March 9, 2013

Rusexijapanicoian

If I ever owned my own country it would be awesome. If anyone said otherwise I'd disappear them.

I found out today that in British English the word for eraser is 'rubber.' I can just imagine that conversation:

"Hey, can I borrow your rubber? I need to fix a mistake I made."
"Uhm, it's probably a little late for that..."

Don't put what belongs in the bonnet in the boot and vice versa, otherwise bad things could happen. In Russian the verbs to write and to urinate (vulgar) are VERY similar. How you conjugate them is a subtlety that I had not learned when I was sitting in a room writing and a friend came in and asked what I was doing. I replied that I was writing. He about fell over he started laughing so hard. It turns out I said I was urinating (vulgar) not writing. My dad thought he knew the word for dog in spanish, and he decided that a good time to share this knowledge was in a crowded restaurant in Mexico. It turned out to be an extremely vulgar word for penis that one doesn't usually say in the company of others, especially during casual conversation. I was just glad we escaped the restaurant with our lives. Languages are fun. Except when you don't speak the local language and you're there for awhile. It can make things interesting.

Just because you speak the language is no guarantee that things won't get interesting anyway. I think I might have told this once before, but I'm too lazy to go back and check, so you might be getting a repeat story. If so, enjoy again for the first time. If not, well shut up and read it.

While I was in Mexico there was a vicious triple murder in a city about an hour from where I was living at the time, and I was living with another gentleman about the same age as me. We rented an apartment from an old lady whose grandson was suspected to be connected to the murder, as it turned out. The police had put out an alert and asked for any information about the pair of young men they knew where involved with the murder. I hadn't watched the news and didn't even know this had taken place (this is unfortunately a reoccurring theme with me, and I don't just mean missing out on hitching a ride with hell's gate).

That night at about 2-3am while we were asleep, several men came and started smashing out the windows to our ground floor apartment and telling us to come out. I tell you what, that's some scary stuff, especially if you're sound asleep. We thought we were being robbed at first, then the lady we rented the apartment from told us it was okay and to come out. Knowing that they might have a gun to her head and be forcing her to say these things doesn't bring much comfort to you. I opened the door to find the very large (probably a .22) barrel of a gun pointing right at my face. It's amazing how big a gun looks when you're starting at the wrong end of it. One of the neighbors either had a beef with either me or the guy I was renting the place with, or the lady we rented it from because someone had called the cops and said there were two suspicious young men matching the description of the two on TV at her house. We'd been living there for quite a long time, and everyone knew who we were. It's sort of funny in retrospect. The cops went through our house, stole about $100.00 from us, and told us not to go anywhere too far in case they needed to talk to us. I was just happy to not be going to a Mexican prison. Though my high school music teach told me that if I'm ever in Monterrey to go check out the local prison. He spent a few days there back in the 70s or 80s and his name might still be scratched into the ceiling. That's still on my to-do list, right after eating small children (I'm a big fan of Kronos).

I wanted to be a ninja, and they would have let me. All I had to do was show up for class. I could never find the classroom. As such, I'm merely a lowly chemist, and not a very good one at that. I don't even use chemicals, other than those in my food, soaps and detergents, and various other assorted products. Screw diet and exercise. Just eat a lot of preservatives, then it doesn't matter what kind of shape you're in, you'll live forever. Just ask Donald Trump. He's been around for at least 500 years. He and Scalia the Hut used to terrorize the solar system. Then their dads took away the galactic car keys and as punishment they left them here. No wonder they don't like Harrison Ford.

Speaking of eating raw flesh. I tried sushi for the first time the other day. I don't like fish. I hate the way they smell and taste for the most part. I like fishing, but once I reel it in, I want it off my hook and back in the water as soon as possibly. This was a point of contention with my mom for a little while, especially once she found out I'd been sneaking off to go fishing every weekend for over a year while I was still living at home (no, that wasn't just last year either, haters; I may be a nerd, but I have my own house and there's no way in hell I'd hang out for fun in my basement. I go down there to do laundry or fix something-with my face!-and that's about it). Usually the thought of eating fish makes me want to run out and fill up on steak and pork. The general idea is that in my mind eating fish is slightly more uncomfortable than throwing up forks that bent every-which-way, and the fork taste better too. We went to a sushi bar and ordered tuna, salmon, yellow fish, something I don't know, crab, shrimp, and sea urchin. They were all surprisingly awesome tasting! Well, other than sea urchin. That had the taste and consistency one might expect raw fish to have. My brain was having a really hard time with it though, and I think at one point my ears started to smoke because the people I was with were looking at me funny (it also might have been while I was trying to force myself to swallow the sea urchin). My mouth was saying "THIS IS AWESOME!!!" while my brain was saying, "No, this is gross. It's dead raw fish. Fish are slimy, smelly, stinky, horrible tasting and if the seven plagues come back a new one will be that everything you eat tastes like fish." to which my mouth would respond "LIAWAJDKMMMMM ASDLKASULASFJ,,SD,MSDMMM!!!!!" which translates into "THIS IS AWESOME!" spoken with a mouth full of food. Like quarreling siblings they wouldn't quit either and even right now they are arguing with each other about what really happened on that day. The world will probably never know. If I tried really hard I could probably come up with some grainy pictures of me supposedly at this sushi bar. The quality will be so poor that you won't be able to make out what I'm eating even if you can tell it's me. That's the problem with interesting things, high quality pictures are not allowed. It's a universal law that cameras of all kinds, shapes, sizes and quality know about and follow very strictly. Just ask anyone who's ever tried to get a picture of big foot, the pope, UFOs, or any government being productive.

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