Bad Engrish

The other day I sent an e-mail to my brother Dave who is currently stationed in Djibouti. In the e-mail I included this Satan's Laundromat link. I love seeing mangled english and apparently I am not the only one.

After I sent the e-mail, for some reason I began thinking that making light of non-English speakers inadvertantly twisting the language might be a tad culturally imperialistic (can you tell I took political science classes in college...years of debt just to be able to drop the term like culturally imperialistic into a sentence!)

I felt bad for about eleven minutes and then I realize that everyone in every culture would make fun of a non-native speaker destroying their beloved language. For instance, I know that every Spanish-speaking person I encounter will likely mock me when I describe everything as "mas fina"...pantalones mas fina, cerveza mas fina, el diablo mas fina. Trust me if I could master a second adjective I would gladly apply that to every spanish noun in lieu of "mas fina"...maybe someday.

I began trying to mentally investigate where I developped this appreciation for mangled english. Ironically, I saw as one of the major influences in this direction was my brother Dave...

My brother Dave is thirteen years older than me, so when he was a young adult I was still very much an impressionable kid.

If I remember correctly, Dave was in his mid-twenties when in addition to grad school and full-time job he signed up to be a door-to-door advertisement distributor. When he could not fit this part-time job into his schedule, or had a particulary large route to deliver, he would sub-contract his duties to his younger brothers.

As a way to make a little money, I was seduced into helping out.

The basic concept of the job was to go to every house in particular neighborhood and hang a plastic envelope that had an advertisement for a local business held within it. For city-dwellers, imagine the guy standing on the street corner handing out fliers...now imagine him coming to your front door to hang the advertisement you have no interest in on your doorknob...now imagine that it is a punky eleven year old who may potentially step on your well-manicured front lawn.

The job was a dream for anyone who had a future in sociology. You definitely got to see human behavior in relation to their "personal space" being invaded. When you went into the wealthy neighborhoods the residents would look at you suspiciously and wonder if you might defile one of their precious blades of grass or steal some of their property. When you went into the poor neighborhoods the residents would look at you suspiciously and wonder if you were going to steal some of their property. Best of both worlds.

One day Dave and I were delivering ads in the poor neighborhood called Belmont. When I was on my section of the route I came across house with a doorknob that, in barely legible hand-written pencil, said "Hang No Ads". I immediately started laughing hysterically. I got such great satisfaction because, other than being obviously retarded and funny, I knew that when I described it to my brother he would get a kick out of it as well.

When I reconnected with Dave I told him about the doorknob, and as expected, he thought it was a riot. I swear that for the rest of the day we repeated the phrase "Hang No Ads" back to each other about forty times. From that day forward, whenever we would come across a particularly shady residence I would just say "Hang No Ads" and we would begin laughing about it as if it were the first time we encountered it...