Category: Humor

I Need A Montage

montageHere it is December 6th, and I haven’t even thought about … OMG!  there are only 19 more Panic Days ’til Christmas.  What the hell?  I haven’t got rid of the Thanksgiving waistline, and now there’s another turkey looming on the horizon.  This happens every year: leftover Hallowe’en candy mutates into Thanksgiving pie that turns into Christmas cookies that become boxes of Valentine’s Day bonbons which morph into gigantic, solid chocolate Easter bunnies — and it’s July 17th before I can see my toes again.  Merciful Jesus, sew my mouth shut!

And it’s not just my jeans screaming for mercy.  It’s almost the end of the year, and I haven’t fixed the kitchen fan, the living room light or the bedroom window screen.  My desk looks like Attila the Hun has established a colony, and if I don’t clean my car soon, the Department of Health is going to put a padlock on it if — big if — the Department of Safety even allows them in!  I’m never going to get a tree, deck the halls, find the perfect present, string the lights, attend the parties, suffer the hangovers and get anything wrapped in time…. The whole world sucks and I hate everything.

I need a montage.  I need that movie device that compresses time so guys like me and Rocky Balboa can quit whining, chisel our abs, finally get a few things done and go out and kick Mr. T’s ass — once and for all.

Movies have had montages since Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein developed the technique over 100 years ago.  You would think by now some smart Silicon Valley type would have invented one for real life.  Just imagine cramming six months of relentless, laser-focused work into 3 and a half minutes of an “Eye of the Tiger” video.  I don’t know about you, but I’d pay folding money for that little puppy.  And wouldn’t it be cool?  Want to lose weight?  Get a montage.  Learn a language?  Montage.  Write a novel?  Build that kickass social network?  Organize the photos from Italy?  Montage, MONTAGE, MONTAGE!  Just think about it.  You could do the crap work before breakfast and all the cool stuff lying by the pool in the afternoon.

Wait a minute!  Earth to WD!

Unfortunately, we live in barbarous times, and all those Google fools can think about is automatic cars.  Hey, folks! I know how to drive; what I need is pants that fit.  Find me an app for that, Google, and I’ll put you back on my Christmas list.

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