more porteno, for fun

just cause:

(and i am not really sure where this idea initially came from except that yesterday i saw an ad for the movie nacho libre, and began to think, what would that be? free chips? a pound of chips? then it occured to me that i never heard the word nacho used in argentina. not once. no. cause they don't have nachos, or tortillas, or anything of the sort there. then i wondered what chips would be in castellano, and it further occured to me that when i first got there (and before a freer trade was established between the states and argentina), the closest thing was galletitas, the sweet versions of which were similar to cookies, and the salty versions more like british "bisquits"--or maybe british bisquits are actually more like our cookies, and the salty versions of galletitas are more like our crackers? oh, fuckt if i know, shit. now i am all confused. anyways, the point being that galletitas aren't really like chips at all. then the free trade occured, and we started seeing pringles and the like in argentina. and they were simply called cheeps, which is how portenos would pronounce the english word "chips", and that led to the following insanity:)

when i first arrived in argentina, i was relieved to see some familiar name brands in the local kioskos (small corner stores, from the word "kiosk"--there is a plethera of european, middle eastern, and even asian influence in argentina), though all packaged or bottle or whatnot in argentina.

so i went into a local store and asked for colgate (toothpaste), pronouncing it as we do here in the states, kol-GAYT. the proprietor looked at me a bit blankly and said, "que buscas? flaco, que no te entendi" (and let me take a moment to say i sure miss being able to type accents and upside-down punctuation, cause that sentence is horribly lacking) [what are you looking for, man, cause i didn't understand].

i explained i wanted the red and white toothpaste, and pointed, and he said, "ooo, colgate." pronouncing it as it would be in porteno, or that is to say, col-GAH-tay.

yes, i tell him and he gets it off the shelf.

now, the really funny thing about that is colgate in castellano is, literally, "go hang yourself!"

no biggie, back the next day for a liter of 7-up. i ask for "siete-ooop" cause that is how it would be pronounced.

again, the proprietor makes with the googly-eyes and brushes with the tips of his fingers under his chin (the universal porteno sign for "i've no fucking clue"). i point, again, and he says, "ooo, seben-ahp."

what we have here is a failure to communicate.

so it became a fun game of, do they pronounce it in porteno or in an approximation of the product's name in english? the big chains of pop were all in yank: pepsi was peksee, coke was, plainly, coke, and 7-up was seben-ahp. sprite, however, was SPREE-tay.

the beatles, who is, was, and always will be, huge in argentina, was a tricky one. in el campo, or small towns in the country, they called them los bay-AHT-lays, which was confusing as hell: "te gustan los bay-AHT-lays?" to which i would brush my fingertips under my chin with a slight shrug.

"los bay-AHT-lays? jone, pahl, ringO, shorj?"

"aaa, the beatles! si, me gustan."

"como se dice?"

"the beatles?"

"de beeetells?" (which, in their mind, must be spelled "bitels")

in the city, i asked a pibe if he liked "los bay-AHT-lays" and he did the chin-brush thing, and i explained, and he said, "ooo, de beeetells, si a mi me re encantan."

oh, and those cheeps they imported from the us, they called them "PREEN-gless"

so i fucked that up, too.

darth sardonic

sometimes nothing is a cool hand

wellp, my beloved non-existant readers (and i can never quite decide if that should be a hyphenate or a single word, hence the constant changing from one spelling to another), i am planted with my computer in front of me again. it has been nearly a week since it was taken to our computer tech's to be "cleaned", and boy o boy is it clean.

like we need to download nearly everything back in. and all the tracks i had recorded; gone. yep, gone. i was peeved yesterday, but the more i think about it the more i think that nearly every track i had laid down needed some fine-tuning, and what better opportunity to accomplish that? mostly, in my inimitable candide-ish manner, i piss and moan, shrug, and get set about redoing it all.

as a fun and added twist, for some sort of security thingie that is completely beyond my scope of understanding, we can only download in one setting and then have to make ourselves "users" to the downloaded stuff to be able to use it in our personal settings (or i would've rerecorded at least one song already!) now, i am sure each and every one of you much more enlightened techie types are nodding your head and saying "of course" and "makes sense" in your sage manners, but i am at a loss.

i am not a technophobe, in any stretch of the imagination: i love technology when it can help me enjoy myself more (i.e. porn, the ease of recording and mixing songs at home, producing dvds to view and what-have-you), but i am technically stupid. yes, stupid. there is simply no other word for it. it has to be explained and showed to me at least twice, and then i need to do it at least once with guidance over my shoulder, and then if for some reason, the process should change, i am skullfucked.

i also feel that, while technology is cool as fuck and makes our lives so much easier, somehow we end up missing out on simple pleasures. i still, despite the ease of typing on the computer, love taking a pen in hand and writing something across a virgin sheet of paper. it is calming. it is cathartic. it eases whatever pain i might be feeling, simultaneously bringing it to the surface so that i might examine it and discard it. i am a fan of vintage things, things from a "simpler" time and age.

but then again, i certainly am a bucket of contradictions.

darth sardonic