Echo

Reggie wins the Heisman for Spanking.

I’m in love with Maryjane…

Interpret however you’d like.

Nerd Island makes a special appearance at the afterparty.

May the tradition live on forever…

Michael Jackson’s Closing Statement:

Your honor, first of all, I did not touch those kids. And even if I did…so I touched a few kids. Big. Deal. I mean, what’s up with all y’all kids calling me on my shit…and you know I’m talkin’ to you, lil’ boy in the suspenders…You better not be talkin’ bout my business unless you wanna play with my monkey no more. And besides your honor,…did you see what he was wearing? That muthafucker was asking for it. And so I only flicked him a couple times and it was nothing. Your honor, as the founding fathers of our country said, two flicks, does not convict.

I rest my case.

Today is my favorite day of the year!!

I cry shenanigans. This crap they’ve got swimming in their heads is DSM categorical.

Who are these people? And are we really bonded to them? Is love only a chemical reaction? Are we all strangers, each dangerous to another in some way? can anyone really understand my loneliness? Maybe there’s something to be said about how exquisite the pain is. I, personally, wouldn’t give it up for the world.

People with good intentions become fixated on conquering your loneliness, a smothering kind of good will masking a power play where they secret hope to become your sole lifeline. But they don’t understand the devastation that ensues when this lifelong companion is taken away. They don’t know that what you really needed was a tether to a safe place when you’ve been set adrift. Can anyone really understand why I cry at night? What wakes me up at 2am feeling the presence of other, heavier spirits around me? What crowds into my head as I walk amongst people and see their individual secret tragedies?

And trust. What is that. How can we expect any kind of trust when we aren’t strong enough to reveal the truth when it matters?

Lost in Translation

I watched Troy last night and I have to ask, who decided that when doing a period piece set wherever, all of the actors must speak with an English accent? Almost everyone in the movie chose to use an English accent to authenticate the movie, even despite the fact that they were supposed to be Greeks. And then along comes Eric Bana playing Hector of Troy who says, “Well if we get to choose our own accent, I’m going to speak with my native Australian affectations.” So he spends the movie sounding like an Australian while everyone else was English. If I were in the movie, I would bring an Indian accent. Just to really mix it up.

On the subject of languages, Colin RSVP’d to my evite for my birthday party, then RSVP’d again after translating his original RSVP comments from English to Spanish to English to German to English. The results:

(Original)

Martin may be out of town, but that just means more spanking left for your tight buns. The tightest, juiciest buns in Taiwan I would reckon. I think junkster91 said it best: “man up” Shih, and get ready to beg for mercy. Or beg for more…

(After a game of Multi-Lingual Telephone)

Martin is outside city, but this means more whips for her firm rolls. The tight, more substantially of Taiwan,as if it would count. I think junkster91 of this is better:”it serves over” as Shih, prepared for grace, to ask in the situation. Or requires more… Prepare thine tight rolls!

I burst blood vessels in my head from laughing.

So I thought I would translate one of my posts a la CornishColin. I took an excerpt of my foot massage post. You can read the original below. The translation from English to Spanish to English:

Obtained blocked outside this house. Directed under the street towards a massage of the foot. According to reflexology Chinese, a vigorous one (read: ) the painful massage of the foot improves other corporal functions. For $6 more, a massage of the shoulder was offered. It rubbed my shoulders like 3 times before spending the 20 minutesnext in my end, internal thighs and… Reggie called and asked him how many massages of the shoulder implyareas near Donde-$$$-$$$-MALO-HOMBRE-TOCAR-USTED the areas. He laughed. Perhaps in Taiwan, the shoulders of a person are in an extremely diverse area ofbody.

Massage of the foot: $30.
Massage of the shoulder: $6.
Obtaining bothered by a toothless middle-aged Chinese man:

We went to this Russian bakery for drinks after the supper. They have this unit of the refridgerator that becomes a “barof the ice,”with the ice that covers the shelves, floor and sweeps, finish with snowman miniature of the ice. There were hundreds of vodkas to choose of. We chose two of Russia, including that it was test 160. I will never ingest any thing that is test 160 unless it istrying officially to kill to me. My stomach still burned one more average-hour ahead, and combined with the fact that there is smoking total within bars inTaiwan, I had to call it late early due to desire to put my headin a dressing table.It went to house, Called Reggie. It had called my time in the morning, then drunk marked him again in 1am. He was strange because in its end, it had received a call of me takes at night and thenfollowing day. How many drunk dials want you always receive in 10amWednesday, I asked to him. Esperanzadamente, not that many, unless somebody is trying to promulgate again scenes wereto leave Fertile valleys.

And then worse, a smaller excerpt of my words going back to English to Dutch to English:

Massage of the foot: $30.Massage of the shoulder: $6.To obtain impeded by tandenloze Chinese people on middleage: We went to this Russian bakery for spirits after the supper. They have this entity of refridgerator which a bar becomesof the ice, floor and range, finite with snowman miniature of the ice. There were hundreds choose vodka of. We chose two of Russia, including that was tests 160. I never no matter which thing take that tests 160 is unless itisofficially trying to me kill. My flatulence burned still one more gemiddeld-uur ahead, I had it been appropriate let early clamours wish my put headin dressing itself list.

Wait, wait, WAIT! “Flatulence!” I don’t remember talking about that!

And then suddenly, thinking about flatulence naturally led me to thoughts of…Bon Jovi. What would happen if I took revered songs by Bon Jovi and put them through the language ringer?

Let’s see.

I took the Bon Jovi song that most sounded like flatulence (You Give Love a Bad Name), and translated it from English to German back to English, then to Japanese back to English. Here are the results:

(Original)

An angel’s smile is what you sell
You promise me heaven, then put me through hell
Chains of love got a hold on me
When passion’s a prison, you can’t break free
You’re a loaded gun
There’s nowhere to run
No one can save me
The damage is done

Paint your smile on your lips
Blood red nails on your fingertips
A school boy’s dream, you act so shy
Your very first kiss was your first kiss goodbye
You’re a loaded gun
There’s nowhere to run
No one can save me
The damage is done

(Translated)

It is shot by the center
And acre of responsibility
Those give the ton love of name of the bathroom of A
I bear my role, do your play
Those give the ton love of name of the bathroom of A
Those give the ton love of name of the bathroom of A

Paint your smile of your lip
Speak the nail of the blood of the point of your finger
Dream of the pupil of A,
those operate so bashfulness
Kiss of the kiss your roofridge of all roofridge way if
Those of acre stacked the load in the rifle
That does the flexible ton of emergency of operation anywhere
Who can my pure curtain
The damage happened

Again, an occurence of things which happen in the bathroom. Seems that whenever other languages have trouble translating us, it assumes its something potty.

Retard.

I use the word more often than one would expect considering my personal sensitivities. Each time I say the word, it’s a game of chicken with a piece of verbal expression, a stigma–I dare it to have any emotional pull on the strings that tie to my rage and pain. Because it doesn’t mean anything. REtard–a mispronounciation. Retarded–underdeveloped. Somehow, the process was halted by external forces. But at least it was on its way.

The Mandarin phrase for the word “retard” translated to English is “Wastedly fed.” The two words are “wasted/pointless” and “eat.” The phrase is quite morbidly poetic–if your child is retarded, why bother diverting resources to feed and nurture it when it will only grow up to be a non-factor in human civilization? What’s the point of feeding an idiot child who will never contribute to the collective, the phrase asks. A retard is a bad investment. With a normal kid, you’re playing the lottery. You take shares of your resources that are necessary for your survival and you divert it towards your children, hoping that when they become fully matured and able-bodied, these investments will bring returns in the form of income for the family or caretakers for the parents. If your kid becomes a wealth business man, that’s a great investment. If your kid goes towards a life of crime and you spend his adult life paying his legal fees, that’s a terrible investment. And then there’s the retarded kid, where you know right off the bat your returns will always be in the red. So why feed a monster that only bleeds your resources and brings no quantifiable returns?

When I really started to think about what this phrase, this label meant today, it made me think about families who were really poor, about families who are struggling to survive. Did they have a kid who was mentally disabled and refuse to feed him because the logical survivalistic decision was to feed the able-bodied kids who could develop and work the fields and bring back something to help the family? Did they kill them right away once they realized what kind of kid they had because it was pointless to nurture something that was already flawed from the start?

I realized today, that Asians have quite a way with language. With two Chinese characters, they could sum up a person in such a tight, cruel little box, that it’s almost too logical not to make complete sense, and yet it doesn’t. Whenever I walk into stores, the first thing I think is if they look at my brother and think, “bai tzi.” In Asia, we don’t walk around with our shame pinned to our chests. We leave our shame at home, in a dark backroom somewhere, or shipped off to a distant relative we’ve never met. And we don’t get to decide what is deemed shameful and obscene. Others will do so for you. You most certainly do not walk into a retail store in a busy commercial area, trying to pass off damaged goods as a human being. And if these people who see him and recognize him as being categorized by the only label the language provides for this “type,” if they sat down and analyzed their spite for this lesser man’s existence, would they discover that they can see why the source of this label is a fairly logical argument, that it’s pointless to nurture a human being who just feeds off resources without giving any positive contributions? Do they realize that with one label, they’ve deemed my brother not just worthless and a non-human, but a parasite?

I hate that phrase with everything in me. I hear, say, read the word “retard” in English and it doesn’t mean anything to me. Friends ask, “Do you get offended when I say the word retarded?” No. Because the more it gets used for random things, for anecdotal nonsensical actions, for satirical slander, for a throwaway moniker, the more that word loses its power. It no longer shreds at my love for my baby brother by nailing him to his flaws because it is an impotent piece of slang, and I can laugh at it the way I can laugh at a bully caught with his pants down.

But there is only one way to describe people like my brother in Chinese; we do not mince words or ideas with political correctness. No, Asians are far too efficient. They can cut him down with the only label available within their language, innocently enough, but with a malice that is so deeply embedded into the character of the words, that people don’t even realize how awful of an idea it is to pin on any human being. They don’t realize that the label, in one fell judgment, asks disdainfully, “Why is this person still allowed to live?” Our empire was built upon sacrificing our humanity in favor of efficiency, oh Chinese brothers and sisters. Let us not forget that aspect.

I’m known for fighting vehemently for causes and for becoming enraged by injustices far and wide just because there’s no sense or balance within injustice. But today, I realized how rageful I am with one phrase, and I realized how often it is that I walk into a place and I brace myself for the rage I feel when I watch a salesperson size up my brother and wonder if that word has flickered into that person’s consciousness. It is not the salesperson that I am angry towards, for whatever judgments he or she may or may not make; it is anger at the sheer fact that two Chinese characters, two short syllables, can strip away all the goodness and holiness that exists in my brother and frame him as a quantifiable production negative, and that it is implied that others can judge whether or not he’s worthy to be allowed to live.

If people were actually conscious about what they were saying, this phrase should not be in the vocabulary anymore.

more cowbell.

More Human Idiocy

One Of the Funniest Things I’ve Ever Seen

“Next time…we’ll bring a bigger crane…”