Luxe, calme, et volupte

In order to reply to a LiveJournal comment, I found this page, containing L'Invitation au Voyage by Baudelaire. The last part is what Amy MillanEmily Haines says at the start of Counting Stars on the Ceiling, from Nightsongs. It's rather beautiful, so I did a poor translation and included it in my reply.

Les soleils couchants
Reventent les champs,
Les canaux, la ville entiere,
D'hyacinthe et d'or;
Le monde s'endort
Dans une chaude lumiere.

La, tout n'est qu'ordre et beaute,
Luxe, calme et volupte.

The setting sun covers the fields, the canals, the entire town, in hyacinth and gold. The world falls asleep in the hot light. All is only order and beauty, luxurious, calm and sensual.

Approximate and not very good, but it gets the beauty of it across.

Posted at 2005-03-27 12:18:27 by Richard • Link to Luxe, calme, et vo…

Clocks back!

A convincing argument for putting the clocks back an hour a day for 23 days, rather than forward once (and thus losing an hour of sleep):

True, there would be the strange fortnight when days and nights would be inverted; we'd be living in the dark and sleeping during the day, but we could just use our imaginations and pretend we were working night-shifts- or perhaps make-believe that we were bats, or foxes, or some other nocturnal creature. It would be fun. And as we'd be able to get up an hour later every day, we'd be able to go to bed an hour later every night, thus being able to enjoy more of the light as the dawn broke in the evening.

Convoluted genius. Thanks to Mark for the pointer.

Oh, and while I'm here: Proporta Big Cat Hunting Stilts. They're certainly branching out.

Posted at 2005-03-27 10:10:04 by Richard • Link to Clocks back!

Don't bother tidying up

That's my Dad's summary. We're watching a 3-month retrospective of the Indian Ocean tsunami, and some guy was telling the camera how they had just held the opening party for his new luxury hotel. Imagine that — the very day before the tsunami you'd just held the opening party for the beachfront hotel you had just finished building. Then the very next day it's flattened by an enormous wave. What a fucker of a Christmas present. It shouldn't be funny, but it just is.

Posted at 2005-03-27 09:45:05 by Richard • Link to Don't bother tidyi…