Trivia Tidbit - Excommunication

Well, it's been a month. A variety of factors, chief among them being unreliable internet that makes blogging a not-as-convenient pastime, lots of homework as I approach the end of my semester, and a 2-week vacation flitting around Poland and Spain, led to my hiatus. And now, I'm afraid I have nothing really profound to say... I just found this random trivia tidbit hilarious.

You see, I was looking up "on this date in history" for my birthday (procrastination is an artform), and apparently the Pope with the shortest term died on my birthday, isn't that sweet? Ah, malaria. The best part's yet to come. According to everyone's best friend, wikipedia:

Urban VII's short passage in office gave rise to the world's first known public smoking ban, as he threatened to excommunicate anyone who "took tobacco in the porchway of or inside a church, whether it be by chewing it, smoking it with a pipe or sniffing it in powdered form through the nose.

Would excommunication be a viable way of combatting smoking today?

Other things that get you excommunicated: (wade through this site if you're up for it)

• abortion
  
• dueling
• communism
  
• neglecting to denounce within a month a priest who has "solicited" you to "immodest acts" during confession (or "in a confessional," which made me giggle inappropriately. Funnily enough, this law dates from the 17th century)
  
• abducting a woman "with a view to marriage" (I like this one because you don't get automatically excommunicated just for abducting a woman)
• punching a nun

Just imagine if, by smoking, you could add yourself to the venerated list of people excommunicated by the Catholic Church, which includes, in case you were wondering, Freemasons, Fidel Castro, and Napoleon. I like to imagine that they all broke aforementioned rules. You can decide which acts you think each one committed. I'm chuckling right now, picturing Napoleon giving a nun the right hook.

Faux Amis - Mensuel

While we're on the subject (a month later), mensuel always looks like menstrual to me, even though I've known forever that it means "monthly." And I tell myself every time I see it, "Sam, menstruel means menstrual, mensual just means once a month. Focus, Sam." That last part is something I add on to inner monologues often, and maybe you wouldn't be surprised to know how useful it is.
It's not really a false cognate. Menstruation does happen once a month...and you can call it your "monthly" or what have you. It's just very, very strange to hear someone use a word intending it to mean a monthly magazine and think of menstruation. Trust me, it is even stranger than it sounds in context.
Just think of all the contexts in which one might use "monthly" and how awkward it would be in those few seconds it takes you to tell yourself that it doesn't mean menstruation. Maybe you get together with friends for dinner once a month, maybe you have to pay your rent every month... trust me, it's not that often, but it's often enough to throw you off.
And it's only worse when you see things like this:
Another fun fact: I found out by doing a google image search for "mensuel" that there's a gay French magazine called "M. Mensuel."

French word:
mensuel
English equivalent:
monthly

This is probably the least faux of my faux amis, but it's been seriously bothering me, people.

Prank Call

So, I just got a phone call on my cell from an unknown caller, and I pick it up. Usually unknown numbers are my parents, but just in case, I answer the French way.

"Allo?" I say. A little silence, and then the person on the other line says "Allo?" They sound confused, so I figure that it might be another Erasmus student that got my number somehow. I give another "Allo?", and they respond...

"Uh, est-ce que votre frigo marche?"

(my actual frigo, with postcards/magnets from my summer wanderings in France)

Well damn, who knew that prank works in French, too? I was a little impressed, actually. I always knew marcher meant to walk and to work, but I never connected them.

Touché, French kid. Touché.


Word of the Day
La bêtise
I think it best translates as foolishness, but I don't know of a good English word that would work in all of its various contexts. Faire une bêtise is to do something stupid: The guy in front of me at the counter the other day didn't have enough money, and he told the cashier "oh, j'ai fait une bêtise." Dire des bêtises is basically to talk nonsense, or drivel. And wordreference.com informs me that friandises ou bêtise is the French way to say "trick or treat."

Baker Street, Toulouse? And a Not-So-Aptly-Named "Rotary"

Was there a Sherlock Holmes convention in Toulouse? 5 minutes after seeing a guy in the street with a pipe - a real live, legit pipe - I saw this guy:

Then, I saw this by the médiathèque:







Couldn't they have named an actual rotary after the Rotary club?








Word of the Day:
un rond-point
Depending on where you are in the English-speaking world, a roundabout, rotary, traffic circle...and probably more.

Wordle

I got bored and went to this site: http://www.wordle.net
and did a "wordle" of my blog.
Here's what came out: