The proven benefits of fermentation

 

A man by tumbling his thoughts, and forming them into expressions, gives them a new fermentation, which works them into a finer body. Jeremy Collier

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Drinking beer in Barcelona

I am not much of a beer “connaisseur” but I know that any brew needs fermentation to be palatable.
The same goes for ideas. They need to ferment and percolate for some time to mature.

An idea is like a rough diamond. It has to be cleaned, cut and polished to become appealing. The same goes for writing. The text needs to be thoroughly scrutinized before being released for consumption.

The brain is an exquisite piece of machinery that runs silently 24 hours a day. Even while asleep your brain processes and reprocesses many of the thoughts that you had the previous day. Because of this non-stop activity you often wake up in the middle of the night with answers to your concerns.

When it comes to writing, nobody is harder on himself than a blogger. He/she tries his best but the results vary. An essay is like a cake; sometimes it turns out beautifully and sometimes it is a disappointment… mainly because it was not kneaded enough or fermented long enough.

When writing, being bilingual or trilingual is a big advantage. When you cannot find the right word in English, you search for it in your mother tongue or if you are fortunate enough in a third dialect and you are very likely to find the correct word.

But you also have to be attentive because similar spelling or sounding words can have a different meaning in a different language.

When I first came to the US, my eyes caught a newspaper headline: “Cons escape!”
I found this a little puzzling. In French, a con is a stupid person, a jerk.
So jerks escaped? Big deal! Cons are all around us.

Few writers can produce a whole document in a single draft. Presidential speeches for instance need to ferment and are constantly massaged to sound right.
Speaking from the cuff or impulsive digital graffiti is a bad idea! In cyberspace whatever you say can be retrieved and used against you.

It is much better to sleep on a first draft and let it froth for a while. You can tackle it again the next day and see your flubs more clearly… then you hopefully can correct them.

Fermentation is akin to preparation and,

“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” Benjamin Franklin

Alain

A day without laughter is a day wasted


A day without laughter is a day wasted
. Charlie Chaplin

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Laughter is an instant vacationIn our troubled times, we need to decompress regularly. So here are three (old) short stories kept cool for you in my joke freezer to make you laugh:

A man comes home and tells his wife that he will take a shower and leave immediately for a last minute business dinner. His wife is a little skeptical and decides to go through his pockets while he is under the shower. She discovers a little note saying:
My love, I am awaiting your arrival. I will cook you a duck in sauce, the dish that you are so crazy about.
The spouse does not lose heart and decides to up her game: she puts on a sexy negligee, enticing makeup and spellbinding perfume. The husband astounded, throws himself immediately on his wife and makes love to her with a long forgotten passion, and renews his feat twice.

But he suddenly remembers his lie and feels that he has to go to his so-called business meeting in order to avoid arousing his spouse’s suspicions. He arrives at his mistress and tells her right away that he is exhausted from working all day and that he is just going to eat and leave early.
After dinner, he falls asleep and the offended young woman goes through his pockets. She discovers her own note on which the spouse had added: I send you the duck, but I am afraid that there is no sauce left….

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Attorney: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a
pulse?
Witness: No.
Attorney: Did you check for blood pressure?
Witness: No.
Attorney: Did you check for breathing?
Witness: No.
Attorney: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began
the autopsy?
Witness: No.
Attorney: How can you be so sure, Doctor?
Witness: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.
Attorney: I see, but could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless?
Witness: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing
law

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A guy is reading his paper when his wife walks up behind him and smacks him on the back of the head with a frying pan.
He asks, “What was that for?”
She says, “I found a piece of paper in your pocket with ‘Betty Sue’ written on it.”
He says, “Jeez, honey, remember last week when I went to the track?’ Betty Sue was the name of the horse I went there to bet on.” She shrugs and walks away. Three days later he’s reading his paper when she walks up behind him and smacks him on the back of the head again with the frying pan.
He asks, “What was that for?”
She answers, “Your horse called.”

Feel free to thank me: your day has not been wasted.

Alain

Do you speak Russian?


“I’m Russian: I’m into men, diamonds, and caviar.” Irina Valeryevna Shaykhlislamova

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а ты говоришь по русски? (A ty govorish’ po russki?)

On American TV good movies offerings are rare… They are like mirages. They shimmer on the horizon but they vanish the minute you try to grab them.

To watch fairly decent flicks you have to stay clear of the networks and fish in foreign waters. You have to turn to Netflix, HBO, Hulu, Amazon and the likes.

After a hard day of loafing, I often relax from the stress by gazing at the BoobTube. Well, it is not a tube anymore… but after spending a sizable amount of money on a large flat screen, I want to get my money’s worth.

The last 3 months I survived a pathetic dearth of Yankee entertainment with a steady diet of Hispanic, Indian, Korean, Danish, Swedish and German offerings.

After exhausting my supply of watchable stuff, I turned to my wife for recommendations.

моя жена (my wife) who watches almost exclusively Russian flicks pointed me to YouTube where there are plenty of foreign and Russian movies.

I am somewhat acquainted with the Russian language and I am familiar with a bunch of words; I also understand some snippets of conversation.

Additionally, when watching a Russian movie I sometimes come accross French “loanwords” such as bagage, bigoudis, bouquiniste, café, cauchemar, chance, chanson, concours, costume, couchette, dame, douche, garage, jalousie, mirage, plage, restaurant, trottoir, voyage, etc.

Let’s not forget that before the Bolshevik Revolution, due mainly to Peter the Great (r. 1682–1725) and Catherine II (r. 1762–1796) the nobility spoke almost exclusively in French.

I found Russian movies very interesting. If it would not be for the omnipresent snow and if people didn’t speak Russian, you could easily believe that the action was taking place is some affluent European country.

The living quarters are nice, people are well dressed and everybody seems to drive late model cars.
This is course a fantasy land, like the 1930’s Hollywood productions.

Many Russian movies feature beautiful women who dress exquisitely (shades of Doctor Zhivago) and act very well.
In many Russian comedies (and dramas) women are unmarried or divorced. They are all brazenly looking for marriageable material and they make no bones about it. But not everybody qualifies. The prospective groom has to be rich, filthy rich. Russia seems to be a very materialistic society where money reigns supreme.

Plots are often convoluted, if not very schmaltzy. But I am not against occasional schmaltz. If you must know, I am a softie and I like happy endings.

In Russian melodramas though, there are very few happy endings. Somebody must die before the movie ends. It sometimes reminds me of exasperating French flicks that do not have an explicit ending.

I tried to learn Russian many times but the devilish Cyrillic alphabet always prevented me from getting ahead. With subtitled Russian movies, I have the feeling of gaining ground. Maybe someday I will be able to finally understand моя жена.

до свиданья мужики. Goodbye peasants!

Alain