double-takes

I woke up one morning, got ready for work, kissed the Guy good-bye, and puttered down to the car. Started it. Pulled out of the driveway. Turned the corner, headed toward the main road.

Stopped at the intersection. Stared at the red light.

Thought: "What?"

"You do not live in the ghetto."

"I do. I swear to God."

"You have a Whole Foods grocery across the street."

"There's a truck in my neighborhood that has a bumper sticker that says, 'My other piece is a 22-gauge.'"

"So? NRA members can live in the suburbs."

"I think he mounted something on his truck."

"What?"

Sullen silence. "I don't know. I was driving too fast to see."

"Unless it's a gun rack or a big-breasted woman, you don't live in the ghetto."

It wasn't a gun rack.

Or a big-breasted woman. It might have been, but it was too dark to see by the time I got back. And, to be honest, I'd forgotten all about it.

Thing is, this truck is parked half a block away from my apartment, and until I'm in my car and moving towards the main street, I don't even see it. So. I woke up, got ready for work, kissed the Guy good-bye, and puttered down to the car. Started it. Pulled out of the driveway. Turned the corner, headed toward the main road.

Caught a glimpse of it in the corner of my eye and slammed on the brakes. Noticed the truck's owner standing on his porch, watching me, and zoomed off.

It couldn't possibly have been -- could it?

It could.

Want to see that again?

Here's a close-up.

Those black hollows that look like its eyes?

They really are black hollows. Empty.

I know. I checked.

"Yan?"

"Yeah?"

"Is it at all possible that the guy across the street has hung a dead pig's head on the front of his car?"

"You noticed that too?"

"It was kind of hard not to notice. I mean ... dead pig head."

"Yeah."

"On the front of a car."

"Yeah."

"You don't see that every day."

"Yeah."

"Even in the ghetto."

"Yeah."

"That's weird."

"You know what's really weird?"

"I find that really weird, personally. I don't know what you consider really weird, but hanging a dead pig's head to the front of your car seems to me--"

"No, what's really weird is that he's always washing his car."

"Okay."

"If you're obsessed about keeping your car clean, why hang a dead pig on it?"

"Okay. See, this is where we differ, because I don't find the desire to keep your car clean in any way related to the strangeness of hanging a dead pig's head on your car. It doesn't augment the weirdness. It doesn't offset the weirdness--"

"I think he's retired."

"Oh. That explains it, then."

Why the sky is blue

[OldSchool] Yuhri: Here's something I always wonder. Two ESL people with the same language background, who suffer the same grammatical problems. One of them writes something in English. The other person reads it. The second person can't understand what the first person wrote. But shouldn't he be able to, considering?

[OldSchool] Flamingo: I wouldn't think so. The language barrier is between them, in the form of English. Now, if they were discussing the writing in their own language, translating it into the other language for figuring out the ideas behind the English text, that'd be different. But if they're both reading English, they still have that barrier.

[OldSchool] Yuhri: In my mind, though, there's this translation assumption that just seems to make /sense/.

[OldSchool] Flamingo: Well, ask them. :)

[OldSchool] Yuhri: Kind of like, well, of /course/ the sky is blue because God in His wrath squashed smurfs all over the heavens.

[OldSchool] Flamingo: Ha. And I'm looking at it from a cognitive psychology/psycholinguistics point of view. ;)

[OldSchool] Yuhri is suddenly enchanted with this notion of an angry God chasing shrieking smurfs across the sky.
[OldSchool] Yuhri: With a /hammer/.
[OldSchool] Yuhri: I'm going to tell my children this story and they will be haunted by it forever.

[OldSchool] Flamingo: See, this is why there are no Japanese in heaven.

[OldSchool] Yuhri: I am going to record this entire conversation for /posterity/. And you will be sorry.

And this, folks, is why I never did well in school.