July 09, 2009

Turn on the hot water.

I am a whore!

Click to see gumby in the background.


I know it's true, because my wife agrees with me and she just don't lie.
Let me set the facts down for you..

1.) I live in Japanland and and make a bit of gelt from transforming gibberish into something that resembles the English language. Not the kind of language that most teenagers and rappers express themselves with, but a certain kind of English nonetheless.

2.) I quit smoking over a year ago and I pride myself on not having that unmistakable "holier than thou" stinky attitude that seems to infect any form of reformed dip-shit. You know who I'm talking about.

3.) I have this thing about "truth". Although I will prevaricate when necessary, fib in order to save someones feelings, stretch veracity to provide entertainment and tell a bald faced lie in order to protect those I love- I still got this thing about truth. I don't like bullshit. This is probably why I am a big fan of Penn & Teller.

Enough appetizer. Let's dig into some meat and potatoes or maybe some patchouli scented greens and granola for the vegans out there.

My wife Crispy* got some translation work from JT (Japan Tobacco). They have a factory here in Lilliput and unfortunately for the people who work there it is closing down. A sad, but all to common occurrence nowadays. The people at the factory are going to England to show them how cigarettes are made in Japanland, so they put this multimedia presentation together and wrote the English on their own without any assistance. I actually like it when folks do this because I end up making some pretty decent cheese for correcting their creative sentence constructions and seriously silly syntax.

Usually I do this kind of work for research scientists who are attempting to publish their work in international journals. This time I was poring my efforts into a company whose products I don't like and definitely do not support, so correcting mangled statements whose mathematical proof was specious at best or were down right falsehoods made me feel just a little itchy.What made it fun was the amount of hilarity this report has produced. Crispy and I have been infected by the ridiculousness of things and are trying to ward off the lingering feelings of guilt with laughter and mockery.

I don't like doing this kind of work. The company is being both demanding and parsimonious, but a rat's gotta eat and like I said; this is a pretty big piece of cheese.

*Not her real name.




A realy cool blogger, X-Dell, who is not a whore, has put something together that will amaze and entertain you. Go check it out, now.

16 comments:

Serena said...

Crispy isn't her real name? No way!:) Hey, I feel for you. Alas, we often have to do things we find offensive in order to keep buying the cheese. Try to just have fun with the fractured syntax and not think about the deeper implications.

lime said...

yeah, i can get why that particular job would make you itchy. also, after having had two MBA students from taiwan live with me and ask me to proof read every paper they turned in i can also appreciate the giggles such work can give you. (mind you, i don't mean that as mockery of any form because anyone who can go through a formal education in a language other than their native tongue automatically earns a bunch of respect in my book.)

NYD said...

SJ~ Not her real name, but I actually use it in our everyday conversation.

Lime~ Oh, go on. Mock them! If you can provide them with a roof then they can certainly return the favor with a couple of gaffaws

Mona said...

I would hate that doing that kind of stuff too...

But I would like to write dubbing captions for our Hindi movies. They are so screwed up, I want to scream! I Realized this only after seeing dubbed Hindi Movies here!

X. Dell said...

Well, on the bes of days, I'm not.

hat's been an age-old dilemma. Any with a conscience will understand. The need for day-to-day survival vs. one's personal sense of morality.

Sometimes, I think hat the holier-than-thous are so lucky that they've never been placed in a position where they had to choose. Either that, or they're in extreme denial.

Reminds me of a Milgram experiement.

Kurt said...

Japanese people love cigarettes!

Grant said...

Maybe you could creatively edit their Engrish. Like, change "Jappy brand smokes to be the bestest in happy fun smooth flavor" to "For every pack of these wads of compressed filth you purchase, our CEO will personally club a baby seal to death."

Anonymous said...

Okay, let me get this straight, you correct the big corporation and their inept ability to write the truth behind their failing business, but you can't do mine! wow, That's intense.

JUST KIDDING!
As a great woman once called me, Mrs. Malaprop, I can honestly say I'm glad it wasn't me doing the writing....Yeah!

Sniff,sniff,sniff....sorry just smelling some skunk around here and wishing i was the one smoking it.sigh.
All in all I hope you made a bundle having so much fun. And I'm so proud that it's been a year since your last puff.

LFNY
JBG/NYC

secret agent woman said...

I wonder if there is a job out there that doesn't involve doing things that feel a little icky at times?

And I am seriously disapointed that your wife's real name is not Crispy.

moi said...

Dude! I LOVE Penn and Teller! See, we could sit down at the sushi bar together and not have an argument over politics, I just know it. Instead, we'd talk about our days at CBGBs.

Megan said...

Crispy is a lucky gal. Just sayin'.

Carla said...

I could see how a job like this could provide you with hours of entertainment. But alas, the conundrum.

Jenny said...

What Moi said. :-)

Aunty Belle said...

Heh...yep. You and few million others wrangle wif' this same dilemma. When ya ain't in bidness fer yore self it is worse, but I doan think even the owner/ operators is escaped this quandry in a globalized world.

an' BTW, I done showed Granny about NYD a long spell back--when you was hackin' up the grass hedges out back--'member? She thought youse a riot.

lime said...

ok, ok...i found it extraordinarily challenging NOT to break out into guffaws when the one guy who could barely compose a literate sentence would look over my corrections and tell me what an amazing writer i was (as primarily evidenced by my good grasp of subject verb agreement and basic vocabulary)because my editing made his papers so good. "well, uh...english IS my first language."

the one guy, bless his heart, he was really a piece of work. i should probably do a blog post...the story is just sort of unbelievable.

Ming the Merciless said...

That is an accurate, albeit a long ass way to illuminate the meaning of WHORE. And yes, you are a whore. :-)

Not that there is anything wrong with that. HAHAHAHA!