Sunday, May 02, 2004 :::
 
In keeping with a personal habit of longstanding, A Mind That Suits bought himself a Powerball ticket the other day. He does this only when a the jackpot gets really high. The last guy to win $220 million or whatever did that, but he was rich enough to buy 100 tickets. A Mind That Suits buys only one. The amount goes way up about twice a year, and it happened this week, when the number got to $140 million or so.

And in keeping with another habit of longstanding, A Mind That Suits got not one single number correct. Even the hyphens appear to be in different places.

God is saying something here.

In the world of politics and war, Christopher Caldwell has what appears to be yet another insightful article on Western Europe, concentrating this time on Spain's craven new prime minister, Jose Louis Rodgriguez Zapatero. Mr. Caldwell is a very old-fashioned kind of intellectual reporter, meaning, among other things, that he has a thorough command of the languages and histories of the countries he covers.

He is also not given to flip comments, so it falls to A Mind That Suits to point out that "Zapatero," which literally translates to "shoemaker," is nearly universal Spanish slang for "lazy a** dumbsh**."

Indeed, one of his colleagues is a dainty and elegant woman who personifies most people's image of a punctilious composition teacher, but she also speaks Spanish and Portuguese fluently, having lived in Iberia for years. She also, somewhat surprisingly, has a very well developed appreciation of life's absurdities. And so she was walking down the hall one day a little ahead of her pudgy, balding co-worker, who blurted out, "Hey, Sue, did you know that Spain's new prime minister is named Zapatero?" At which she stopped dead in her tracks, turned around and bent over double laughing.

Poor guy must have caught hell in junior high school.

::: posted by A Mind That Suits at 1:33 PM


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What doesn't kill me, makes me laugh... usually.