Month: March 2022

Small pleasures of life for Yuki

Reading 1984. It appeared to me that Orwell liked lengthy sentences. I decided to come down to my computer and check a few other books. Just to compare. The longest Orwell’s sentence is 132 words/703 characters. Tolstoy’s… the longest sentence of War and Peace has 228 words/1293 characters. Nabokov is right on the heels of Tolstoy in terms of long sentences. 183 words/921 characters in the English (original) version of Lolita, and 209 words/1126 characters in its Russian translation! The screenshots are attached 🙂

Reading 1984. It seemed to me that Orwell uses a lot of long sentences. I quickly decided to go to my computer and compare with Tolstoy. The longest sentence by Orwell turned out to be 132 words and 703 characters without spaces, while Tolstoy’s longest was 228 words and 1293 characters. Then I found Nabokov’s Lolita in the original. The longest sentence in the English version is 183 words and 921 characters, and in the Russian version, it jumps to 209 words and 1126 characters—almost catching up to Tolstoy!

Essentials:

To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first, and then, wherever you hit, call it the target. — Ashleigh Brilliant

To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target. — Ashleigh Brilliant

Meanwhile, there is very fine and sparse, but snow. Zero degrees

An urgent joke:

A doorbell rings. A man with a huge drum is standing on the doorstep.

– Is this where I need to play at the funeral?

– How can you say that! The person is not dead yet!

– Oh, okay then.

Five minutes later, the doorbell rings again:

– Listen, can I leave my drum here with you for now?

(I don’t translate it to English as usual because it might be understood wrongly without having the proper context and without following what is happening in Russia on the political scene these days)

Yuki knows how to keep herself busy

“Wings, legs… The main thing is the tail!” (c)

Urgent joke:

Hello, dear, they just announced on the radio that some lunatic is driving the wrong way. Be careful. — One??? There are thousands here!

“Be careful love, it’s just been on the radio that some idiot is driving opposite to the traffic on the highway..”

“Someone…? These rascals are in hundreds!”

It turns out that the Shiba Inu is ranked first in terms of DNA closeness to the wolf. That’s why their howl is so reminiscent of a wolf’s—it’s in the genes. It also has two other noticeable traits—a fox-like pounce into snow or grass as if hunting for mice, and a clear reaction to strange dogs—he presses his chin to the ground and moves in small bounds, hiding behind trees, approaches the dog, and at the last moment can leap forward in one bound.

As I write this, he just can’t stop howling. He howls and runs between the door, the backyard, and the balcony.

Yuki’s voice broke out. It seems he saw some unrequited love from the balcony and started crying loudly. That dog is already gone beyond the horizon, but he’s still crying. Spring 😉 we went outside, took a trail. We’ve been running somewhere for half an hour already.

Our weather: The day before yesterday – snow with drifts and a blizzard, and minus six during the day. The day before that was plus 17. Today – minus five in the morning, and plus 17 again during the day. No snow at all