(Pacific) Rim Jobs

One of my favorite lines in any Simpsons episode is when Homer hires the mob to help Marge sell pretzels and in retaliation Marge's former investment buddies (Mrs. Krabapple, Agnes Skinner, Mrs. Lovejoy, and Mrs. Van Houton ie. Milhouse's mom) hire the Japanese mob to fight them. And once they meet on the Simpsons' front lawn and start to fight Marge leads Homer inside. But there is one member of the Japanese mob that is just standing there to which Homer moans, "Aw, but the little guy hasn't done anything yet...and you know it's gonna be cool!" After a few minutes of talking about how they're glad to have solved their personal differences and are back to being all lovey-dovey, "the little guy" crashes through the kitchen window, gets up, brushes broken glass off of himself, puts his hands together, bows and says, "fo-giv-uh-nuss pweazuh."

Kills me every time. I'll tell yea why. Not only does it play so well off of what Homer was moaning about but it's also a fabulous display of mockery of the Asian-American accent. And by mockery I mean flattery by imitation (which is the best form of flattery) that also happens to be hilarious because it doubles as mockery. Still with me?

It's this kind poking of fun at the Japanese's expense that tickles my funny bone. But using stereotypical Asian-American accents is not the only way to poke the fun. Because really, were you expecting anything less than multiple ways to make fun of someone from me? If yes, then you're either a newbie or an idiot. If you're the latter then you'll probably end up on the Over/Under.

No, this other way of poking the fun (I think I just coined that) is by visiting this lovely website: www.engrish.com. If you've never been there before it is simply this: poorly translated anything from Japanese to English. That's it. Street signs, menus, children's toys, clothing, labels, etc. Anything that gets translated to English. Thing point of this site though is that all the translations are completely absurd. They make no logical or grammatical sense in English. And when I say translations, I don't mean there's a sign in Japanese and the guy running the site made a caption translating it. No, the sign will have the Japanese and under it is the English for everyone to see.

I actually spent a little over an hour perusing the site the other night severely cutting into my gym time. I meant to hit the weights at nine and didn't end up going until 10. The following are some of my favorites that kept me from sculpting the guns.

Yummy Candy

Someone ask for a colonoscopy?

I'm worried about the bun...

Walter's a strange guy

Sony loves terror

That's just a quick sampling of what was keeping me from doing a few sets of Iriqoui Twists. I just don't understand how these stores/restaurants/companies couldn't hire a proper English translator to accurately translate their slogans. I mean, I've taken four and a half years of Spanish classes and lived in Miami and Los Angeles for a combined (nearly) five years and I'd still screw up proper translations of random Spanish slogans and titles. And the Japanese are way smarter than me so one would think they'd know when they've been beaten, swallow their pride, and hire an American that knows Japanese fluently to accurately translate these signs and labels. There was probably a World War II joke in there somewhere but really, haven't I insulted them enough in this piece?

Just for the record, I love sushi and I drive an Nissan Altima and one of my friends (who's also my neighbor) is half Japanese. So yea. That oughta tip the scales back toward me some, eh?