Ceci n'est pas un blog.

Recipe For A Dink

Ingredient 1:

Mister Slocombe, a nomadic South African, speaks fluent Afrikaans. While the "kitchen Dutch" language, which is a sort of highly developed pidgin, is somewhat understandable to Jan Dutchman, my partner can communicate clearly with Jan Q. Dutchman.

Ingredient 2: You can't buy ice in Dutch gas stations as one can in the US, and our American friend was thirsty.

Mix and Pour:

My Partner asks for "Eis blokkies", and the kind attendant at the gas station gives him directions to a nearby grocery store. "Tweete links" (second left), she says, and our American friend's face blows up and changes colour immediately. What she heard was this:

And now she thinks the Dutch are all people like this:

I wish I had a Euro for every time I heard "Dink Dink Twinkle Dink" during our mini-vacation.

But first!

I must keep my word and post about Mizez Slocombe's moment of slapstick last week.

In the pursuit of weight loss (because physical fitness doesn't look as pretty, n'est pas?) and knowing the city a bit better, a friend and I were strolling down the Canal St. Martin in the urban chic  10th arrondissement full of tourists hopelessly looking for Amelie skipping stones from a bridge.

I was happily ambling along with said friend, thankfully burning fat cells from my derriere after 30 minutes of walk, and we came upon a open-air produce market from which all the carts had been recently hauled away. Like an archaeologist who had found Caesar's kitchen scraps, I was fascinated with the market seller's lack of post-sale sanitation and the various fauna left behind. What were they selling? Was the fruit on the ground still edible? Gee, this gray slate sidewalk is interesting. Is that fennel or something else? Who's going to clean this mess up? The entire Wendy's Freshtastic® salad bar here, geesh. What time did the market close? Why don't I go to markets more? I wonder where....THWAP!

I looked up for one second to say something to my friend, and I fell on my ass. Looking through the flock of birds flying in circles around my head, I found that the tumble was the result of a banana peel. Serves me right for hop-walking to avoid staining my well-polished Pradas and not to alleviate the symptoms of my left-handed disease that has resulted in countless spills, drops and falls.

My French friend was roaring with laughter, as expected. To me, the banana peel gag was so emblematic of the clichéd slapstick side of European humour to which I barely give more than a slight chuckle. I had never, ever seen anyone slip on a banana peel, so I found the over-proliferated joke far-removed from this world and, of course, far-removed from me. True to form, life has this way of letting one know he is just as susceptible to  the humiliation of physical reality as anyone else. Having learnt my lesson, I am now nervously watching out for dangling pianos as they are being moved into apartment buildings.

I'm Caught Up...I Don't Know What To Do

  Hung Up 
  Originally uploaded by mizezslocombe.

I can't keep on waiting for you!

I know that you're still hesitating.

Don't cry for me

'cause I'll find my way

You'll wake up one day

But it'll be too late.

My Favorite Myléne

Cinema La Wanda

 

Aprender Français avec Wanda Wisdom.

While My Partner Recovers From Light Emergency Surgery...

...I'll answer sweet Hikaru's week-old tag.

7 things I plan to do before I die:

1) Live outside of the US for a bit (soon to be fulfilled).
2) Take Rovos Rail from Capetown to Dar Es Salaam
3) Finish my manuscript and commodify it somehow.
4) Have Sarah Cracknell sing me a lullaby.
5) Get my PhD in history or cultural anthropology and teach
6) Live eccentricly amongst natural beauty with several Rhodesian Ridgebacks
7) Cruise on a Cunard ship for at least a month.

7 things I can do:

1) Parody any song off-the-cuff.
2) Come up with 250 names for a brand in less than four hours.
3) Smoke copious amounts of...
4) Sing. But I keep that somewhat secret.
5) Manage my wily, wavy hair
6) "Fall In Love" with people (platonically) very easily.
7) According to Kirstie Alley, lose 50 pounds with Jenny Craig™!!!

7 things I cannot do:

1) Sit still.
2) Clean bodily fluids.
3) Be a complete and utter a**hole.
4) Suffer fools gladly.
5) Imagine life without my gem of a partner.
6) Concentrate on much of anything until we leave Chicago.
7) Runway.

7 things that attract me to the same sex:

1) The Sex, of course.
2) That fantastic combination of tenderness and strength.
3) Body hair.
4) Phermones
5) "Down there."
6) The pronounced lack emotional chow-chow (most of the time).
7) Creativity.

7 things that I say most often:

1) "Indeed!"
2) "F***ing F**!!!"
3) "Mary!"
4) "Go fuc* yourself!"
5) "Get out!"
6) "Well alright!"
7) "I love you."

7 celebrity crushes:

1) Kaysar Ridha
2) Josh Wald
3) Eric Evans (naughty naughty)
4) Chris Evans
5) Survivor Colby
6) Ralph Fiennes (so unlike me, too!)
7) Gen. Wesley Clark (shhhhhhh)

Moon River....and Meeeeeeeeeeeee