Dieser Eintrag ist auch auf Deutsch verfügbar .

Another curiosity which cropped up whilst reading Kafka’s Der Prozess can be found in the following quote:

Außerdem schien es der Maler mißzuverstehen, warum K. nur am Bettrand blieb, er bat vielmehr, K. möchte es sich bequem machen und ging, da K. zögerte, selbst hin und drängte ihn tief in die Betten und Polster hinein.

Franz Kafka, Der Prozeß

Ignoring for a second changes in the use of the ß, most learners of German would assume from this sentence the word missverstehen should be a separable verb. That is to say the painter seemed misszuverstehen and not zu missverstehen. As a result, you’d be forgiven for thinking that were the painter to misunderstand something K. said, Kafka would write:

Reading Kafka’s Der Prozeß recently, I came across an interesting construction that I hadn’t seen before.

Trotzdem K. gerade jetzt nicht daran gedacht hatte, sagte er sofort: “Gewiss, ich muss fortgehn. Ich bin Prokurist einer Bank, man wartet auf mich, ich bin nur hergekommen, um einem ausländischen Geschäftsfreund den Dom zu zeigen.” Franz Kafka, Der Prozeß

I’d only ever heard trotzdem used in a main sentence, and never before to form a verb-shunting Nebensatz. I figured at first this might be a mistake on the part of the publishers – my copy was of rather low-budget quality – and that the word obwohl had been intended, but the form repeated itself a number of times throughout the book.

Extravagant Spam

A topic I’ve previously written about has lately become something of a pain, to such an extent that I’ve actually decided to change my way of dealing with it. Whilst I could certainly complain that the number of spam messages on this blog far exceeded those few genuine comments (by a factor of several hundred), glancing over the list of catches once a week, it didn’t take all that long to weedle out the very occasional piece of ham incorrectly identified by Akismet as ‘spiced’.

Slightly confusing argument to start with, but this comic provokes enough argument for legal eagles and philosophising owls alike. Would the three go down for attempted murder or conspiracy to commit murder? Would Alp get sentenced for manslaughter for being the last one out of the room and apparently the one to finally turn the key? Should Aaron take the blame for ultimately removing the water, the pre-meditated poison going unused? Did Harold commit suicide by being so dopey about sitting around in there with just a bottle of water in the first place? Could Alp get committed for being so loopy as to drill several holes in a bottle after confusing sand and water?

Partly inspired by Linden ’s little snapshot of her life , and obviously a rip off of the film title, this is simply a mini-list of truths about myself that grate.

I write better when it’s dark

Not in the dark but when it’s dark. Whether it’s because that’s when I’m at my most lucid, or perhaps because the tiredness helps me overcome my inhibitions, the small hours have often been when I’m at my most productive. In fact, the idea for this very post was sketched at 5am one very idle night, when the neural aurorae kept me from dropping off. The ideas hop and flow and melt into one another like chocolate on a hot stove—and there’s never a pen around when you need it.