May 2007 Archives

Power of One - appliance purchase ad

In the same post I was writing about slang here that I don't understand. I couldn't think of much while I was writing it, though. I was sitting in the Glasgow airport this weekend with some Irish friends (last week I found myself in three countries, oddly) when I heard something that tickled my fancy--much better than the examples I put here previously. One of the guys was telling a story that began "That fooking eejit was going to the jacks for a slash, but it was jammers, so he..." The story ended with a bathroom covered in blood, and the eejit being slapped across the face with a five Euro note.

As I stepped onto the elevator the other day, I was pleased to see a grossly obese young woman already squeezed into the metal compartment. The girl couldn't have been more than 25, and was tucking her fleshy folds into her elastic-waisted jeans--this was, I had been told, a feature exclusive to Yanks, and I was quietly jubilant to see that the Irish, on their diets of potatoes and creamed everything, were finally catching up. I grinned openly as we rose from one floor to the next.

As we got to the sixth floor and the girl got off, she squealed to the woman next to her in a distinctive American patois, "Dude, did you see Project Runway last night? It was, like, awesome!" Sigh.

On accents:

In Dublin, one gets used to hearing all sorts of accents. The city feels truly international sometimes, sometimes more so than New York ever did. So many countries are basing their European operations in Dublin now, that there are people from all over Europe and beyond crawling the cobbled streets.

This, of course, means that there are a lot of funny accents around.

When I was a youth (but not young enough that writing this doesn't humiliate me), I asked my mother why everyone else in the world had accents but Americans didn't.

I had learned about the pilgrims, and was trying to understand why the Americans wouldn't have the same accent as the English. Clearly they did to begin with, but then, somehow, we managed to throw off any sort of defining accent and emerged like blank slates, unable to be tied to any geographic area by our well-modulated voices.

My mother looked at me and and in horrified disgust said "you moron." This was when I learned, however harshly, that Americans have accents too.

I was reminded of this lesson when I was on the patio of the local pub, enjoying the last dying rays of the Irish sunshine. One might say that a good craic was being had. I was surrounded by locals and few friends from Northern Ireland, who sound more Scottish than the average Irishman. We had been there for a length of time that is too embarrassing to admit here, when a girl from California sat down at our table.

Her voice was jarring. I'm not even going to pretend that her voice was expecially annoying or that she said anything particularly idiotic, but after not hearing an American accent for so long, I finally had a sense of what we sound like to others. The answer is, simply, fucking stupid.

I'm never sure what to post about anymore, which is why I've been reduced to wry observations about the Irish and other untermenschen. The only things that I can think to post about are my family, love life, work and minorities.

Since my family and at least three ex-boyfriends read this site, and since I'd get fired if I wrote about my job, I'm reduced to spouting bigotry and gibberish.

I'd like to post more about boys, but every time I start, the fear takes over. I've been traumatized by boys, and now at the age of 28, think I'm completely incapable of having a real relationship ever again.

The most annoying one ended with me saying "go fuck yourself" over the phone and never speaking to the fellow again. During our relationship, he had accused me of cheating on him with my brother and any other male I may have come into contact with. We broke up four times before it finally stuck. At one point I had decided that playing Snood for five hours a night was preferable to his company, which understandably enraged him. During one of our last calls, I broke up with him while playing Snood. "Are you playing that fucking game?" he screamed into the phone. "No," I lied, and unable to resist, shot another snood onto the screen. The click was audible, and the relationship was clearly doomed.

I heard from him 18 months later when he wrote to me to ask for the record player back that he had given to me. I looked it up on ebay and found that it was going for, on average, $7, and decided to move the email to my spam folder.

Before the Polack, I hadn't titled with anyone in a year and a half. The last one absolutely destroyed me--at one point he admitted that he thought it was a game to get me to fall in love with him. "That's just what you do, isn't it?" he asked, confused as to why I was upset when he broke up with me after realizing that his plan had been successful. He left me, sitting on my bed bewildered and in tears, hopped in a cab and flew across the country. He's probably reading this right now.

Since then, I've only gone out with younger men. This has been my way of combating serious relationships and coming into contact with taut skin. I have an unfortunate habit of getting into relationships with men who are clearly unqualified for the task. I really don't mean to, I'm just bored and an emotional black hole. I have intense friendships, an intense job and intense feelings about everything from snack cakes to synthetic fabrics. It stands to reason that my relationships would be the same, but it's exhausting. I just don't know how to avoid falling into relationships that I know won't work. I took my record-player-demanding boyfriend to meet my parents after just three weeks of dating. I just wasn't sure how I felt about him, so I thought that maybe they could provide some insight. My dad (rightly) pointed out that he was the first reasonable date I had brought home--he had a college degree (albeit in physical education) and a real job. He didn't have tattoos on his neck or a drug habit. My mother worried that he didn't have enough "edge" for me. As it turned out, he didn't have enough of anything for me, really, and I was what could only be described as a shitty girlfriend. I wouldn't be surprised if he were reading this right now.

It's funny, though, when I look back on these relationships. It seems that the more reasonable the candidate is, the more I hate them once it's over. Interestingly, the ones that I still like are the Americans, a small subset of my sweethearts. The only exes I've really managed to stay friends with are the one that married the stripper while we were dating and the one that managed to leave heroin under my mattress and in my shoes on a regular basis while he was hanging out in gay nightclubs. These are the ones I love, and the others I just resent. And the more I resent them, the more likely they are to be shutitdown readers. Funny like that.