It is always nice when a beautiful girl pay notice to you, but you always want it to be for something else than random knowledge. . . . In this case the random knowledge was the name of Swedens national antheme: "Du gamla, du fria"

Who cares, the question is did you get the girl!:D

By the way what does that mean? Is that it "You old, you free?"

I assign signing up for your exam on a relatively late (afternoon) term. I mean, I have at least about an hour before preparing to go, now I am here and not sure what to do, I won't revise for it anymore nor make any creative effort, so I am just hanging around, and of course I resorted to going to the Downs... :) and posting on unimportant things.

yep that is the direct translation. . . one could also translate it "Thou ancient, thou free"

The funny thing is that this song was not written about Sweden at all, it was part of Scandinaviasm/Nordism and is about the lovelieness of the north. Only latter was verse added that mention Sweden as such.

Norways national antheme also talk about "Three Brothers" (Denmark, Norway, Sweden), but neither the danish royal antheme or the danish national antheme mentions the other countries.

The avast virus alert in German. I'm not one of those people who associates that particular language with evil, but that voice is just deliciously demonic. :smokin:

Them is fighting words!

I believe it was written in the mid 19th century to help strengthen the then quite recent (forced) union between the kingdom of Sweden and Norway. Sweden probably harboured hopes of regaining Finland too at this time, which they just lost to Russia, but before that had been a part of the kingdom for many centuries. Sweden had wrestled Norway from Denmark, their arch-enemies, after a successful field-campain by the newly appointed king, Frenchman Jean Baptiste Bernadotte, who had no Swedish connections apart from leading an invading army against the country only a few years before receiving the crown. This happened in the aftermath of Napoleon's big defeat, which Bernadotte, once favoured by the little big man, was instrumental in achieving with his inside information. In Norway however there was little interest in being the subjects of a French Swedish king; nationalism was stirring and they desired independence but had to wait almost a hundred years to get it. "Du gamla, Du Fria", written as a Scandinavian anthem, later became the unofficial Swedish national anthem, although it never mentions the country in question.

I assign nationalism.

Wrestled Norway from Denmark. . .Sweden did no such thing. It was demanded by England! Norway declared independency and Denmark got the tiny duchy of Lauenburg (northern Germany) as compensation. Norway elected the danish prince Christian as king, got one of the most democratic constitutions in europe and was then invated by Sweden. . .

Anyways the song is from 1844, by this time the ancient rivalry of the north had been substituted by sense of common history and brotherhood. In the first war of Slesvig (1848-1850) between Denmark and Slesvig-Holsten (supported my Prussia), there where troops from Norway and Sweden in Denmark to defend her.

If I remember correctly one of the conditions Bernadotte put on joining the anti-French coalition was England's support for his plans on Norway, which was given. First Bernadotte commanded the international North Army against Napoleon, but when that war was won, he marched with the Swedish army (which he had spared from most of the fighting up until now) on Denmark. He won a few minor battles and when Copenhagen was threatened the Danes gave up, and lost Norway in the subsequent peace treaties. I don't know if the English were present during the negotiations, they might have been. When Norway refused to accept the "union", they were invaded and defeated by the Swedish army, as you said. Norway got to keep their modern constitution though and was an autonomous region until 1905 when they gained full independence.

Surely you mean Bernadotte and not Bonaparte?

and no, the only fighting that the danes did was against the english in the so called "gunboat war". I think you are mixing up the napoleonic wars with some of the earlier Dano-Swedish wars.

Anyways we should move this talk to PMs

Wouldn't that be a bit hard to do?

Yeah, let's do that. You will receive a PM later on.:)

And yes, I got my Frenchmen mixed up, obviously.

Moderator's note
 

I'm missing a Tolkien connection in these last posts - please do take off-topic discussions to PM. Thanks! :)

Club remixes of a rather...profane...rant. It amuses me rather more than it should.

Crows. I love listening to them greet dawn en masse, but they started this morning at 4:53.

They're an hour and a half early. It's only March.

I love Crows. There's a clan of them living on our office building. They have a big tree in the 'crocodile pit' light well in the middle with two nests in it and two more perched on the ledges, and if you go high enough you can see in to the eggs. They're deadly territorial though, one of them perches above the entrance doors and shrieks at people coming into the building :cool:

Crebain of Government Land! Run for your lives! Heh.

Having beloved books returned after a loan so long you had given up hope of return.... Only not in the Shire because I spent the time I should have devoted to house and garden to rereading....

New England weather, which can be very confusing at times. We had some beautiful weather the past few days, which was quite refreshing after months of wearing jackets. Then yesterday the high got to 93F (34C), which was in fact a bit too hot and very unusual for April. Today it's supposed to only get to 59F (15C). How on earth can the temperature be cut in half (and a little more) in 24 hours? :eek: Okay, I know New England weather does tend to be bipolar (much like my hometown of Boise actually), but c'mon this is a bit extreme. Can Mother Nature please decide whether it's spring or summer already?

I assign getting a new computer, normally I'd assign this to the Shire, but my lovely father put parental controls on that thing, so now I can only go on at certain times. It also doesn't have internet on it yet, probably will b in a couple of days though.

Customer Services - I phoned 3 lots today. The two where I was ordering / checking progress were super-efficient friendly and helpful. The one I needed to complain about I was hanging on for ages waiting for an operative to be free before I gave up. Funny that :rolleyes:

Brushtail possums. They have to be one of the most easily-tamed species on Earth, they're terribly cute as babies and even as adults... and they rip tiles off your roof, eat all your plants (including cacti) and fight with each other all night.

If you're ever in Melbourne and you hear what sounds like a leopard snarling in the night... that would be a possum. Cobra-like hiss? That's another possum that doesn't like the first possum. Horrible, ear-piercing screeching that would put a Nazgûl to shame? The two possums have decided to settle their differences by beating the living daylights out of each other.

Oh, and that's not really a horse galloping up and down on the roof in the middle of the night, just a possum running to... I don't know, express the joy of possum-hood. Or something.

A couple got in through a hole they've made behind the stove and rampaged around my kitchen at about three a.m. this morning. I'll have to do something about that. Like build a new wall.:(

~Nerwen the Sleepless.

new fangled flat-screen TVs, their huge & overly complex remote controls and the user manual with almost as many pages as The Two Towers.

All I wanna do is plug-in & watch straight from the box, and not spend a life-time sorting out another bunch of cables, scart sockets, RGBs. USBs and a partridge in a pear tree!

Enough of the fancy specs, just give me something functional. Basically, keep it simple, stupid

Computer and xbox and whatever games. They're entertaining but darn time-consuming.

Eurovision Song Contest (I know I've assigned this before) - it's so stupid but such great entertainment! :D

Analysis of poetry. I find it fascinating but some parts of it I just don't understand whatever I do.

Lommy, I second the Eurovision Song Contest - the musical quality is nowhere near as good as the entertainment value! :D

I only ever bothered with ESC for the dry wit & cynicism of Terry Wogan.


Replacement Graham Norton, was okay last night but on current form not quite in Wogan's league.

As for the songs? What Songs!

I don't think the consept is stupid.

It is just odd that it has to be so tacky all the time. . .

I don't get the people that hate it, and I don't get the peope that are fanatics, I guess Orthanc is just the place for it.

Having to stay up late to do coursework... it's late.. but its also kinda fun. (See time now)

Reaching a conclusion for my literary criticism ii paper... which says that with a certain bestseller young adult short story collection published by our University Press interpellates kids (mostly our univ students) that militants, politically active kids, and kids whose sexual preferences are not strictly heterosexual are to be ignored and are basically an insignificant lot... even though in our college, for example, there is a dearth of straight guys and militants and rallies and demonstrations are part of our lives. Incidentally, the author of the collection is a graduate of our creative writing program.

And my teacher for that subject is a big name in the university press.

Predictive text on mobile phones

Yes I understand the principles of how it works, but personally I hate using it because it hardly ever gives the words I'm looking for

A job offer (finally)...

...that doesn't start until August.

Getting sick with a mild strain of H1N1... a ten-day vacation that gave me an imperative to clean my room (which it needs badly), spray Lysol all over, and rethink my life, as well as a bit of fever and cough and colds. On the other hand, I miss classes and opportunities to hit our library for my thesis.

Thunder.

Absent-mindedly noticing the next WW game has started, and--yet again--you're not playing... which is sad, because you miss WW, but is actually awesome, because you realise that, for the first summer in recorded history, you actually wouldn't have time.

Or, to phrase it in a less Downs-centric manner: having a summer social life should be assigned to Orthanc.

Animal shelters.

On one hand, all of the pets I've ever had have been adoptees that needed love, and shelters are full of awesome people who work really hard and don't get nearly enough credit for the amazing work that they do.

On the other hand, I can't take every pet in that I come across and I always feel guilty for not being able to adopt them all.

lesson in humility
 

The University of the Philippines lost in the cheerdancing competition today. Well, not really lost lost, we just slid from being two-year champions to second runner-up.

We had a tarp, "UP is way beyond the Gold Standard," gold being the color of our rival for the top notch, University of Santo Tomas. When I dropped my attendance card, a UST person picked it up, returned it to me, but gave me a severe sermon about the arrogance of UP, whose tuitions are paid for by them, the taxpayers. He even said something to the effect that they, the Dominicans, are taught good manners while us liberal/free-thinkers have forgotten what sportsmanship is. I was so humiliated, for something that I was not directly at fault. But I did learn a very great lesson in humility.

UST didn't even make it.

Misunderstandings-
 

caused by knowing too many people with the same name.

Bad part: thinking my favorite paternal cousin was spontaneously getting married next summer even though it's wildly out of character and really a terrible idea (I was talking to his mom, hence associating the right name with the wrong person).

Good part: the massive flood of relief that came when he responded to my frantic e-mail ("Your mom just said you're getting married. WHAT!? When?! I want details. Spill!") with a lot of laughter.

I thought I was going to have to talk that boy out of some pretty serious stuff. :eek:

Added responsibilities at work that bring you a small increase in salary, and that you know will be good for your career prospects long-term, but are so time-consuming that you no longer have a life.

Shameless sequels to already trashy movies. Specifically sequels with all new actors for the same characters, because presumably the original actors had too much pride to take part in the new version.

So fun to watch... So terrible... Such awful acting...

Kinda like the mental equivalent of eating a popsicle.

Dad eating my precious champorado. I kept looking for hours where the big pan full of that gooey brown stuff was, until he asked me what I was looking for, and said he ate the entire pan. :(

To add insult to the injury, he also said my cooking was way too sweet, and that I used coffee creamer instead of real milk. He shouldn't complain, when I was cooking I asked if anybody wanted some, and he said he didn't want any!

I assign seriously contemplating major life changes to Orthanc. On the one hand, I haven't felt this alive in months.... on the other hand, I haven't had this much sheer fear (aka adrenaline) in my blood stream in months...

*panics*