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Charlie Hatton
Brookline, MA
The beautiful thing about the Internet is that it can actually make you feel smarter. We have instant access to information, references, news, trends and data of every conceivable kind. It’s exhilarating.
The awful thing about the internet is that these effects are usually temporary. As quickly as we learn something — or appear to have known it all along, perhaps — it’s gone again. Take away the internet, and we’re as drool-dripping dumb as we were before our search turned up gold.
Exactly this thing happened to me today. I was playing one of those Scrabbly games on my phone — because everyone needs their daily dose of vitamin neeeeeerd — and struck up a match with some anonymous ‘net user, as usual.
We traded a few turns, and then he sent me the following message:
“Wat is dit voor een woord???”
Now, I don’t know what the hell that means. I tried reading it backwards — still nothing. I squinted at it for a while, wondering if it was some new kind of AOL-speak Esperanto I haven’t heard about. But no; I couldn’t understand a word. I might as well be reading Cosmo.
So I pulled up Google Translate, and typed it in.
Apparently, the sentence above — minus the excessive punctuation; hence my initial AOL-ish suspicion — is in some language called “Dutch”. Wherever this “Dutchland” is, they apparently use lots of vowels. Also, question marks. Funny people, these “Dutchicans”.
On the good side, Google told me that the person was asking the meaning of one of the words I’d just played. As it happened, I actually knew what this word meant — unlike the usual nonsensical ‘UT’ and ‘XU’ and ‘QANAT’ crap you have to play to win the stupid game. And I’m a nice guy, always willing to educate others when one of the four pieces of information in my brain might help someone out. So I decided I’d tell him the definition.
The question was: how? I don’t know Dutchese. And this guy, possibly, wasn’t fluent in English.
(Because that totally seems like a good time. I love playing word-based games in languages I don’t speak. That’s a real hoot. Boggle is just so much more satisfying when I’m getting my ass kicked in Cyrillic instead.)
Of course, the answer was right in front of me. I hit the “flip” translation arrow, typed in my answer, and Translate spat out a bunch of ‘oo’s and ‘ee’s surrounded by v’s and w’s and the occasional j in response. I diligently copied it over to my phone, fully expecting that I was declaring to this stranger:
“I’m sure my sentences were getting mangled somewhat in translation, making him think I was either a small Dutchean child or that I’d been bonked on the head by a windmill.”
“My hovercraft is full of eels.”
(On the bright side, I am no longer infected — you want to come back to my place, bouncy bouncy?
If that doesn’t make any sense to you, just ignore it. It probably just means you’re not irretrievably old, and didn’t sit up on Saturday nights in your far-gone youth watching Monty Python on PBS. Or the BBC. Or possibly the Dutchen Broodcasting Neetwoork.)
To my surprise, a few minutes later I got a message back. And to my further surprise, when I translated this one, it didn’t ask me what the hell was wrong with me.
(Nor did it say, “Drop your panties, Sir William, I cannot wait til lunchtime!”
Which would have been frightening. But also quite impressive.)
Instead, the message (when translated) made perfect sense. So I translated another reply into Dutcherish, and tapped it in. We went back and forth a few times like this, conversing. I was actually having a conversation with someone in another language! A language I couldn’t speak a word of — and was quite possibly made up; I mean seriously, “dit voor een”? That sounds like someone lisping in Morse code.
But dammit, we were talking! For real, and understanding each other. I’m sure my sentences were getting mangled somewhat in translation, making him think I was either a small Dutchean child or that I’d been bonked on the head by a windmill. But it was working. It was a legitimate conversation.
And then I had to leave the computer. So I still had the game, and I had my phone, and I had this Dutch guy tapping messages to me, but no Google Translate.
(Okay, technically I still had Google Translate, since I have an Android phone. But I was walking and carrying something, so I only had one hand free.
I can play pseudo Scrabble with one hand. I can type with one hand. But translate, on top of that? That’s crazy talk. I’m no hero over here.)
I figured I’d get away with a quick break, and I’d be back to the computer soon enough. But as soon as I stepped out, Meester Dutchy messaged me.
And then again.
And again.
Was it a single three-part message? An insistent question? Was he having some sort of wooden clog emergency? Who the hell this side of Antwerp knew? I certainly didn’t. But I realized I couldn’t just let it go until I got back. I had to respond.
So I looked back over our first ten or twelve messages, gathered all the Dutchish syntax and grammar I could, and gave it the old Nether college try:
“Soorie, II doon’t kneewen whoot yoo sayeen. Tulip boorken Tiesto durken Anton van Leeuwenhouk un boork der hoork der.heerk de boork.”
It’s just possible I panicked and threw in a little Swedish that I learned from that chef guy on the Muppet Show. I’m sure it’s similar to Dutch. More or less.
Anyway, the guy never wrote me back. Also, he stopped playing the game. Maybe he got his finger stuck in a dam or something; whoo caan zay, reeally?
Probably, it’s for the best. I’m pretty sure if he does respond, it’s not something I want to plug into Google Translate. Internet or not, I’m still smart enough to know that.
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(The ‘Eek!Cards’ explan.)
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(The ‘Eek!Cards’ explan.)
Yo baseball buffs — feel free to check out my blockbuster trade-to-be look (at what’s now a trade-that-is) over at Bugs & Cranks: One Quarter of One BILLION Dollars. The Red Sox just cleared a budget hole the size of the Venezuelan GNP. So what’s next?
Permalink | No CommentsI have a dog. The dog has needs. If you were to ask the dog, those needs would include a peanut butter IV and a private swimming pool filled with Snausages.
The dog is an idiot.
Meanwhile, she needs food and fresh water, a little exercise, an inordinate amount of medical care as it turns out, and a warm cozy place to sleep at night.
Also, for most of the afternoon. And ninety percent of the rest of the day. If she didn’t roll over after her oh-so-frequent farts, I might think the old girl was in a coma.
I digress.
The other thing the pooch needs, of course, is to drop off her waste. Now, she doesn’t technically “need” to do this somewhere other than our carpet or our couch or our kitchen floor — and based on her behavior, she’s well aware of this technicality. But I’d very greatly prefer that she whizzed and crapped elsewhere, every once in a while.
(To her credit, she used to be much more reliable — particularly back when we had a doggie door to assist her expulsions. She’s an old pup now, and missing a few working organs.
Her colon, sadly, is fully intact, and in fine working order.
The point is, it’s pretty understandable. At her equivalent age, I expect to be pretty much fully incontinent. I’ll tie a Swiffer to the back of my pants, just to clean up wherever I happen to be walking.)
So. On weekdays where we can’t make other arrangements, the missus and I hire a dogwalker to come and coax our dog’s bladder and ass over some patch of ground that isn’t supporting a bit of our condo’s hardwood. This is tremendously helpful.
Or so you’d think.
The problem with the dogwalker, as with so many things in life, is timing. I generally get out of the house at a certain time in the morning. I won’t say how late or how early — I wouldn’t want to frighten or disgust anyone not familiar with my personal scheduling peccadilloes.
The point is, we’ve asked the walker to come a couple of hours after I usually leave, and then come again four hours or so later. Which leaves another four hours or so before my wife or I would typically get home.
“If Mrs. Dinkleton down the block calls in to say that her precious poodle Fluffers has a hangnail today and is too depressed for her usual constitutional, then everyone else moves up the list.”
(Yeah, it’s a pretty long day. I used to feel bad for the dog, on the days she has to stay here alone. But every time I ever came home early or swung by for lunch, I found the dog sprawled out on my spot on the couch, legs in the air, snoring away. It’s a hard life, apparently.)
Of course, the times when we ask the walker to come are not at all remotely the times when the walker actually comes. Honestly, it’s like negotiating with a cable installer. More often than not lately, the first visit comes while I’m still in the house. Still here!
And while I appreciate a bit of practice in interacting with someone early in the morning who can’t fire, divorce, disown or arrest me, it’s not so especially helpful to walk my dog when I remain physically present and able to walk her myself. It’s like having a pizza you ordered last week delivered today, while you’re eating takeout Chinese food. Pointless.
Now, I’ve discussed this with the walkers — sometimes dripping wet in a towel, just out of an interrupted shower.
(That’s me with the interrupted shower, of course — not the walkers. They’re almost always wearing pants. I assume that’s more soothing for the canines.)
They tell me — and I completely understand, I do — that their schedule each day is predicated on which particular neighborhood mutts need a potty break that morning. If Mrs. Dinkleton down the block calls in to say that her precious poodle Fluffers has a hangnail today and is too depressed for her usual constitutional, then everyone else moves up the list.
That makes perfect sense to me. If I had six stops, and suddenly I had five stops instead, I wouldn’t sit around on my thumbs for an hour. I’d get my ass up the street to drag the next piss-ridden ball of fur across town, the better to get back home a little earlier to drink myself stupid and wonder where the hell my life went wrong. Trust me. I get that.
Still. Now I have these quandaries every morning. I don’t need quandaries in the morning. I can barely stand upright without drooling before noon; Complication is not my friend.
And yet, I find myself — on days my shower progresses to completion, anyway — facing difficult questions before work. If I’m dressed and scrubbed and ready to roll, but the walker hasn’t come yet… what should I do? Walk the gimpy old dog, and risk that they’ll drag her carcass back out in ten minutes? Leave her snoozing and risk a flash-flood whiz? Hang out and wait for the walker to show? What if this is the day the Merkleson’s huskies finally break that urinary tract infection? I can’t take that chance, dammit!
So mostly I chat with dogwalkers, show up late to work and clean pee off my floor in the evenings. That’s pretty much my life these days. A slave to some elderly bitch’s bladder.
I think we all knew it would come to this eventually. It was only a matter of time. Anyway — happy weekend! Woof!
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