More lies

I am, despite what it looks like, writing something for this blog. The material fought me at first, and frankly, is still resisting a bit, but I think I am within spitting distance of getting this to work. In the meantime, I want to apologize for the delay; it is unconscionable, but I hope to make good on it very shortly. Thank you for your patience. 

And Eliza says...

The[1] rain[2] in[3] Spain[4] stays[5] mainly[6] in[7] the[8] plain.[9]

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[1]English’s definite article, the word that says that the word after it is the one you are talking about and not some other word that may or may not mean the same thing. The is in direct contrast with a or an, which are English’s indefinite articles, which do not describe specific things but rather members of a class of the same thing. For example, the rock refers to a specific rock that I may or may not throw at your front window as the fancy strikes me, and if the fancy does strikes me you can bet your bottom dollar that I will throw the rock—I am no turn the other cheek advocate, not by a long shot, guys, and if you think you can chuck a fancy at me without me chucking something right back at you then you are seriously deluding yourself. On the other hand, a rock refers to any rock that I may have at hand to accomplish this purpose. An is a’s little brother and is used in front of words that begin with a vowel. English objects to the idea of naked vowels at the beginning of a word for some reason and so insists that a consonant precedes them. This sort of Victorian prudery went out the door during the 1960’s, of course, and normal people don’t insist on this sort of rubbish anymore, but the grammar police still demand that words beginning in a vowel have a consonant chaperone, lest the neighbors start talking and give the word a bad reputation. All words would like to have a good reputation, except for the swear words, for obvious reasons, and ain’t, which has been disreputable for so long that it has a hard time imagining itself as a reputable member of lexicographical society. It keeps on trying, God love it, and who knows, maybe someday ain’t will be respectable. As Noah Cross says in Roman Polanski’s film, Chinatown, ‘politicians, ugly buildings, and whores all get respectable if they last long enough.’ The same process might occur for ain’t; we can only hope. Ain’t deserves some respect, I think, if only for hanging on for so long against the power of the grammar Nazis.

       So to reiterate, the is the definite English article and a or an is the indefinite English article. Some languages, like Russian and Chinese, do not have articles at all and do not seem to care, whereas other languages, like French or German, can have three or more. This seems to be a matter of linguistic taste, along with anchovies on pizza or mayonnaise on French fries, both habits that are more than a little nauseating and which good parents should endeavor to discourage in their children.

[2] A natural phenomenon best known for its ability to ruin parades. I am not sure why rain hates parades so much; the frequency with which rain will go out of its way to ruin a parade suggests that the animosity is personal, which in turn suggests that this is some kind of childhood trauma or perhaps the result of a love affair gone horribly wrong, but science does know that parades invite rain the way a white shirt invites spatters of spaghetti sauce. Given these facts, one should always go to a parade with an umbrella and galoshes. Rain that does not fall on a parade or anywhere else is called virga. This really doesn’t have anything to do with anything we are discussing here, but it is the sort of meteorological fun fact that you can impress your friends with at the Fourth of July parade and fireworks show while you are waiting for the rain to end.

[3] An uninteresting word, well-known for its Bolshevistic tendencies. In its youth, in was a Trotskyite with Bukharinist overtones, but after the Moscow show trials began in began its full-throated support of Stalinism and demanded that the security organs destroy all kulaks, class enemies, and wreckers. A lot of this went on in those days and the people who had been Stalinists all along could not help but notice that in was a little late to the game. In noticed that the Stalinists noticed and, being a highly intelligent article as articles go, decided to get himself out of the worker’s paradise before the inevitable meeting with Vasili Blokhin occurred.  So in the summer of 1937, in had himself smuggled out of the Soviet Union disguised as a bottle of cheap vodka. After the tumult of the October Revolution and the Civil War and all the other crises that made early 20^th century Russia a bad place to sell life insurance, in decided that he wanted a quiet, well-ordered existence where he would be safe from the Chekhists. He found this existence inside the Oxford English Dictionary, where in resides to this day. He is very old now, of course, but he is very happy that he outlived all the other Old Bolsheviks and everyone who remembered the last time the Chicago Cubs won the World Series (for those of you interested in such things, the Cubs last won the Series in 1908).

[4] A place. It rains there, or so I’ve heard.

[5] What you can count on relatives to do whether you want them to or not.  Free room and board will attract lots of people that you only want to see on the Christmas holidays, and not even then, to be perfectly honest. They are very nice people in their native habitat, wherever that may be, and you wish they would go back there as quickly as possible. In the meantime, they are eating you out of house and home, and expect you to do their laundry and drive them to the mall whenever the urge to commit commerce strikes them. I understand that family feeling should count for something in this day and age, but frankly, I don’t remember when I started to think that opening  a not for profit hotel was a good idea and I wish to get out of the business as soon as possible.

[6] An adverb, which is just a verb without full time employment. Please don’t start on me; I know that the economy is hurting and that the competition for full-time employment is intense. No one wants to hire English verbs anymore, not when they can get a Mexican verb to do the same job for less than minimum wage, but most adverbs are just not trying hard enough. If they had stayed in school like their parents told them instead of hanging out in the boy’s bathroom smoking marijuana and listening to that damn heavy metal music, they’d all have good paying jobs now instead of living in their parents’ basement playing video games to all hours of the night.  Am I right or what? Adverbs today are just a generation of slackers that just don’t want to grow up. Annoying, and probably not politically correct to say so, but true is still true whether you like it or not.

[7] Cf. Note 3. Not going there again, folks. Been there, done that, got the revolutionary t-shirt to prove it.

[8] Cf. Note 1. Ditto.

[9] Yogurt without the stale fruit on the bottom. I am not sure why anyone eats yogurt in the first place. Eating something with the look and consistency of snot seems to be a complete repudiation of what our mothers told us not to do in kindergarten, but I seem to be alone in this opinion. Every year dairy farmers turn millions of gallons of milk into yogurt and someone must eat the stuff because it disappears off the store shelves with great regularity.  I can’t explain why anyone would want to eat yogurt, in much the same way I can’t explain why anyone would think voting for a Democrat is a good idea, but someone must want to; they keep turning up on the ballot like termites in an old house.  It’s just another of life’s little mysteries, I suppose.

Excuses, excuses

Yes, you think, excuses, excuses, and more excuses for not writing, Akaky has a million and one excuses for not parking his fat backside down and getting to work. Well, you'll be happy to know that there is something on the griddle and that I anticipate that it will be done shortly. At least, I hope it is done shortly, because, as you know, things come up suddenly, the lawn has to be mowed, and the Commies are coming out of the woodwork. But I will, as the Chief says in The Outlaw Josey Wales, endeavor to perservere and have this new bit out here just as soon as I can, And thank you again for your continued support!

Turkish, Coffee, and its discontents

It has been an interesting week here in the egregious mold pit wherein I labor for my daily bread.  Since Monday, I have been an unwilling participant in an ongoing argument with an elderly and more than a little loony Puerto Rican gentleman about the proper conjugation of Turkish verbs.  I am an unwilling participant in this brouhaha because, as I have told him numerous times, I do not speak Turkish, I have never spoken Turkish, and it is entirely unlikely that I will be trying to learn Turkish any time in the immediate future.  Given this state of absolute ignorance concerning all things concerning the Turkish language, I am not in a position to debate the proper conjugation of verbs in the future dubitative tense with this gentleman.  In fact, however, I should mention that the gentleman I am having this one-sided argument with is in no position to argue the facts of Turkish verb conjugation either—possession of a small and incredibly ratty Turkish dictionary  bought for a quarter at the second hand bookstore down the street from us does not make one an expert on the Turkish language, Turkish culture, or the long-term ramifications of current Turkish foreign policy in the eastern Mediterranean region and beyond, a position, I feel, is something that Turks  of all political persuasions can agree with. If not, please let me know.  After he finished lecturing me on how wrong I was in all matters concerning Turkish verb conjugation and grammar, our Puerto Rican gentleman asked for the address and phone number of a Spanish botanica in the city, saying that he wanted to go there in order to find something to help alleviate his loneliness.  No one at his group home wants to talk to him, he said, and he did not understand why not.  I must admit that I was about to snicker when he said this, but then the chuckle died aborning; it struck me that it must indeed be a lonely life for a mentally ill elderly man without a family when even his fellow crazies think he’s nuts.

Television advertising constantly reminds the American public these days that America runs on the baked goods and coffee of a large chain of restaurants that will remain unnamed here. If you are an American, you know which chain I am talking about; if you are not, then there is no point in bringing the matter up; and if you are an advertising executive for this chain who wants to do some product placement I should point out that the advertising rates for such placement are very reasonable here.  Getting back to the facts, I was sitting at the red light waiting to make my right onto the highway that leads into the heart of our happy little burg.  Unlike many red lights, which simply serve as a device to justify cops handing out traffic tickets, this particular red light does serve a practical function. While it is possible to make the right on red at this particular red light, it is not advisable.  The lay of the land and the curvature of the road are such that in order to see if anything is coming down the highway, the hurried motorist must inch out almost halfway out onto the highway, thereby increasing the risk of having the front end of his car sheared off by some impatient doofus hurtling through the intersection before the yellow light turns red.  Needless to say, I have, over the years, been the subject of so many near-misses at this light that I no longer go inching out onto the highway; being an extra minute early for work is simply not worth risking my neck for.  This attitude, however, is not widespread hereabouts, as demonstrated this morning when the incredibly angry obese woman with a face like a cross between a Vietnamese fat-bellied pig and a rusty fire hydrant in the car behind me began leaning on the horn in order to move me along.  I was not going to move, for the reasons aforementioned, and because that moving along is not a big deal at this light. This light, unlike so many traffic lights, actually goes through its green—yellow—red cycle quickly, so motorists in a hurry are never left sitting there wondering, when is this damn light ever going to change, for long.  

In any case, after one prolonged and very unnecessary horn blast, the woman opened her window and began screaming at me. I did not shout back at her; I simply adjusted my rear-view mirror in such a way that she could see what I was saying and used a short but definite phrase to let her know that I was not going to move until the light was green.  Our automotive Brunnhilde saw what I said, and promptly backed up and went around me even as the light was changing and went roaring out onto the highway without looking to see if there was anything coming. Now, if life was fair, this avoirdupois ass would have had her avoirdupois ass smeared all over the road by a tractor-trailer, but alas, Nemesis would not have Her way with this gelatinous dolt today.  She roared off down the highway like a Macy’s Thanksgiving balloon in a high wind even as the light turned green. I went out onto the highway a moment later and without worrying about the oncoming traffic.

I saw her only a few minutes later.  She was in the parking lot of the unnamed coffee and baked goods chain whose products keep America running, trying to hoist her very substantial and circumferential self out of the driver’s seat of her car.  I laughed out loud, a not terribly polite reaction on my part, I know, but one I could not help at the time—the idea of charging blindly out onto a highway without checking to see if there was anything coming was just so stupid to me I could not believe it, as was knowing that the object of this stupidity was because this onnazumo manqué could not bear someone keeping her from her doughnuts and coffee for an extra twenty seconds.  Those guys must make a damn fine cup of Joe.