|
|
February 20,
2009
More notes of a food fiend
I have another food article up
today, about my favorite trade fair,
on Paris
Update.
February 7,
2009
Social
studies: I won't shut up,
so I must be telling the truth
I'm always amazed and fascinated by
people, and
there are many, who seem to think that incessant, belligerent bluster
should be accepted as proof of good faith.
Lawyers and politicians do this as a
matter of
course, of course, but the latest example I observed first-hand took
place not in court or in Congress, but at my local supermarket.
I was waiting in the checkout line when
the security
guard stopped a kind of scruffy-looking guy with a backpack, apparently
on suspicion of shoplifting. The guard quietly and politely asked the
gentleman to open his backpack for inspection, but he refused to
comply, instead launching into a frenzied, rabid tirade that he
apparently thought would "prove" his innocence.
The
thrust of his argument was rather weak, i.e. that he shouldn't be
suspected of being a thief because he didn't, by his own reckoning,
look like one.
It was quite an admirable performance,
actually. The
guy seemed to be able to yell continuously without inhaling. His line
of discourse, delivered at metal singer volume and auctioneer
speed, went like this:
"What? You think I stole something? You think I'm a thief? Look at me!
Do I look like a thief? No I don't! You know why? 'Cause I'm not a
thief! What's
a thief look like? Not like
me! I
didn't steal anything! You think I did?
Why? Because I'm a thief? I'm not! Do I look like one? No! You think I
do? If I was a thief what would I look like? A
thief? What do they look like? Like Me? Thief? Look! What? You think?
Me? Thief? Not! Huh?" etc., etc., etc., etc., etc.
Whole minutes went by while I was
waiting to check
out, and when I left he hadn't let up in the slightest. For all I know
he's still
there,
pleading his case. ("How many times do I have to tell you I'm not a
thief? A million? OK, I will: I'm not a thief! Not me! Do I look like a
thief? . . . ")
In
fairness, maybe the guy didn't look like a thief. Sure as shit sounded
like one, though.
January 28, 2009
True
story from a more innocent era
My
wife Nancy getting stopped by department store security today
because a salesperson failed to take the anti-theft strip out of a
recently purchased hat reminded me of something I witnessed at an
airport some years ago.
It happened in about 1990. I was at
Charles de
Gaulle to get a flight to the States. Of course they were scanning all
carry-on luggage and making everybody walk through a metal detector,
but in retrospect I would have to say that the security guidelines
weren't quite as stringent back then as they are now.
I say this because right in front of me
was a tall,
massive gentleman wearing thick multiple layers of clothing and
carrying an infant on his back in one of those elaborate baby carriers
with so many straps and buckles and metal clasps it probably weighed
more than the kid. He was also carrying an attache case, which he
dutifully laid on the conveyor belt to the X-ray chamber, or whatever
that thing is, and then he walked through the metal detector.
Which
lit up like Chinese New Year and beeped like a Beijing traffic jam. But
before the security people could react, the guy started gesticulating
madly over his shoulder and yelling, "IT'S THE BABY! IT'S THE
BABY!!! IT'S THE BABY!!!!!" Whereupon he grabbed up his attache case
and strode briskly away.
And get this: the personnel did nothing.
I made a mental note to check if he was
on my plane,
considered asking the security guys why they didn't recheck him,
decided that it wouldn't be worth the hassle they were likely to give
me for telling them how to do their jobs, and went to my gate.
There
were no hijackings or bombings that day, so I guess it really was
THE BABY!!!!!!!!
January 20, 2009
A new (to you) piece on a new (to me) site
And I have a new(-ish) piece up on a new (to me) satire site. Check out
"Boorish
pickup lines inspired by the recession, paired with
rejoinders for women who don't suffer boors lightly" on Yankee
Pot Roast.
If you just came from YPR,
check out some of the back issues, like for instance:
Honesty
in personal advertising (on The Big Jewel)
Secrets of
numerology revealed
Three modern-day
interpretations of Zeno's Paradox
Meet
the poet (on The Big Jewel)
January 21,
2009
More
notes of a food fiend
I have a new food article, this time
about obscure vegetables, on Paris
Update.
January 18,
2009
Literary
parlor game:
Did you hear about this?
For no particular reason I was thinking
today about
a guy I met at a party in about 1995. A bunch of us were talking about
this and that and the conversation turned to books and recent fiction.
The young man in question piped up with what he thought was a trenchant
anecdote to illustrate the sad state of literature today.
His story went essentially like this:
"Hey, did you hear about this? There's
some guy who
lives in some godforsaken isolated tiny town on the coast of
Newfoundland where there's absolutely nothing to do all day, so just to
keep himself occupied over the years he's kept a log of all the ships
he sees coming and going out in the Atlantic, and last year somebody
got a hold of his journal, published it and it won the Pulitzer Prize!"
(If you don't happen to "get" this, here's
what he was actually referring to.)
Based on this example, the possibilities
are endless:
Hey, did you hear about this? There's
this teenage kid who was going to
some la-dee-dah prep school on the East Coast and one day he goes nuts
and runs away and when they finally find him they put him in an asylum
somewhere where he has all these therapy sessions with a psychiatrist,
and the psychiatrist publishes transcripts of the kid talking and the
book becomes like this anthem for a whole generation!
Hey, did you hear about this? There's
this rich
English guy who never needs to do a minute of work and all he ever does
is get into trouble and then rely on his valet to get him out of these
hopeless predicaments, over and over again. So he starts writing down
his ridiculous "adventures", publishes them in books and earns millions
of dollars and the valet doesn't get a cent!
Hey, did you hear about this? There's
this old guy
in Cuba who's like retired or something so all he ever has to do is go
fishing every day but he never catches anything. Then one day he
finally catches this huge fish but by the time he tows it back to port
it's all eaten away by sharks so he ends up with nothing again, but he
sells his story to Life
magazine and it wins him the Nobel Prize in Literature!
Hey, did you hear about this? There's
this pervorama
child molester who murdered this woman, kidnapped her 12-year-old
daughter and drove all over the country raping her in motel rooms until
the cops finally caught him, and then he published his diary and the
book is hailed as a modern classic!
Hey, did you hear about this? There are
these two
bums who stand around on the same street corner all day every day
waiting for this friend of theirs who never shows up. So one day this
"avant-garde" playwright comes along and hires them to go up on stage
and wait for their supposed friend there, in front of an audience and
everything, and that's his play!
January 9,
2009
True
story: Simone
I
lived for many years in the part of Montmartre known for its relatively
high population of transvestites, some of whom were performers at the
drag show nightclubs on Rue des Martyrs and the rest of whom were
prostitutes.
One
prominent neighborhood character was an overweight
middle-aged cross-dresser named Simone, who lived kitty-corner across
from my building. I'm not sure if Simone performed on stage or in
sparsely-furnished hotel rooms, but she was "on" all the time,
cheerfully greeting and chatting with everyone she crossed paths with
all day long. She was a real sweetheart and everyone who knew her liked
her.
One day I was at the local minimart
picking up some
coffee and paper towels and noticed that the checkout line was much
longer than usual. When I joined the queue I realized why: Simone was
at the cash register having a long conversation with the checker and in
the process entertaining everyone no end.
Apparently she was a few
francs short of the total (this was before the new currency, the euro,
was introduced) and the checker, who of course knew her, was telling
her not to worry, to pay next time, and Simone was, typically, milking
the situation for all it was worth, searching and researching her
handbag and prattling on and on about "What a stupid little BITCH I am!
Oooh I can't believe I could be such a silly BITCH! An
empty-headed
BITCH!"
etc., etc., etc.*
Meanwhile, standing at the door was a
very tough
looking guy wearing ratty hoodlum clothes -- torn-up jeans, denim
jacket, high scuffed-up black boots, etc. -- and he was staring at
Simone with a look of annoyed exasperation.
I
immediately took him for
one of the toughs who hang out around the punk clubs on the boulevard a
couple of blocks away. I figured he had stopped in to buy beer, saw
this histrionically flaming queen and was waiting for a chance to do a
little fag-bashing. Honestly, I thought I was going to be a witness in
a criminal trial in the near future.
But when Simone finally finished her
"bit", she
picked up her bag of groceries, turned to the guy at the door and said,
"Cheri, could you be a dear and carry this for little me? Off we go
now!"
And off
they went together. One sauntering, one sashaying.
*For
those of you who speak French, the word that kept coming back in her
rant was "conne", as in "Qu'est-ce que je suis CONNE! Oh quelle CONNE!!
Comment puis-je etre tellement CONNE?!" etc. You see the implications.
And the difficulty in translating it with all its levels of meaning in
less than about 200 words.
|
Copyright
2009 by David Jaggard.
Basic design of this page by www.rickyswebtemplates.com
Don't read
this: QOO
is a humor site devoted to parody, satire, parodies, satires, jokes and
humor, jokes and humour, news parodies, news satires, funny news,
satires of the news, parodies of the news, humorous news, news jokes,
newspaper parodies, funny quotes, funny lists, list humor, list humour,
list jokes, cellphone ring tones, cell phone ring tones, cellphone
rings, cell phone rings, podcasts, experimental rock, offbeat music,
newspaper satires, literary parodies, literary satires, literary
satire, literary parody, satirical literature, funny obituaries,
parodies of obituaries, journalism parodies, journalism satires,
journalism parody, journalism satire, parodies of literature, lyrics,
parodies of lyrics, satires of lyrics, song lyric parodies, song lyric
satires, satires of literature, strange monologues, humorous lists,
humourous lists, list parodies, list satires and getting as many
possible search engine keywords into this paragraph as possible. I
warned you.
About
the translation / traduction of Air France Madame Magazine and Nancy Li
|
