A NEW SCANDINAVIAN SECTION: THE DECALINGUAL BLOG

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Dear Readers, we can now read ourselves in Swesdish!!! (We knew that´s what you were waiting for, so that´s why we have just opened the new Scandinavian Section.

It´s true we are on holidays, but we have decided ourselves after having a glance at the happy results in the reading averages of the different blogsite editions. That´s why we have proceded to give way to some new innovations we were preparing for September: the new decalingual version and the new scandinavian section.

We have to admit that some versions of the blogsite (the german,the italian, the polish ones) have only get a few posts (barely five each) and that the load of entries belongs mainly to the Spanish version ( 167 articles) followed by the french, english and polish ones (33, 57 y 39 entries each) but the truth is that having a look at the visit maps of each of the sections is really encouraging. We are even read in Russia in Russian!! And even in Beijing though we are calling for a boycottt of the Games!!

Furthermore, we have chosen to grow bigger in concentrical circles (the Spanish version will always be the core of it, being surrounder by the ever-expanding English, French and Portuguese ones, and then the other "periferial" languages will come)

And finally, a very special noveauté I´m specially proud of: the new section in Catalonian. It´s difficult for me to express the pleasure and joy it amounts to me. I´m not a good Catalonian-speaker (in fact I´m an awful one) but Catalonian is a language deeply connected to my childhood and my holidays, Catalonia is sort of a second language for me, and in a time where things are so tight in Spain in the nationalistic-linguistic conflicts it´s a pleasure for me to use both Catalonian and Castillian (the so-called Spanish, but both are Spanish languages).

Lets leave the hatred, the intolerance and the incomprehension to those who want it. At this blogsite what we want is to see, learn and even mistake, but love. And languages is what we love here. Even when we don´t write well.

THE LAST TIME THE BRITISH FOOLED THE FRENCH (OR SO THEY THOUGHT)

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The nearly almost last time the British fooled the French (or was it the other way round?) was the day the convinced each other to build one of the most amazing, anachronic and fascinating inventions of the XXth Century, the Concorde.

We recently created a new section within our blogsite to what we call "inventos bizarros" that is wild, recklees, bizarre inventions which no one else dares to construct. The latest one we wrote of, was the Concorde.

A result of the anachronistic technology of Great Britain in the aftermath of World War II, the Concorde was a business failure from the very beggining, a trap in which both the British and the French State were caught up, spending loads and loads of money in a product which never seemed to arrive to be profitable.

So it did in the end, almost a few years before the blast of one of them leaving for NYC, which seemed to put an end to the only 20 aircrafts that came to be constructed in the whole history of it, a putting and end to this disastrous experience.

Not so ruinful was it, as it seems. AIRBUS aircrafts seemed to heir a lot of its design, and the new european aerospatial icon seems to be a terrible terrible enemy to its former challenger the Boeing, in a fascinating dead hear race which is making both the american and the european company revolution airship market.

However, we could not avoid here paying a little hommage to that anachronic, magical invention, which enables us to say to kids, in the wake of such a high-speed XXIst Century world, something as strange, as beautiful and uthopian as: "In my times, there was a faster plane than today´s ones, you see? It was able to cross the Athlantic in three hours, half the time a commercial plane does today".

A pleasure to say so. No? At last for the time we can-.

BIZARRE SEXUALITY: THE BEAR WAY

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One of the nicest gay-lesbian groups to me is the BEAR MOVEMENT (their flag here on the left).

For those who may not have a clue (here in Europe, Spain and Madrid we seem to get used to everything and I don´t know what´s known or not out there), the bear people is a cultural gay subgroup, that appeared in San Francisco in the 80s or so I think and that has particular aesthetical preferences where a certain moderl of hypermasculinity seems to prevail. For you to have a guess, just imagine the "Village People" pop group: the policeman, the lumberjack, the cowboy, but always with good beards and moustaches (hair above all)



The truth is that both BEAR, and FEMME mouvement, what they try is to break up with stereostypes (in the case of BEAR people with the afeminate gay, in the case of FEMME with the Butch type of lesbian.



The point is we like these people because of their happy point of view and we think they are absolutely bizarre (in the sense of strange, weird and brave) and the issue came today because our favourite designer just a new web site to prevent AIDS and STD among bear people.

We invite you to visit the website because it´s really enjoyable and you can play with it (but it´s in Spanish) Special prize for that one who finds the train.... :-)

MICROTALES (IX)

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With this microtale (1 of 2 this week) my aim is to pay tribute to such a great author as Javier Cercas, in what we could call the "realistic micro-tale"

“That damned hypotenuse captured Pi”. That´s what he said among other meaningless things. Being prime time, a celebrity such as he was. Unbelievable.
His former girlfriends smiled inside, pretending not to want anybody no bad. The sons were negotiating undercover their interventions on TV as the same time they publicly regretted their father´s decline. His legal counsellor declared in front of everybody to be doing the right thing by denouncing his client, while in private she bragged of her shrewdness in order to take advantage of the free publicity for her lawyer´s office.
Soon after, the old comedian arrived to hospital, not making laugh any longer, with his face, now strained.

We all have two of them. Don´t we?

El viejo cómico ingresó poco después en el hospital, su rostro crispado ya no hacía gracia.
Todos tenemos dos caras.


(NOTE: This article was originally published by Botijo de Oro in the spanish section of the blog)

PHILIPPINES BIZARROS OR DRAG QUEEN CATHOLICISM

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I have just read the news in a homphobic newspaper that in a religious parade or ceremony in Philippines, a "group of homosexuals" (I guess a group of lovely "transvestites" more possibly but who knows) want to participate as queens serving Virgin Mary, and I was delighted by the illuminating beauty of their intention.


Under no cirumstantces, is Bizarría, no doubt, a rational project.


And bizarros, these philippine transvestites -or whatever they want- really are.



The Catholic Church has a mastership in blending folclore with religion (as all churches and sects try to, I don´t know if for good or bad, but no doubt they do so) and for that reason this project by these LGBTQ people in Philippines really makes me happy by their stubborness and love and their desire to participate in whatever they want and feel to. To march parading alongside with the Catholic Church, which is one, that, at least by the volume, greater Homosexuals-Despising has encouraged, may not be quite ortodox nor coherent or consistent, but brings along all my sympathy and love for this people, for their hability, strength and consistency in being able to blend and solve within them the contradictions of all the things they love.

The world, may be, has to be this way: polluted. With everyone participating in whatever he or she feels like and with everybody partying together and respecting what each other wants to do, and trying to understand and not to impose your own ideas.


In the end, it´s not if you are a religious believer or not what matters. What´s important is to be able to embrace the beautiful diversity of the world and not to impose the others your own beliefs.


Let us be bizarros and relax: lets embrace the whole world in its mistery. No room for intolerance (whatever the origin). Openness to the bizarre, surprising and wonderful world.
Let so be it.

THE STRENGH OF BRAZILIAN CULTURE

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Please note that the original article for this news was originally posted in the portuguese section of our blog site.

A month or so ago, I was lucky enough to come across an incredible Spanish woman that is a basketball, waterpolo and rugby player. If you are lucky and you speak or read Spanish you may like to have a look at her blog (and you may even post a comment -she speaks perfect English) She is a fascinating woman, I tell you!

But the reason why I am writing this post today is mainly to tell you of the musical "bloco" in which she plays and the symbolic value it has for us today.
The batucada-group is called Bloco do Baliza, and here you can see them playing in Madrid´s Puerta del Sol (the most important site within Madrid).



The discovery of this group was something that I especially liked, not just because I like blocos (and saw and visited many as I was in Brazil) but also because of the pleasure of this worldwide bizarro culture we all share. This woman, for instance, plays an american sport (basketball) a british one (rugby) and plays brazilian music, but she doesn´t just add up, she blends it instead into something new and special within herself.

The world wide bizarro culture is sort of like that (we are all like that to a certain extent in the globalization world) but what I particularly liked here today was the international reception of brazilian culture. At a time when there has been some nasty confrontations between Spaniards and Brazilians (the issue has been quite hot in the brazilian press) due to some shameful events at the border controls of both countries with the others´ citizens, it is great to see that the passion toward each others culture is a better indicator of what each other have to gain from mutual exchange and sharing.

A BIZARRO TRIBUTE: ELIEZER BEN YEHUDA

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An octolingual blogsite couldn´t do otherwise, but pay a tribute to the "bizarro" hebrew who achieved one of the paramount linguistic deeds of the XXth Century: to revive (we could even say "resurrect") one of the oldest languages in the world and it make it become the daily, economic, milatary and administration language of a new-born State and in fact one which would experience a harsh, difficult and risky-life (to make this experiment even more valid): Eliezer Ben Yehuda.

EBY, born in Belarus and dead in the Holy Land (in what then was the turkish Ottoman Empire) was a filologue, activistist, hebrew teacher, journalist, founder of the first hebrew newspaper and the first modern hebrew dictionary, but neither of this definitions fully defines what is so fascinating to us of him.

The real and epic "bizarry" of this modern genius was to be born in a slavic country (where people spoke lithuanian, polish or russian) moving to the Middle East (where people spoke turkish, arab, yiddish or german) and deciding that at home, ever since then, they were only going to speak Hebrew (which nobody spoke, back then).

Furthermore, the epic doesn´t finish here, it just starts. Ever since then (we may say even before) he concludes that the future state of Israel or Sion (that back then was nothing more of a dream, like a dream it was at the time the idea of independent arab countries)would only be possible if the israelis or zionists spoke hebrew.

To have an idea of what a crazy idea it was, back then hebrew was nothing more than a liturgic language (such as latin is today). The Jews in the Middle East, if there was something they spoke, that was arab, or turk, or german, or yiddish (a mixture of german, hebrew and slavic language) and those to come would only speak french, english, polish or russian, whatever. Whatever except Hebrew.

But this bizarro and crazy man just sticked to his idea that the only thing that could be spoken in a future, bizarro and imagined Zion state in order for it to be stable, was that: hebrew. We don´t want to speak here on the complications and the confrontations of the creation of this state: we just want to stick to the fascinating in the man we are talking about here.

Noy yet satisfied having told everyone his decision (for which he was taken as an outlandish and even crazy man) he started publishing his own newspaper in hebrew, his own dictionary, and what was to become a symbol: to raise his son as the first Native-Hebrew speaker. Itamar Ben Avi (Eliezer´s son) was indeed to become the first child to speak hebrew as mother tongue in nothing less than two thousand years.

Itamar, the son, later followed his father´s steps, he collaborated is the fist journal in hebrew, he was pro-independence, etc, but without doubt the moust astounding fact in his life was that: he was the first kid in two thousand years to have Hebrew as mother tongue.

Today Israel was hebrew as his official language. There, many other languages are also spoken: English, Arab (official as well), Spanish, Russian (even to the point electoral propaganda is printed also in Russian, since 10-20% are also Russian speakers) but the main language is Hebrew, a language the grand-grand-parents, the grandparents, the parents and even the inhabitands of a great part of Israel had never spoken before. But that´s the language the all speak, nowadays. They have revived it. Resurrected, I may say.

Tell if this is not a bizarro fact, in the sense we have given to this word (weird and corageous), if it´s not bizarro the man himself (extremely bizarro) and if from a linguistical pointical of view as the one we have here, we ought not to give this man a tribute.

This goes for you, Ben Yehuda. Chutzpah, our congratulations.