Reverse Gizoogle

I'm not one to follow politics or give comments on them in general, but this one is a tough one to pass up because the comments keep coming and they're gems.

For those not in the know, our dashing Mayor, Rob Ford, was caught in yet another video this week.  Instead of an alleged crack pipe, it was Jamaican patois:

And then, in the spirit of my previous entry about Gizoogle, someone took the time to transcribe and "translate" what exactly the Mayor said in the video - what I am referring to when I say it's reverse Gizoogle.

The other two are more obscene, what our Jamaican translator called “indecent language.” The first, “raasclat,” is a deeply offensive term that refers to a rag used to wipe one’s buttocks after defecation. As slang lexographer Jonathan Green explained in a 2011 online post, “raas by itself means the buttocks, and by extension the whole person.”

Click here to read the whole article published on the National Post.

And then came the comments:

   "I can't get past 'ya raasclat bumbaclot.' LoL!"

   "Seriously, why he doesn't have a reality show is beyond me. The City should look into this, it'd be an excellent source of revenue.  It could pay for a lot of things, like subways or even gravy trains."

   "I love his defense too: 'It was my own time, that's how talk with my friends on my own time.'"
   "Absolutely.  On our personal time, some of us baby talk with our significant others, some of us use curse words with our friends.  The Mayor, he slips into Jamaican Patois.  Totally legit defense."

Totally.

What's in a name?

Both of the mothers were scheduled to arrive later that morning which left the bridal suite filled with just us young girls - the only married one was our makeup artist and she had only had her wedding a little over a month before mine.

Thank goodness the moms weren't there.

The topic of conversation was about what to do with your maiden name.  Señorita and my makeup artist, Charming, were of Hispanic/Filipino tradition: their names consisted of both their mother's maiden name and their father's last name: Señorita Looking For Fun, and Charming Iss Living Talent.*  Their tradition followed that at marriage, they would drop their mother's maiden name and adopt their husband's family name; Señorita would lose "For" and Charming would lose "Living."

*obviously these names are made up, but the initials are (pretty much) true for illustrative purposes.

However, while Charming and I both wanted to take our husbands' names, neither of us wanted to lose any of the ones we already had.  After some excited discussion, the suggestion was made to just smash our maiden names into our already existing middle names and take our married names as our solitary last name.  That made me Melody Amazing Choiceto Love, and Charming Iss Living Talent Sublime.  The difference was that to do this, we'd require a legal name change versus just assuming his last name.  And then came the comment from Charming:

   "My name is going to be so long!"
   "But it'll be worth it - you get to keep everything AND get a bad-ass last name to boot.  Just get it legally changed."
   "Yeah, you're right.  And while I"m at it, I should just switch my second and third names so my initials will be 'CLITS.'"

I died.
...

I shared this story with Brodder and we had a laugh.
   "That's like 'Coors Light Iced Tea,'" he pointed out.
   "Oh my god, it is!  Someone didn't think that one through."
   "Or maybe they did.  And it gets funnier the drunker you get - 'I'd like some more CLIT, please!'"

Oh gawd.

Back food

Okra was only introduced to my palate in perhaps the last 4 years of my life.  Malcolm ordered it from his favourite Malaysian restaurant and I've loved it since.  Loved it enough to attempt to reproduce the various recipes at home.

But that wasn't technically my first run-in with okra.  I of course knew that the vegetable existed, but learned more than I wanted to about it a long tie ago - back when I still worked at the restaurant, serving my way through university.

I can't for the life of me remember why the topic came up - favourite food discussion, perhaps - but it did and my male co-worker proceeded to go on and rave about just how much he loved it.

   "...and not only is it healthy for you as a vegetable, it's good back food."
   "Back food?"
   "Yeah, you know, back food - it's good for helping you to put your back into it."

...and with the thrusting motions that followed, I knew more about okra - and his personal regime - than I cared to.

But it still is really good.

Friday randoms

It's Friday.  It's lunchtime.  I'm ready for the weekend.
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My work email spellcheck accepts "guesstimate" as a legitimate word.  Huh.
...

Is it bad that I read this article and found it (morbidly) amusing?  Yes, I know there's not much information, and yes, I know that it's sad that a man was killed in this accident, but the circumstances just take a turn for the ridiculous without that vital extra information.  From what I could glean from the article, my brain rewrote the events as this:

It was a dark night as a man walked down the lonely road at 3:30 am.  Suddenly, out of the darkness, a car appeared, driving too fast.  So fast, the man was struck in a instant.  While the car took off, the man stumbled, dazed and disoriented, now in the middle of the roadway.  Being as dark as it was and the hour that it was and at that particular intersection, a second, smaller car appeared too fast and struck the man again. 

The little car screeched to a stop.  Panicked, the driver dialled 911 and desperately called for help for the man on the road.  The driver jumped out after the call and ran to the man who was amazingly intact and trying to pick himself up a second time.

  "Holy shit, are you okay?!"
  "Yeah, I think so," came the disbelieving reply as the man swayed unsteadily to his feet.
  "Dude, take it easy, I just called the cops - they should be here any second."
  "Thanks - I think I might be okay."

Sirens could be heard approaching the scene.  The driver called after the man, trying to convince him to stay, but he had already begun to swagger off into the night.  A moment later, a police cruiser swung into view going too fast and struck the poor man a third time.

  "Aw fuck."

I know, I know, it's not funny...but it kinda is...
...

Dear Winning Lottery Ticket,

I know we haven't met and we've never actually spoken in person before, but I was kind of hoping we could change that this weekend.  Whadda ya say?

melody

What's in a name?

It's all the in the way you read things. 
...

At work, I'm a writer (surprise, surprise, huh?), but being a major corporate company, all of our publications need to be bi-lingual.  So, whenever I write things, I need to have them translated before I can have them published. 

This week, as much as I was slaving away with a million communications with a million modifications and a million edits and a crazy tight deadline, one single poor translator was assigned to handle my documents and requests. Usually you send your document to translation with 4 days for turnaround time.  I gave 2 days…on 6 documents. 

However, my translator was AMAZING and managed to get all of it translated and returned to me by the deadline, and even made accommodations and extra edits for all of my team’s changes.  So I decided to send a VIP notice.  A VIP notice is just a little certificate of recognition at work that the employee receives with your nice message included, and it’s also sent to their manager so that they know what good work’s being recognized.  My nice little message was as follows:

Dominique has translated an astounding number of documents over the past week - many of them rush submissions!  She has managed to come through on all of the time lines that she has promised, even accommodating all of the last minute additions and modifications that have come along on multiple projects.  Despite the complexity of each project, the technical terms, and the difficult subject matter, she's done a wonderful job and I want her to know that I really and truly appreciate all that she's done over the last few days.

Thank you, Dominique!

A little while later I got an email back from Dominique:

melody,

Thank you very much for your VIP certificate and your nice comments. I am touched!

Best regards.

Dominique

PS: I will phone my mom tonight to let her know about my VIP. I will also tell her that she should have spelled my first name with a "c", because many people think I'm a woman. (ah, ah, ah...) :-))

*hangs head in shame*

I felt like a class A idiot.  I told Dominique as such and he was nothing less than supremely gracious about it.  Probably gets it all the time from us Anglo-speakers. 
...

Nerbs

At work last Friday and again this Friday, we got to discussing great nouns that have evolved (some officially, some unofficially) into verbs.  There were some good ones.  I've noticed that all of the ones off the top of my head evolved not just from nouns, but from proper nouns. Perhaps that indicates that if you do something and you do something well, "maybe they'll create a nerb after you."  I think that beats a building. 

The best:

to google: to perform a search [using a search engine] for something on the internet
e.g.  I'll have to go home and google what a nerb is later when I get to my computer.

to tetris: to manipulate objects in a tight space, ensuring maximum efficiency of space usage
e.g.  Man, we tetrised that stuff into the trunk really well - I can't believe it all fit!

to macgyver: to create an extremely useful object under pressure, using only the materials on hand at any given moment
e.g.  I couldn't find a spoon, so I macgyvered one out of this cup and fork.

to frankenstein: to create one whole object out of the best parts of other different, yet similar objects
e.g. I finished writing the communication faster by frankensteining it out of previous memos.

to multimedia: to bombard another person [their inbox, or your chat window] with link after link of videos, songs, or other mediums of entertainment.
e.g.  Heartbreak? Don't worry, I'll multimedia you back to life.
...

Update - September 28, 2012, 2:55pm
My supervisor was giving me advice on how the final draught of my document was probably going to look like after submitting it for review.

     "They'll probably look at the different versions, frankenstein some from each, and then tetris it all together."

Love it.  She's probably secretly been reading my blog.  :)

Pimp sleepwalking

I love my workplace.  I talk about playing racist volleyball and using pimp sticks and no one bats an eye. 
...

As I have done most of my life, I spent last night out playing at the CNE until late instead of doing "responsible things" and upon returning home after midnight, was faced with the task of having to pack and prepare myself for the next three days of volleyball tourney that I had in front of me.  And also, as I have done most of my life, I had not planned far enough ahead to have my favourite gear and clothing ready and washed to pack for this weekend. 

Some time after 1am, I threw a half-load of the things I absolutely needed into the wash and convinced myself that I could go to bed for a bit because I'd definitely hear the "I'm finished" alarm on the washing machine.  The plan was that I would then get up and throw the clothes into the dryer before going back to bed so that everything would be clean and dry and waiting to be thrown into my bags in the morning during my dash out the door to work. 

So this morning.

First of all, I slept later than I should have.  When I woke, I realized I couldn't remember falling asleep.  And then I realized I couldn't remember getting up and then going back to sleep.  Crud.  And yet.  When I walked down to the laundry room, not only did I find that I'd managed to get the load into the dryer (WITH a dryer sheet), I had somehow had the sense about me to hang up my incredibly-shrinking-dress to line dry as well as Malcolm's dress shirt.  Amazing.

After seeing all of the things as I'd apparently left them the night, I could vaguely recall being down in the laundry room in a ridiculous stupor, however, to save myself the strain of trying to recall details, I'm happy enough to believe that the house elves did it for me.  Or the bats.

Internally uninitiated

I have a summer intern as my cubicle-mate. He’s excruciatingly young and the fact that he’s got SUCH a baby face look to him doesn’t help at all. While I have to give him credit for knowing his business stuff (and hip-hop/rap history, juxtaposedly enough) his lack of knowledge elsewhere just kills me, reminding me just how old mature I am, and how sheltered he is.

City Vocabulary
Having been raised and reared in the distant suburb of Vaughan, the Intern is not very familiar with Toronto streets, places, or pronunciations.

   “Hey, Intern, where’s the Frank Ocean concert tonight?”
   “Oh yeah, I’m so pumped! It’s at the ‘Cool Hoss.’”
   “The what…where? You mean at ‘Kool Haus.’”
   “No, it says it’s…”
   “Trust me, Intern, it’s ‘Kool Haus.’”
   “Oh.”

Later that same day, he also learned that he was meeting his friends on “Queen’s Quay,” not “Queen’s Kway.”

Life Vocabulary
Then, on Friday after the sign-up sheet was posted, Intern finally learned what those regular family gatherings for dinners were called by others.

   “So, Intern, when your family gets together and everyone brings a dish to share, what do you call that?”
   “A family dinner. I’ve never called it a ‘pot-luck’ before today.”

Poor boy.

Keyboard etymology
Finally, while making review comments on a document regarding formatting, Intern kept making notes to “delete the extra enters.” A few more comments later, I realized he meant to delete the extra “hard returns.” I called over the cube wall to verify with him that that was what he meant. He called back,

   “What’s a hard return?”

Oh man.

Learn-ding

ger•und
n. grammar

1. (in certain languages, as Latin) a form regularly derived from a verb and functioning as a noun, having in Latin all case forms but the nominative, as Latin dicendī gen., dicendō, dat., abl., etc., “saying.”
2. the English -ing form of a verb when functioning as a noun, as writing in Writing is easy.
3. a form similar to the Latin gerund in meaning or function.

I learned this word today. I can say pretty confidently that I’d never heard it before. Now I know it and now I know how to use it…sort of. Actually, I can use it 96% of the time, according to my work training test score.

I was just…refreshed that there was still more to learn.

Do I get training for that?

I think I might just apply.  :)

On a roll

So, the other day, I had my pun on.  I even had a chance to tell Boo about it (when she finally called me to wish me a happy birthday) to which she laughed, and fully understood:

  "Oh, I know, boo.  I live on a street called 'Euclid' and every time I see the sign, I think, 'No, YOU clid!''

But then, tonight, I had another moment.  Mom was telling me about a friend's sister visiting.

  "Yeah, her sister's here now.  She's Alona."
  "Oh mom, you don't know that she doesn't have any friends; you don't have to call her that."

Yessssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss.

Quote of the Moment:

It was on a guy's shirt at the CNE. I smiled.

    "If life give you melons, then maybe you're dyslexic."

If you say so

Listening to Classic Rock on the radio at work, I realize that a lot of songs, I don't actually know the words to--which is not a big deal or anything (since I don't tend to sing along at work). However, I realize that what I've always thought the words were are very off and ridiculous. I've only got three examples right now, but I thought I'd share them and add more when I figure them out. Please keep in mind that I've never known the NAMES of these songs so when I heard them, I had no idea what they were about.

Blue Rodeo - "Bulletproof"
What I heard:
"...I'm not gonna lie about it, I'm not pulling through..."

Actual lyrics:
"...I'm not gonna lie about it, I'm not bulletproof..."

Not bad--pretty close, right? And pretty much along the same lines of thought.

Manfred Mann - "Blinded by the Light"
What I heard:
"...Blinded by the light, ripped up like a douche and I'm running in the night..."

Actual lyrics:
"...Blinded by the light, revved up like a deuce; another runner in the night..."

Okay, so I was like "what??" when I first heard the lyrics, yet no matter how hard I listened, I could not hear anything else. However, now, upon googling the correct lyrics, I have discovered that I am not the only one to hear what I heard--though the most common mis-hearing is apparently "wrapped up like a douche." I am not alone.

The Clash - "Rock the Casbah"
What I heard:
"...F*ck the Caspah, f*ck the Caspah..."

Actual lyrics:
"...Rock the Casbah, Rock the Casbah..."

No, I don't know what a "caspah" would have been...a bad pronunciation of Casper? And how the heck did I convince myself that they would let anyone use the F word on the radio so casually? I was perplexed that anyone WOULD allow that. :)

I will add more as they come up (I can never remember them all).

We'll steal for free?

Free Identity Theft

That was the subject title of a work email that went out today from our head office. I'm pretty sure that it was just sent internally to staff and sales teams, but I still thought it was funny. What they were actually talking about was that the company is now offering Free Identity Theft Protection to our clients, but it would seem that the author left out only the most important word.

Funny what a difference just one word makes...
...

On a semi-sidenote, one of our friends has unwittingly coined our new favourite term--we now fondly add the word "fuckin'" in front of anything we're even only vaguely unimpressed by. It all stemmed from a one-sided conversation we clearly overheard our friend having one day on the phone.

*answers phone*

Hello? ... Yeah? ... I'm having lunch. ... With friends. ... Where are you? ... Pick you up? When? ... Can't you get a ride? ... How did you get there? ... Do I have to? ... Fine, whatever. Bye.

*ends call*

Fuckin' mom.

All of us present gasped and had to confirm that she was referring to her own mother.

    "Yeah, why?"

Hence, the birth of our new term.

    "I have to work tomorrow."
    "Fuckin' work."

    "Mike's going to be late."
    "Fuckin' Mike."

    "Man, it's really hot out."
    "Fuckin' heat."

The other day we were all at the beach and our friend was using her term very liberally that day, getting a hoot from all of us within earshot. However, when Malcolm called me and I tried to tell him about it, it was funny for another reason.

    "Oh my god, honey, you should be here. She's 'fuckin' everyone!"
    "..."

Whoops.

(Un)Commonly Mispronounced Words

Brodder and I like to purposely mispronounce: paté (as "payt") and lasagna ("la-sag").

Boo and I do Chipotlé as "chi-po-tl".

Malcolm and I mispronounce everything: got = gotted, learned = learnd-ed...the list really goes on...it's our own language, really.

Visitors to Toronto call Spadina "Spa-dee-na."

And then at work the topic (of "Ja-la-pen-o") came up and someone had a great one:

    "My girl friend walked in with her kids to a fast food restaurant and seeing poutine on the menu, she said 'I'd like two orders of poontang, please.'"

They definitely do not serve that at our cafeteria.

Language break

Alright, I just finished a load of filing...something that I've been avoiding for MONTHS. So much so that I had to hire Hand-Me-Downs for 2 days to try to make a dent. :( However, having HMD around the office for 2 days, then having good wine again with her over the holidays was really something special. It's like we bonded.

But she still didn't get me anything for Christmas.

Then again, I hadn't paid her yet for helping me at the office. Even.
...

I wish I could take a screen shot of my BB. My WeatherEye app is telling me it's raining triangles of glass. Watch out.
...

Mom, in the presence of our cousin's 1 and 4 year old kids, after dropping the cordless phone in a sink full of water:

    "Shit!"
    "Goo-goo! Watch your language!"
    "Well what the heck would YOU say?"
    "'Oopsie-daisy!'"

No you wouldn't. No one would say that.

And then, like mother, like daughter. Doing some Christmas shopping at Chapters with Crazy Malcolm, I came across a hardcover copy of Dr. Seuss's The Grinch who Stole Christmas. I immediately wanted it for my new found little love and flipped it over to see the more-than-I-expected (but totally-worth-it) price.

    "Fuckers!"

Seeing as the book I was exclaiming over was a children's book, that put me in the children's section. Surrounded by...children. Malcolm elbowed me hard and gave me the "watch what you're saying--there are children around here" look. I sheepishly hid behind the book cover and mumbled the correction to myself.

    "I mean, fudgesicles."

Defining myself

A friend of mine described a recent pub crawl as being ependary. It took me a while to get that one. After comprehension set in, I decided it wasn't a good word. If I'd put the words together, I'd have come up with "legendic." So there.

Drinking over the holidays this year is going to be legendic.

It will be. And people WILL get Simmy'ed. Oh will they get Simmy'ed.

Back to Basics

I accidentally deleted my entire Custom Dictionary off my BB today. I meant to delete just one entry that annoying kept inserting itself, but I got rid of them all instead. Dammit.

Anyway, I've since been texting and have been re-teaching my BB the custom words that I use. My new current dictionary went from having zero entries, to a whopping total of four:

fuck
haha
lol
shit

Goes to show how intellectually classy my text-conversations are.

Say what?

It's totally Friday today. Totally.
...

Last week I was stuck in this loop where starting on Wednesday, I thought it was Friday. So I was hoping for Friday three times, but was disappointed twice. This week, I got it right. And so far, it's been a pretty snazzy Friday. (Snazzy? Yes, snazzy.)

Trafficus Ignoramus(es)

Traffic is unavoidable in the city of T-dot. But the things that peeve me to no end are: traffic for no reason, and people who just don't obey the rules.

Traffic for no reason is fairly self-explanatory. I mean, I understand when sometimes there's an accident on the highway that ties up traffic and creates a huge jam, but that gets cleared away by the time you reach it. But sometimes, there's just traffic without a cause and that drives me bonkers.

The other one, about people not following the rules, has two parts to it. There are the people who are just dumb and do dumb things that break the rules, and then there are the ones who just blatantly disregard the rules of the road. Cases in point:

• Yesterday I arrived behind another car at a three-way stop. The car on the left went through the intersection, then the car on the right went...and then the car on the left went. The car in front of me had luckily been aware of the area we were in (one that's rife with stupid drivers) and had only inched into the intersection. I was very pleased to watch him stare down the stupid, out-of-turn driver, questioning hand out the window with a very disgusted look on his face. Even better when you could tell StupidDriver was ashamed to look in his direction.


• On my way to work every morning, there's a point where I come to an intersection where there is a right-turn lane that MUST exit, and then just left of that is the through-lane to use to cross the intersection after which you may continue straight, or veer right. I have to veer right to get to where I need to go. Usually, there are buses in the right-turn lane who all turn right correctly at the lights. However, every once in a while, there are retarded drivers who use the right-turn lane as a through-lane. I could kill them. It never fails to ruin my drive in when I have to fight these Ignoramuses to get to MY right-veering lane. Today, I cut them ALL off. It's MY right-of-way, idiots.

...

Apparently the term "Ignoramus" has been around since the sixteenth century--who woulda thunk?