Rottin' in Denmark

I've spent most of this week writing a report on Guyana, the so-called 'only English-speaking country in South America'. This led to me to wonder how the hell I had never heard of Guyana before, which led to Wikipedia, which led to the page on Guyana Creole, which led to Facebook... So I could change my status to 'Mike is pon de fwone, gyal!'

This is seriously the most entertaining shit ever. These are the wiki-samples:

• Girl - Gyal
• Boy - Bai (pronounced bye)
• I am on the phone - Meh deh pon de fone
• Who is she? - Ah who she?
• What is that? - Dah ah wha? / Ah wah ah Dah?
• I don't know - Meh nah know
• What do you want? - Wuh yuh want
• What is happening? (An every day greeting similar to What's up?) -Wappenin?
• How are you? - How yuh do?
• What are you doing?- Wa ya do?
• We are going to cook - Abee a guh cook
• Don't come back- Nah mek meh see yuh back here/Nah mas come back
• What's wrong with you? - Wha rong wih yuh?
• Do you understand what I am saying? - Yah hear wah meh ah seh?
• Come here - Come suh, nuh?

My favorite one is 'Wuh yuh want' for 'what do you want'. It's like someone translated an entire language into 'Hulk smash!' Speaking a foreign language kind of feels like baby-talk anyway, and I like how Guyana just fucking ran with it.

I'm always shopping for dialects that allow me to speak English around Danes without them understanding. The closest I've come so far is a thick 'No Country for Old Men' accent, but I'm considering switching to this Guyangsta Shit next time I want to be discreet. Yah hear wah meh ah seh?  

If that was a contest, The New York Times today would be in the running:

Many victims of the quake are children in a country where most families are allowed to have only one.

I didn't know it was possible to have your heart broken by a sub-headline, but here we are. Jesus.

This story, and this entire episode, reminds me of this affluent-guilt-wrangling blog post from last month:

Last week, after four years nearly to the day, my boyfriend and I split up. We were living together in the home that we bought last year. [...]

It's one thing to go to sleep alone after being used to have a body beside you. You can read until your eyes shut and the book falls from your hands, or you can count your breath backwards out of consciousness, or you can go to a friend's house and have one extra, soporific glass of wine with dinner. It's quite another to wake up alone, with no body beside you, with no tricks or techniques but to swing your legs over the side of the bed and walk to the bathroom through a closet still full of the detritus of your shared life.[...]

I nearly wept on the bus--the bus! I can't concentrate. I hurt palpably, as if deep water were crushing me. I feel utterly bereft, without worth or hope.

Now if this is how I feel after something so quotidian as a break-up; if I feel my frankly comfortable, untroubled life to be exploding into a thousand sorrows just because my lover and I reached an impasse that we couldn't negotiate together; if such bleakness, helplessness, and desperation as I've never felt in my life can come from something so insubstantial as having to buy new furniture or a new jacket because he's taking my favorites; if I am wracked by fear--real, true fear as I haven't felt since I was a child--about being alone for a while; then just how the fuck must it feel to be an Iraqi or an Afghani or a Palestinian? If it's bad to lose a lover in Pittsburgh, what must it be like to see your family killed, or your husband kidnapped, or your home destroyed in Baghdad? [...]

Consider the most terrible thing that has ever happened to you and your family, and then look at a picture of a woman wailing over a husband killed by a bomb, or a man tearing his hair out over the body of his brother with a bullet in the head, and consider that for them the reoccurence of such tragedy is inevitable, and the closeness to it daily and inescapable. How must they hurt, those people caught between nations, armies, insurgencies? And how is it that I am crying on a bus for myself, and not for them?

Sweats

via

I was reading the New Yorker’s scorching review of ‘Speed Racer’ today, (‘Our eyeballs will slowly, though never completely, recover, but what of our souls?’), and the following sentence jumped out at me:

There’s something about the ululating crowds who line the action in color-coördinated rows;

Coördinated?!

Ö?!

What language is this article written in?

Since living outside the U.S. on and off for the past five years, this has become one of my favorite phenomena: Americans who pepper their English with umlauts, tildes, ratatat-R's and one-word accents in an effort to appear cultured.

‘I’ve just come back from a weekend in München,’ your hungover friend from Minnesota says on a Monday.

‘They have the best tartiflette in pa-ree’ says Connecticut, scrolling through Eiffel views on his DigiCam.

‘Oh, you live in Copen-HAW-gen?’ Upstate New York knows that the insertion of a long A into a foreign word equals instant sophistication.

Maybe I’m a purist, but I don’t think there’s any shame in pronouncing words Americanly when you’re speaking, you know, English. Saying ‘Copenhagen’, or ‘Munich,’ or ‘Japan’ isn’t incorrect. It’s just English. The language you are speaking. When I speak Danish, I say København. If I was speaking German, I would gladly say München, or Neue York, or Das Szhicago or whatever.

The only reason people lapse into another language for a few syllables is to prove how worldly they are (‘What’s it called in English? Oh yes, Munich. Such philistines’). Similarly, the New Yorker is rocking the umlaut just to remind you that they know where the word cooperate comes from: Some umlautey language with polka dots above the vowels. I’ll bet they keep that gay little crown above the O in Côte as well.

They only keep the artifacts of the cool languages, though. We get words from Sanskrit and Arabic, too, but I don’t see the New Yorker writing backwards and all squiggly when they use ‘Cheetah’.

Look, word origins are interesting, but if we’re gonna steal words from other languages (and what is English if not linguistic jumbalaya?), we might as well just steal them all the way. We don’t use the Æ anymore (Hi Denmark!) for Old Latin-rooted words like encyclopedia or pedagogue. I don’t see why Naïve gets to exceed its dot quota just so the New Yorker can sound like a college freshman who just got home from ‘totally backpacking the shit out of Europa, bro’.

Just tell them gays are increasingly victimized ... by Muslims.

Not very long ago, Oslo was an icy Shangri-la of Scandinavian self-discipline, governability, and respect for the law. But in recent years, there have been grim changes, including a rise in gay-bashings. The summer of 2006 saw an unprecedented wave of them. The culprits, very disproportionately, are young Muslim men.

See that? ‘Unprecedented wave’. ‘Rise’. ‘Recent years’. ‘Grim changes’. Those are called statistics, punk. As unassailable as the shimmering virtue of Jenna Bush. Each of those terms signify quantifiable percentages based on not-remotely-anecdotal data. How nice of the author, Bruce Bawer, to translate such robust numbers into terms even an illiterate (i.e. a Muslim) can understand!

The real gem of the article, as it always is with these fact-vaccinated rocking chair rants, lies in the comments section:

Europe threw out the God of the Bible to serve the god of themselves. The God of the Bible has abandoned you to face Devil with out his help. That Devil is Allah.

The future belongs to those that show up for it. In Europe, that would be the products of Muslim wombs. Two generations, max, and Europe is Dar al Islam

Within 10 years, a veil will be REQUIRED to be worn by ALL European women, to avoid being raped or worse, and alcohol will be banned in the EU.

Fortunately, here in the U.S., we have a fundamental right to self defense, up to and including the right to keep and bear arms (at least for now).

I have no understanding of today’s leftists. I watched Iranian leftists push to eliminate the Shah, and then I watched them get elbowed aside as the Muslims took over and instituted a far-right theocracy. I haven’t trusted Muslims since then.

It would appear that gays, as well as Jews, are canaries in the European coal mine, and die first when noxious jihadism seeps in.

I’m quoting this guy in full because I think I dated him in Aarhus:

Some Muslim men are violent,insecure,homophobic,misogynistic,neanderthals.The only way to deal with their violent outbursts is to literally defend yourself ,and if necessary,use force and weapons.When innocent victims start kicking these hooligans asses and possibly kill them sorry butts,then the Muslim thugs will understand they can retain backwards thoughts,but acting on it is illegal.Europeans are wimpy pussies!!!

We are about a generation away from all of Europe’s great cathedrals being turned into mosques to accommodate the muslim invaders.

You noticing a pattern yet?

While I agree that the muslim view on homosexuality is horrific, I don't agree that the gay situation in Oslo is that bad. In general I'd say gays are more visible than ever. And a gay couple walking on Karl Johan will not draw any attention what so ever.

Oh wait, that’s a comment from an actual Norwegian. How’d that get in there?

Being a Catholic I agree with Pope Benedict. I share the Catholic beliefs about homosexuality. However, those beliefs do not include beating or killing homosexuals.

Phew, now we're back to normal. Thanks for not wanting to stone me to death, bro.

Wake up Europe. Big daddy America won’t save you.

I actually already have that one on a T-shirt. With a picture of The Rock on it. Suck it, Euro-labias!!!

Well, well, here we go again. Once again Americans are watching activities in Europe wondering are we going to have to save them from themselves again.

Best. World War II interpretation. Ever.

In certain neighborhoods of Detroit when I was a kid, gays were routinely jumped by gang-bangers. That changed radically over one summer when gays, perhaps influenced by NY drag queens, starting packing STRAIGHT RAZORS. If these Euro-Gays sprang into an angry Muslim face or two with a flashing razor, the situation will change.

OK, maybe right-wingers aren't so bad after all. Let's be honest: At least 85 percent of life's problems could be solved if more people carried STRAIGHT RAZORS around (not least the other social ills that could be remedied by the influence of NY drag queeens). I wish I knew how to quit you, Race-Baiting Hillbilly.

It’s official: Adam Sandler’s new movie sucks. You know how I can tell? Look at this publicity still.

Sandler

See that bulbous tricep peeking out from Sandler’s Springstee-shirt? And the wiry, veiney forearms? Each muscle fiber is the tiny strangulation of a laugh.

There is nothing humor hates more than attractiveness. Comedy is supposed to be ugly, awkward and everyman. The minute it becomes aspirational—something you look up to rather than look down upon—it becomes Comedy Antimatter, a substance physically incapable of producing anything more than annoyance and confusion.

There’s a reason every famous comedian is unattractive. Would it be funny to see Will Farrell running around in his underwear if he had a six-pack and a two-tablespoon lumbar? It’s only funny if it seems like he doesn’t want you to see him that way.

This is why Brad Pitt and George Clooney have never been funny. Eddie Murphy, the closest thing to a good-looking comedian America has ever produced, is only funny when he’s wearing fat suits and fake moles. Alec Baldwin, probably the funniest actor on TV right now, didn’t even attempt humor when he was Teen Beat Baldwin. It’s only Jowl-Voice Baldwin that’s been able to pull it off

The most convincing evidence of this phenomena, though, is this motherfucker, who has spent the last seven years looking like a Cadillac in a rap video:

Daaaaah! Make it put its shirt back on!

Vanity and comedy don’t mix. You have to circle A or B. This is probably why Hollywood hasn’t produced many funny women in the last 30 years. Hotness trumps funnyness, and a lack of hotness is an instant disqualification for getting anywhere near the business end of a working television or film camera. Tina Fey, the funniest woman on TV by Monique-sized leaps and bounds, is about as unattractive as TV will allow. Which means she’s, what, an 8 on the Bo Derek Index?

So add that to the mobius-list of double standards, ladies. If you’re hot enough to be on TV, you’re too hot to be funny. Drink it in. Then puke it up and go weigh yourself.

So anyway, fatten it back up, Sandler. Your ‘Friends’-era facial hair isn’t sufficiently deformatizing to save this film. And, considering the fact that your celluloid existence has so far replaced the term ‘lowest common denominator’ with ‘Adam Sandler movie’, you need all the jiggly, pimply help you can get.

My French friend, walking around town: What's is this place ahead? Amigo?
Me, wondering why I possess this knowledge: Oh, that's Copenhagen's gay sauna.
France: My uncle goes to gay saunas a lot.
Me: Why?
France: He's gay. Don't you all do that?
Me: [sigh]

David Sedaris in The New Yorker:

It was odd. I’d always heard how clean Canada was, how peaceful, but perhaps people had been talking about a different part, the middle, maybe, or those rocky islands off the eastern coast. Here it was just one creepy drunk after another.