Inktrails from Alaska

Funny Engrish 1

I've been goofing on my spam emails as you all know, and my girlfriend up in Vermont, Janis, who apparently has fewer filters than I do, got one so good I just have to post it for your enjoyment. I love the efforts of non-English speakers to sound glib. Their attempts at slogans such as Pepsi's "It's the Real Thing" and so on are hilarious. Long ago a friend came back from Japan telling me that some company was using "For Beautiful Human Life!" as a slogan for some product.

Along that line, I collect instructions from any device that are obviously in funny Engrish. If you have some good ones, please send them to me. My address is on my book review blog Northern Book Review .

Here is the delightful email:

Every human being could use a nice-looking wrist watch, which is why we
retail ours at fees most people can manage.
Not happy? Ship back your timepiece for a refund.

You will want a nice watch, which shows off his impressiveness and
prestige.

It is the amounts that will make you happiest. You'll be able to attain
what looks like the true thing without thecost of the real thing

Our wristwatches symbolize only the finest quality and durability.

Yes, I want show off impressiveness to symbolize finest quality!

Are You Pondering What I'm Pondering? Part 2

Okay, now Arnold. Gary and Brandon are swamping me with one line emails with a link, and asking that ever so vital question in at least ten different ways:

Do you want cheap drugs?
Do you want Canadian drugs?
Do you want new Canadian drugs? (oh, were the other ones OLD drugs? used ones? yeccch)
Do you want new and Canadian drugs? (is it one or the other?)
Do you want Mexican drugs? (not if I can get Canadian drugs)
Do you want Cheap and New Mexican drugs? (um, well, Canada still sounds better)

and then they change to the subjunctive case...

Would you like Cheap Overseas Drugs? (Would I, you mean, if I could have some? Cheap Overseas drugs sounds even shadier than Cheap Mexican drugs)

Would you want Cheap and New Canadian Drugs? (Is this a rhetorical question?)

Now I kinda miss my Paul and John junk emails. I wonder if Brandon, Gary and Arnold are all wearing fake Rolex watches.

The Ten Commandments of Jamming

Amended for our local jam....

I. Thou shalt not ever forsake the beat.

II. Thou shalt arrange thyselves in a small circle so that thou mayest hear and see the other musicians. Thou shalt listen with thine ears to the songs and attempt to play in accord with the group; also, open thine eyes betimes to look about thee, lest there be some visual sign someone is endeavoring to send thee. Thou shalt play softly when someone lifteth his voice in song, when playing harmony, and when thou knowest not what thou is doing.

III. Thou shalt play in tune. Tune thine instrument well, and tune it often with thine electric tuner, lest the sounds emanating from thine instument be unclean.

IV. Thou shalt commence and cease playing each tune together as one, so that the noise ye make be a joyful noise, and not a heinous tinkling that goeth in fits and starts, for that is unclean, and is an abomination. Whensoever a musician sticketh forth his foot as though he were afflicted with a cramp in the fatted calf, thou must complete the rest of that verse, and then cease.

V. Thou shalt stick out thine own foot or else lift up thy voice crying "This is it!", or "Last time!" if thou hast been the one to begin the song, and it has been played sufficient times over. If the one who began a tune endeth it not by one of these signs, then the tune will just go on and on, like the begats, until the listeners say, "Hark! It all soundeth the same." Especially ye take care with Olde Timey tunes.

VI. Thou shalt concentrate and thou shalt not confound the music by mixing up the A part and the B part. Most songs, but not all, proceedeth according to the ancient law "AABB". But if thou sinneth in this regard, or make any mistake that is unclean, thou may atone, not by ceasing to play, but by reentering the tune in the proper place and playing on.

VII. Thou shalt take thine own turn in the circle, and not presume to play out of turn. Be thou patient, for do not The Byrds say “to everything,, turn turn turn”?. Be thou ready to play or sing when thy turn comest round again.

VIII. Thou shalt not speed up or slow down when playing a tune, for it is an abomination. (See commandment I) Thou shalt keep the beat of thine friend whose turn it is.

IX. Thou shalt not, by thine own self, commence noodling off on a tune the other musicians know not, unless asked or unless thou art teaching that tune, for it is an abomination. If thou wouldst thine friends learn a new tune, thou shalt go to the copy shop and bring forth copies.

Been a While

I've been busy! Between Nanowrimo (see stinking badge down the left side of the page) and a watercolor class (I could rant about watercolor but I don't have time, got to get to the last class) and playing gigs and teaching folks, not to mention various snowfalls and other challenges, well....I've been busy!

Plus our guitar player was seduced by playing the blues, so the search for a new guitar player for the Tanana Highlanders is on. And this, right after we did a fabulous gig at Café Alex! Awww, we'll find someone soon, I hope. I posted a note to the local folk trad group about it, and even mentioned we'd be interested in an accordion player. Then I'd be in a band with a bagpiper AND an accordion player! Am I masochistic or WHAT?

I just interviewed the LuvPuppets via conference call last Thursday. They are a rock band from the Anchorage area made up of folks around my age and who actually remember things like when Jerry Garcia had black hair. It was much fun (macht viel spass) and you can look for the resulting article in AK This Month in December's issue. I forgot to hassle them about their silly band name, though. I must remember to call them back and do that. ;-)

So my life has revolved around writing, playing music and painting. Gee, life's rough, ya know?

Are You Pondering What I'm Pondering?

Who are John and Paul and why do they keep sending me the same message about fake Rolex watches ten times every single day?

And why don't I get email from George and Ringo?

Happy 4th Birthday Sofia & Athena

I wish I had a picture of Athena, but in your mind you can double Sofia and that's what it would look like, two Sofies.

I gave her half my steak for a birthday present. Yes, I realize I should have given her the WHOLE steak. Well, maybe next year. Besides, Thanksgiving is coming up.

She asked for one of the rabbits for her birthday (actually, she asks for that every day, continually) but I draw the line at that. Let her disembowl a stuffed toy, it's easier to clean up.

How to Get Your Novel Going

This is something I handed out at the last Nanowrimo Fairbanks meet-up:

Ways to Get your Novel Going!

1. Get your characters into an argument.

2. Have your character have trouble with a mechanical object, electronic object, or just an non-human object etc.
a) For instance, have their car break down.
b) Or their computer crashes.
c) Or they are trying, vainly, to record a TV show on the VCR (or DVD recorder). Heck, maybe they are just trying to keep it from going 12:00 12:00 12:00 12:00 12:00 12:00
d) Both my ex and my current boyfriend have had extremely bad conflicts with filing cabinets. The cabinets lost, but were pretty useless afterward.

3. What’s your favorite rant? Voilá! It’s now your character’s favorite rant! Good places to start:
a) Driving. Tailgaters, people who pass on curves at 80 mph on CHSR. Etc.
b) Feral rabbits invading your barn, yard, garden? (well, it worked for me)
c) The way some people treat their kids, dogs, wives, husbands, etc.
d) Mac vs. PC (No, let’s NOT discuss this in our meetings!)
e) Dems vs. Repubs. (Same rules as above.)
f) The government of the United States of America. And subdivisions thereof: the IRS, CIA, National Park Service, Army, Marines, etc.
g) Waiting in lines.
h) One coming up soon: Christmas holidays. The shopping, the commercialism the whole overdone thing. The ignorance of most people about OTHER religions.
i) Your ex. We hope you parted as friends, but even so it didn’t work out for a reason.
j) People who talk on cell phones, in cars, in stores, too loudly, etc.
k) Those horrible phone systems where you have to keep talking with a robot or pushing 1, 2 or 3 and it's impossible to talk to a real person.

4. Suddenly your character has a brain tumor, or other serious condition.

5. Suddenly your character is mugged.

6. Your character gets knocked on the head and wakes up with some sort of psychic power, such as being able to see the jelly inside the doughnut, or being able to talk to dogs. It can be something very simple.

7. Your character finds how his/her best friend has been a werewolf all along. (Either literally or figuratively.)

8. Car accident.

9. One word: mother.

There are plenty more. Post your ideas in comments, Nanowrimo-ers!

Curse of the Feral Rabbits

It is my hope that any minute I'll be interrupted while writing this to deliver yet another feral rabbit into the hands of an eager rabbit lover.

Since some idiot let loose their domestic rabbits in my neighborhood, they have proliferated, to say the least. Did you know that only one pair of rabbits can produce 13 MILLION young (the young breed as young as four months) within three years? (Source: Paul Paradise in Rabbits (T.F.H. Publications, 1979.)

It's no wonder it's considered the patriotic duty of every Australian to run over rabbits on the highway at every opportunity. New Zealanders mostly feel the same.

Just do a google search on "rabbit population" to see what a terribly destructive power rabbits can be. Here in Alaska they are dealing with the sub-zero temperatures just fine, too.

Keeping in mind their capacity for breeding, here are some reasons not to give your rabbits their "freedom":

1. They dig. They dig and dig and dig and will dig the foundation right out from under a building.

2. They eat EVERYTHING. Okay, they won't chop down forests but they will eat all the bushes, shrubs, grasses, and even your potted plants. Everything. You'll never have a garden again.

3. In the Interior, and many other places in the world, rabbits are vectors for tularemia. Dogs, cats and people can all get tularemia, and both dogs and cats can die of it. It is treated with antibiotics. It is serious. Many State governments have pages on tularemia in both pets and people, and rabbits are how most people and pets get it. The CDC has information as well.

4. They are a prey species. They are going to die anyway. Letting them "run free" is only going to make sure that one day they either starve to death, get shot, get caught and torn to pieces by a dog or fox, or taken by an owl or lynx. Up here the baby rabbits freeze to death. They make up for their loss of numbers in springtime.

Please, please please folks. Take responsibility for your animals and don't ever let your rabbits out. Give them away, take them to the animal shelter or a rabbit rescue organization, but don't let them loose to injure the environment, not to mention someone else's foundation!