Horror movies

You know, I was considering some nice, harmless post about the oddly alien architecture here (which I may still do), the relative merits of real bacon vs. beef bacon (ditto) or even just how excited I am about the prospect of a leisurely weekend.

Instead I was exposed to something so horrific, I have to share it with you.

Thanks, Karl.

Yes. Canada's queen of pop is trying to not just cover but imitate a guy who, at least during the "Bad" era, sweated more panache changing a light bulb than Celine Dion has mustered up in her entire career. The whole performance, really, is summed up by her hair, which I pray to the follicle gods is a wig.

None of this, by the way, should serve as commentary on the Jackson-fest that we witnessed a few days ago. It was a little embarrassing how over the top everyone, including, perhaps most offensively, the media, went in mourning (celebrating?) the death of a guy who wrote some good songs and got weird when he was older.*

I guess you can count this as my contribution. Now... off to go contemplate bacon.

*And speaking of embarrassing, that was quite a comma-tastic sentence. Sorry.

Too bad taking pictures of random people is considered impolite

Because as I walked home from work last night, there were a bunch of guys just hanging out on the right-of-way between the sidewalk and the street.

One group was playing cards ("go hammour"), another group was playing Parcheesi. If I see someone with Scrabble I am totally crashing the game.

This and that

More linguistic nonsense. If you're a words dork, like certain author-blogger-editors I could name, you notice the way people say and write things. In Abu Dhabi, I am surrounded by a simmering jambalaya of different accents and usages: British, Australian, Arabic, Taxiese... the list is long and distinguished. (insert Top Gun reference here)

But lately I have noticed a new one. When the guy sitting next to me, code named "Karl," calls someone, he'll say, "is that so and so?" when the call is connected. Me, I say, "is this so and so." And 10 minutes ago, I got a call from a bank in which the caller asked, "is that Mr. Matthew?"

So, as editors tend to do, I'm sitting here trying to figure out who is right. On the one hand, there is a certain logical harmony to saying "is that x?" because, well, "this" would refer to the speaker (this is Mr. Matthew speaking) whereas "that" would refer to some external person (that is the person to whom I am speaking.)

On the other hand, if you hear an unidentified voice on the other end of the phone, wouldn't you ask, "who is this?"

On the third hand--yes, just pretend you're an alien for a second--grammatically speaking, the answer is a little vague. "This" is to be used for something close to the speaker; "That" is to be used for something far from the speaker. It's just a matter of mental gymnastics. The telephone speaker is a half-inch from my brain, yet the person on the other end of the phone is, say, in Chicago.

So, whatever. We're all correct. Except for all the people who try to put a "u" in "favorite."

Nothing interesting has happened to me in a few days

This is because I do not have swine flu. But I do have something else nasty. How nasty? The more-or-less 100-degree air on the way home from work last night felt cool and refreshing.

Anyway, the point is, I have been up to nothing at all. Except sleeping. My roommate, on the other hand, relayed this story to me after I woke up this afternoon (not a typo) and found two huge boxes of fried chicken in the fridge:

He fancied some fried chicken to nosh on after a night celebrating one of our co-workers' birthdays. So he stopped at Texas Fried Chicken--known in the U.S. as Church's--on the way home. The problem, however, was that after procuring the aforementioned fried chicken, he no longer had enough to pay the taxi driver. Specifically, he was Dh4 short... a little more than $1.

The solution is obvious. The driver got the fare, less Dh4, and my roommate made up the difference by giving him a liter of Coke, a bag of potato wedges, a container of cole slaw and (I think) some mashed potatoes.

File under "things that would get your ass kicked in New York." Or a thing that makes you smile in Abu Dhabi.

It was bound to happen

Yes. Death, taxes, and catching some Middle Eastern bug my Yankee immune system hasn't seen yet. I would love to blame the Aussie for this, but he is a good guy and keeps me supplied with Aussie Burgers. So I think it is much more equitable to simply sigh "inshallah" and go drink some tea.

Which is what I have been doing.

On the plus side, though, my walk to work now has a dual function as a steam bath. It counteracts the next seven hours of sitting under an Arctic air conditioning vent.

A guy walks into a bar

... and orders a beer.

This is what he gets:

Irish for "fightin' words."

And this:

"The tall guy looks like a bad tipper. Find a way to make him pay."

The upshot is that the nearest bar to the paper has a really nice beer garden but uniformly awful service. I wonder--assuming a guy could jump through all the right [flaming] government hoops--what it would take to open a bar here. Because I'm pretty sure I could hire a staff of journalists and have the best drinks in town.

Q) When is a spokeswoman not a spokeswoman?

A) When she can't speak.

This is where I usually give the disclaimer about how I don't post often about politics--and I don't--but I think I can make a good case that this post is simply about being good at your job. If you are supposed to represent a national political figure, shouldn't you be able to string together a few coherent sentences?

Anderson Cooper: "I know nothing about sports."

And don't get me started on the tortured analogy about basketball. First of all, I take personally anything that impugns basketball. And second of all, it doesn't make a lick of sense: Palin is the... point guard... who is a leader... so she passes the ball, which allows her to... go to the hoop of "whatever she wants." Ooooookay.