In an attempt to polish up the rusty language skills, I worked my way through an interesting obituary (with the help of a dictionary in another tab of Firefox). I had only recently learned more about yé-yé music (courtesy of Radio Oh-la-la), so it was interesting to read about a Canadian artist in that genre. Most interesting, though, is the snippet of his big hit: the French language version of Doo Wah Diddy:

Quand je l’ai vue elle marchait seule dans la rue,
J’entendu wha diddy diddy dam di di dou,
Elle ondulait des hanches comme une ingénue,
J’entendu wha diddy didididam dididou,
Les yeux bleus (les yeux bleus)
la taille fine (la taille fine),
Les yeux bleus la taille fine
j’en suis presque devenue fou

I’m going to go ondulerai!

I don’t know whether to be reassured that everybody’s kids want to eat nothing but chicken fingers, or driven to a firmer resolve to encourage more gustatory diversity.

The bee problem (known officially as Colony Collapse Disorder) may not be as bad (yet) as I had imagined: The symptoms have happened before; even if all European honeybees die, they’re responsible for only 30% of global agriculture’s pollinating; and in their absence, other pollinators will usually fill the niche. Almonds seem to be especially affected, with a large proportion of the available mobile honeybee hives trucked in for the bloom in January.

All American Beef Pizzle! Which should totally be the name of a band. Instead, it’s a dog chew, contaminated with Salmonella (towards the end of the alerts). I am so proud of yet another product of Washington State.

Their opening act would be Muscle Pig IV. Which should contain sulfathiazole, but actually contains sulfamethazine.

How long until this mysterious illness is an episode of House, MD? Oh, who cares. Even the lovely and talented Hugh Laurie can’t save it for me. It’s a turd on toast of unmotivated character actions and ridiculous costuming. TV sucks.

Partly because we could, and partly because it’s a cool word. My best guess as to what it means in context (and yes, I’m a very bad fanboy; I read issue one only because it was convenient, and have not yet read any subsequent issues) is that it’s being used as a peculiar synonym for Jotun (Mimir, the thrice-wise, was one). They were giants, Dawn got all big, that’s how the math appears to me today to work. There’s no clear indication, as far as my librarian and I can tell, that it means anything other than “really wise” in the original, but the Eddas are full of threes, so three wisdoms that we’re overlooking wouldn’t entirely surprise me.