Category: Culture

Lost In Translation

conversationI am hopelessly in love with language.  I love the way it moves, the way it sounds, the way it feels, the way it thinks.  Hell, just being in the company of language turns me on!  If language were a woman, I’d never get out of bed.  Luckily, even though I’ve dabbled in French, Spanish and now Dutch, English will always be my monogamous choice.  You see, I have this feeling that being completely bilingual (or multilingual, or whatever) is like having two girlfriends, mistresses or wives.  It’s probably totally cool in theory, but the reality has got to be super- difficult and uber-confusing.  So, if you speak more than one language, I have a few questions.

1 — My electronics are all set for English.  However, if you’re emailing and texting people in more than one language, do you have to constantly change settings, or do you just pray autocorrect won’t suddenly have a total logic meltdown and fry your phone like in a bad Sci-Fi movie?

2 — What happens when you’re speaking one language and there’s a more descriptive word for what you’re saying in a different language?  Do you tell your brain to quit being such a smart ass and carry on, or do you use the foreign word and hope people don’t think you’re a pompous jerk?

3 — In general, jokes don’t translate, so are people who speak more than on language so confused they don’t really laugh at anything? Or do they wander around all day, giggling like idiots, because everything is so damn funny?

5 — Idioms and slang usually don’t translate either, so when you get really angry or excited, do you swear at people in the wrong language?

6 — How do you play Words With Friends?  Do you settle on one language or just use them all?

7 — How do you know which language you think in — like, for really?

But the thing I really want to know is this:

8 — After awhile, do you start speaking French with an American accent, German with an Italian accent, English with a Spanish accent and on and on — until even you don’t remember which is which, and you sound like your original language was Klingon?

It’s About Time

time-onI broke my watch, and since I’m some years over 40 and use my telephone for making telephone calls, I’ve spent most of the last couple of days absent-mindedly looking at my naked wrist and wondering “Where’d the time go?”  And since I had no idea where I was supposed to be or what I was supposed to be doing at any particular moment, I took the opportunity to try to wrap my mind around the nature of time itself. (FYI, if you’re name isn’t Einstein, good luck with that one!)  But I did come up with a few curious observations.

First of all, in the 21st century, trying to find somebody who will repair a watch is very much like looking for unicorns — everybody’s heard of them, but nobody actually knows where they’re at.

Furthermore, time is not a straight line, a circle, a square, or a polyhedron: time is a telescope.  It expands and contracts and — depending on how you look at it — throws everything out of proportion.
For example, trying to find someone to fix your watch — when you’re still relatively certain such people exist — can devour most of a morning.  YouTube videos alone can eat up several hours, taking you from how to replace a Bulova™ battery to how to build a Steam Punk Hourglass using chrome from a ’57 Chevy and black Alaskan sand.
On the other hand, trying to find someone to fix your watch — when you finally realize only mad dogs and Englishmen engage in that activity — is a heart-racing panic, reminiscent of the bomb scene in Goldfinger.  This is because the last remaining Romanian repairman (it took you two days to find) is 86, and if you don’t get to him before the Grim Reaper does, your broken watch will remain accurate twice a day ’til the end of time.  (Think about that.)

Plus, panic is contagious because the Romanian went out of business in 2003 and his great-nephew (who sells timepieces) laughed in your face when you showed him your watch.  He told you to throw it away and buy a new one ’cause “There are some good sales on, right now.”  And this made you remember that it’s American Thanksgiving on Thursday, Black Friday on Friday and — OMG! — it’s only a month ’til Christmas and you haven’t thought one thought about Christmas, and now you don’t even know what time it is and — crap — you are so-o-o-o screwed!

But most importantly, through it all, I discovered:

The difference between fixing a broken watch and buying a new one is an aristocratic Romanian with an attitude.

The difference between just buying a watch (which are rare as hen’s teeth) and buying an electronic device you wear on your wrist– that measures blood pressure, water pressure, air pressure and peer pressure– is about $300.00 — even on sale.

And the difference between Wednesday, November 23nd and getting sucked into Black Friday madness is a $50.00 Timex™, a stick-my-head-in-the-sand attitude towards Christmas and the overwhelming belief  that I’ve got better things to do with my time than stand in line — like checking out Kijiji to see if anybody’s got some chrome off a ’57 Chevy

We’re All In This Together

There’s been a lot of yipping lately about how divided our society has become.  These days,  everyone is painfully aware of what this particular group thinks or that particular group does or how some other group will react or get pissed off or … on and on and on.  Bullshit!  I don’t care how people identify themselves or what they think makes them different from everybody else, because the bottom line is — they aren’t — and I can prove it.

together

Here’s a simple test.

If you’ve done any one of these 10 things (11 if you’re female) you’re living proof that, way down deep in the human psyche, we’re all the same — just a bunch of ordinary folk, trying to get by.

1 — You hear a recording of your voice and think, “Wow, that is so-o-o weird.  Do I really sound like that?”

2 — You see someone you kinda know but not very well, and you pretend you don’t recognize them so you don’t have to make conversation.

3 — When you’re alone and a popular old song comes on the radio, you mumble most of the words until the chorus comes along and then you sing really loud.

4 — At a party with varying degrees of background noise, you smile a lot and “ha-ha-ha” laugh because you can’t actually hear what the other person is saying.

5 — Somebody says, “That was 10 years ago” and you’re thinking the 1990s, not 2006.

6 — You silently pronounce Wednesday as Wed-Ness-Day and February as Feb-Brew-Airy when you write them.

7 — You spend $20.00 extra at Amazon, for something you don’t really want, just to avoid paying the $8.00 shipping charge.

8 — You remember a stupid thing you did —  like — 12 years ago and get embarrassed all over again.

9 — You get out of the shower, see yourself naked in the mirror and go Supermodel for a nanosecond.

10 — When James Bond says, “My name is Bond, James Bond.” — you just read that in his voice, didn’t you?

And finally, for women only:

11 — At some point in your life, you’ve laughed so hard you peed your pants.