Yep, that's right: you're jealous b/c you don't have a 25 year-old ex-con (read: dealer of heroin) across the street from your house in his parents' driveway, topless and wearing the single pair of shorts he appears to own (blue mesh, knee-length), showing off his hard-earned muscles (that is, earned in the prison yard), tricking out his Kia with a new sound system, blasting mid-nineties rap music.
If I'm not mistaken, he was recently bumping Bone Thugs' "Crossroads," a true gem released circa 1995. But I can't be sure, b/c the freaking bass was so loud I could barely make out any other sounds.
Ahhh, summer.
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Now, a pleasant story
I get out of the shower this afternoon and Brad tells me that I've missed a call from a number he didn't recognize. When I see the number, it's familiar, but I can't quite place it. Doctor's office? Restaurant?
No, it's my delightful German teacher, Herr J.
The long and short of the phone call is that I helped him order some sports memorabilia from eBay early last week and three of the SI issues haven't arrived yet. This man + a computer is about equivalent to me +
performing surgery - that is, not gonna happen - so when I say "helped" I actually mean "did the whole thing." (Although his lack of knowledge about tech is not a result of quesiness and freaking out over needles and any real quantity of blood. At least, I never got that impression.)
Basically, I set him up an eBay account, but when he couldn't remember the password for his e-mail and therefore would not have been able to activate the account, the whole project threatened to explode, so I said I would use my e-mail address until he figured out his password. I got an e-mail this weekend from one of the sellers saying that he was on vacation and the three magazines we ordered from him would go out on Monday. Since Herr J. doesn't use e-mail, he didn't know this, but I didn't think it really merited a call. Obviously it did, since he was a bit distressed.
But none of that is the pleasant tale I want to tell.
Last fall, Herr J. and his wife were robbed - jewelry and sports memorabilia made up a lot of what was stolen, and since they didn't have riders to cover those items, they got nothing from the insurance for them.
You never met a sports fan like this guy, so his heart was broken. But especially bad was the loss of a photo of Enos "Country" Slaughter's "Mad Dash" during the 1946 World Series. It was signed by Slaughter, a St. Louis Cardinal, and Marty Marion and Roy Partee, two of the Red Sox players involved in the play. All of these guys are dead now, so there's no getting it signed again, and right after the theft, Herr J.'s son was unable to find another one like it online.
Well, I found one on some memorabilia site and it was $3000 (yikes!), and then on eBay I found something actually feasible, a photo autographed by Slaughter for $65. Herr J. leapt on this.
Today on the phone he tells me that the photograph has arrived. Here's the conversation:
HJ: The photo of Enos Slaughter's Mad Dash Home came and it's beautiful. It's thanks to you that I have it. I keep it in my car so I can look at it all the time.
Me: In your . . . car? [A gorgeous red Mercedes 2-seater - convertible! - in which I rode last week - with the top down!]
HJ: Yeah - you know where you were sitting? Well, to the left of that, b/t the seat and the console. The guy packaged it really nicely, in thick plastic, so it's safe. Every time I stop at a redlight, I take it out and look at it.
Me: That's adorable! I'm so glad you like it! You'll have to bring it up and show it to me once we're back on campus in the fall.
HJ: I would love to! It doesn't take much to make me happy, and I'll get a few years out of this one.
Is that not, like, the sweetest thing you've ever heard?! It's even sweeter if you know this guy. I can't imagine anyone not liking him. I adore him beyond belief. He's surely the nicest, most genuine person I've met in a decade. I didn't even tell him about yesterday's bird death trap debacle b/c just talking to him made me feel happier. Now, fingers crossed that his Dick Groat and Sam McDowell SI issues show up pretty soon . . . .
No, it's my delightful German teacher, Herr J.
 |
| Love, love, love this man: me and Herr J. at the Hofbrauhaus in South Side on our last day of class |
The long and short of the phone call is that I helped him order some sports memorabilia from eBay early last week and three of the SI issues haven't arrived yet. This man + a computer is about equivalent to me +
performing surgery - that is, not gonna happen - so when I say "helped" I actually mean "did the whole thing." (Although his lack of knowledge about tech is not a result of quesiness and freaking out over needles and any real quantity of blood. At least, I never got that impression.)
Basically, I set him up an eBay account, but when he couldn't remember the password for his e-mail and therefore would not have been able to activate the account, the whole project threatened to explode, so I said I would use my e-mail address until he figured out his password. I got an e-mail this weekend from one of the sellers saying that he was on vacation and the three magazines we ordered from him would go out on Monday. Since Herr J. doesn't use e-mail, he didn't know this, but I didn't think it really merited a call. Obviously it did, since he was a bit distressed.
But none of that is the pleasant tale I want to tell.
Last fall, Herr J. and his wife were robbed - jewelry and sports memorabilia made up a lot of what was stolen, and since they didn't have riders to cover those items, they got nothing from the insurance for them.
You never met a sports fan like this guy, so his heart was broken. But especially bad was the loss of a photo of Enos "Country" Slaughter's "Mad Dash" during the 1946 World Series. It was signed by Slaughter, a St. Louis Cardinal, and Marty Marion and Roy Partee, two of the Red Sox players involved in the play. All of these guys are dead now, so there's no getting it signed again, and right after the theft, Herr J.'s son was unable to find another one like it online.
Well, I found one on some memorabilia site and it was $3000 (yikes!), and then on eBay I found something actually feasible, a photo autographed by Slaughter for $65. Herr J. leapt on this.
Today on the phone he tells me that the photograph has arrived. Here's the conversation:
HJ: The photo of Enos Slaughter's Mad Dash Home came and it's beautiful. It's thanks to you that I have it. I keep it in my car so I can look at it all the time.
Me: In your . . . car? [A gorgeous red Mercedes 2-seater - convertible! - in which I rode last week - with the top down!]
HJ: Yeah - you know where you were sitting? Well, to the left of that, b/t the seat and the console. The guy packaged it really nicely, in thick plastic, so it's safe. Every time I stop at a redlight, I take it out and look at it.
Me: That's adorable! I'm so glad you like it! You'll have to bring it up and show it to me once we're back on campus in the fall.
HJ: I would love to! It doesn't take much to make me happy, and I'll get a few years out of this one.
Is that not, like, the sweetest thing you've ever heard?! It's even sweeter if you know this guy. I can't imagine anyone not liking him. I adore him beyond belief. He's surely the nicest, most genuine person I've met in a decade. I didn't even tell him about yesterday's bird death trap debacle b/c just talking to him made me feel happier. Now, fingers crossed that his Dick Groat and Sam McDowell SI issues show up pretty soon . . . .
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
No good deed
Were I to tell my German teacher this tale, he would sigh and say, "You have a good heart." Then he'd tell a story of his own where something crummy came out of his trying to do something nice, and I would still feel lousy, but the tiniest bit better.
***
Last summer, Brad's mom bought us a very pretty "squirrel-proof" birdfeeder and a giant box of bird seed. It was much prettier than this, but you get the gist:
![]()
We never found the time to put it up last year, and I was hesitant to do so this summer b/c, given that our backyard is like an aviary, I knew the bird seed would disappear in no time flat and we'd be buying more and more all the time. And, as I see it, we don't need one more expense.
Brad, however, really really wanted to put this feeder out and see the birds and let the cats (from the window) see the birds, so he said that he would pay for the replacement seed with money he had leftover from his birthday and Christmas.
I was fine with that, and so he filled up the feeder and hung it in a low branch of the dogwood outside of the dining room window - the kitties sit on the saddle chair and look through the screen at all the things of nature that they want to eat. And for a few days it was going great: big birds, little birds, chipmunks, the ocassional lurking squirrel.
Then on Saturday we came home from the chiropractor and saw a little bird inside the feeder, flapping around like crazy. Panicky, we took it out of the tree, unscrewed the top, set it in the grass, turned it on its side, and the little guy flew off.
I told Brad that had we not come home so quickly, that bird would have likely flipped out, beat itself off the walls endlessly, and really hurt itself or, worse, died. But he thought it wouldn't happen again or that, if it did, that what I said wouldn't actually happen.
Fast forward to tonight. We go out, do some browsing and shopping, have dinner, more shopping, and then head home after being out for about 4.5 hours. As we're carrying our stuff into the house from the car, Brad somehow notices something in the birdfeeder - I don't know how, b/c I couldn't tell anything was amiss - and goes over.
And there it is, a tiny little bird, barely longer than my index finger, laying in the birdfeeder, not moving. Needless to say, things went downhill from there. I pushed the feeder some; no movement. I asked the little bird to move; no movement. Then I freaked out, kind of cried, got a splitting headache. Telling Amanda and my mom only made my head hurt worse.
The feeder is obviously not properly made (as Amanda pointed out), and it's definitely not made for little birds to go in it (as my mom pointed out). That said, I should have made Brad take it down after the first bird got stuck. I knew it could happen again and I predicted quite accurately what the consequences would be, but as soon as I went in the house that day I pretty much stopped thinking about it. Now I feel awful. I feel like I killed the bird, although Brad, Amanda, and my mom assure me it was not my fault.
Brad put the bird and the feeder in a garbage bag. I thought about burying it, but, honestly, I'm not too keen on dead animal germs - whether for me or Brad - esp. when I'm trying to get pregnant. I feel just terrible for the poor little thing, and I'm furious with myself for not using good sense. I can't imagine how much the poor little thing suffered.
***
So this takes me back to my German teacher, a lovely, lovely man who will eventually get a post of his own. Class is over, so I won't see him for at least a few weeks, which means I can't get a story that would make me feel less bad. But I know that he would tell me not to feel awful, and that we were only trying to be nice, to do a good deed, and then he would probably say, as he seems to like to say, "It's okay. You have a good heart. See?" Perhaps he's right, but still, I'm definitely punishing myself for this good deed.
***
Last summer, Brad's mom bought us a very pretty "squirrel-proof" birdfeeder and a giant box of bird seed. It was much prettier than this, but you get the gist:
We never found the time to put it up last year, and I was hesitant to do so this summer b/c, given that our backyard is like an aviary, I knew the bird seed would disappear in no time flat and we'd be buying more and more all the time. And, as I see it, we don't need one more expense.
Brad, however, really really wanted to put this feeder out and see the birds and let the cats (from the window) see the birds, so he said that he would pay for the replacement seed with money he had leftover from his birthday and Christmas.
I was fine with that, and so he filled up the feeder and hung it in a low branch of the dogwood outside of the dining room window - the kitties sit on the saddle chair and look through the screen at all the things of nature that they want to eat. And for a few days it was going great: big birds, little birds, chipmunks, the ocassional lurking squirrel.
Then on Saturday we came home from the chiropractor and saw a little bird inside the feeder, flapping around like crazy. Panicky, we took it out of the tree, unscrewed the top, set it in the grass, turned it on its side, and the little guy flew off.
I told Brad that had we not come home so quickly, that bird would have likely flipped out, beat itself off the walls endlessly, and really hurt itself or, worse, died. But he thought it wouldn't happen again or that, if it did, that what I said wouldn't actually happen.
Fast forward to tonight. We go out, do some browsing and shopping, have dinner, more shopping, and then head home after being out for about 4.5 hours. As we're carrying our stuff into the house from the car, Brad somehow notices something in the birdfeeder - I don't know how, b/c I couldn't tell anything was amiss - and goes over.
And there it is, a tiny little bird, barely longer than my index finger, laying in the birdfeeder, not moving. Needless to say, things went downhill from there. I pushed the feeder some; no movement. I asked the little bird to move; no movement. Then I freaked out, kind of cried, got a splitting headache. Telling Amanda and my mom only made my head hurt worse.
The feeder is obviously not properly made (as Amanda pointed out), and it's definitely not made for little birds to go in it (as my mom pointed out). That said, I should have made Brad take it down after the first bird got stuck. I knew it could happen again and I predicted quite accurately what the consequences would be, but as soon as I went in the house that day I pretty much stopped thinking about it. Now I feel awful. I feel like I killed the bird, although Brad, Amanda, and my mom assure me it was not my fault.
Brad put the bird and the feeder in a garbage bag. I thought about burying it, but, honestly, I'm not too keen on dead animal germs - whether for me or Brad - esp. when I'm trying to get pregnant. I feel just terrible for the poor little thing, and I'm furious with myself for not using good sense. I can't imagine how much the poor little thing suffered.
***
So this takes me back to my German teacher, a lovely, lovely man who will eventually get a post of his own. Class is over, so I won't see him for at least a few weeks, which means I can't get a story that would make me feel less bad. But I know that he would tell me not to feel awful, and that we were only trying to be nice, to do a good deed, and then he would probably say, as he seems to like to say, "It's okay. You have a good heart. See?" Perhaps he's right, but still, I'm definitely punishing myself for this good deed.
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Month 8 was not the month
If I had known it was this easy to not get pregnant, I wouldn't have fretted those 3 or 4 times over the past few years when I was a week late (no doubt stress-induced) and Brad and I weren't yet ready to start a family.
Goodness, not getting pregnant is so easy that I find it hard to believe that anyone makes a baby the first time they have sex. That seems like some kind of astronomical odds going on there.
The woman who cleaned my teeth last week made a good point. "How old are you?" she asked. I told her 29. She shook her head and said, "Well, if you were 16, you'd be on your second one right now."
I'd laugh, but it's so true it's not even semi-funny.
Goodness, not getting pregnant is so easy that I find it hard to believe that anyone makes a baby the first time they have sex. That seems like some kind of astronomical odds going on there.
The woman who cleaned my teeth last week made a good point. "How old are you?" she asked. I told her 29. She shook her head and said, "Well, if you were 16, you'd be on your second one right now."
I'd laugh, but it's so true it's not even semi-funny.
Cleaning out the garage
I can't even muster the energy for a fancy, interesting, or otherwise worthy title after spending 2.5 hours tonight dealing with this:
Yeah, that's our garage. AKA the place where cars are supposed to go. AKA the place to store all kinds of crap of various levels of usefulness/uselessness.
We undertook this cleaning-out-the-garage task last summer and, well, you see how that went. I think we spent about three days, got things in reasonable shape, and lost interest. What you see here is the result of a year's worth of piling things on top of one another, shoving them in corners, and otherwise dropping them where we stand. And what we've started with this time is definitely worse than what we had going on last summer.
This is looking to be about a week-long project. I sigh just contemplating the necessary amount of work.
First, we've got to clean it out. Which means throwing away, donating, and recycling everything we can possibly get rid of. That's where we started today (but I forgot to take a pic. of our progress and it's getting dark out).
As with my wardrobe, I am in shock at the amount of "stuff" I (we) own. Stuff I've had since high school. Stuff I forgot about. Stuff I bought two months ago and misplaced under other stuff. I mean, it's like Stuff Central down there.
After we've cleared it out, then begins the sorting. What should stay in the garage? Come inside? Go in the sheds? (If I haven't mentioned that we own sheds, let me say now that we do - 2 of them - but they came with the house and are a whole other story.)
Finally, there's the organizing. I get a headache just thinking about this. Tools, picture frames, cleaning supplies, paint, random household goods (humidifier, board games) - the list goes on and on. And on. Not exactly the way I want to spend my afternoons for the next 5 or 6 days, but if it doesn't get done during the summer, when's it gonna get done?
Yeah, that's our garage. AKA the place where cars are supposed to go. AKA the place to store all kinds of crap of various levels of usefulness/uselessness.
We undertook this cleaning-out-the-garage task last summer and, well, you see how that went. I think we spent about three days, got things in reasonable shape, and lost interest. What you see here is the result of a year's worth of piling things on top of one another, shoving them in corners, and otherwise dropping them where we stand. And what we've started with this time is definitely worse than what we had going on last summer.
This is looking to be about a week-long project. I sigh just contemplating the necessary amount of work.
First, we've got to clean it out. Which means throwing away, donating, and recycling everything we can possibly get rid of. That's where we started today (but I forgot to take a pic. of our progress and it's getting dark out).
As with my wardrobe, I am in shock at the amount of "stuff" I (we) own. Stuff I've had since high school. Stuff I forgot about. Stuff I bought two months ago and misplaced under other stuff. I mean, it's like Stuff Central down there.
After we've cleared it out, then begins the sorting. What should stay in the garage? Come inside? Go in the sheds? (If I haven't mentioned that we own sheds, let me say now that we do - 2 of them - but they came with the house and are a whole other story.)
Finally, there's the organizing. I get a headache just thinking about this. Tools, picture frames, cleaning supplies, paint, random household goods (humidifier, board games) - the list goes on and on. And on. Not exactly the way I want to spend my afternoons for the next 5 or 6 days, but if it doesn't get done during the summer, when's it gonna get done?
Monday, June 13, 2011
Movie Un-Recommendations
Tonight, Brad and I are relaxing on the patio behind our house, listening to Coltrane on his iPod speakers, futzing with the new fire pit, and just generally enjoying one another's company. B/c the breeze is so nice (or chilly, if you ask me - and I've got the sweater, fleece pants, and blanket to prove it) and the light is out so long, we're doing our version of communing with nature instead of what we usually do on nights like this - that is, on summer nights when I've got no work to do. (For the record, I do have school tomorrow, but I turned in my translation of the opening of The Trial this morning.)
Normally, we curl up on the couch in front of the flat screen and, if there's no Burn Notice or True Blood or NCIS going on, we watch a movie from Netflix or RedBox or our personal stash of DVDs, or something streaming from Netflix on our super high-tech excessive BluRay (a gift from the in-laws, of course).
A lot of the movies we've recently been watching, however (with the exception of Inception), have been so crappy it hurts. It seems that every now and again we get to the point where we've exhausted all of the movies of mutual interest, and we end up watching garbage (of seemingly mutual interest). Well, we're at that point. Now we need to take a little break from our flick viewing so that I can stop saying, "I can't believe I just wasted my life on that crap!"
To hopefully save you from the same fate, here are the movies that have bored, irked, baffled, and just plain disappointed us in the past 2 months (in no particular order). They definitely receive my heartfelt un-recommendation.
--------------------
Black Swan
This was obviously my pick. And I've paid for it mightily in the form of groaning and moaning from Brad. I figured all the critical raving about it meant it was worth seeing. And, after all, Natalie Portman - who I like a lot - won the Oscar. Well, it sucked. Her performance was one dimensional ("a crazy, frigid ballerina," is Brad's description, and he doesn't say this lightly - he, like, loves her), the movie could've been an hour and 5 min. instead of an hour and 48 min., and the lesbian love scene was so over-hyped.
Vincent Cassel was probably the best thing about this movie. He seems to often play a somewhat unhinged person, and he does to quite well. But that's about all I have to say in favor of this one. Don't see it unless you feel obligated to watch all of the "hip" movies of the year.
True Grit
Love love love Jeff Bridges, and he does a nice job in this movie. (He's a U.S. Marshal named "Rooster" Cogburn.) The main female character does a nice job, too, but the story is really slow, it doesn't get interesting until the last 25 minutes (of an hour and 45 min.), and Matt Damon (whom Brad and I adore) plays a mostly lame and uninteresting (though at times humorous) Texas Ranger. I was a little shocked when Brad told me it was a western. but I went with it. Oh, folly.
The ending is so so so unacceptably unsatisfying that any ground the movie might have made up in the last 25 min. is instantly lost. Even Brad, who feigned interest, was greatly shocked and irritated by the non-ending. The movie's based on some book, by the way. That's all I got. It was dumb.
Taking Lives
I don't know why you would see this movie now - it's from 2004 - but we just watched it yesterday. Angelina Jolie is her usual gross, skanky self. (Those lips give me nightmares.) Ethan Hawke is his usual rat-looking, feminine-sounding self. The plot was what you might expect from something called Taking Lives - serial killer, FBI agent, childhood baggage, questions about who's who, etc. etc. There was a pretty hot sex scene, but it was too drawn out. We normally like these kinds of movies b/c they keep our attention and don't require much thought or emotional involvement; this one required a great amount of thought, however: we had to answer, Why did we pick this?
(Even though I can't stand Angelina Jolie, we did enjoy Salt recently.)
Stone
This movie's got one majorly great thing going for it: Bobby D.
Brad and I are somewhat obsessed with Robert DeNiro (can you be "somewhat" obsessed?), and so we'll sign on for most anything he does (including American Express . . . okay, not really, but still). But even he and Edward Norton couldn't save this movie from Milla Jojovovich and a horribly slow and unexciting story line. Mil-Jo, as Brad calls her, is just awful in my opinion (in his opinion: hot), and this film was no exception.
I wanted to like this movie - it's serious, nicely filmed, trying to be complex and grapple with deep themes. But it's just a disappointment. Another one with not enough going on either plot-wise or character-wise, and although I might be the only person who feels this way, a thuggish, convict Edward Norton just isn't very convincing to me.
Perfect Getaway
Okay, so we didn't see this in the last 2 months, but it was so bad and I dislike Mil-Jo so much that I've got to mention it. Steve Zahn is the other "name" in the movie, and he's also endlessly irritating to me. This was a sort of - I don't know - psychological thriller? or something. It did have me "tricked" - that much I'll say for it. But it was so over-the-top and stupid-weird that I just couldn't wait for it to be over. There was no interesting depth or nuance to the psychological level - just weirdness and craziness. And I can't stand Mil-Jo!
Normally, we curl up on the couch in front of the flat screen and, if there's no Burn Notice or True Blood or NCIS going on, we watch a movie from Netflix or RedBox or our personal stash of DVDs, or something streaming from Netflix on our super high-tech excessive BluRay (a gift from the in-laws, of course).
A lot of the movies we've recently been watching, however (with the exception of Inception), have been so crappy it hurts. It seems that every now and again we get to the point where we've exhausted all of the movies of mutual interest, and we end up watching garbage (of seemingly mutual interest). Well, we're at that point. Now we need to take a little break from our flick viewing so that I can stop saying, "I can't believe I just wasted my life on that crap!"
To hopefully save you from the same fate, here are the movies that have bored, irked, baffled, and just plain disappointed us in the past 2 months (in no particular order). They definitely receive my heartfelt un-recommendation.
--------------------
Black Swan
This was obviously my pick. And I've paid for it mightily in the form of groaning and moaning from Brad. I figured all the critical raving about it meant it was worth seeing. And, after all, Natalie Portman - who I like a lot - won the Oscar. Well, it sucked. Her performance was one dimensional ("a crazy, frigid ballerina," is Brad's description, and he doesn't say this lightly - he, like, loves her), the movie could've been an hour and 5 min. instead of an hour and 48 min., and the lesbian love scene was so over-hyped.
Vincent Cassel was probably the best thing about this movie. He seems to often play a somewhat unhinged person, and he does to quite well. But that's about all I have to say in favor of this one. Don't see it unless you feel obligated to watch all of the "hip" movies of the year.
True Grit
Love love love Jeff Bridges, and he does a nice job in this movie. (He's a U.S. Marshal named "Rooster" Cogburn.) The main female character does a nice job, too, but the story is really slow, it doesn't get interesting until the last 25 minutes (of an hour and 45 min.), and Matt Damon (whom Brad and I adore) plays a mostly lame and uninteresting (though at times humorous) Texas Ranger. I was a little shocked when Brad told me it was a western. but I went with it. Oh, folly.
The ending is so so so unacceptably unsatisfying that any ground the movie might have made up in the last 25 min. is instantly lost. Even Brad, who feigned interest, was greatly shocked and irritated by the non-ending. The movie's based on some book, by the way. That's all I got. It was dumb.
Taking Lives
I don't know why you would see this movie now - it's from 2004 - but we just watched it yesterday. Angelina Jolie is her usual gross, skanky self. (Those lips give me nightmares.) Ethan Hawke is his usual rat-looking, feminine-sounding self. The plot was what you might expect from something called Taking Lives - serial killer, FBI agent, childhood baggage, questions about who's who, etc. etc. There was a pretty hot sex scene, but it was too drawn out. We normally like these kinds of movies b/c they keep our attention and don't require much thought or emotional involvement; this one required a great amount of thought, however: we had to answer, Why did we pick this?
(Even though I can't stand Angelina Jolie, we did enjoy Salt recently.)
Stone
This movie's got one majorly great thing going for it: Bobby D.
Brad and I are somewhat obsessed with Robert DeNiro (can you be "somewhat" obsessed?), and so we'll sign on for most anything he does (including American Express . . . okay, not really, but still). But even he and Edward Norton couldn't save this movie from Milla Jojovovich and a horribly slow and unexciting story line. Mil-Jo, as Brad calls her, is just awful in my opinion (in his opinion: hot), and this film was no exception.
I wanted to like this movie - it's serious, nicely filmed, trying to be complex and grapple with deep themes. But it's just a disappointment. Another one with not enough going on either plot-wise or character-wise, and although I might be the only person who feels this way, a thuggish, convict Edward Norton just isn't very convincing to me.
Perfect Getaway
Okay, so we didn't see this in the last 2 months, but it was so bad and I dislike Mil-Jo so much that I've got to mention it. Steve Zahn is the other "name" in the movie, and he's also endlessly irritating to me. This was a sort of - I don't know - psychological thriller? or something. It did have me "tricked" - that much I'll say for it. But it was so over-the-top and stupid-weird that I just couldn't wait for it to be over. There was no interesting depth or nuance to the psychological level - just weirdness and craziness. And I can't stand Mil-Jo!
Friday, June 10, 2011
The Friday 4: Puzzling Proverbs
We've talked about a slew of German and American proverbs in German class these past few weeks, and although none of these below were on our lists, perhaps I've got proverbs on the brain. But since favorites are too easy, here are some strange, stupid, or otherwise confusing proverbs to consider:
4. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.
Like, obviously. Unless you're going to defy physics/logic/time/etc., you can't cross something you haven't yet reached. Maybe it should read, "We'll wait to fret insanely about that bridge until we come to it." Not quite the same ring, but at least it makes mathematical and scientific sense.
(I do so adore bridges, though.)
3. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth.
I get the sentiment here, but why would you look a horse in the mouth anyway, gift or no gift? Are you checking for cavities? (Brad and I each have 3 by the way - eeks.)
And I don't get the whole horse + gift thing. Is this like some medieval dude-was-fighting-other-dude-wearing-chainmail-and-first-dude's-horse-got-lanced-and-then-he-was-horseless-but-another-random-(gift?)-horse-came-trotting-up-to-the-rescue-so-he-could-kill-second-dude kind of thing?
Whatever the case, this one just seems silly to me.
2. The exception that proves the rule.
What does this mean?! For the love of all that is good, I wish someone would tell me. Smart people love to say this - it's something they think is witty and pithy and all that crap - and I never know what they're talking about.
Just once I'd like to say to one of these people, "That sounds like a load of horse sh*t." But if he's given you a gift, then don't . . . .
1. You can't have your cake and eat it, too.
This is a bunch of crap. Why would anyone want to have cake if she weren't going to eat it? Moreover, how could she eat it if she didn't have it?
My guess is that "have" means something like "keep" or "retain" (?), so, you can't keep something but also use it up. But why cake? Why not something like a piece of gold, which would at least be pretty to look at?
I don't particularly like cake, by the way, and I often pass on it at parties (unless it's cheesecake, which is heavenly, or ice cream cake, which it seems no one but me likes anymore), so maybe I'm biased.
4. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.
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| One of my favorites: the Sixth Street (Roberto Clemente) Bridge in downtown Pittsburgh |
Like, obviously. Unless you're going to defy physics/logic/time/etc., you can't cross something you haven't yet reached. Maybe it should read, "We'll wait to fret insanely about that bridge until we come to it." Not quite the same ring, but at least it makes mathematical and scientific sense.
(I do so adore bridges, though.)
3. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth.
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| I see a mouth, but no gift . . . |
And I don't get the whole horse + gift thing. Is this like some medieval dude-was-fighting-other-dude-wearing-chainmail-and-first-dude's-horse-got-lanced-and-then-he-was-horseless-but-another-random-(gift?)-horse-came-trotting-up-to-the-rescue-so-he-could-kill-second-dude kind of thing?
Whatever the case, this one just seems silly to me.
2. The exception that proves the rule.
What does this mean?! For the love of all that is good, I wish someone would tell me. Smart people love to say this - it's something they think is witty and pithy and all that crap - and I never know what they're talking about.
Just once I'd like to say to one of these people, "That sounds like a load of horse sh*t." But if he's given you a gift, then don't . . . .
1. You can't have your cake and eat it, too.
This is a bunch of crap. Why would anyone want to have cake if she weren't going to eat it? Moreover, how could she eat it if she didn't have it?
I don't particularly like cake, by the way, and I often pass on it at parties (unless it's cheesecake, which is heavenly, or ice cream cake, which it seems no one but me likes anymore), so maybe I'm biased.
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