11.26.03


1


I'm going to France tomorrow nite.
I need these two key phrases translated, so if anyone knows French

and can help out, that will be great.


1) I will pay you 30 euro to speak American to me.
2) Please stop hitting me. My friends have money. I can take you to

their house.


2


according to jerome (a real frenchman!), those would translate like this:


> 1) I will pay you 30 euro to speak American to me.
Je te donne 30 Euros si tu me parle en anglais.


> 2) Please stop hitting me. My friends have money. I can take you to
> their house.
Arrete de me taper. Mes amis ont de l'argent. Je peux t'emmener chez

eux!


3


not totally sure of my verb forms (damn you and your conditional-speak), but

something like:


Je vous payerai Euros trente si vous parlerez anglais.


S'il vous plait, arreter! Mes amis ont trop d'argent. Je peut vous prendre

a leur maison.


Also when I went to Spain my boyfriend gave me these three key phrases:


Donde estas los servicios? (Where are the bathrooms?)


Mi novio es muy fuerte et proteger. (My boyfriend is very strong and

protective.)


and in extreme cases: Yo tengo syphilis! (self-explanatory).


4


jerome (crackhead frenchman that he is) was kind enough to translate yours

back into english! :)


I will pay you dollars thirty si you speak English (in the future beyond

now and today).


Please stop (but the tense is false. Phonetically it is the same, but

tense is false). My friends have too much money. I can grab you at their

house.


On Tue, 25 Nov 2003, Y wrote:


> okay, obviously this supposed frenchman is on crack. I mean, my 9 years of
> wells school system french with summers off are far superior to this
> bullshit he's spewing.


5


that shit is funny. and true!


6


not that anyone is interested in grammar at this point, but


> Je te donne 30 Euros si tu me parle en anglais.


would mean "i give you 30 euros if you speak to me in english."

that tense is crap.


and


> Arrete


is the worst conjugation of an -er verb, even allowing for a wacky imperative

form, that i've seen since junior high, man.


1) aimes-toi des cacahuetes? j'ai besoin d'un taxi.
2) va te faire foutre. jerry lewis est mon pere.


6


uh, i still gotta go with the GUY WHO'S FROM FRANCE here.


7


what X asked for:
1) I will pay you 30 euro to speak American to me.
2) Please stop hitting me. My friends have money. I can take you to

their house


Z's french:
> 1) aimes-toi des cacahuetes? j'ai besoin d'un taxi.
> 2) va te faire foutre. jerry lewis est mon pere.


Z's french translated:
1. do you like peanuts? i need a taxi.
2. go stuff yourself. (literal, equiv. fuck you) jerry lewis is my

father.

11.21.03ii


on dogs, i wrote an angry letter to the daily news about this horrible staten island guy whose puppies burned to death when he took them to the vet's for tail-cropping. they, erm, chopped and chewed and published it today, which should probably teach me something.

11.21.03

take another ride to see me home
listen to me! i'm on the stereo stereo
oh my baby baby baby baby babe
gave me malaria hysteria




what about the voice of geddy lee
how did it get so high?
i wonder if he speaks like an ordinary guy?
(i know him and he does!)




and you're my fact-checkin' cuz


(Aww...)


(pavement)

11.16.03


of the many good reasons to look at dogs, the most recently notable is that they tend to mirror my reactions to new york city. a six-pound yorkie echoed my take on the shoe department at barney's yesterday: yeah, the beady look said, i don't really get this scene either. there's a beautiful, pudgy, stoic bulldog named petunia who gets walked around sixth avenue on my lunch breaks during the week. she and i stare at each other so regularly that she plops down at my table when her owner passes me on the sidewalk. i like that.


meeting #2 with also lauren, now a lit grad student and shepherdess of disaffected freshman writing students, was a success. i'm glad we established that she's not in cambodia any more - she sent me a marvelous e-mail about concerts in brooklyn that involve cages and roller skating. a good woman, that one.


sonic proselytization track list.


name that tune!

I realize we kept piling up these presents because it was as good as free advertising for the firms involved, but I couldn't be cynical. I got such a kick out of all those free gifts showering on to us. For a long time afterward I hid them away, but later, when I was all right again, I brought them out, and I still have them around the house. I use the lipsticks now and then, and last week I cut the plastic starfish off the sunglasses case for the baby to play with.

11.14.03


next to phil & co, i fail time out's "are you a true new yorker?" feature miserably - especially with the whole getting-angrily-lost-in-queens-when-you-can-see-the-manhattan-skyline,-it's-right-goddamn-there thing - but i do have little mantras for cursing the people who insist on meandering down the sidewalk directly in front of me. they should perish, i could help them perish.

In a locks-to-locks comparison, [Wesley] Clark would be judged more favorably. [Howard] Dean's hair looks as though it was ordered from an old Sears catalogue. But there's a certain Mayberry charm to Clark's barbershop cut. Yet who can linger over Clark's perfectly trimmed, supreme-Allied-commander hair when his taut profile is competing for attention? His jaw line is so perfectly sharp that a draftsman could use it as a straight edge. Clark has an ideal nose, one that should be cast in plaster and used as a teaching aid in a course on rhinoplasty. Given all that, he doesn't even need hair.


(today's washington post)

11.13.03


gratuitous my-cats-are-cuter-than-yours photo





because, honestly, they are.

11.12.03


san francisco's acorn books, truly a mouse that roars: since giving them a customer feedback card a year ago, i've received weekly e-mails with hyperlinks to purchase rare books in the categories i mentioned. someone actually rummages through their intake piles every week to see if they've bought anything by ted hughes or eavan boland - extraordinary. give them money. for this, maybe.

alibris, a portal for independent bookstore inventories, is also quite fine - but i'm still more impressed by the acorn guys.

11.08.03iii

Listen,


if stars are lit,


it means there is someone who needs it,


It means that someone wants them to be,


that someone deems those speckles of spit


                                                                    magnificent.


And overwrought,


in the swirls of afternoon dust,


he bursts in on God,


afraid he might be already late.


In tears,


he kisses God's sinewy hand


and begs him to guarantee


that there will definitely be a star.


He swears


he won't be able to stand


                                        that starless ordeal.


Later,


he wanders around, worried,


but outwardly calm,


And to someone else, he says:


'Now,


it's alright.


You are no longer afraid,


are you?'



Listen,


if stars are lit,


it means there is someone who needs it.


It means it is essential


that every evening


at least one star should ascend


over the crest of the building.



(vladimir mayakovsky, 1914)

11.08.03ii

it isn't that nothing has happened in the past few weeks; on the contrary, october was zesty and marvelous. it's that the things were mostly exciting in a very subjective way, like seeing a nun on a bicycle or ethan hawke's puppy having a poo. no one wants to hear about that, really.

stewart et al. came over last weekend for sonic proselytization - somber, focused listens to other folks' music. one assumes he'll post the track list at some point; i believe my five choices were

iron & wine - promising light
britney spears - e-mail my heart
rainer maria - the contents of lincoln's pockets
the modern lovers - pablo picasso
the fucking champs - winter of our discotheque

joe and i are starring in the weeping walls, a low-budget horror movie in which maintenance workers broke a pipe upstairs, the neighbors use their kitchen sink, a strange tinkling sound comes from nowhere, and the ceiling bulges and slithers. it's pretty awesome. our super is not being very super about it.

11.08.03

i was death for halloween. i looked good.