Real hombres don't read books

I’m not going to comment on Wednesday’s debate between the major presidential candidates, except perhaps to give thanks that it’s the final one.

However, as you might imagine, I’ve got some Twitter-love to share. Because, starting with a comment from a Saint Louis alderman, the hashtag #TrumpBookReport just took off like a Chinese rocket.

Here’s the original tweet:

And here are some random samplings of the responses:

Naturally, more than a few Chaos Monkey supporters missed the point, viz.:

And then there was this chick, who not only missed the point, she didn’t quite get the whole “bad hombres” thing.

But on the whole, Twitter buried them all.

Dear old dad

Two photos defining good parenting came across my social media recently. Specifically, parenting on the father side.

First off was this one:

One of my Twitter followers thought this was kind of abusive, but from the look on that girl’s face, I believe she’s learnt her lesson. Someone said, “I bet she thinks three times before she skips school again!” I replied, “Bet she’s begging her parents to transfer her to another school. In another city.”

But if you do think this is way harsh, here’s the antidote:

You’re welcome.

Langue et langage

As you know, I enjoy the virtues and vicissitudes of language—any language, I ain’t proud. So this BBC vignette rather appeals to me: linguists sharing their favorite idiomatic expressions from various languages. The ones that don’t quite translate into English.

The Polish one—not my circus, not my monkeys—actually is reasonably transferrable. Lord knows we’ve got a full-bore circus going on, with plenty of monkeys.

(I guess that an expression on our side of the language barrier that might be equivalent is the somewhat wordier “Failure to plan on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.” Usually said just before one packs up for the day and leaves.)

The one here I particularly like is the Chinese phrase about the grass mud horse. That’s because it’s a homonym of the Chinese equivalent of “yo mama”. This syllabic slitheriness reminds me of a slightly roundabout play on words that starts with the French “ouate de phoque”—a homophone for the English whiskey-tango-foxtrot? (Which in French is actually translated to “c’est quoi ce bordel?”)

Only the actual English translation of ouate de phoque is “seal wadding”.

I learned this from a multilingual Facebook friend. Occasionally when he posts something that strikes me as beyond the beyond, I’ll comment “Seal wadding!”, and he has to explain it to others.

Well, perhaps it doesn’t sound as amusing to you as it does to me. Because you just can’t make this stuff up. Unless you’re a linguist, I suppose.

Algo roulette

Y’all know how interesting I find algorithms used for search and for serving ads. (One of the worst instances of the latter actually came from the LA Times; that one is forever printed on my cortex.)

Well, here’s another example that I find deliciously perplexing, served up by YouTube, a Google property:

I mean—are the people who’d listen to Tom Waits and Bette Middler singing a smoldering “I Never Talk to Strangers” likely to be in the market for dating Arabian women? Conversely, are the people interested in dating same likely to be listening to Waits and Middler?

I didn’t click on the link, so I can’t tell if the “dating” site is an iteration of Eastern European women who really, really want to be friends with you. Or what. I just don’t really want to know. I am kind of wondering what, exactly, that algorithm is smoking.

But I’m betting that somehow Facebook is going to be showing me more of similar sites.

Gratitude Monday: what a year

I was riding Metro to work Thursday morning when I realized that precisely a year before I was getting ready for a job interview. The interview, in fact, that brought me to the District They Call Columbia.

It was also the last time I spoke with my BFF: I walked back to my hotel after the interview, kicked off those interview shoes and dialed her to report on the whole thing. How I actually enjoyed talking with the panel of seven, was psyched up by the challenge, loved being in the city in October. She was drifty because of the morphine, but nonetheless expressed her excitement, and made a joke about my one competitor for the job.

Our last laugh.

It’s been a taxing year since that day, and I’m only now starting to feel like I might be getting my head around what I need to do, how to frame my communications, where I need to be. Many rivers to cross, of course, but I can do it.

So today I’m grateful for the way things finally came together, and for the opportunities ahead.