English, Bleeps, Water buffaloes and Keralafonia

“I know less than half of you half as well as I should like and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.” ~ Bilbo Baggins in the LOTR

Amen dude....! And that said let us begin.

The more discerning amongst you will have noticed that I have added a few gizmo's, thingys and watchoocallits to the blog, which reportedly are supposed to do a lot of things, most of which I don't understand. To me "Feedburner" suggests a large cow with an extremely effective digestive system (cattlefeed types). I think they improve the blog's look, however, and make me look incredibly techno savvy, which has been a long time dream.... sigh. What they are not supposed to do, is to direct you to any other sites, especially dirty ones. If they do, please do let me know, especially the dirty ones. Just so I can report them you understand, not because I have any interest in such sites. I know most of my vast audience would never think that of a fine cultured person such as me, but its always better to explain.

My favorite is the 'button' (prior to this I always thought they were circular thingies to make your clothes cling on) which gives my gmail ID. The smarter half of readers will notice that I have added the word 'Errrr...' above this button, and immediately realize that this is a trick button. The other half will spend a lot of frustrating time trying to click on this hoping that it would help them communicate with me. These are the In'duh'viduals as Dilbert (or rather Scott Adams) calls them. I only wish I were around to see their faces when they do this. Thus do I claim revenge on technology buffs! Ha Ha!

Which brings us to the fact that English is a beautiful language. Just by adding the word 'Errr...' I have communicated the above mentioned facts to my audience. On the other hand you could do it in a long winded way too. Consider for example the below, which could win a prize for bad English:

If such a sublime cyborg would insinuate the future as post-Fordist subject, his palpably masochistic locations as ecstatic agent of the sublime superstate need to be decoded as the now-all-but-unreadable DNA, of a fast deindustrializing Detroit, just as his Robocop-like strategy of carceral negotiation and street control remains the tirelessly American one of inflicting regeneration through violence upon the racially heteroglossic wilds and others of the inner city.

I mean, what the hell? You could just say "Man, that dude kicks ass!" or even "Dude, that man kicks ass!" and be done with it. Metaphorically and literally a precise interpretation. The problem is that there's English and there's American. Most of us don't understand American when she's spoken. My favorite example of American is the conversation Samuel L Jackson (Jules) has with this kid (Brett), while he's holding a gun over him ( Jackson's holding the gun, geddit? Tricky thing, this American....)

JULES: What country you from?

BRETT: What?

JULES: "What" ain't no country I know! Do they speak English in "What?"

BRETT: What?

JULES: English-MF-can-you-speak-it?

BRETT: Yes.

JULES: Then you understand what I'm sayin'?

BRETT: Yes.

JULES: Now describe what Marsellus Wallace looks like!

BRETT: What?

JULES: Say "What" again! C'mon, say "What" again! I dare ya, I double dare ya MF, say "What" one more goddamn time! Now describe to me what Marsellus Wallace looks like!

The audience is advised not to try this at home, unless you're sticking a big gun, or a big broomstick into the listener's face. In the absence of these two, the listener will demonstrate violent tendencies towards rearranging parts of your anatomy, or will tear your leg off and beat you to death with it. This may partly be, because Samuel Jackson does not say emmeff (MF), he substitutes with a word, which suffice to say is not 'My Friend". That's one of the inherent problems with American, see? In view of the delicate sensitivities of my audience I shall leave this line of discussion here and move on.

A deficient or even dysfunctional socializing process, has brought most of us to believe that four letter words add power to our speech. I'm sure we can communicate effectively without the 'bleeps'. For example take Wodehouse, I hear the man used to re-write each page in his book eight times before he was satisfied with the results, and he can use some mean English I tell you. Wouldn't you rather say " I say old chap, you gurgle like the death rattle of a soda water siphon" rather than "F*#@k off, moron!". See English has its uses, unless you're in a hurry of course.

The one exception to the four letter word rule is the word B-E-E-R. You have no idea how much much power it adds to my speech, or how lyrical I wax when B-E-E-R is around. How much sense I make is a debatable topic, and the subject of another post by itself. More on that later.

Then there are the delightful compositions, that rock bands come up with. Don't get me wrong, Rock is my life blood, but when I hear this guy singing: 'Oooh Life, Its bigger, Its bigger than you, and yooouuu are not meeee" I can't help getting irritated. What are you supposed to do? Say "Thank you for that brilliant piece of logical thought!" ? "You are not me"? "Life, Its bigger, Its bigger than you" ? I didn't know these things! What a clear insight! I know them now, and for the life of me, I wont understand them ever! Give me a break will ya?

Then you have the death metal bands, which purportedly sing in English. Try as hard as I can, it doesn't sound like English to me. More like a pair of flatulent water buffaloes mating in a sludgy pond, or a brace of pigs being tortured in a tin foundry. Well, zat too, is ze Eenglees.

Then there are the personal gems you come across. Was in the elevator at work, and I overheard this conversation which went "We used to collide every quarter but now we have been asked to collide every month". Now this seemed like a event which would be more prevalent in the mosh pits of the above mentioned death metal band's concerts. Images of arcane rituals of people body banging before starting a project flashed through my brain (Kind of like a Hi-Five, see?). Took me some time to realize that the guy was talking about "Collate".

I'm the kind of guy who always gets threatened by service providers, in life. Whether its my TV mechanic, or my phone banking representative. I'd called my Bank yesterday to find out if they had a SMS alert for credits to my account. He told me they didn't have one right now. "But we are adding those 'technologies' saar. We will continue to call you and 'intimidate' you, as soon as they are up".Thanks a lot, as if I wasn't intimidated enough by technology, already. I work for an IT company after all. English at work, for you.

According to urbandictionary (thats a website) an 'askhole' is a person who asks too many idiotic questions. English is getting better by the day, baby!

The last word in English of course is this song I heard yesterday called "Hotel Keralafonia". With all due apologies to everyone from God's Own Country (and to those irritating people who've heard everything before, especially when you think you have a good joke to crack), you can find it here:

http://kotinetti.suomi.net/hilja.reinikka/Audio/KeralaFoniaYC.mp3

A weekend of barrels of beer, hard rock, and humongous hangovers, beckons. Adieu, all......