And Now For Something Completely Different

 

"Hey, that's my line."

    You may have heard.  Something important is going on this coming Tuesday.  No, I won't go into my thoughts on that and any possible implications.  Frankly, I'm tired of hearing about the whole thing and you probably are, too.

    Bottom line, all the candidates suck.

Ears ringing, Comrade?

Including those who aren't even candidates.

     So, instead, I thought I'd go with something a little different this time instead of hammering away at the same tired old things.

Speaking of old things...

    Some (or none) of you may know that I went to Miami this week for a few days.  I took my wife to go see Lionel Messi play football.

AKA "soccer."  You know, the type of football which isn't hot garbage.

    Palm trees and balmy breezes notwithstanding, the city is not exactly my cup of tea (there are skyscrapers and construction EVERYwhere).  

To say nothing of the fashion.
Ewwwww, no socks.

    However, I was impressed by one specific thing.

    Hispanic culture, primarily Cuban, dominates the region.  In fact, you could assume most people spoke Spanish.  Most importantly, they had an equal grasp of English.  There seemed to be just as many signs in Spanish as there are English.  Admittedly, I do know some Spanish (four years of high school and an Argentinian wife), so I was very comfortable navigating my way about the city.

    But, some folks refuse to even attempt to speak the language much beyond "cerveza" and "toilet."

"'Toilet's' the same in both languages, El Dumbass."

    This got me thinking (I am capable of that) of the old joke:

What do you call a person who speaks three languages?

Trilingual.

What do you call a person who speaks two languages?

Bilingual.

What do you call a person who speaks one language?

American.      

    I think it's embarrassing that we Americans aren't nearly as fluent in another language (Spanish, French, German, Chinese, etc.) as we should be.

"Not even Klingon."
"Racists."

  In fact, some Americans think speaking loudly and with an accent is all they need to get their point across.

    That is obviously not the case.

    In my opinion, training in a foreign language should be a routine part of every American student's education, starting in the younger years.  I had Spanish lessons, to be sure, but they didn't start until I was in junior high school and took it only as an elective.  How much better would it have been if I started in elementary school and not in an environment where I had to battle boners  a lot of my educational "cement", so to speak, had already set.

    As an example, when I was stationed in Iceland, an Icelandic national told me that foreign language training starts at a young age and includes Icelandic (duh), English, and Danish.

Wrong Danish

    I don't  have an answer as to which language should be taught, mind you.  After all, this is a dopey blog which is only read by a couple people.

Clearly, though, Dothraki should not make the cut.

    But, it would be nice to be able to order lunch and not give myself a verbal hernia in the process.  Or make the poor bilingual person rescue me.

    On a personal note:  I told my wife we would never visit another country which didn't speak Spanish.  As my personal translator, she could guarantee a hernia-free lunch.

    Now, we return to your regularly scheduled program of bitching about which scumbag to vote for.

Talkin' to you, Jimmy.