Joe's Blög

Mojo seems to have gone missing…
It’s hard to build a house without opposable thumbs….

I won’t know what that ridiculous statement means in 3 weeks…

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So Thursday was a language day..I was asked by the german colleagues how they were perceived by the americans. Korinthenkacker came up again…I had to then explain the use of the word ‘anal’ to them.
Korinthenkacker definition:
raisin-pooper
nit-picker
hair-splitter
fusspot

This was brought on by them saying to me ‘die spinnen die amis’. somehow I was actually able to translate that without help: ‘the americans are crazy’. I apologized on behalf of ‘my people’ and quantified (?) it by saying that we aren’t all that way…

also learned Deutsch meaning of ‘pop’
once you pop you can’t stop.

some girl – to me who was sweating profusely at the time: Are you hot?
me: my mom says I’m handsome
girl: you are!
see it’s funny cuz…
oh nevermind…

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The airport….where all proverbial and literal journeys commence…

so everything I typed about the language in my last was wrong…I think the smallness of my dictionary caused them to put words together that aren’t quite exactly the same thing…I guess Italian is not as sexist as I first thought…I’m not editing it of course because I like to read my first impressions of a topic later….

They aren’t the alps either…it’s the apuane alps…which is a separate chain completely…and the Med is more like a kilometer (1000m – for the yanks) away from the office at least.
the whole last entry was a waste

The annual company party was last night. Hung out with the two polish guys. They were quite funny and friendly..At one point one of them re-enacted a whole monty python sketch by himself (complete with old lady british accent). simply magical…they were cool….

There was a pool and it was quite funny to see the italians frolic like a bunch of little kids in it…

Only italians could turn a 4 letter word into a 5 syllable word….
CH-EEE-AAAAAHHH-OOOOWWWW-eh (ciao)…this might be even more amazing than the german MmmmmmmmmmmmmmmaaaaaaAAAAAAAaaaaannnnn as described by matt.

today went to the town of Lucca…It was a medeival town with a complete wall around it. the wall is still intact and the town is absolutely beautiful. I only had a couple hours there, but it is on my to do list for when I go back…
I had lunch at the first place I saw inside Lucca. It so happened that it was an ‘American Restaurant and Wine Bar’…Whilst waiting for food I looked around and figured that all you need to call yourself an ‘American Restaurant’ are some Beatles posters (WTF!!!!), Muhammad Ali Posters, and Marilyn Monroe Posters. There were many more Beatles posters than anything else.

My english is continually getting worse…I actually used the word ‘quitted’ in an email last week…I didn’t even notice until I finished the sentence then had to reread it cuz I knew something was wrong…
Now the fact that I thought ‘quitted’ and then went ahead and typed it is a bad sign…I suspect if I spend more time in Italy this trend will continue.

Will put the pics on the Italy page…

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Happy Birthday Amerika!
Part of a speech by Frederick Douglass…
“Fellow citizens, above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions!…To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sound of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants brass fronted impudence; your shout of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanks-givings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.”

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This really is one of the most beautiful areas I’ve ever been too…From the office the sea is about 400 meters away, and you can see what I think are the Italian Alps…
amazing…I think I could really get used to this…

there seems to be some inherent chauvinism in the italian language…i.e. the male version of a word and the female version of the word imply different things…this is interesting, but here’s an example…
English word: allegiance
italian male form: fedeltà
italian female form: obbedienza

Now isn’t there a big distinction (in english) between fidelity and obedience? Doesn’t one imply a choice (fidelity) and the other implies no choice (obedience)?
It’s just funny that’s all…
Obviously I’ve been killing time with my english-italian dictionary while eating dinner alone…
I think I’ve made it 4 pages into the ‘A’s.
and it’s also an assumption on my part that fedeltà would translate to fidelity, but this is (for me) why Italian would be pretty easy to learn. Once the rhythm of the language is down and I can tell where one word ends and one begins it should be cake – when I first hear a language it is hard to tell where the words start and end…it all sort of runs together.

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If I had just left the blog entry it would have been a good, typically vague entry on this page, but since I feel like I want to chat and I’m lonely  (if you’ve never been on a business trip to a country where you don’t speak the language you can’t possibly relate) I will continue…

I won’t be bothered to explain who Jan Delay is…that’s why god invented google…

I’ve heard way more Italian music on the Italian radio than I hear German music on German radio…are the Italians more patriotic than the Germans are?

I’ve gotten lots of nice texts this week…maybe I read too much into them, but it’s nice to feel missed…

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apparently every occasion is an occasion to wear heels in italy….going shopping, going to the beach, playing sports….etc..

here’s an example of driving in italy…
I was on a 4 lane road today (two in each direction) and on the sides of both roads cars are parked (with no space between the second lane and the cars parked on the side). It basically ends up that the cars driving drive over the divider line (a lot of roads like this don’t even bother with dividing lines) because you have doors opening on the parked cars on the right side of the road, bicycles on the right, scooters on the left and the occasional car passing going the other way moving into what should be the left lane…as a result (I guess this can be considered driving defensively) you end up sort of merging to the middle of the two lanes to let all the chaos ensue around you without consequence. It’s sort of a beautiful thing cuz you can still pass the slow moving cars without much threat….
the beauty, art and chaos of driving in italy…I’m not scared anymore you just have to actually pay attention when you drive…in the states they just widened the lanes such that you don’t even have to pay attention when you drive (make it easy for the lowest common denominator…aka. the stupid people…)…in europe you have to drive actively…if someone dies then they deserved it…in the states if someone dies then get a lawyer…

I’m going to learn more Italian in a week of being here then i learned deutsch living in Deutschland for a year…it’s quite easy…
in fact it’s very cute the way the italians put a hard e sound at the end of most words when they don’t speak much english…except words that actually end with a silent E…those they manage to leave off…the stereo-typical italian accent speaking english is not really an exaggeration…I love listening to it…
don’t ask an italian to spell M-I-S-S-I-S-S-I-P-P-I

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I was thinking today about different cultures and the perceptions that go along with that. It’s still funny to me that people treat other people better or worse based solely on their nationality without even knowing that person. I think I’ve seen this everywhere I’ve ever been. It’s funny though that I think people are nicer to me or want to be my friend just cuz I’m american…(like americans automatically don’t want to be a friend to a mexican….are you a mexican or a mexican’t) So I started thinking about the pre conceived notions that go along with each country…and all I can come up with that americans abroad are famous for is being loud, obnoxious, and ignorant (at this point I’d like to say that I’ve been told many times that I’m not a typical american)…(at this point I’d like to add that I have on many occasions – ok regularly – been loud, obnoxious, and ignorant).

…all I can come up with is that the non-yanks think we’re all actors, movie stars or both…so they want to hang on/out to/with that…
apparently Jared Leto is trying to sing…I saw the video with the sound off, so I don’t know if he can actually sing, but I dislike it on principle…hello poseur…put on some more eyeliner jerk!!! typical video…MTV go away…I’m boycotting you as well…but seriously what happens when the whole world is watching the same 10 videos on MTV at the same time…this is where the worlds culture will come from in 100 years…the world is flat and small…

this somehow all comes down to americans stealing…erm terrorizing… no…liberating…no…raping…uh…pillaging…ahem…ethnically cleansing…I mean, populating the largest chunk of North America in less than 200 years…the concept of populations existing for thousands of years in near isolation does not register with them, so they don’t get that cultures existed for any length of time…manifest destiny and stuff….

if matt had written this it would have been well thought out and actually made the point I was attempting to formulate, but since it’s me…well…draw your own conflusions…

I just made up the word conflusion…I’m not going to edit it…it suits me…I am a god…
I mean yank…

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