Closed captioning now provided by the Redundant Department Of Redundancy. Interested parties should just read between the lines.
Any moment now my Aunt Bob and Uncle Betty
will be here. No, that's not an editing error - they just happen
to be two transvestites who were made for each other. And yes, I
have generally avoided them since accidentally blowing up their kitchen
while trying to whip up a few quick dollar bills to pay for breakfast out
during a visit back in 1975, but these are critical times. I'm running
short on words again and these two folks each have more syllables in them
than the rest of my family combined, having long ago decided to reserve a mere few choice words for the government instead of regularly sending
whole barrelfuls of rant to Washington like the rest of us.
As for me, I'm down to my last dhoti. That word has just been invested
here by a merciful Krishna, who assured me in the process that I have a
very ugly one.
Dhoti dhoti dhoti.
I'm not proud of that, but sometimes we do what we have to do to make paragraphs
meet.
Ahh, at last they're here! Saving me from having to share with you
the long, dirty story of how Krishna once lured the wives and daughters
of cow herders out of their homes with his flute one night so he could
go dance ecstatically with them in the forests.
"Aunt Bob! Uncle Betty! How nice to - "
"Cut the crap, Dan. Just show us the goddamn journal."
"Right this way."
"Entry for for many?" the maitre d' on duty asked us.
"Three," I answered.
"Make it four, I have a fat ass," Aunt Bob corrected me.
"Reflective or non-reflective?" the maitre d' asked, toning down the snootiness
in his voice a tad just as I had instructed him to beforehand.
"Non-reflective," Uncle Betty told him. "Reflective entries
are too hard on the eyes."
"Right this way."
"Nice background color, eh, Uncle Betty?" I pointed out the one change
I had made to better appeal to their refined aesthetic sensibilities.
"Looks like cat puke," she assured me.
"Spoiled cat puke," Aunt Bob elaborated.
"And the letters look like black ants swarming over it," Uncle Betty exercised
the poetic mindset which had won her a full scholarship at Akron's Davis
Business College.
"Let's try a section break," I whispered to a passing proof reader, slipping
him a twenty.
"So," Uncle Betty said, settling unawares into my best obscure allusion
and thumbing lackadaisically through my HTML. "What the hell kind
of name is 'Almost A Jester's Journal'?"
I winced. Truth be told, I had myself just been having twenty-second
thoughts about my choice of title. It was coming to seem too cute,
too confusing, too Midwestern, too... Dan. That's why I'd spent hours
last night trying to change it as fast as I could. In an effort to
make the change easier, I'd gone to AltaVista's translation page where
any English phrase can be transformed into French, German, Italian, Spanish,
or Portuguese at the click of a button. I thought "Almost A Jester's
Journal" might seem classy rather than half-assed if rendered in the language
of Parisian artistes, so I typed it in and clicked.
"Presque Le Journal D'un Farceur" was what AltaVista gave me. Not
bad, I thought. But to be sure, I typed this French phrase back in
and pressed the button to get the English translation - just to see if
everything was on the up and up.
"Almost The Newspaper Of A Joker" was what I got back. Ouch.
Not quite what I'd had in mind.
Not knowing what else to do, I fed this back in and asked for the German
version.
"Fast Die Zeitung Einer Spassuage's" was what stormed back at me.
You know it's never a good sign when you ask for the German version of
something and "Fast Die" are the first words you get. Asking for
the literal English translation of this made clear the violence done to
my original thought:
"Almost The Newspaper Of The Fun Bird."
I was starting to panic as I asked for the Italian version of this, hoping
against hope that at least one language was sympathetic to what I was trying
to do.
"Quasi Il Giornale Dell' Uccello Di Divertimento" came back. Yuck.
Too long by half. I hoped the English version might be less, ummm,
Continental.
"Nearly The Newspaper Of The Bird Di Divertimento."
Shaky, sweaty, and whimpering, I began pushing buttons almost at random.
English to Portuguese to English gave me "Almost The Periodical Of The
Di Bird Amusement."
English to Spanish to English yielded "Almost The Newspaper Of The Diversion
Of The Bird Di."
Appealing desperately again to the French who had proved so valuable at
Yorktown resulted only in the mocking "Almost The Newspaper Of The Transfer
Of The Bird Of Di."
A second mad and naked run through Italian resulted in nothing less than
the Ionesco-like spew "Nearly the Newspaper of the Bird of Of."
Heart racing, face contorted, my Secret deodorant rapidly failing me, my
M&Ms melting in my hand, I ran off to reassure myself that my problems
were nothing compared to those of of Ally McBeal....
of of Ally McBeal???
"Help! Help! Is there a linguist in the house??"
"Hey, did you invite us here only to shove us in the corner with the afterthoughts?!"
It was the voice of Uncle Betty, coming through the mouth of a large stuffed
ant covered with cat puke which she had propped up on her knee.
"This journal sucks, Dan. I'm outa here," Aunt Bob declared, throwing
down his freshly-stained reading glasses and getting up to leave.
"You want my advice? Invest your time and energies in butt mints."
"Butt mints?"
"Yeah. They're like breath mints, only instead of sweetening your
breath, they sweeten your farts. Very big in France."
"Italy," the ant corrected him.
"Whatever," Aunt Bob opined.
I absent-minded twirled my undercooked theme, wondering what to do next,
verb tenses clashing in my head.
"Good heavens! What is that noise?!" the ant changed the subject.
"The site next to mine on the Web has a blaring MIDI musical background,"
I muttered.
"Well, let's go there!" Aunt Bob carpe diemed, springing up.
"Yes - let's!" Uncle Betty vociferously agreed, forgetting not to move
her lips as she talked.
"Coming, son?"
"No... no...." I mumbled. "I think I'm already gone."
"Well, maybe next failed project. See ya!" Uncle Betty chirped.
Just like the Bird of Of, I thought. Exactly like the
Bird of Of....
Note To Caring Parents Everywhere: Never allow your child to sit alone
in a journal entry with the ideas burning low, passions running high, and
a comely-looking stuffed ant on the floor, too puke-covered to defend itself.
That's all I've got to say until I see my lawyer.
(All Material Not An Obvious
Rip-Off Of Some Other Aspect Of Western Civilization © 1999 by Dan
Birtcher)
