A smiling Mercedes?; RT again; Spanish words for 'whore': & Wails/Whales

No sooner do I say that judge Mercedes Alaya - of the ERE case - never smiles, than the Spanish media is reporting she's just been seen to do so. Albeit during a marriage-vows-renewal ceremony with her husband (Who else?). Here and here are fotos of this but I, for one, am not convinced there's a smile there. Incidentally, since marriage vows are for life, what is the logic behind renewing them? Just an excuse for a party, I guess.

I watched Russia's RT TV channel this morning. Initially, it was laughter producing but before too long I began to feel nauseated by the relentless partisanship of it all. If he's watching from Hell, Goebbels will be proud of his students. Though not, I suppose, when they refer to the Ukrainians as 'far right Nazis'. As if there's any other sort. I initially thought the worst aspect of this morning was another appearance of George Galloway, who seems to have bought back his soul from militant Muslims and sold it to militant Russians. Or perhaps to the Devil. But, in fact, the hardest thing to stomach was a clearly intelligent professor from Moscow university who appeared to have taken leave from Putin's backside to come on the program to tells us just how nefarious the USA is. Supporting Al Qaida groups in Syria, for example. Not to mention far right Nazis in Kiev, who are planning to destroy gas pipelines with nuclear weapons. And who must be stopped, I guess.

But on to brighter matters . . . Years ago, I produced a list of Spanish words which, at worst, mean something slightly naughty in the masculine form but mean something far worse in the feminine form. Here's a Spanish list I saw last night. If you don't understand Spanish, all you need to know is that puta means prostitute/whore:-

PUTO: Gigolo, follador, vividor: PUTA: Puta.

ZORRO: Espadachín Justiciero: ZORRA: Puta.

PERRO: Mejor amigo del hombre: PERRA: Puta.

AVENTURERO: Osado, valiente, arriesgado, hombre de mundo: AVENTURERA: Puta.

AMBICIOSO: Visionario, enérgico, con metas: AMBICIOSA: Puta

CUALQUIER: Fulanito, Mengano, Zutano: CUALQUIERA: Puta

BICHO: Insecto; animal: BICHA: Puta.

CALLEJERO: De la calle, urbano: CALLEJERA: Puta

HOMBRE PÚBLICO: Personaje prominente: MUJER PÚBLICA: Puta

GOLFO: Masa de agua marina parcialmente rodeada de tierra: GOLFA: Puta

LOBO: Mamífero predador rapaz y feroz. Hombre experimentado y agresivo. LOBA: Puta

LIGERO: Hombre débil y/o sencillo: LIGERA: Puta

ADÚLTERO: Infiel : ADÚLTERA: Puta

“QUE HIJO PUTA”: Expresión de “menuda suerte, ¡qué cabrón!”: “QUE HIJA PUTA”: Expresión de “menuda Zorra, ojalá se muera”

Actually, I could add a few more - e. g. Cerdo/Cerda - but I'll leave this for the future.

Finally . . . Sitting in my salón yesterday, I had to endure a bout of my neighbour's apparently purposeless shouting and wailing. It certainly wasn't singing. And then it struck me what it was really like - the calling of whales across the planet's oceans. So wailing is a more apt term than I first thought.