Links

First, thanks to Zill for this link to The International Ginger Kids Foundation. If you’ll remember, a few weeks ago the Brog lambasted Harry Potter’s choice of a ginger for a spouse. This was really narrow minded of the Brog and this web site demonstrates just how debilitating the disease Gingervitis can be.

Next, the Brogcrush on Bryon Fong continues. He sent me one of the coolest maps ever (and because the only thing the Brog loves more than pandas and Chipotle is geography, I was bigtime mesmerized). It compares the GDP’s of various countries to the GDP’s of each state in the Union. The intent of the map is to show just how dominant the US economy, but I found it endlessly amusing because any excuse to compare Peru and Utah, Pakistan and Arkansas, and Bangladesh and New Hampshire I find compretery hirarious (and you know who was thrilled that his home state got paired with Korea! A sign? I think so). I’m resisting the temptation for future brog pieces to refer to people from Tennessee as “the Saudis” or folks from West Virginia as “Algerians,” because it would cause too much confusion but I will maintain that it would have been funny.

And, finally, Ms. Talya Vatman, who apparently has assimilated quite nicely into London’s branch of the Russian mob, emailed me this link to a blog entry entitled: Stuff White People Like: #11 Asian girls. Obviously, this was an egregious ploy on our Jewish friend’s part to be mentioned in the brog, and it worked. The Stuff White People Like blog is a pretty entertaining read (though a tad overrated) and is usually updated daily, so give it a whirl.

There’s also a very realistic possibility that next week I’ll be able to post a link to the official Polish Horseshoes manifesto from the Cal State High Desert Website. Expect updates at the very minimum.

 

Language Deception!

-I shall continue to embrace the role of raconteur with a few tales of adventure from Frenchystan. And remember, I’m not one to dabble in apocryphal anecdotes, though I am prone to hyperbolic statements, so the stories I recount are at least 80% genuine, with a little embellishment along the way. Let me preface that I hate people. No, really, I do. Especially hungover. So, last Sunday morning (and obviously reeling from the previous evenings celebration), I took the train from Lyon back to Megève. I went to the very last car, and secured a booth all for myself, spread my limbs out to take up as much room as possible, placed my earbuds into the wax factory, and adorned my face with a scowl to dissuade fellow passengers from occupying my booth. Just as the train is about to pull out of the station, I think I’m in the clear, until I see a young Chinese couple (a skill I developed during my time in the Far East is I can now discern different Asian races from others by facial features alone with remarkable accuracy) moseying towards my sector of the train. Right then, I knew they’d be sitting in my booth. Shocker, I was correct. After they sat down, I slyly removed my headphones in order to eavesdrop on their conversation. In China, I used to play this game all the time, because whenever I would travel in rural areas, the Chinese would bluntly gossip about me assuming I didn’t speak Mandarin. Phrases I overheard ranged from “Why are all foreigners so fat” to “that foreign male has female hair!” (I had Jesus hair at the time). Once I even caught three teenagers debating whether I was handsome or not (one was correct, the other two were way off). My favorite part of this trickery is going up to the people once they’ve finished and conversing with them, listen to them half-heartedly apologize, and bask in the awkwardness. And the train scenario presented me a perfect situation to indulge in a little Chinese funtime. Unfortunately for me, these were the two most boring people on the planet. The girl said something about snow and scenery being pretty on at least ten separate occasions and when we went through a tunnel, she reacted as if Godzilla were invading Shanghai. These two were apparently newlyweds on their honeymoon, so I was hoping for a little dirty talk from the dude, something along the lines of “Tonight, I’m going to fuck you three ways from sideways” (I wouldn’t, she had the nastiest teeth. Instead of buying your wife a honeymoon in France, why not shell out a little dough for some orthodontic work?) or, at least overhear the blushing bride admit that “ hopefully our honeymoon in the auspicious year of the rat will bring good fortune and we shall conceive a baby boy to appease our most honored ancestors, Confucius, and our dutiful mothers and fathers. And so I don’t have to get another abortion.” But, noooooo, the most interesting topic they touched upon was how the weather in Wuhan (a muggy, smoggy river city in central China) differed from the Alps (no way!). I’d resigned myself to a story that never realized its potential, until right before I exited the train. At that point, the husband tapped my knee and said in English “excuse me sir, is this stop St. Gervais-les-Bains?” I seized the opportunity and Chinesed all over his face. “Xia.ge zhan (next station),” I replied, much to the young couple’s shock. The look on the girl’s face was priceless. She was initially astonished that this kid in rural France spoke decent Chinese, followed by a look of horror, as she tried to recall everything she said in the past hour that could have been really embarrassing. We shuo-ed some zhongwen for the next few minutes (I informed them that I studied in the great nation of Taiwan. Exacerbating political tensions? That’s your SOS!), and before I could dig myself into a deeper whole, the train reached my stop. I gave them a perfunctory zai jian and peaced before I could cause any more trouble.

-Being on the other side of this duplicity really sucks monkey balls, and it happened to me and my friend Fong once in Laos. Me and halfy (as we affectionately refer to our semi-Chinese companion) were pissed off pandas because this crappy hotel on the outskirts of Vientiane did not understand the concept of a voucher and charged us twice. Also, they refused to take my credit card because I hadn’t signed it, even though I had no less than four picture IDs with me (oh, herro 19^th century!), which only made us even more livid. Upon leaving the hotel, we took a shared taxi with a few other Laotians to downtown Vientiane. Fong and I vented our frustrations in a dialogue that went something like this: Me: “Those assholes knew EXACTLY what was going on, and they intentionally deceived us for a few more bucks. Fucking Laotians.” Fong (who in general is averse to profanity): “I hate fucking Laotians and I hate their fucking country.” We proceeded to seethe in silence for a few minutes, until one of the Laotians in front of us, turned around, and in flawless English asked: “So, you guys are American?” Ruh-roh! Turns out this Laotian was a Laotian-American and was none too pleased with our disparaging of his people. Fong and I, though clearly embarrassed, were rather surly at this point, so did we apologize? Hell, no! I just put on my headphones, closed my eyes, and went to a happy place: Chipotle.

Last week, my friend Fong was a brog all star. This week, he faces the brog’s wrath.

Fongfriend lives in London, and I invited him to go skiing with me in France. Fong informs me that he cannot come the weekend of February 8-10 because he has a presentation…February 20^th! You’ve got to be kidding me, Fong! That’s the nerdiest thing you’ve ever done, and you were a regular in the library at six in the morning on Saturdays. And I may never forgive you. There, I said it.

Fong Was a Brog All Star That Week

In addition to the BUCS CROCS enhancement, he typed this gem in the wake of the Heath Ledger calamity: “OMG, Heath Ledger is dead! Batman got him!” Another funny exchange in the HLA (Heath Ledger Aftermath) occurred while my mother and I simultaneously read the press release. Rynn: “See, (son), this is why I don’t like drugs.” I then retorted “See, mother, this is why I do like drugs.” She promptly left the room.