Engrish!

Last night I was at Kiki’s house helping her husband celebrate his birthday by eating an enormous amount of tasty food and staying up way too late. We all gathered outside on the perilous deck (there is no railing yet) and ate our way through several helpings of pasta, baguettes, bruschetta, salad, and pesto. All homemade, all amazingly delicious. Kiki's pesto is way better than mine and I need to learn how to make it as well as she does. After topping the dinner off with ice cream from Mariposa--the best ice cream on the planet, I am not kidding--we went inside for hours of silly word games and heated discussions accompanied by wild gestures and raised voices. Lisa had given Welton a book of “Mad Liberals,” a new left-leaning version of Mad Libs, and we played that for a good long while. We learned many important things, such as the fact that Pegasus is the sole owner of the pinwheel and he doesn’t have to share it with any of you sorry commie pinkos.

Later on in the night, K, L, and I decided to escape the wild gestures and raised voices and retired to the computer room to watch Will Ferrell videos. We had sat in the sun room with the boys for a while, because their initial arguing was quite entertaining. However, it soon became a painful spectacle as they got mired in several tangents and began arguing heatedly over what the subject of their argument should be. I believe they spent a solid 50 minutes trying to nail down an acceptable definition of their “First Principle." I’m glad we got out when we did. After a few youtube videos, L introduced us to a site called Engrish.com. I have to say that I have not laughed that hard at anything on the internet in a good long while. I’m not even going to describe it to you; you just need to go there. Right now!

Here is my favorite t-shirt from their store that someone can buy me for an early Christmas present: monkey shirt. I would like it in red in a size small. Thank you very much. This website also has instructions for a fun diversion that I discovered this morning: how to translate your very own English excerpts into tortured and amusing phrases by using the Babel Fish site, or by using Sherlock on a Mac. I did both, and I am happy to say that they turned out splendidly. I took a sentence from my previous blog post that was kind of bizarre even in English. Here is the original text:
"Doesn’t that just happen to you all the time?--You’re sitting at home relaxing and watching a movie, and then two grease-smeared young women show up at 10 o'clock at night asking to borrow some tools to fix their tandem bicycle?"

And now, for the oh-so-enlightening translations, which I have not altered or edited in any way. The first is from Babel Fish, the second is by Sherlock. Please let me know which version you like better.

In that fair you all time? Then -- where it does not happen it loosens the movie, sitting down in the house which is seen, because it locks the tandem bicycle 2 at 10 o'clock the grease coating it is accustomed to painting the fact that you ask that you borrow a certain equipment which in the young woman shows in the night is high.

It causes exactly always in you? In regard to being seated of the
foam/home which -- it loosens is seen the movie because the tandem bicycle is locked, that the tool which at 10 o'clock is in the night is borrowed you ' and then two it asks the grease which shows in the young woman where coating it is accustomed to painting is high.