Spicy food, zesty song

Nothing keeps you young like ma la and karaoke.

New Wild Boar Village

Etymology is great fun, as this post describes. Names we think of as proper nouns in fact mean things:

New York? “New Wild Boar Village.”
(Apparently, York, in England, derives from the Old English eofor for wild boar and the Latin vicus for village.)

Great Britain? “Great Land of the Tatooed.”

Grozny? “The Awesome.”

London? “Hill Fort.”

Happy World Toilet Day!

I Sing For Toilets from Gino Federici on Vimeo.

It's amazing what one finds when searching for information on the World Trade Organization. Like this important announcement from another WTO:

Today is World Toilet Day!!!

Apparently 2.6 billion people in the world lack proper toilets. To help us remember, they have come up with "three we's" of toilet advocacy. We we we.

Indeed, this is not the only pun they have developed to promote the cause. There is also the Let's Observe Ourselves (LOO) campaign, which aims to get people to pay more attention to their habits. (Er, let's NOT, shall we?)

But they can also be rather direct. The third "we" is "WE DESERVE BETTER PLACES TO DEFECATE -- PROPER TOILETS". Well, yes, that about sums its up.

Unsurprisingly, the organization is based in Singapore. I'm just glad WTD is not tomorrow, when this important cause would be overshadowed by an even more important event.

Sunshine!

Internationally acclaimed painter DKlein has just completed her latest project, "Country Sun," at the 48th St. Gallery. The world thanks her for this artistic gift.

VICTORY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Put this on.

Here we go

Tuscan weekend fun

Weeks of anticipation finally give way to chestnuts, films, excessive giggling, torrential rains, fog, real estate, lashings of hysteria, A. In short, bliss.