Velcrometer
Throwing stuff at the internet to see what sticks
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M. Giant's Velcrometer Throwing stuff at the internet to see what sticks |
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Wednesday, January 28, 2004 Humpblog (1/28/04) Okay, I confess: I'm totally dry today. I got nothing. Fortunately, Yahoo! News has a section called "Oddly Enough." It is the zany blogger's friend. As am I, which is why that link is there for the use of all my zany blogger buddies. And also so I'm not tempted into falling back onto something this lame again in the future. * * * I agree that this is kind of insensitive. For those of you who are either too lazy to click on the link, or reading this more than two hours after I posted it in which case the link is probably dead already, psychiatrists in Greece are mad about the Greek translated title of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. They call it The Schizophrenic Chainsaw Killer over there. It's interesting that it's the psychiatrists who are pissed off rather than the patients. Or maybe they're just more quotable. When asked to comment, perhaps the schizophrenics simply said, "spooky disharmonious conflict hellride." On the other hand, I can see the psychiatrists' point. Their jobs are hard enough without the locked ward getting all offended and firing up the Stihls and coming after the white coats. I kid! I'm kidding, Greek psychiatrists! Jeez. Take one of your pills, why don't you. * * * Here's what surprised me in Greece. Our first day in Athens, after a sixteen-hour flight, we were crashed out in our respective jetlagged comas when we became dimly aware of Greek being spoken through a loudspeaker somewhere out on the narrow, tangled streets. Greek, by the way, sounds fairly authoritative through a loudspeaker. We would have investigated, but our heads were too heavy. When we ventured out later, it was to discover that a building across the street on our block had been completely gutted by fire while we slept. Weird. Eerie. The second segment of our Greek vacation was on the island of Santorini, an island so beautiful that the view from our balcony looked like CGI. It's one hundred and eighty degrees from Athens in terms of the environment. In fact, it’s one hundred and eighty degrees from anyplace where it's possible to be remotely unhappy about anything. Again, we heard amplified Greek coming from outside our window. This time we were awake enough to investigate, and we would have done so even if we hadn't been. "Is this country always on fire?" we wondered. It wasn't a fire engine this time. It was a fifteen-passenger van, trolling slowly through the narrow, tangled streets, with loudspeakers lashed to the roof. And also, patio furniture. Greek, by the way, sounds fairly authoritative through a loudspeaker, even when it's only being used to hawk porch swings. I felt a little sad for the patio furniture man. In the United States, he'd be trailed by a mob of excited children. Also, he would have a truck full of ice cream instead of a truck full of patio furniture. When people say America is the greatest country on earth, this is what they mean. * * * Something else that freaked us out: one day I walked down to the market to get Trash a cheeseburger (this was before she went vegetarian) and a pouch of pole-meat for myself. I watched the cook slap a patty on the bun and start to wrap it up. "No, I said a cheeseburger," I said. "Inside," he said. I would have requested further clarification, but I was in Greece, my Greek wasn't a great deal worse than his English, and I knew very little Greek. I hoped that "Inside" meant that I'd gotten a Jucy Lucy-style cheese-inside-meat bomb, but the thinness of the patty made that unlikely. Trash looked at the burger doubtfully when I presented it. "I wanted a cheeseburger," she said. "Inside," I explained. The words "cheeseburger" and "inside" in this context turned out to mean that cheese had been mixed with the meat at some point. Which explained the grayish patty's orange cast. Trash did not eat the cheeseburger. Even I did not eat the cheeseburger. I was wrong. Santorini is only a hundred and seventy degrees form anywhere where you can be remotely unhappy about anything, because we were remotely unhappy about that cheeseburger. * * * Well, that went better than I expected. Which should tell you something about my expectations. I'm going to stop now. Today's best search phrase "Douglas Adams couch rotation program" and "Dirk Gently sofa screensaver." Don’t have them. Wish I did, though. posted by M. Giant 3:27 PM 0 comments 0 Comments:
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