Sprechen Sie Deutschland?

At my previous job, I was once having a conversation in English with a francophone co-worker, and he mentioned something about "speaking Germany". I started laughing. Not at his mistake, but because I always do the same thing in French: I confuse the words "Allemand" (Germany) with "allemagne" (German). When I quickly reassured him that I wasn't laughing at him but at the apparent universality of this error, he just stared at me. "You mean there are two words?"

So the other day it occurred to me to Google the phrase "speak Germany" and see what came up. Turns out a lot of people seem to make that error. :)

If you arrived here at my blog trying to find a solution to this problem, Germany is the place, and German is the adjective and the language.

Pour les francophones, "Germany" est le pays, parce que l'on peut y aller.

If they put you under general anaesthetic, when you wake up do you feel like
you've slept?

A poll:

Suppose you were buying a new computer today. Would you get one with a floppy disk drive?

The problem
With the Bloor line platform
Of St. George station
Is that
There are no arrows
Pointing
In the direction
That the train is going.

Sometimes
One wants to know
Which way the train is going
So one can get on the front of the train
Or the back of the train
Or the second car in front of the DWA
Or whichever car is nearest
To the most convenient stairs
At one's destination station.

We cannot do this
Without arrows.

I think school is good for me. The whole "sitting through classes and doing homework" thing satisfies some Aspie need for order. Plus, forcibly delaying my arrival home for another two hours puts me at an optimal level of tiredness come bedtime.

Crazy poll of the moment:

How long has it been since you last vomited? I haven't vomited in 10
years. Can anyone beat that?

I had to make a personal phone call that I didn't want my co-workers to overhear. So before class, I went to the park part of Queen's Park, found an isolated bench, and made my call. Then I left Queen's Park promptly and went to class.

And my arms and legs are covered in bug bites! I was there for under 15 minutes! And, to add insult to injury, the party I called wasn't even there!

Attention prank phone call people: I don't know from personal experience, but I'm sure the people who are responsible for making arrangement for the delivery of porn don't refer to it as "porn" when talking to their customers. Especially when the supposed customer is male and the person who answers the phone is female. Get a plausible situation already!

All the patron saints in the world! Catholicism must be terribly interesting to those who have never had the misfortune to be bound by it.

I think I am going to adoptSt. Dominic of Silos, patron saint against insects.

A poll! In all cases, this is for people a) who do not live with the person in question, b) who are not estranged from the person in question, and, of course, c) for whom the person in question is still alive:

How often do you talk to:

1. Your parents
2. Your siblings
3. Your grandparents
4. Your aunts, uncles, and cousins

I got free cat food with my morning paper. So what do I do with it? Leave it in the lobby with a note: "Cat owners: help yourselves"

ETA: Further problem: My newspaper smells like cat food

I've lost like three blog entries. And I have a zit under the nosepad of my glasses.

I tend to comma heavily. The person who edits most of my work at work tends to comma lightly. Since he is responsible for editing my work, he tends to remove any commas that are not strictly necessary. As a result, I'm starting to find myself inclined to remove any commas that are not strictly necessary when revising my own work! GAH! My commaing habits have been corrupted!

I wonder if there have been any attempts at airplane terrorism since Sept. 11?

On MASH, they got some newspaper's and it's a big deal. Everyone is swarming the newspapers asking for the sections they want. One guy says "Give me the classifieds, I need a job!"

Um, you're in the army, you have a job...

Malheureusement, I find myself thinking about US politics again. Three points:

1. I find it strange that quite a few political critics point at US politicians and say "I don't see your kids in the military!" as though having kids in the military is a demonstration of the politician's virtue. Now, I realize that someone whose kids are in the military is likely to be less frivolous about military deployment, but the fact remains that a politician's children are completely separate people from the politician. They are not some artificial extension of their parents. An adult child's career path is in no way a manifestation of their parent's virtue or lack thereof. What the critics should be focusing on instead is the politician's own career path. "I don't see you on the front lines!" I wish they'd stop making an issue of politicians' children's lives, so that the poor kids can live their lives on their own terms instead of being pressured to live in a way that's politically appealing.

2. Canadians: I'm sure you've noticed by now that any time anyone publicly utters anything that's anything less than audulatory of any US policy, someone writes a letter to the editor screaming "ANTI-AMERICANISM!" Have you ever noticed that the vast majority of these things that are being decried as anti-American are things that we'd just laugh at if they came out of the US?

3. Bloggers have probably alread seen it, but this article is particularly interesting. You'd think that if someone was going to forge a document as typewritten, they'd either a) use a typewriter, or b) use a font where all the letters have equal spacing (and I know there's a cool word for that, but I forget). More valuable commentary here.

Fw:

My feet hurt.

I got these lovely comfy new shoes. There was a bit of extra space, so I
thought I needed insoles (it's one of those things that my parents drilled
into my head: YOU NEED INSOLES IF THERE IS EXTRA SPACE IN YOUR SHOES). So I
got lovely comfy gel insoles. I put the insoles in my shoes and set off to
work.

As I walked down the street, I noticed that my feet hurt. It seems the
insoles had made the space inside my shoes too short, vertically speaking,
so the tops of my feet were pressed against the "roof" of the shoe. It was
raining so I couldn't sit down on a bench, and you don't just take your
shoes off on the subway, so I couldn't take the insoles out until I got to
work. And by the time I got to work blisters had formed on the top of my
toes, and then burst open.

So now I have open weeping sores on the tops of my toes, and all my shoes
cover that particular part of my toes, so I'll have to be in pain for a few
days, unless I decide to drop out of society and stay home with my feet up,
which is becoming increasingly tempting by the moment. And I'm seriously
considering dropping my class just to avoid the pain of walking the block
and a half from the nearest subway station to the building where my class
is. That's one advantage of taking classes - four days a week, the amount
of walking and stair-climbing I do daily is increased by 50%, which is a
good thing unless your feet are in constant pain.

This is probably the most pain I've been in as a result of shoe problems,
which is ironic considering that these shoes are perfectly flat, made of
leather, and have good supportive straps. I would have been more
comfortable if I had worn my 4-inch heels.

A poll: you're wearing khaki pants and black shoes. Your socks might show when you sit down. What colour socks do you wear?

I'll be back when the day is new
And I will have more ideas for you
And you'll have things you'll want to talk about
I will too
- the closing song of Mr. Rogers

Odd, we always ended up talking about the things he wanted to talk about, we never got to talk about the things I wanted to talk about.