doppelgängers

seated across the way, near the doctor-your-drink station in one of the campus coffee shops, is a young man (maybe twenty-five years old) with bushy dark-brown hair, wearing a turquoise t-shirt. close by, on his right, is an older silver-haired woman.

it's lunch time. so they're eating. but, unlike others here, they're not eating food from the starbucks. instead -- hosting a kind of indoor picnic -- they have before them an array of tupperware containers, full of food that had been prepared at home. they have laid out piles of napkins on the tabletop. they have brought along their own metal cutlery. and as the man sits quietly in the black wheelchair, with its rounded cushioned headrest, the woman lifts forkfuls of food gently into his mouth.

these are the moments, after loved ones have left, that you ache for. the moments when you get to see ghosts. Graham and Mom used to sit together just like this. wielding metal forks and tupperware, from within their own sacred space. a sacred space that's now all mine to share in once again. from up close. from very far away.

and now back to translating...

schooling

kids go to school to fatten their spongy minds, and adults attend professional development seminars to hone their expertise in a given field. but the coffee shop, too, has all sorts of lessons for us!

today's lesson comes to us (indirectly) from Hans and Franz, the two thirtysomething guys over there to my left, sporting pinheads and authoritative pre-pubescent voices.

what we learn just from witnessing H&F is that, when you've worked out at the gym so much that you'll have to add "neck" to your next xmas wishlist (dear Santa...), you are indeed over-pumping.

and now back to translating...

so this guy walks into a bar(ista)...

some wisecracks should be banned. not because they're racist or homophobic or begin with "knock-knock" (though, generally speaking, these also deserve the axe). but because they're so tired that they're just not funny anymore. case in point: in ottawa, there are two seasons: winter and construction. yuk yuk yu(c)k...

same goes for certain songs. or, rather, certain appropriations of certain songs. personal remixes whose formulas are so tired that the "clever" spin-off renditions drive everyone crazy in the moment, not to mention for hours afterwards. case in point: earlier today, one of the baristas is singing la bamba. typically among the worst earworms. however, since the guy (being colombian) knows the spanish lyrics, it's actually delightful to overhear him launch into para bailar la bamba, instead of pa la ba la ba la bamba (the way most of us -- myself included -- usually gringo-garble our way through it). the trouble begins shortly after this. when the second barista (the one who, last week, hadn't been clear on nova scotia's elusive whereabouts) jumps on board and -- like a sprinter in a relay race, taking the (inadvertent) baton pass from Colombia -- just runs with it: pa la ba la ba la bamba, i need s'more es-pres-so...

¡ay caramba!

and now back to pa la ba la ba la translating...

machu picchu. (gesundheit!)

there's not much point in pretending otherwise: i'm a language snob. and there's no point in apologizing for it either. for better or for worse, i genuinely love seeing words spelled properly, and poor grammar turns me off -- though mostly when it's lurking in published goods. on the flip side, i'm a practical goon when it comes to science. (oh, Bob McDonald, you make it seem so easy...) but strengths and weaknesses and personal preferences aside, you figure people who've at least completed grade eight share a base of common knowledge. like knowing what a hypotenuse is (or at least knowing it's not an african animal), or that yellow and blue make green (not to mention some pretty gruesome thigh/ass bruises), or that machu picchu isn't located in ontario, or that Madonna is(n't) necessarily a virgin, or that mixing vinegar and baking soda makes for a reasonably satisfying papier maché volcano eruption (and has been popular at grade school science fairs the world over since the dawn of time).

but this logic doesn't always hold...

Barista One, chatting with Barista Two: a consonant is the same thing as an antonym.

(fortunately, Barista Two swoops in to offer an alternative point of view.)

Barista 1: so, where is nova scotia? (B2 swoop: take two.) *explosion of laughter* (that's B1 laughing at herself, by the way.) i guess i need to study geography more.

holy hypotenuse.

and now back to translating...