prefer it to the original. I found a good cover of that cover by heifdogg

3. Supermassive Black Hole by Muse – look at this awesome live video. Oh, the red suit! Love it.
And here is a cover of the drums and guitar by Esparoba1

4. It’s been awhile by Staind
And an excellent performance by Aaron Lewis on his own. Cover version from Zashnog

5. God put a smile upon your face by Coldplay 
A piano cover from jwkrap

6. Iris by Goo Goo Dolls – the live version from the concert in Buffalo is the best.
And a good cover by beezteez

7. One more time by Daft Punk – I like this one for sentimental reasons.
A live version by Daft Punk and a Daft Punk piano medley by the Napkin Holder

8. Moondance by Van Morrison
There doesn’t seem to be an original version available.  Cover with two guitars from 6K6R, a cover sung by Eric Shelman and one by Charlese Allen.

The “favourite artists” category:

9. Stirb nicht vor mir by Rammstein – one of my favourite bands. This is my favourite song by them, but not your typical Rammstein song.
And the only full cover version from a Brazilian band I could find, which is not bad at all. Contrary to some of those rude comments on youtube, the German is pretty good and the guy has a decent intonation and all. Some people find fault in everything.

10. Behind the wheel by Depeche Mode – my favourite Depeche Mode song
I found this cover version with only a guitar from a French guy called jjyhyhyy. He’s got lots of other DM covers. Really good.

11. Seasick, yet still docked by Morrissey The Smiths are my favourite band of all. I’m not too fussed on Morrissey on his own, I’m afraid, even though I’d love to be. Do you know the feeling when you desperately want to feel something, but just can’t? This song comes as close to the Smiths as is possible. A bit like “Heaven knows I’m miserable now”. Love it. I chose this video because it is a live video from 1992, when the song came out. The original video clip is here. Sorry, no cover here. I only found three, one was a pain for the ears, one was with an e-guitar (sorry, but you can’t do this!), the third was by a woman with a ukulele. Don’t think so.

The “this is fabulous” category:

12. Minor Swing by Django Reinhardt I like the last second, when they sound really pleased with themselves.
Two cover versions. One from ArtFeile and one from Tony Reynold Lopez and Luca Borgia. I love how they play together.

13. Caramel by Suzanne Vega – not only books can be medicine for the soul. This song is simply perfect.
Above link is from a live performance in 1996, unfortunately it is cut off at the end. This one is also from when the song came out with Suzanne Vega playing guitar, this one here is from 2007 and here is another one which, I think, is from very recently. No covers here, I don’t want to spoil this.

I know, I’ve already got 13, but I can’t leave this one out:
14. It’s too late by Carol King, another one of my all time favourites. No covers here, either. I don’t want to search through youtube and listen to umpteen people butchering it before I give up finding something halfway decent.

I hope you liked my eclectic mix and possibly discovered something new.

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Image above by clix from stock exchange.

Today’s Thursday 13 is about books you can read online for free. I chose 13 that I think are worth looking into for some reason or other. But of course, there are thousands out there. I had a look at googlebooks for the first time now and find it quite good. Of course everybody is up in arms about it what with world domination and knowledge monopoly and all (something I can’t quite see, since the knowledge is still out there like it was before). Anyway, I like it. You can actually search the books, search by keywords, find related books and websites, read popular passages, reviews and so on.

1. The castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole because it was the first Gothic novel.

2. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka because the first sentence was voted to be one of the most beautiful German sentences to start a story. In fact the sentence came in second after Günther Grass’ first sentence of “The Flounder” (which in my opinion isn’t a good sentence at all. Sorry, I don’t know the English translation of it. If somebody happens to own the book, please let me know). I must admit though that Kafka’s sentence loses some of its flow and beauty in translation.

3. The awful German language by Mark Twain because it tells you everything you need to know about our beautiful language. Not. But at least it’s funny.

4. The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle because Sherlock Holmes is great and this is his longest story.

5. Persuasion by Jane Austen because it seems to get overlooked often in favour of Pride & Prejudice and the others.

6. Beauty and the Beast by Jeanne Marie Le Prince de Beaumont because it is such a lovely fairytale.

7. Bulfinch’s Mythology because it tells you all you want to know about old myths.

8. The Picture of Dorian Gray because it is Oscar Wilde.

9. Fortune-Telling by Cards by P. R. S. Foli because you never know when this knowledge might come in handy.

10. Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence because it was controversial when published, and that is always good.

11. The Diamond as big as the Ritz by F. Scott Fitzgerald because it is one of Fitzgerald’s best known stories.

12. The Lesser Key of Solomon because it sounds as if once you read this you’re prepared for Dan Brown’s new book. It’s called the “lesser” key because undoubtedly it wasn’t nearly as successful as Brown’s new book will be. I’m probably wrong here on the usefulness of it since Aleister Crowley was one of the translators of this book. And he’s not really considered mainstream.

13. Short stories of Saki because they are wonderful.

 

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