mikeneko's about the Horror! the Horror! the Horror! of Canada Post/ Escargot Canada's new regulations when there came a merry timble at the door- on a Sunday- surely the Greeenpeace people have better things to do on a freezing weekend before Christmas than come soliciting, must be kids selling chocolate bars poor bunnies, better limp down and get them in out of the cold for a minute. Did, could see nothing out the window in the upper door, must be very little kids what can their mothers be thinking of, open door... on nothing, and a white van taking off... and two packages on the porch. So mikeneko and incandescens, worry no more, your contraband has made it multas per gentes et multa per aequora, through many peoples and over many waves, to my doorstep. (And so did yours earlier, mvrdrk, but of course you put 'no' on your label so I know you weren't worrying. ^_^)Rot those damned customs labels though. I must train myself not to read them, now they have to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, in detail. No more 'gift' or 'personal use material' or 'toy' (on a vibrator, not that you wanted to know that.)
On a totally different note, interview with the maker of The Triplets of Belleville (in the Japan Times of all places, hmm.) Hadn't realized the triplets' cuisine was a nose-thumb at what the French eat, but OK. I did have a translator's twitch at rendering joie de vivre as 'the joy of life'-- I mean it is but it isn't, you know, any more than genki is 'healthy.' Joie de vivre is joie de vivre and doesn't translate into a language/ culture that doesn't *have* joie de vivre in the ordinary way of things. (No really, Anglo cultures don't. Consider the dominant ethos (ethoi?) of England, America, Canada, and Kiwi-land: puritan, the lot of them. The cheerful Ozzies may have their own version; I won't say they don't. But not us, outside Quebec.)
