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| Spam and Turkey |
| 11.24.04 (11:12 am) [edit] |
In the spirit of Thanksgiving I decided to post this looooooong piece of spam sent to me by Shagman, who is Turkish by the way. I think now that Shagman has ditched his long locks for the sake of the job-market I should give him a new nickname. Nah, I really like "Shagman"....Oh and Godspeed to all of you travellers!
And now, more than you ever wanted to know about the bird:
Talking Turkey: The Story of How the Unofficial Bird
of the United States Got Named
by Giancarlo Casale
How did the turkey get its name? This seemingly harmless question popped into my head one morning as I realized that the holidays were once again upon us. After all, I thought, there's nothing more American than a turkey. Their meat saved the pilgrims from starvation during their first winter in New England. Out of gratitude, if you can call it that, we eat them for Thanksgiving dinner, and again at Christmas, and gobble them up in sandwiches all year long. Every fourth grader can tell you that Benjamin Franklin was particularly fond of the wild turkey, and even campaigned to make it, and not the bald eagle, the national symbol. So how did such a creature end up taking its name from a medium sized country in the Middle East? Was it just a coincidence? I wondered.
The next day I mentioned my musings to my landlord, whose wife is from Brazil. "That's funny," he said "In Portuguese the word for turkey is 'peru.' Same bird, different country." Hmm.
With my curiosity piqued, I decided to go straight to the source. That very afternoon I found myself a Turk and asked him how to say turkey in Turkish. "Turkey?" he said. "Well, we call turkeys 'hindi,' which means, you know, from India." India? This was getting weird.
I spent the next few days finding out the word for turkey in as many languages as I could think of, and the more I found out, the weirder things got. In Arabic, for instance, the word for turkey is "Ethiopian bird," while in Greek it is "gallapoula" or "French girl." The Persians, meanwhile, call them "buchalamun" which means, appropriately enough, "chameleon."
In Italian, on the other hand, the word for turkey is "tacchino" which, my Italian relatives assured me, means nothing but the bird. "But," they added, "it reminds us of something else. In Italy we call corn, which as everybody knows comes from America, 'grano turco,' or 'Turkish grain.'" So here we were back to Turkey again!
And as if things weren't already confusing enough, a further consultation with my Turkish informant revealed that the Turks call corn "misir" which is also their word for Egypt!
By this point, things were clearly getting out of hand. But I persevered nonetheless, and just as I was about to give up hope, a pattern finally seemed to emerge from this bewildering labyrinth. In French, it turns out, the word for turkey is "dinde," meaning "from India," just like in Turkish. The words in both German and Russian had similar meanings, so I was clearly on to something. The key, I reasoned, was to find out what turkeys are called in India, so I called up my high school friend's wife, who is from an old Bengali family, and popped her the question.
"Oh," she said, "We don't have turkeys in India. They come from America. Everybody knows that."
"Yes," I insisted, "but what do you call them?"
"Well, we don't have them!" she said. She wasn't being very helpful. Still, I persisted:
"Look, you must have a word for them. Say you were watching an American movie translated from English and the actors were all talking about turkeys. What would they say?"
"Well...I suppose in that case they would just say the American word, 'turkey.' Like I said, we don't have them."
So there I was, at a dead end. I began to realize only too late that I had unwittingly stumbled upon a problem whose solution lay far beyond the capacity of my own limited resources. Obviously I needed serious professional assistance. So the next morning I scheduled an appointment with Prof. Þinasi Tekin of Harvard University, a world-renowned philologist and expert on Turkic languages. If anyone could help me, I figured it would be Professor Tekin.
As I walked into his office on the following Tuesday, I knew I would not be disappointed. Prof. Tekin had a wizened, grandfatherly face, a white, bushy, knowledgeable beard, and was surrounded by stack upon
stack of just the sort of hefty, authoritative books which were sure to contain a solution to my vexing Turkish mystery.
I introduced myself, sat down, and eagerly awaited a dose of Prof. Tekin's erudition.
"You see," he said, "In the Turkish countryside there is a kind of bird, which is called a çulluk. It
looks like a turkey but it is much smaller, and its meat is very delicious. Long before the discovery of America, English merchants had already discovered the delicious çulluk, and began exporting it back to England, where it became very popular, and was known as a 'Turkey bird' or simply a 'turkey.' Then, when the English came to America, they mistook the birds here for çulluks, and so they began calling them 'turkey" also. But other peoples weren't so easily fooled. They knew that these new birds came from America, and so they called them things like 'India birds,' 'Peruvian birds,' or 'Ethiopian birds.'
You see, 'India,' 'Peru' and 'Ethiopia' were all common names for the New World in the early centuries, both because people had a hazier understanding of geography, and because it took a while for the name 'America' to catch on.
"Anyway, since that time Americans have begun exporting their birds everywhere, and even in Turkey people have started eating them, and have forgotten all about their delicious çulluk. This is a shame, because çulluk meat is really much, much tastier."
Prof. Tekin seemed genuinely sad as he explained all this to me. I did my best to comfort him, and tried to express my regret at hearing of the unfairly cruel fate of the delicious çulluk. Deep down, however, I was ecstatic. I finally had a solution to this holiday problem, and knew I would be able once again to enjoy the main course of my traditional Thanksgiving dinner without reservation.
Now if I could just figure out why they call those little teeny dogs Chihuahuas....
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3 Comments
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| Colin/Counter-Colin |
| 11.17.04 (1:48 pm) [edit] |
AE sent me info on People's choices for Sexiest Men 2004. Some choices we agree on while others, well read on.
AE:
He's one of the sexiest men. :o)
MY Colin's in there too!! (with his oddly uber-white teeth)
But, how Ben Affleck made it, I'll never know. I could agree on Matt
Damon, Brad Pitt, even Jake Gyllenhaal...but Affleck? What's he done?
Blech. At least they didn't put in Tom Cruise.
Nat's boy, too.
Nat:
I like how YOUR Colin is the nice, stable, classy
professional one and MY Colin pees on people in
bars...anyways....
Affleck - it's the stupid chin. women (not you or I)
dig the chin.
Tommy's not on the list - HALLELUJAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The angels sing!!!!!!! God is good, God is great!!!!
AE:
You like badboys...it's a fact; especially if they're "dickish", and
YOUR Colin certainly applies. Mine would be considered boring (except for
that Italian model he's been shacking up with for 5 years).
"MY Colin pees on people in bars..."
Comedy gold. :o)
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19 Comments
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| Where in the world is Joolie? |
| 11.15.04 (2:55 pm) [edit] |
Well, I'm not sure exactly. I'm hoping to hear about her grand vacation soon though, or I will have to send out the rescue ships (Damian Lewis in a speedo with life vest - um, better not go there as A-M may not have eaten supper yet).
This from Mal's spam-attack:
And one last random thought:
Ever notice how repetitive your friends get when they don't want to talk about something but they're clearly pre-occupied with it? For example:
There's a gigantic pink elephant in the living room but all you get is "Did I tell you that I found a new tax exemption? I'm getting $200 back this year."
Then later that evening "By the way, did I mention this new tax exemption?" and all you can do is say, "Yeah, I think you might have."
Still later that evening "[Insert name of spouse] and I found this new tax exemption that gives us $200 back" and you deadpan "Wow, that's brilliant."
Just as you are leaving their home and headed out the door "I'm so excited about the new tax exemption. I think I told you where to find it online."
You say, "Yeah. On the IRS website?"
"Right. Well, you have a goodnight and I hope you didn't find my husband fondling your butt too off-putting."
Finally, some honesty, but you're too exhausted at this point to care so you say "Eh, no biggie - hardly noticed." Even though the tosser was grinding up against you on the dance floor against your will. Whatever! Don't just stand there! Get your frickin' husband off my backside. It might be a large backside but that doesn't mean there's an open invitation.
Next time I go there, I will attach Mal's grating-toilet-roll to my bum and see how he likes them apples!
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2 Comments
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| When jokes go bad |
| 11.15.04 (2:39 pm) [edit] |
Some jokes are dead before they're even spoken. Others die on the delivery, while others just rot in your mind after you think them over. These...well...suck:
Courtesy of AE.*BLAME HER IF YOUR BRAIN ROTS* Enjoy!
A grasshopper walks into a bar. The bartender looks at him and says,
"Hey, we've got a drink named after you". The grasshopper looks puzzled
and asks, "You have a drink named Steve?"
A man walks into a doctor's office. He has a cucumber up his nose, a
carrot in his left ear and a banana in his right ear. "What's the matter
with me?" he asks the doctor. The doctor replies, "You're not eating
properly."
Two cannibals are sitting down eating a casserole when one says to the
other, "Man, I really hate my mother in-law." The other one looks at
his plate and says, "Well then just eat the noodles."
A man and his daughter are in the back yard. The girl see two daddy
long legs farking. The girl asks what kind of insects they are. "That's a
daddy long legs," replies the father. "So the other one must be a mommy
long legs?" asks the girl. "No, the other one is also a daddy long
legs," her father tells her. Upon hearing this she stomps them into the
ground. When her father asks why, she tells him, "I don't want any of that
shit going on in THIS yard."
How many kids with ADD does it take to change a light-bulb?
LETS GO RIDE BIKES!!!!!
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2 Comments
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| It's Good... |
| 11.11.04 (12:21 pm) [edit] |
...but nobody is watching. This Fall TV season all the buzz for new shows seems to be for Desperate Housewives, CSI:NY, Jack and Bobby and even Joey. Those shows are alright in my book but my favorite new show isn't on the established networks or even the WB. It's on UPN!! No, I'm not talking about WWE Smackdown! This is a new show, remember. No, I am not talking about Kevin Hill starring Taye Diggs (which is a cute show and has been getting some buzz of it's own).I'm talking about Veronica Mars. Loved by the critics, most of them poo pooing that the show was on the wrong network, it receives very little buzz but has managed to stir up a cult following.
You've probably never heard of it, and my dear friends in the UK, Joolie and A-M will probably never get to see it despite the fact that UPN has just ordered a full season of 22 episodes. So what about this 'little show that could' has got me all excited? I don't know...may be it's because the writing is good, the characters are real and complicated, the actors are talented and fit perfectly into their roles or that Veronica is one-part Nancy Drew, one-part Chloe Sullivan (Smallville) and two-parts Angela Chase (My So-Called Life).
Story to date:
Veronica is a highschool student living in the town of Neptune, California - home of the haves and have-nots with very few in-between. The highschool itself is very much segregated across those lines - even the teachers do not disguise their biased behavior towards the wealthier students. At the beginning of the show we find out that Veronica's best-friend (and sister to her wealthy ex-boyfriend, Duncan), Lily Kane has died under mysterious circumstances, her father was kicked out of office as town sheriff when a recall was initiated when he accused Lily's father of her murder, and her mom abandoned them during this turbulent time. We see that Veronica and her Dad have rebounded - her Dad running a detective agency with Veronica helping out on some of the cases and Veronica, no longer with the in-crowd, has made new friends and tries to make the best of things. So we all want to know
- Who killed Lily Kane?
- Why did Veronica's Mom split town?
- Why did Duncan break up with Veronica?
- Why is no one watching this show????
I know, I know. The last question - it's on UPN. So, if you're bored on a Tuesday night at 8pm ET/7pm ET (with repeats the following Tuesday on MTV at 7pm ET/6pm ET), check it out.
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2 Comments
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| To Missi Jackson |
| 11.08.04 (12:20 pm) [edit] |
My dear officemate with dreams so large, no one can stop her. Saw this and thought of you.
The 2004 Edition, due out in December.
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2 Comments
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| Stuck in my head |
| 11.08.04 (12:16 pm) [edit] |
In my head....replaying a gigillion (a 1000 billion) times.
At my window, sad and lonely
Oft times do I think of thee
Sad and lonely and I wonder
Do you ever think of me
Every day is sad and lonely
And every night is sad and blue
Do you ever think of me my darling
As you sail that ocean blue
At my window, sad and lonely
I stand and look across the sea
And I sad and lonely wonder
Do you ever think of me
Will you find another sweetheart
In some far and distant land
Sad and lonely now I wonder
If our boat will ever land
Ships may ply the stormy ocean
And planes may fly the stormy sky
I'm sad and lonely but remember
Oh I'll love you till I die
- Wilco, Mermaid Avenue, 1998
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0 Comments
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| Over-exposure |
| 11.02.04 (11:54 am) [edit] |
Last year Colin Farrell appeared on the US silver screen 6 times (not to mention the UK release of some of his ealier films). This Spring and Summer Ben Stiller appeared in 5 films and is set to appear in another this Winter. Not to be outdone, Jude Law will appear on the silver screen in 6 films in less than 5 months. Two much of a good thing can be really BAAAAD! What are the film producers thinking? Far from memory are the days when Leonardo DiCaprio's films would premiere back to back. As good as each film might be (Ben Stiller need not worry about any of his good films being crowded out as he has none worth the $5.50 matinee price), how can movie-goers who are not die-hard fans of Mr. Farrell, Mr. Stiller and Mr. Law not get a little constipated from this excessive diet?
As a side note, I would like to say that I have seen I Heart Huckabees and it is good, fresh, funny and worth the $8.50 evening price. The ensemble cast (including the afore mentioned Law) is brilliant and engaging. I haven't seen Lily Tomlin in a film for a while. I had forgotten how funny and awesome she is. Dustin Hoffman was cool but I have to say that Jason Schwartzman and Mark Wahlberg stole the show for me. Go see it.
Oh and I almost forgot - I hope you voted today. I am of the opinion that if you don't vote then you have no right to bitch about the people elected.
Ta ta!
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8 Comments
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