A Berlin grandmother who has worked the city’s red light district as a prostitute for the last 49 years plans to retire when she turns 64 next year. She said she charges 30 euros ($36) and on good nights she has four to five clients.
She said her husband drops her off for work each night after watching the evening news. Now THIS guy must just be a gem! How thoughtful he doesn’t make her take the bus!
I can speak a bit of Spanish. In San José, I am able to say just about anything I need to say. I can understand those who speak Spanish to me as long as they don’t go full speed. I do OK. I make mistakes of course, but most of my Tico friends are patient souls and “get it”.
However, when I go to the country… they speak a who different Spanish. I hate to visit ML’s family as I cannot understand a single word. It’s like I fell off the boat yesterday.
I can also write a bit of Spanish though the little accent marks can cause problems. You wouldn’t THINK they are that important, but they are!
Example1
A few months ago, a woman wrote to me seeking employment. Her email was in Spanish and I had no problem understanding her. She gave me a brief resumé of her experience and mentioned she had one child, a son.
I wrote her back, and one of my questions was about the age of her son. In Spanish, we ask “how many years do you have”. Seemed simple enough!
However… the word for years in Spanish is años. Notice that little thingy over the n? That is a tilde. As it turns out, it is quite important! It not only affects how the word is pronounced, it can also affect the meaning. If you leave off the tilde, you of course get anos. Well anos IS a different word in Spanish. It means anus!
When I replied to her I asked “Cuantos anos tiene su hijo?” Or “how many rectums has your son?”.
In typical Tico style, she replied “El tiene solo un ano pero tiene doce años! This translates to “He has only one rectum but he is 12 years old!”
I hired her of course.
Sometimes my lack of Spanish causes a commotion. When I first arrived in Costa Rica, devoid of Spanish skills, I found myself in need of toilet paper.
I went to the local store and asked for papel (the only word I knew dealing with paper). After several misdirections (i.e. school paper, etc.), I found myself in true NEED of toilet paper if you catch my drift.
In exasperation, I finally remembered another word dealing with “that area” so asked (quite loudly) where I could find “papel de culo“. Ummm… culo, as it turns out, is a VERY bad word and is NOT used in public. Well after the initial gasps, everyone in the store fell out all over the place in peals of laughter. God I love Ticos!
In any case, my meaning was crystal clear, I got my “papel higiénico” (the correct words as I learned later), and rushed home.
I have never returned to that store.
Terms of endearment are really different. In the US, we call our lovers sweetie, darling, etc. Here, we use mi vida, mi corazon, mi amor or respectively, my life, my heart and my love. Cool huh?
However, there are a ton of other words… such as gordita, mi gordita linda, flaca, and negra. Gordo means fat and flaco means skinny. The “a” means female! Lindo is “pretty”.
These thus translate to “little fat girl”, “my pretty little fat girl”, “skinny woman”, and “black woman” respectively with the last one having nothing to do with the skin color of your sweetie!
How different the cultures! I don’t believe I ever even thought for a second to call any of my US-born girlfriends “My pretty little fat girl” and I know had I done so, I might not be writing in this blog today! But that is how it is here. I DO call ML gordita (she is NOT… she is thin and tall), and she calls me her “gordito lindo” (far more accurate except for the “lindo” art).
These terms of endearment are not limited to couples. Everywhere you hear men calling their male friends “gordo”, “flaco” and others.
What the meaning is for negra is more difficult for me to understand. I am not permitted to call ML negra until after we are married. I will too!
So I sorta fancy that I know a bit about my adopted country.
Arrogant maybe, but not totally unfounded as I do a lot of writing and teaching here. I run a forum on Costa Rica In fact, I just completed a section on Costa Rica’s creepy crawlies for a huge new web site on Costa Rica… so I THOUGHT I had a grasp on this bug thing. Until tonight.
Charlie starts the stalking thing and pretty soon Georgie has caught the scent of something crawling around my desk (and thus my feet… my BARE feet).
Now in CR, this can be anything from a beetle or an ant to something a bit more sinister… like a scorpion or a centipede (i.e. the ones you do NOT want under your bare feet).
Knowing this, I take a peek! What I see calms me. It is only a cockroach (albeit a really BIG cockroach!). As any regular reader of Dave Berry can tell you, the further South you travel, the bigger and badder the bugs! (Nice alliteration huh???) Costa Rica sports some truly impressive cockroaches and many are measurable in inches. This little fellow was somewhat smaller than Tom Cruise, but still a healthy specimen. He smiled up at me, winked, then headed under the PC!
OK… so I start “the search”. Those of you who think large cockroaches move noticeably slower than the tiny ones we had in Chicago might be interested to know that Costa Rica Grandes move about as fast as a good sized linebacker, so he was nowhere to be found.
I returned to work… until I felt a “tickling” on my arm. Oh shit….
Well I am considerable larger than most linebackers, but I assure you I moved my butt a whole lot quicker than Butkus ever dreamed.
There was my little buddy… looking up at me… his little feelers waiving around frantically, and I swear he winked again!
So… after changing my underwear, I returned to my desk and HE WAS STILL THERE! I am not sure, but I believe he may have found something edible in my keyboard.
He seemed unafraid, and (I don’t know why), I decided to watch him before I killed him. (Why does that sound so bad in print?).
So he moseyed around the keyboard for a while, then strolled up the monitor, back down, moved to the edge of the desk, headed down (art least until he caught site of the book in my hand), then back toward the relative safety of the keyboard (somehow KNOWING I was not going to use the book whilst he was on the keyboard!)
I then did a dumb thing… though as with most dumb things I do, it didn’t seem dumb at the time. I lowered my face down to get reeeeal good looksy at this guy (girl?). It was then it happened.
The damn thing FLEW into my face, then headed off the toward the kitchen.
I fell on my butt. ML came running over and asked if I was OK. I asked her “¿Sabes que estas cucarachas pueden volar?? or in English: Did you know these *%$^%&* cockroaches can fly??
Laughing, she said “Por supuesto!” “Of course”, and she returned to her book knowing her champion was injured only in his male pride (but I am sure she is now considerably less assured of her champion’s ability to protect her if needs be).
I set off after the BUG who laid me low and who was now caught between two cats and a palm.
This time, I took no chances and stomped his little lights out much to THE DOG’S delight as she stopped by for a quick snack of cucaracha al piso.
So, dear reader, you know know what I know (but YOU know it from the safety of your home).
“These goddamned cockroaches can fly!”
Microsoft warns of unpatched IE flaw… AGAIN (gaffaw!)
Microsoft, for the 2,347th time this year, has issued a security advisory for Internet Explorer, after a research firm published a working exploit to demonstrate how attackers could take advantage of the flaw, and with almost no effort on your part, allow any pimply faced anti-social to take control of your very life.
Gee!
Just about everyone else involved in Internet technology issued another advisory today: Microsoft Sucks!
The vulnerability, discovered by SEC Consult, mean that attackers could cause the browser to unexpectedly exit and execute arbitrary code.
Translation: Oh Shit!
Versions of IE affected by the flaw include IE 6.0 on Windows 2000 with Service Pack 1, 3 and 4, and on Windows XP with Service Pack 1 and 2.
So, in other words, if you have all the latest and greatest updates and whatever, you STILL get to take it in the shorts!
A patch for the flaw is not available.
A patch for the flaw is not available. As an interim measure, the software giant advises people to set their Internet and local intranet security zone settings to “high” before running ActiveX controls.
And I advise you to never use this cumbersome, slow, dangerous, and hopelessly out-of-date web browser unless you have some sort large hole in your head!
Damn people… if you don’t use Firefox (best) or Opera NOW… you gotta be about as dumb as a box of rocks.
Shooting near Taste of Chicago festival kills one and injures two others
CHICAGO, June 26 — Shots were fired near the crowded Taste of Chicago outdoor food festival, killing one man and wounding two others, police said.
The shooting occurred late Saturday as tens of thousands of people were leaving the festival, which had just closed for the evening, police spokesman Pat Camden said.
Now does anyone other than me find this to be pretty amusing? (No, idiot, I am not referring to the dead or dying).
As an ex-Chicagoan living the ex-pat life in Costa Rica, I think that simply letting people sample the wonderful cooking in Chicago is not enough! Clearly, Chicago agrees!
Chicago clearly wants to enlarge on the definition of Taste of Chicago to maybe get a feeling for the true Feel of Chicago. Sort of…. “Violence and gun control with pene pasta!”
Try some pierogi but bring your Mac 9!
Like ribs? Try our sauce and our Glocks!
Oh… BTW… the food there is most excellent… so I would suggest everyone go.
Just make sure you are carrying!
My girlfriend is a most thoughtful person.
She is also caring, warm, sexy, beautiful, and generous.
She is also really hard to train. She resists this, preferring her way at all times. Many times this is good thing as I often do or say really dumb stuff, and she is always there to fix that. Other times, it is most annoying.
For instance, let’s discuss what I call the pizza incident last night.
This occurred when we (read SHE) invited a few family members over to decorate the Christmas tree. In Costa Rica, when you are involved with a (Costa Rican) woman, your involvement extends to her family as well. Actually, I like this!.
Some definitions!
As this is a good Catholic country, this “extension of family” translates into roughly 732 family members who show up (announced or not) for all functions.
“Function” is broadly defined as just about anything that is not done in the bed with the lights off or in the bathroom involving the toilet. I say this as tooth brushing can be an acceptable event (as can be flossing). The act of taking out the garbage qualifies as an event. In reality though, that event seldom attracts more than a half dozen or so persons. Decorating a tree is certainly higher up on the function list.
A tree decorating event, which really IS a function as defined in the US Culture of Acceptable Events & Functions, vol 3, may easily draw 90 folks who thoughtlessly expect to be fed and given something to drink.
Something to drink means something with alcohol.
I have mixed feelings on this.
When I lived in the US, only the closest family members arrived to decorate the tree. We ate a few cookies. Drank some eggnog, decorated a bit. Drank some more nog. Listened to the carols and drank some nog. Sang some carols. Downed some more nog. It was a fine time.
So last night, we decorated our tree. I do not have a body count, but the expression “shitpot fulla people” may give you an idea of how many arrived. There was merriment and fun. Music and dancing….and PIZZA. A LOT of pizza.
Remember the olde expression “Many hands make light work”? The tree was decorated in perhaps 6 minutes. Now… the tree looked great… until the lights were turned on. We had a problem.
When I was a young person, I was taught early to hang the lights first, test them to be sure they were distributed properly, THEN add the rest of the stuff.
Well, apparently, it is done differently here. Everything is done at once. However, when the lights were turned on, there were roughly 392 lights in the top third of the tree and perhaps 9 to cover the middle and the bottom.
As you may imagine, this gave the tree a somewhat unbalanced look. With the lights off though, it looks first rate!
My suggestion that we un-decorate the tree and re-do the lights brought forth a veritable blast of laughter, so the tree remained as it was.
An amazing amount of pizza and beverages were consumed and finally her family went back to their homes. Happily, there was left over pizza! I went to my bed dreaming of the next morning when I could rush to the kitchen to eat COLD pizza preferable washed down with Coca Cola (Diet is OK) to sorta cut through the grease if you catch my drift. Certainly cold pizza is an item very high on the list of “the foods of the Gods”.
I am never clear if eating cold pizza is a guy thing. I certainly know of no man in my life who ever warmed up pizza before consuming. IN fact, many of the women in my life enjoyed cold pizza the next day…
Sadly, my dream was to be dashed.
I made grave error. On my way the kitchen this morning, I stopped to check my email. The next thing I know, my wonderful sweetie is bringing me WARMED UP PIZZA and COFFEE. Oh the pain!
I have discussed the fact that many Americans LIKE cold food and will happily munch away on leftovers fresh from the fridge. She cannot fathom this! In fact, when first I mentioned this, her reaction was akin to mentioning I had a penchant for cooking and eating small children. She was horrified and told me eating cold food could kill me. She believes this! Argh.
But I have aged and know the value of a wonderful near-perfect relationship. I ate the pizza and washed it down with coffee. I also promised to get my ass outta bed earlier when there was cold pizza awaiting. One must adjust to life in the tropics….
Today I need to rant a bit on that problem common to many men and a few lucky women! I am, of course, referring to nose hair!
Getting older sucks. It especially sucks when hair that has been apparently happy growing in one location on your body decides now that it now wishes to expand its sphere of influence.
When I was young(er), my hair knew how to behave.
It grew on my head, my chest, my legs, (but never very much on my legs which caused my son to call me a sissy until I sat on him), two little patches on my back, and, of course, in my nether regions.
Now this brings up another subject. Why are our nether regions called our nether regions? In fact what is a nether anyway? Is it like the opposite of hither? Like coming hither, going nether? I suppose it could be where we get the term for that popular game nether ball. (Sorry, had to).
This may fall into that odd combination of weird words like Hoosier. What the fuck IS a Hoosier?? Now don’t tell me a Hoosier is a person from Indiana duh! I want to know exactly what IS a Hoosier. And nobody seems to know.
In fact, one day I should do a rant on screwy words. Like what is a Nittany??? There are the Nittany Lions, right? but what IS a Nittany?
Well this has been fun, but I really need return to the reason you were attracted enough to READ this rant in the first place. NOSE HAIR!
As I was saying, for years my hairs knew their place. Now, a sort or Hair Lib is taking place.
Let’s start at the top!
I had a nice head of hair. I guess I still do, BUT, there is a danger zone exactly on the top of my bean where the hair is ummmm… Endangered!
A person directly looking down at my head from above say when I am sitting in a sofa and they are above and behind me, can now see a LOT of skin through the trees! Sort of a Friar Tuck in Training thing. This is not good. I wanted to know where it was going because I was NOT losing these hairs. None on my pillow in the morning, None in my hairbrush. A conundrum for sure.
Then, I figured it out! They had ingrown through my brain and were now sprouting from my ears, my nose, and my chest.
This is GROSS. Ear hair must be dealt with. Men with foliage growing from their ears are disgusting. Men with uncontrolled nose hair make the ear hair guys pale to insignificance. Now I have both. When I was young(er), I always thought men (and women) with wild nose hairs should not be permitted in public.
Now I have become one of THEM, and I have to DEAL with this.
Now you can PULL an ear hair. No biggie! It hurts, but you can deal with it. You cannot pull a nose hair. Nose hairs grow in no pull zones. Even NFL players do not pull nose hairs.
Also, my chest hairs, which for many years were well disciplined and self-grooming for the most part, have now also felt the need for rebellion. Some grow at an amazing pace and not at all evenly. It’s like the chest hair fertilizer fairy came visiting after a bit too much of the suds. Why, the other day, I yanked one out (chest hairs, like ear hairs are in OK to pull zones), that was easily long enough to use as shoelace! Alas, it broke after only two tyings.
So, I did what any new age man would do, I formed a nose hair support group. We comfort one another twice a week. Somehow, you feel better knowing you are not alone.
Sadly, we have not one member who knows what is a Hoosier or a Nittany.
