Realms of bliss
Realms of light
Some are born to sweet delight
Some are born to sweet delight
Some are born to the endless night

–The Doors

I don’t often laugh aloud at cartoons, but this one got me.

Michael Quinion of World Wide Words has a book out.

I’m tempted to see about getting a spare mailing address at this domain.

Michael Jennings watches the Eurovision song contest. I’ve seen this phenomenon at least once, circa 1977 (the winner was the French entry, about a child and a bird), but most Americans will go “huh?”; it may help to mention that the contest gave ABBA their first international exposure.

Friday? How did it get to be Friday already?!

Brian Micklethwait took a mess of pictures of the EU complex in Brussels. One that caught my eye shows the words “European Parliament” in eleven languages, leading me to ask myself what rule decided the sequence. It appears to be alphabetical by native name: Dansk, Deutsch, Elliniki, English, Español, Français, Italiano, Nederlands, Português, Suomalainen, Svenska. (Spanish and Italian are identical; Danish and Swedish differ by a hyphen. If such they are.)

Afterthought – what are the native spellings of Slovene and Slovak? I seem to remember that the adjective for Czechoslovakia was Československo. (The first letter of that word, in case your font lacks it, is C with caron.)

Later: My old friend Ulrika tells me svenska, not svensk. Is the Swedish word for language feminine, or what?