How to Talk to People in Europe Without Sounding Like a Stupid Foreigner

“Foreigner?” you say.  “FOREIGNER?!  I’m an American.  I am not a foreigner.”  Well, I have news for you.  When you are in other people’s countries, you are the foreigner.  You are playing in their yard.  And, as eager as they are to accept the money they figure you will throw around like rice at a wedding, they probably think of you as being one small step above pond scum in the evolutionary chain, especially if you act like a jerk.

One way to avoid being a jerk is to learn at least something of the language of the country you are going to visit before you go there, unless you plan to spend the entire time clinging to a tour group.  In that case you will all be doing things en masse to irritate the locals,* so ignorance of their language might come in handy as a convenient excuse for whatever annoying thing you have done.

Learning another language is not easy, and it is true that a little knowledge can be dangerous.  If you attempt to communicate with Europeans in their own languages, it is important not to end up saying something obscene, stupid or senseless.  You will also want to know when you are being insulted.  Here are some examples:

GERMAN

1. To an American, a small brown sausage is a “hot dog.”  The Germans don’t see it that way.  To them it’s just a grilled sausage, or Bratwurst.  Now, if you translate “hot dog” directly into German, you get heisser Hund.  You will get a strange look from a German street vendor if you ask for a heisser Hund, though, because you have just asked for a sexually aroused dog.†

2. The same principle applies to people.  If you tell a German, "Ich bin heiss," you are announcing that you are horny.  What you are supposed to say is, "Es ist mir heiss," or “It is to me hot.”  You have to talk like Yoda when you are speaking German.  It’s weird that way.  Of course, if you have met a really sexy German and you want to make your intentions known, you can say this wrong on purpose, but it isn’t advisable.  The German language isn’t very romantic, even to Germans.‡

3. Germans sometimes refer to an American as an Ami.  This is like an American calling a German a Kraut, only in reverse.  The word Ami is often paired with other words to give it emphasis, notably the word Scheisse (“shit”).  If you hear a German mutter Scheiss Ami, he is not declaring his undying love. 

ITALIAN

1. The Italian word for “fennel” is finocchio.  It is also the insult slang word for a gay male.  Therefore, if you are ever shopping for fennel in Italy, it is probably better just to pick it out yourself or point.  This is not to be confused with Pinocchio, the wooden puppet with the long nose.  I doubt if anyone in an Italian vegetable market will be selling long-nosed wooden puppets, but you never know.  It’s best to be prepared.

2. If an Italian is looking at you and saying any of the following things, you had better run as fast as you can, get ready to defend yourself or smile and pretend you are too stupid for him to bother with: 

            figlio di puttana (“son of a whore”)

stronzo (“piece of shit”)

schifoso/schifosa (“male dirtbag/promiscuous woman”)

puttana (“whore”)

cretino/cretina (“male idiot/female idiot”)

Va fa in culo (“Put it where the sun doesn’t shine.”)

This is only a partial list.  Italians are very eloquent, and they don’t mind a little exaggeration and invention when they are useful to get a point across.  To add to the expressive value of their words, they often accompany them with intricate hand gestures.  Italian hand signs have been recognized all over the world as a language of their own.

This ends today’s lesson.  If you have any questions, feel free to ask anyone who knows the answers.

=====================

*European tourists have no right to feel superior.  They do irritating things in groups when they visit the United States, in addition to being lousy tippers.  That’s a whole other subject, though.

†Don’t laugh.  I once knew someone who did this.

‡There must be something there, though.  Germans are still having babies.

Fun With MRIs

Many people go into panic mode when they think of getting an MRI.  To them, it’s like being stuck in a locked coffin with a jackhammer being piped in.

I have never had that problem.  I like being enfolded in things.  If I had been Cleopatra, I would have loved being rolled up in that rug and shipped special delivery to Julius Caesar.  It was probably a little hot in there, but you can’t have everything.  I just hope, for Cleo’s sake, that it was clean.


Cleopatra's Packing Material

For me, the problem with MRIs is the boredom.  Lying completely still with your eyes closed and loud mechanical noises being pumped into your ears is not terribly amusing after the first 10 seconds.

The one thing I can do is let my imagination run wild:

Ah!  The Rejuvenation Machine!  I shall be made young, strong and thin again, and I will be a SUPERHERO!  I will call myself Magnetic Resonance Woman, and I will fight evil and nastiness wherever I find it, which means just about everywhere.

I will send criminals running for their lives, and they still won’t be able to get away from me.  I will break the power of the criminal underworld.  I will fly to the Middle East and, by force of my super personality, broker permanent peace and brotherhood among warring factions.  I will be given the Nobel Peace Prize.  I will write books and people will buy them, loads and loads of them.

Those noises are the rejuvenation rays being shot into my body!  NICE noises!  I love all of you!  I love everybody!  Just keep shooting those rays into me.  The more the better.  Magnetic Resonance Woman will be on her way!

“Ms. Minicozzi.”  It’s the voice of one of the technicians, and it breaks into my dream like an ax.  Now I know what Walter Mitty felt like.

“Yes?”

“We’re bringing you out now, and we’re going to inject you with the dye for the second part of the test, okay?”

“Will it make my urine come out blue or something?”

“No.  It’s not that kind of dye.”

So they shoot me with the dye, I adjust one of the earplugs so the noises won’t break my eardrum, close my eyes and put my hands in the right positions again, and let them slide me back in.

I am no longer Magnetic Resonance Woman in the making.  I am Queen Neferanankateeta of Egypt.  I am lying in a tomb, buried alive by my cruel husband, Pharaoh Jerkit, who caught me with the great love of my life, Jared the Hebrew.  I lie here waiting for Jered to come and rescue me, so that we can run away to wherever he came from and live happily ever after, having passionate, primal sex as only he can.  First, he will have to break into this tomb, unwrap me from these silly strips of cloth and carry me away.

“Oh Jared, Jared, how I long for your touch, your piercing eyes, your incredibly strong arms around me, for your … ooh!  Ooh!  OOH!  Oh!  Again!  Again!  Mmmmmm, that is so GOOD!”

“Okay, Ms. Minicozzi, we’re finished now,” says the technician.

Shit!  She couldn’t even wait for me to finish my fantasy!

“Great!  I’m ready to get out of here.”

Jared will have to wait for another time.

Fun Things to Do When You are Too Sick to Go to Work but Not Sick Enough to Stay in Bed All Day

     1.    Make prank phone calls to some nasty neighbor.

 

     2.    Play Dragon Mahjong on your computer until it makes you even sicker from aggravation because it’s so hard to win.

 

     3.    Call your workplace to assure yourself that they miss you.

 

4.    Get caught up on that novel you are reading.

     5.    Work on that novel you are writing.

 

     6.    Look out the window and watch all the people out there having more fun than you are having.

 

7.    Plan a redecoration of your living room.

 

8.    Give up plans to redecorate the living room when you realize you will probably have to do it yourself because your last bank statement shows insufficient funds to pay anyone else.  You are such a klutz that you can’t even hang a picture on the wall without help.

 

9.    Call all your friends, who will be shocked to hear from you.

 

10. Watch the ID Channel over and over.  If you are not addicted already, you will soon become so.

 

11. If you don’t have cable TV, get caught up on some DVD movies you haven’t gotten around to yet.  Your friends are dying to know what you think of “The Hobbit.”

 

Gift Wrapping Made Complicated

The identity of whoever invented gift wrap has been lost in the alleys and gutters of time, so we have no way of knowing who to blame.  It was probably the same person who instituted the “do not open until Christmas” rule that torments people to this day.

People react differently to gift wrap:

Uncle Mario tears paper, ribbon and bows into mangled shreds with one deft hand movement, then tosses it all onto the floor.  You want to punch him out, because, dammit, that wrapping was a work of art until he played Demolition Derby with it.

Aunt Josephine, on the other hand, sits holding her present and says, “Oh my!  This is so pretty I hate to take it apart.”  You want to punch her out because, dammit, you bought that present and you deserve to get an ecstatic reaction from her when she sees it, which will not happen as long as she sits there holding it like a moron.  She then takes an eternity to open it, carefully making sure she doesn’t tear any of that pretty paper, which she folds up neat and tidy before she finally gets around to her gift.**

Kids are never going to be careful with wrapping paper unless they have been trained to recycle it from year to year.  This was traditional in our family.  We had pieces of gift wrap that were family heirlooms.

No matter how hard I try, I can’t get gift wrap to look right.  Something always ends up lopsided or bunched up, too short or too big.  And those are with boxed gifts, books and other things which should be easy.  You don’t want to look at anything else I have wrapped, unless you want a good laugh.  Some things should be left up to professionals.

It always starts out well.  I gather together the present (hopefully in a box, if it isn’t a book), the paper, the ribbon and a pair of scissors.  I clear a space on the table and settle down to work.

My cat sees something interesting about to happen and immediately jumps onto the table and starts to play with the paper.  I pick her up and put her on the floor.   She jumps back up onto the table, swats at me and starts to play with the ribbon.  I put her on the floor again.  This continues until I finally pick her up, put her in the bathroom and close the door.

With the four-footed paper shredder temporarily out of the way, I place the present on the paper and try to figure out how much it will take to cover the whole thing.  I am allergic to the idea of measuring.  I can’t be bothered.  So I eyeball it.  I am also allergic to drawing straight lines to use for cutting, so I just take the scissors and try to cut in a straight line without having a straight line to cut on.  It comes out lopsided and slightly too short.  I remedy this by cutting a small piece of paper, taping it to the exposed end of the box and then finishing with a lot of folding and application of Scotch “invisible” tape, which isn’t as invisible as it says it is.

I look for a stick-on bow to cover the resulting messy spot, but the only one that is the right size is in a color that clashes with the paper.  I decide to call on the one gift wrapping skill at which I am an expert:  curling ribbon.  I curl enough ribbon to cover my less than stellar work with the paper.  This makes the present look like a rag doll without a face, but it’s kind of cute, so I let it go.

I put the wrapped present in the closet and let the cat out of the bathroom.  She gives me a dirty look, swats me and gives me a cold shoulder for about fifteen minutes, at which point she commences to rub against me, purr and nudge me with her nose to remind me that it’s her dinner time.

 

**Aunt Josephine once tried to fold a pair of Uncle Mario’s pajamas while he was still wearing them.  Their sex life improved dramatically that night.

"It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas"

Black Friday is over for another year, and the same craziness happened, even though a lot of the big ticket stores started Black Friday the night before, when it was still Thanksgiving Day.  Cyber Monday starts tomorrow, but the worst we can expect from that are a few stalled servers.

If you don't think it's time for Christmas yet, just take a stroll through the business district of my neighborhood:




Who wants to bet that bus is late?

 



This means that winter is coming, and is planning at least a 3-month stay:

Woman Slowly Turning Into a Popsicle

To tell the truth, I love Christmas and the whole season leading up to it.  That's because I'm still a kid, even though I have the body of a 60-something year old woman.  I plan to keep this up as long as possible.  It makes aging a lot more fun.