The Awesomeness of Nonsense

Sure, it's not always awesome. I should know -- I read a lot of it. But sometimes, nonsense is really great.

Seen on a student's sweatshirt:
Sometimes I think your girlfriend is THE ONE.
(And frankly, imagining Keanu Reeves as anyone's girlfriend is kind of scary. Awesomely scary.)

On the side of a trendy-looking green and white tote bag:
Minutemen Meatpuppets Descendants Angst
(That is some awesomely post-modern poetry right there. Or possibly words chosen at random; it's hard to say.)

In a description of the movie Wuthering Heights:
This movie is full of agon-blessedness and crackdown.
(Not just agon-blessedness. That would be awesome enough. But crackdown! What more could a moviegoer ask for?)

Explaining the sentence "She didn't come, but it's not a big deal":
It means she didn't come, but it's not a brain sample.
(No, no, it's not. That would be too awesome for my test.)

Asked to use a slang word in a sentence:
I always play computer games, so my friends call me Chuck.
(There's a superficial resemblance between the name "Chuck" and the word "geek," so that may be what she was going for, but I prefer to think that "Chuck" is the new and awesome word for people who play computer games.)

Attempting to make a sentence with the word "awesome":
I want to awesome something.

Really, what more awesome use of language could you imagine than to turn awesome from an adjective (a superlatively useful one, admittedly) into a verb? That's some awesome nonsense.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to awesome these papers.

Dave

China Sidelights II: Food Too Cute to Eat

It's been a while since I wrote anything about our summer trip, and you may have forgotten about it entirely. Even I may have forgotten. But what better way to escape the bleakness of late fall than to relive the memories of an exciting summer trip? Our intrepid group of five world travellers had seen the Forbidden City, climbed the Great Wall, feasted on Beijing duck, gazed upon the Ming Tombs, and marvelled at the details of the Terra Cotta Army™. That kind of stuff works up an appetite.

So it was, then, that with the Terra Cotta Army™ behind us, we arrived back at our hotel, footsore and hungry. We showered, changed, and met our guide (the impossibly perky Tracy) out front for some traditional Xi’an cuisine.

Tracy led us across the square, through a street-crossing tunnel, and across another square to our destination. The restaurant owners weren’t shy about their capabilities: the sign (which took up nearly the entire front wall) proclaimed that The Legendary DeFa Chang Restaurant is Renowned for its Superior Delicious Dumplings.

That’s right – dumplings! Like Beijing, Xi'an also has a food specialty. Tracy informed us that at one point Xi’an was the home of an emperor who had a particular fondness for the little delicacies and whose staff satisfied his cravings by creating eight hundred varieties of them. I say “an emperor” because I have sadly been unable to trace this tradition any farther than our irrepressible guide. But historically accurate or not, the results are the same: the Xi’an Dumpling Feast. If Xi’an were a city in the United States, the welcome center would hand out literature proclaiming it to be the “Home of the Dumpling” and it would have a water tower in the shape of a two hundred foot tall pot-sticker.

Whether because that would be tacky in the imperial capitol or because the Chinese are just behind the times when it comes to water towers, the only evidence of the Xi’anese specialty are a profusion of restaurants, each attempting to out-boast the others in signage.

Tracy saw to it that we were comfortably seated, ordered the appropriate feast for us, and cheerfully bowed out, leaving five Westerners, two Chinese waitresses, and a vast array of steamed dumplings. They would bring two or three woven paper-lined serving dishes, each of which contained five of some particular variety of dumpling. When we had each consumed our assortment, the servers would whisk the dishes away and bring out a new set.

The servers spoke no real English, but they had a nice system: when a new dish was brought out, the younger girl would step forward and say “Excuse me!” Once she had gotten our attention, she would point to the various dishes and say things like “Chicken. Pork. Vegetable.” Then she would leave us to our food. Sometimes, even her identifications were unidentifiable. I feel quite sure that once she pointed to a plate of dumplings and said “Excuse me! Garbage.”

After a few rounds of this, Brian tried to strike up a conversation with her while she was going through her routine. “Hey, what’s your name?” he asked, just as she said “Excuse me!” She stared back, uncomprehending and clearly thrown off by the interruption. “Your name?” he repeated, slowly and clearly. “My name—“ (indicating himself) “—is Brian. What is your name?” She frowned, as though greatly irritated, and loudly replied “Excuse me! Tomato! Beef!” Then she whirled on her heel and strode off, leaving us to console Brian by laughing uproariously.

The dumplings, eighteen kinds in all, were exquisite both in form and taste. There were spinach dumplings, tomato-and-pepper dumplings, duck dumplings (shaped like little ducks), fish dumplings, and apparently garbage dumplings (which were fantastic). Our final course was lucky soup, which contained perhaps a dozen miniature dumplings about the size of blueberries, and which conferred good fortune based on how many dumplings you happened to ladle out into your dish – without looking, of course!

As we were leaving, Desiree stopped at the display table by the front door. “Oh, look!” she squealed. “Even more cute little dumplings! Oh, we didn’t get the ones shaped like fish . . . and look – frog dumplings! I want to take them home with me!” Since that was apparently not an option, she had to settle for taking pictures.

I close with a personal recommendation: the Beijing duck was good, and worth trying. But the dumplings were awesome. If you have the good fortune to live in the region of a Xi’an style dumpling restaurant, I urge you to go and order the dumpling feast. You shall not be disappointed.

And seriously, try those garbage ones. They’re great.

Dave

P.S. Either my connection or Blogger is being dumb right now . . . pictures coming soon.

P.P.S. OK, two days later I still can't add pictures. It says "your picture has been uploaded!" Except . . . it hasn't. I'll keep working on it. In the meantime, just imagine some really cute and delicious-looking food.

P.P.P.S. Finally! Hooray for Blogger!

We Interrupt Your Regularly Scheduled Blog . . .

I’m not really happy about using the blog for public service announcements, but here it is anyway. For our friends living in Greenville, this seemed the best way to tell you that we will not be in South Carolina again until August.

I know we had planned to do stuff – I know! And I apologize for canceling it. I especially apologize to those of you with whom we had already canceled. But we wouldn’t be doing things this was if we didn’t think it was important.

We have an opportunity that I can’t really get into here on the blog, and it requires that we go to Canada during our winter holiday. Since the holiday is only two weeks long, that doesn’t really leave time for much else. Actually, it doesn’t leave time for anything else. We’ll be flying more or less straight to Calgary, and we’ll stay there for the duration.

Suffice it to say that we love you all, and we’ll miss you very much. We look forward to seeing you all again at the end of this school year. Until then, there’s always Skype!

Dave

Bam! Hamburger!

First, I apologize for my dreadful delinquency. It's been three weeks since my last post -- I know, I know! I'm beating my head on my desk right now. Seriously. I mean, I was when I wrote this.

Anyway, I'll have a for-real post coming later. Now, let me try to appease you with more wacky massacring of the English language. We've just begun rehearsals for this year's Christmas play: an adaption of Dickens' A Christmas Carol. There were some hilarious misreadings during the auditions, and more than once I had to pretend to scratch my nose to hide my grin.

Student A, reading Scrooge: Why are you here?
Student B, reading Marley: Because I'm crazed!
Me, scratching my nose: That's cursed, girls. Cursed.

Later . . .
Student c, reading Scrooge: Merry Christmas? Bam! Hamburger!
Me, scratching furiously: Bah, like in bottle. And it's not hamburger, it's humbug.

Still later . . .
Student A, still reading Scrooge: Why are you cursed? You were always a good businesswoman.
Student B, still reading Marley and getting confused about my previous correction: I cursed too much about business! I should have cursed more about the people around me!
Me: (Unable to speak, shaking from silent laughter, covering my face and waving at the girls to continue)



That was two weeks ago. Right now, I'm grading another rather humorous assignment. I showed the (very) short film Lifted to my students last week and asked them to describe what was happening; you may remember it as the hilarious animated short that went with the Pixar movie Ratatouille, in which a hapless alien struggles futilely to pass a human-abduction exam while his instructor looks on.

Problem is, the word 'alien' is apparently not in my students' vocabulary. I've gotten quite a range of alternatives, though:

> There are two ET in the UFO.
> The strange person want to take the boy out of his room.
> Two organisms come to Earth.
> One monster want to take the human out.
> Two nonhuman beings download the earth.
> A small creature and a fat creature try to take a person.
> Two frogs come in a UFO.
> There are a big green and a small green.
> The small hero wanted to let a sleepy man come out of the house.
> A stranger animal wants to operate the machine.
> Two cartoons live the UFO.
> The beasts are in a plant. (Plant, plane, what's the difference?)
> The mechian person controlled the real person. (I don't know what she meant either)
> We can see two fingers in a fly ship which is like a plate. (I have no idea what she was going for, but 'finger' was definitely not it)>

. . . but no alien! Such are the difficulties of the English language. Until next time (which I promise will be sooner!),

Dave

What a strange teacher we have . . .

One of the more common things that we do in an attempt to improve our students’ listening skills is dictation. This consists of reading a passage to the class while they attempt to write it down. Sounds simple, but amongst the reasonably accurate transcriptions there are sometimes rather bizarre (and occasionally unprintable) typos. Grading them can be a hilariously Mad-Gab-like exercise.

This is what the students thought I was saying as I dictated a paragraph about our vacation at the beach.

I didn’t want to go to the beech, because I thought it would be boiling. (True . . . boiling trees can be dangerous. Of course, I meant boring.)

I realized that the ocean and the sand and some guy were actually all very preteen. (Ten points if you can figure out what I said.)

I relaxed in red and interesting book.

We cut many animals that live in the water, such as carbs. (It was a very violent, but low-calorie, vacation.)

I was sorry to live. (That's what a relaxing week at the beach can do to you, folks)

Dave

UPDATE: Alfredo (see the comments section) has guessed correctly. Ten points for you, Alfredo. You can redeem those for flights starting at fifteen thousand points.

China Sidelights I: Duck . . . but NOT RICE!

The Chinese take their food very seriously, as well they might. We benighted North Americans tend to think of Chinese food as takeout – sweet and sour whatever, various permutations of chicken, some rice, and an egg roll or two on the side. And, of course, fortune cookies. That is rather a misrepresentation of authentic Chinese food.

The Chinese have eight major schools of cuisine (or ten, if you include Beijing and Shanghai as separate schools) that are as different from each other as Amish from Tex-Mex. Each style has a dozen or more signature dishes that range from volcano-hot stewed tofu to live shrimp soaked in liquor. A formal meal here, no matter what style of cuisine is being observed, is an impressive sight to behold, and a far more impressive feat to consume (as you're aware if you’ve been following this blog).

Knowing this, we wanted to sample the specialty food of each locale that we visited. We started with Beijing Duck (sometimes called Peking Duck) in, uh, Beijing. We asked our tour guide in for directions to a good duck place near our hotel, and finally found the place some three blocks away. Its sign was nearly hidden beneath a mass of brass plaques, each one denoting an award won or some government recognition achieved. This looked promising, so we strolled in and were directed by a veritable conveyer belt of bowing, gesturing waiters and hostesses to a table near the kitchen.

Beijing duck is a pleasantly simple meal, which is good, since we had to order it all in English, and the servers were clearly not used to tourists. We ordered duck for five people, and then sat around sipping Coke and waiting for the arrival of the unfortunate waterfowl.

In perhaps ten minutes, a businesslike chef appeared, pushing a cart topped with a platter bearing our duck. It had roasted to a crispy and mouth-watering brown, and smelled delicious. Without so much as a glance at us, the chef got to work slicing the meat off of the bone in small, thin strips. As he did so, a stream of smiling servers brought us dainty plates bearing slivers of carrot, celery, and cucumber, and shallow bowls filled with the tangy black sauce for which Beijing duck is known. There was also a wooden dish containing something like flour tortillas, but very small and so thin that they were translucent.

In fact, Beijing duck is eaten a bit like a burrito – the thin tortilla-things are filled with an assortment of vegetable slivers, a few slices of roast duck, and a daub or two of black sauce, then rolled up and devoured by the discerning gourmet. It is, as the Chinese would say, very delicious.

Unfortunately for us, not all present were discerning gourmets – at least, not in the eyes of our Chinese hostess. Our companion Brian, hungry from sight-seeing and less concerned with authenticity than with sustenance, ordered a bowl of rice to go with dinner. So far, so good. When it arrived, however, he decided to supplement the diminutive little wraps, and began spooning a generous helping of it into his wrap. He was interrupted in this operation by a cry from behind our table – the hostess had spotted us.

“No, no!” she said, rushing to the aid of the hapless (and obviously clueless) American tourist who was about to ruin his culinary experience. “No” being the limit of her English, she communicated through gestures and a torrent of passionate Chinese that putting rice in one’s duck wrap was Not A Good Thing and was Not Done by cultured people. She then slowly coached Brian through the process of undoing his mistake, obviously concerned that he be educated out of his barbarism.

Brian (amid gales of laughter from his unsympathetic friends) objected that he didn’t care if it was the right way to do it or not – he was hungry! After a few fruitless rounds of protest, however, he caved in and meekly allowed the hostess to direct him.

Having cast her pearls before swine, the hostess retired, leaving Brian to furtively stuff rice back into his tortilla and cram it into his mouth before she could catch him. The exchange may not have been culturally sensitive (on either side), but I think it was the funniest dinner show I’ve ever seen.

And when combined with the fine two-liter bottle of Coke, it proved to be more than worthy of all the brass-plate endorsements I can imagine. What more could the discerning gourmet wish for?

Dave

Mixed Messages: T-shirt sighting of the day

One cute little freshman was wearing a black t-shirt. On the front, in white block letters, was ARMY.

On the back, at the very top, in small glittering gold script, was call me pusspuss.

I guess she's trying to tap that aggro-cute vibe. Or something.

Dave