Why I love the propaganda

Polish Communist propaganda songs are spectacular, and the world deserves more access to this very unique and now sadly vanished art form. To this end, here's a quick on-the-BART translation of one of my favorites, Budujemy Nowy Dom = "We're building a new house." This dates from shortly after WWII when Warsaw had basically been razed to the ground, and in fact Budujemy Nowy Dom was the slogan of the reconstruction movement.

Note that first person plural verbs in Polish often do the job of the English hortative "let's..." even without an imperative ending, so the title of the song might be more accurately translated as "Let's build a new house," which is what I've done below. Try to imagine this being sung in fervent operatic tones.

Let's build a new house
Yet another new house
Unto our future better days,
O Warsaw

Multiply our work with us,
Come share our work with us
For this is our common goal
O Warsaw

From the basement to the roof
May the building joyfully rise
Into my dreams and yours
O Warsaw

May the walls leap skywards
Since the hands are willing
Let's build a new concrete house!

Who wouldn't be excited about a new concrete house? My absolute favorite for sheer ridiculousness, though, has to be Piosenka o Nowej Hucie = "Song about Nowa Huta." Nowa Huta is an enormous industrial suburb of Kraków (Cracow) built by the government in the late 40s and early 50s to try to balance out the intellectual population of the city and make it more amenable to Communist policy. Listen to a little bit of the recording to get the vibe, and then check out what they're actually saying.



My attempt at a reasonably idiomatic English version (thanks go to Jesse for his help with the incredibly difficult-to-translate second line of the first stanza):

On the Vistula, the wide Vistula,
The bricklayers' chatter fills the air in song
And the song of the bricklayer floats up high
And floats through nights and days.

CHORUS:
This is a song about Nowa Huta
This is a melody about Nowa Huta
It's so simple and pretty
And has such a nice melody.
This is a song about Nowa Huta
The words are about Nowa Huta
It's so simple and pretty
And new like Huta is new.

A hundred blocks have sprouted up along the Vistula
And a thousand roads straight to them
The bricklayer's song has grown out into the future
And joins the two banks like a bridge.

CHORUS

And there can be no other future now:
The peace and good that it sends us
And when you're in Huta with your girl
And hear this song, know that...

CHORUS

Remarkably (and sort of worryingly) this song is still reasonably popular today. But come on, is this not a paragon of...well, something we probably don't have a word for yet? The chorus in particular needs to win some kind of award -- a Rory, perhaps -- for the most gratuitous lack of content in a serious song. "And new like Huta is new." Dude.

Next time: Na Prawo Most, Na Lewo Most.

Oh no! Mr. Hat is dead!

From: Dr Usman Bello
To: Jazzschool
Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2008 19:51:22 +0530 (IST)
Subject: My Letter to you reply immediately

- DEAR SIR,I AM DR USMAN BELLO, HEAD OF INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND AFRICA UNIT DU COTONOU BENIN REPUBLIC ,I AM WORKING AS PART OF A BIGGER TEAM THAT COVERS THE ENTIRE WEST AFRICAN REGION INCLUDING INSURANCE BANKS. AN INVESTOR MR HAT DIED WITHOUT NAMING ANY NEXT OF KIN TO HIS FUND IN THE UTB BANK COTONOU BENIN REPUBLIC.THE AMOUNT IS $14,525.000,00 DOLLAR ACCOUNT AND BANKING REGULATION/LEGISLATION IN BENIN REPUBLIC DEMANDS THAT I SHOULD NOTIFY THE FISCAL AUTHORITIES AFTER THREE YEARS.THE ABOVE SET OF FACTS UNDERSCORES MY REASON TO SEEK YOUR PERMISSION TO HAVE YOU STAND IN AS THE NEXT OF KIN TO THE DECEASED. THIS FUND WILL BE APPROVED AND RELEASED IN YOUR FAVOUR AS THE NEXT OF KIN IF ONLY YOU WILL ADHERE TO MY INSTRUCTION AND COOPERATE WITH ME IN ONE ACCORD.I HAVE ALL THE LEGAL AND BANKING DETAILS OF THE DECEASED CLIENT THAT WILL FACILITATE OUR PUTTING YOU FORWARD AS THE BENEFICIARY OF THE FUNDS AND ULTIMATELY TRANSFER OF THE $14,525.000,00 PLUS INTERESTTO ANY BANK ACCOUNT NOMINATED BY YOU.WE CAN DISCUSS COMMINOR PERCENTAGE AS SOON AS YOU REPLY MY EMAIL AFTER YOUR RESPONSE.REGARDS DR USMAN BELLO [emphasis mine]

New challenges facing the modern musician

A man came to the school yesterday ostensibly to inquire about our program. He looked thoroughly normal, recently washed hair, etc., with a tweed jacket -- probably a Larry or a Glenn. We'll call him Larry. Jesse had the...um...good fortune to be the one to speak with him at the front desk, and from my position back in the office I only heard snatches of the conversation, which nonetheless began raising increasingly large red flags as the discourse progressed.

It was an interesting conversation. The guy was definitely a little weird, but there was nothing to specifically pinpoint aside from a demeanor apparently carefully cultivated without the benefit of any understanding of basic social norms -- I consider it something of an accomplishment to be aggressively pompous and worryingly creepy simultaneously. Actually, there was almost a bit of the Senor Cardgage about Larry (aside: Senor Cardgage actually exists, did you know this? I discovered him working at A.G. Ferrari on Piedmont. I am dead serious) now that I think about it.

Anyway, things were going along nicely in said conversation, getting weirder by degrees more or less directly proportional to its duration, when the excerpt I am about to relate occurred. Here is a graph of our perceived sanity of the conversation with respect to time:

The conversation flowed more or less as follows.

Larry: Do you teach your students about the most important thing?

Jesse: [long pause] Um...I'm not quite sure what you mean.

Larry: How not to starve to death!

Jesse: [long pause] Well, I mean...

Larry: [getting excited] Here you are at this college, this college, you know, teaching people, and you don't even teach them...

Jesse: Well, I don't think you really...

Larry: Students need to know, you know! With times changing...our economy failing...

Jesse: Uh-huh...

Larry: ...fuel prices rising...

Jesse: Uh-huh...

Larry: ...the Stargate opening in 2012 allowing us to travel freely through any dimension...

Jesse: Um, I can't really follow you there.

Larry: [nods paternally] Don't worry about it.

So now you know. If you're a musician, don't get left out in the cold when the Stargate opens.

In search of nomenclature

The burning question of the year is this: what on Earth should Amelia and I do with our names after getting married next October? We could theoretically both keep our hyphenated monstrosities in the short term, but this quickly becomes impractical when the storks start dropping off their parcels.

We were both pretty sure we wanted our family to have one name; but which name should it be? We threw around Brandt and Isaacks for a while without definite decision, and then stumbled onto the idea of botany. A new plant-based name for our family certainly seems up our alley of insanity, so the fun began...

I did some research and drew up a list of a bunch of trees, flowers, herbs and other miscellaneous plants that seemed vaguely possible as surnames (or just too hilarious to leave out), and wrote a program to allow us to see each of our first names with all of the last names at random and rate them. Here's the list we were working with:

Alder, Amaranth, Anemone, Arrowroot, Aspen, Aster, Beebalm, Birch, Bladderpod, Bloodroot, Buckeye, Bugbane, Butterbur, Butterweed, Campion, Caraway, Catchfly, Cedar, Chervil, Chickweed, Clammyweed, Cockscomb, Cockspur, Coltsfoot, Cowcockle, Crowfoot, Crucifer, Dragonhead, Fennel, Feverfew, Fireweed, Flameflower, Fleabane, Foxglove, Galax, Gillyflower, Globeflower, Goldcup, Goldenseal, Goldthread, Goosefoot, Groundsel, Gumweed, Hazel, Helmetflower, Hemlock, Honeysuckle, Hyssop, Kingcup, Larch, Larkspur, Laurel, Leopardbane, Lilac, Linden, Liverleaf, Loosestrife, Madrone, Mandrake, Maple, Mulberry, Mullein, Oxalis, Pennyroyal, Peony, Periwinkle, Pimpernel, Poplar, Primrose, Rhubarb, Rockfoil, Rowan, Sage, Sainfoin, Samphire, Sandwort, Saxifrage, Searocket, Skullcap, Snapdragon, Sneezeweed, Soapwort, Sorrel, Spiderflower, Spruce, Stonecress, Sunflower, Sycamore, Tarweed, Teasel, Tickweed, Toadflax, Trefoil, Vervain, Wandflower, Willow, Wintergreen, Witloof, Woad, Zinnia.

...in addition to both parts of each of our existing names. After we'd both gone through all 200 or so possibilities a few times, I weeded out the bottom 75% for both of us (what? what's wrong with Amelia Sneezeweed? and Searocket is clearly awesome) and we went for another few rotations. The last step was to delete all the names that we didn't have in common, which brought us to the following, in approximate order of compromise mutual preference:

Isaacks
Brandt
Birch
Linden
Aster
Alder
Cedar
Laurel
Willow
Aspen

Amelia's favorite is "Birch." It's a beautiful tree that we both love, very unusual as a name but not weird in that context, and goes well with both of our names (though "Josh Birch" isn't great metrically in my opinion) and all the potential kids' names that we've discussed. Josh(ua) Birch, Amelia Birch, Elinor/Eleanor (Ella) Birch, Imogene (Idgie) Birch, Isabel (Izzie) Birch, Julian (Jules/Jude) Birch, Miles/Milo Birch, &c.

My favorite, surprisingly, and also the only one of these that I could instantly adopt without the slightest tinge of misgiving or regret, also surprisingly, is "Aster." I adore it, for all kinds of reasons -- it seems modern and traditional and earthy and celestial and rural and cosmopolitan all at the same time, and the phonological component hits the spot for me as well. I would love to be Josh Aster. I really am, as I may have mentioned above, surprised to find myself having such a strong reaction to this.

I don't think it's a possibility, though -- although it's in our top ten in common, Amelia doesn't really care for it that much, which definitely tosses it out of the running. If we're both changing our names, feeling gung-ho about our choice is a clear prerequisite.

I find I'm ambivalent about "Brandt." I've never particularly loved the sound of it -- a heavy syllable with a nasal vowel as its nucleus -- and I wouldn't particularly have expected myself to push for it in a situation such as, for example, the one we're now in. In fact, for as long as I've had an opinion I've been a staunch opponent of the ludicrous idea of a woman taking her husband's name, so it would have been an impossibility.

Things are strangely different now, though. I'm having this bizarre conservative feeling that I'd rather like it if Amelia wanted to take my name -- and a new allegiance to "Brandt" and its history, particularly since I'm one of the few Brandts remaining from my line after the Holocaust.

In all truth I really have no idea what we're going to end up choosing, or how we'll manage to come to a decision -- the scales seem pretty evenly balanced in every direction. I think I could probably be okay with any of our top options (Brandt, Isaacks, Birch and Linden) or, of course, Aster...heh heh.

And you should go vote and let us know what you think! Who knows, maybe public opinion will be overwhelming enough to sway the jury.

Mistakery as a measure of fluentitude?

Here's a new one for the books: initiagate. I overheard this yesterday in the context of a jocular conversation shouted across an empty restaurant: "Well, she initiagated it!" I'm assuming this lovely coining is a portmanteau of initiate and instigate, and though the semantic gap it fills in the English lexicon is perhaps somewhat dubious, I still think it's useful to have around, and hilarious in a W sort of way.

Also interesting to me is the fact that the perpetrator (initiagator, even?) of this new term was not a native English speaker. I'm impressed by her ability to make such fluent English-style "mistakes," which raises a point in the definition of fluency that I had never really considered. There are a number of languages I would call myself fluent in, but I definitely don't think my speech errors in these languages are of the same ilk that native speakers would make. I'm intrigued -- I want to learn to speak better bad Polish. Or worse good Polish?

And to continue Adam's and my apparently neverending rant, why does no language textbook or reference grammar touch on this area? It seems a ridiculous oversight, the more I think about it.

Yes, please touch my life with your funds

Back on November 5th, the Jazzschool received the following e-mail:

Hi,

I am ill and would die, I want to touch lives with my funds through you please respond.

...and a name. Jesse and I are still trying to figure out what this guy's story is. Could he actually be a legitimate, albeit extremely odd, potential legacy donor? Random lunatic? Prank e-mailer? Not a real person at all, but rather some kind of ill-conceived scam attempt? Pure spam? None of the possibilities seem to fit that wonderful sentence completely.

There are so many great things about it. The opening clause, I am ill and would die, simultaneously and incongruously suggests the style of both an unskilled ESL speaker and a 19th-century author. I want to touch lives with my funds through you, ostensibly expressing philanthropic intent, refuses to stop sounding creepy and/or dirty to me no matter how I reframe it, especially when amplified by the desperation of the unpunctuated conclusion, please respond.

Whoever he is, he has already touched our lives with quite a few days of continual mirth.

Think!!!

I received the following fax at work this morning:

I'm flabbergasted. How is this even possible? I can't believe that Baja Fresh would actually send out such bizarre and incompetently written fax spam, but it's equally improbable that any other party would have undertaken it for heaven knows what purpose. Either way, that's some pretty impressive bad English.