Peppa Pig, language influencer

From The Wall Street Journal : “Peppa Pig, a Pandemic Favorite, Has American Children Acting British.”

I love hearing children say “Jawgh.” Everyone loves hearing children say “Jawgh.”

[I hope the link works.]

“Favorite Books”

An anonymous reader asked me to “correct” the Favorite Books section of my Blogger profile by listing titles instead of writers. From my point of view, there’s nothing to fix.

As my wife Elaine suggests, you can take any name on the list as prefaced by the words “anything by.” They are all good bets. Elaine does something like that in her Blogger profile: “everything by Stefan Zweig, Willa Cather, and Balzac.”

If you want titles, you might look at the Pinboard tags for OCA fiction and poetry posts. (There’s a list of top tags in the sidebar.) Or you might look at the annual reports of the Four Seasons Reading Club, our household’s two-person adventure in books: 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021. The names in tagged posts and the FSRC reports go well beyond those on the profile list.

Finding D. W.

Jason Szwimer, the voice of D. W. Read for four seasons of Arthur, has a podcast, Finding D. W., devoted to finding and interviewing the other males who have voiced the character. NPR had the story this morning.

The podcast appears to be available in all the usual places.

Go fish

Fun: Why Everyone Is Obsessed With Tinned Fish (Thrillist). I can vouch for the Bela and Matiz brands.

Thanks to Music Clip of the Day for this catch.

Related reading
All OCA sardine posts (Pinboard)

Today’s Newsday Saturday

Today’s Newsday  Saturday crossword, by S. N., Stan Newman, the puzzle’s editor, is a real challenge, a great crossword, a Saturday Stumper in everything but name. I ended up stuck in the northeast corner last night and put the puzzle aside for another episode of Mare of Easttown. And while I was watching, an answer I needed to sort that corner out — for 19-A, five letters, “Some stocks or colleges” — popped into my head, and not because of anything happening in Easttown. Episode over, I went back to the puzzle and got the rest. Three episodes to go.

Some clue-and-answer pairs I especially liked:

1-A, seven letters, “1990 coinage in PC Magazine.” The puzzle begins on an educational note. I didn’t know the word went back so far.

5-D, four letters, “What onion rings lack.” SKIN? The answer was not obvious to me.

8-D, three letters, “It’s good for Nazarenes.” A tough one from the northeast. But then so simple.

10-D, four letters, “Arm elevator.” O northeast corner. I thought I knew it, then thought too hard. REST?

15-D, six letters, “Francis is the first pope to be one.” My education is showing.

22-D, three letters, “It often flew FDR during WWII.” Surprising.

29-A, four letters, “Sticking point.” A nice way to clue this answer.

31-A, six letters, “Pop star since the ’50s.” I am happy to know this performer is still with us.

38-A, three letters, “What tops certain faces.” Defamiliarization at work.

50-D, six letters, “Second-shot target, often.” More defamiliarization.

57-A, four letters, “Early-year beef.” An inventive way to improve the answer.

My favorite: 14-A, fourteen letters, “Indy, more formally.” Aha! But even after you see most of it, the final letters are perhaps not obvious.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

“Nothing has ever happened”

Emmanuel Bove. My Friends. 1924. Trans. from the French by Janet Louth. (New York: New York Review Books, 2019).

Deadpan comedy of alienation and poverty. At times I imagine the narrator as a Chaplinesque tramp, at others as a Vladimir or Estragon. Samuel Beckett admired Bove’s prose.

Fritzi’s “No”

[Nancy, July 16, 2021. Click for greater negativity.]

Aunt Fritzi: “Nancy skims everything she reads, so you have to position your argument carefully.” Thus this card, which recalls (for me anyway) Guillaume Apollinaire’s calligrams and what has been called “the greatest Nancy panel ever drawn.”

Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)

“Do”

Only Donald Trump** would speak of a coup as something to “do.” Jeez.

But read that statement in its entirety. His increasingly convoluted and implausible explanations of his actions are signs of desperation and decline.

[** = twice impeached. Kurt Vonnegut gave the asterisk an additional meaning.]

“The most delicate of mirrors”

Anyone who wants to learn about description might benefit from reading Adalbert Stifter. Clarity, density, and a sparing use of metaphor and simile.

Adalbert Stifter, The Bachelors. 1850. Trans. from the German by David Bryer (London: Pushkin Press, 2019).

When I first read The Bachelors, this translation, first published in 2008, was out of print. I’m happy that it’s back and that I now have a copy of my own.

Related reading
All OCA Stifter posts (Pinboard)

The walking brain

From The New York Times :

Exercise can freshen and renovate the white matter in our brains, potentially improving our ability to think and remember as we age, according to a new study of walking, dancing and brain health. It shows that white matter, which connects and supports the cells in our brains, remodels itself when people become more physically active. In those who remain sedentary, on the other hand, white matter tends to fray and shrink.

The findings underscore the dynamism of our brains and how they constantly transform themselves — for better and worse — in response to how we live and move.

The researchers had expected that dancing would produce greater cognitive improvement. But walking beat dancing.