Category: Literature

Anything literary or related to literature, including my own modest attempts.

Kafkaesque! (CUV)

Kafka, Franz: Der Prozeß. Roman. Berlin: Die S...
He liked hard-back notebooks too, did our Franz.

Here we have, in nice HD coding, a walk around in Prague, showing some of the flavour of the experience of being in the Czech Republic – including this very strange thing that happened to me last Spring.

Here, in the city of Kafka, I was seriously summoned to court without being informed why. Just like Joseph K in ‘Der Prozess‘ or ‘The Trial’ by Kafka. You really couldn’t make it up.

I don’t want to talk about the facts of what the case turned out to be, (especially as one party of it graces some films of mine on YT, which will also be shown here) but to my relief I only actually needed to be a witness. I have no wrongdoing as such on my conscience, but I have been known to sack people, and they get given more rights than I do when it comes to court, even if there’s no earthly justice in it. But this wasn’t even someone I had sacked. Because I didn’t know that, I had to go to the expense of a decent lawyer who naturally deserved to be paid for his appearance despite not in the end having a decisive role. But in the end I didn’t get annoyed about it, as it was something truly Kafkaesque in the city of Kafka which I’ll be able to remember and joke about for the rest of my life.

I also talk a little bit about learning Japanese and the kitsch for sale to tourists in Prague.

I thought I’d spice things up with a poll! Remember this is not the number of cases you’ve seen – you may have been more than once. Count is as number of days you’ve ever had to turn up. Don’t count it if you went along just for entertainment.

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Polish Poetry Homework (CUV)

Hot off the press today, not historic in any way, my helping Sophie get more motivated to learn the poetry for her Polish literature class led me to do an impromptu YouTube session with her reciting some from memory.

It may interest you to know that none of the poems were learned with this video in mind, or even recently, and the class test of them happened some time ago.

I don’t let Sophie read a poem more than once a day. I don’t let her read without trying to enjoy the poetry and understand something from it. Never read in order to memorise, but in order to enjoy. Then go back some time later, especially more that two weeks later in the end, and see what was memorised and what not. Just like the goldlist method, only without the writing out, only using recitation.

This method works with a child’s poetry syllabus if you get ahead and do the initial readings well ahead of the class, so that the child already really knows most of the and is at the most putting in the finishing touches while other children are in a panic trying to force the thing into their memory. This results inevitably in the child using the Polish school method having the poem in the short-term memory and the child using a staged repetition technique and taking a long-term view  will have a long-term memory of the poem.

So where you have continuous assessment, the benefit is reaped by people who simply won’t remember the poem once the year is finished. But children need to understand that education is for them to take something precious into their lives and is not just about marks and grades. A teacher might grade the cramming kids higher, but they simply won’t know much when my lower graded kid will remember more than any of the rest of them, and have a more pleasant time over it.

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The Polyglot Project Update

I understand that the download from DocsStocs made by Claude Cartaginese has now reached into over 5,000 downloads, with also many other sources of this document appearing also on the web as people share it freely as intended, so that the full number of downloads may be as high as 10,000 or more.

The Polyglot Project - 42 contributors, 534 pages, including the whole background to the Goldlist Methodology and how I came to invent it.

Set against that, though is the fact that not nearly so many paper copies have been ordered. The only place they can be ordered is Amazon in America, not the UK Amazon as yet, and the link to the product is embedded on the thumbnail.

If you would like a book worth in fact over 50 USD if it had not be gifted by over 40 volunteers each telling how they managed to learn multiple languages for less than 17 dollars, and also support Uncle Claude who had to fork out some of his private lolly on making the first bunch of paper books that are not selling, even though people have been eager to take the free version, then either click on the link here (which gives you the same price and I think I’m on 6% without costing you any more) or if you don’t want to give me 6% but still pay the same, then find the link just by going normally to Amazon.com and searching for it.

If you read the e-version and liked it, why not buy the paper version as a gift for someone else? It will always be possible to get a free version of this booki, but the printed one is very nice too and a good use of seventeen dollars, so please let’s be having a few more purchases of it.

 

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The Book of Samson and Dallillah

Rembrandt's depiction of Samson's marriage feast
Rembrandt's depiction of Samson's marriage feast

Here is the The Book of Samson and Dallillah (the second book of the Usenet Apocrypha, the first being The Book of Aaron, also available on this site. The third book, The Wisdom of David  is lost and efforts are being made to uncover it for the readership of Huliganov TV.

Prelude

The Book of Samson and Dallillah is believed to be, along with the other Books that make up the Apocrypha of Yuzneth, a lost portion of the Book of Mormon, having fallen out of Joseph Smith’s pocket as he was walking back from the hill to the village of Manchester, Ontario County, which, by a cosmic misunderstanding, fell through a kink in the space time continuum and ended up in Manchester England 159 years later and was offered for sale to me by a man in a white van as I was taking petrol at Knutsford Service Station. I didn’t get his number.

Those modern day mormons who became aware of the existence of this
book naturally wished to acquire it, but the angel Moroni came to me
in a vision during an advert break on telly as I was enjoying a nice
cup of coffee and gave me to understand that they had had their
chance and blew it when Joe Smith let it fall out of his pocket,
especially since they didn’t drink caffeine based hot drinks as God
had commanded to the remnant of the human race at the time of Noah,
and that now it was my turn, as a linguist and coffee addict, to have
a go with the Urim and Thummim, and translate the plates, and the
mormons were not to have them for any money, or all the tea in China.

And so, without further ado, here is The Book of Samson and
Dallillah.

Chapter One

1.      As it is written in the Book of Psalms, ‘Blessed is the man
that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the
way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.

2.      But his delight is in the law of the Lord; and in His law doth
he meditate day and night’.

3.      There was indeed one who was such in the land of Yuzneth, and
verily he was like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that
bringeth forth his fruit in his season

4.      And his scroll of answers to oft asked questions came forth as
an offering to the people of the temple each time that the moon was
full.

5.      And he was a leader, as a lodestone amongst men, and he did
establish the Assembly of the Righteous, and did give them laws in
the Scroll, which was called Nethi-Keth. Continue reading “The Book of Samson and Dallillah” →

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The Book of Aaron

Aaron, Russian icon from first quarter of 18th...
Aaron, Icon from the Land of Rus

The “Book Of Aaron” is part of the Usenet Apocrypha, a number of books written by me in the 1990s satirising the soap opera that went on in various Usenet discussion groups or newsgroups, some of whose participants were real people airing their linen, and others where personae there to troll or participate in the rough and tumble of Usenet discussion (read: “flamewars“). Some of the flamewars were productive of quite creative writing, and in this case I used the Jacobean English of the King James Bible (no disrespect to the Bible itself intended of course, it is merely the humour to be had from juxtaposing this classical and religious form of English on the life and views of a handful of eccentric guys and girls living in modern America) to produce some Usenet Apocrypha celebrating and combining some of the amusing stories that had been discussed on the group over recent months, in particular those of usenet legend Aaron Kulkis, described by many as the Ubertroll. Whether he genuinely believed his chauvinistic beliefs nobody can say, but he was a real person who came to see me in London in 1998. For those who don’t know the people involved, I have know idea whether the book will still be a laugh or not, or make any sense or not. You tell me!

Chapter One

1. This is the history of the prophet Aaron son of Kulkis, which beginneth when he was yet unborn.

2. In the land of Po the LORD looked over the people to see if there were any righteous and not sunken in iniquity.  And behold, one Kulkis of the ancient tribe of Lith did walk uprightly.

3. And the LORD came unto him in a vision by night and said unto him ‘Gird up thy loins and betake thee and all thine house unto a land which is afar off, a land that I, the LORD thy God will shew thee’.

4. And Kulkis did exceedingly fear and shake before the countenance of the LORD and great were the movements of his bowels. Continue reading “The Book of Aaron” →

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