That Moment...

TMW you now want to play Fallout.

 

Ha! I got booted from the page after posting the following image last night.

 

Wait...I’m a little extra dyslexic today, so forgive my stupid question, but...Are you saying you, the ultimate-hammer-Banner-in-Chief got banned?

There’s something about that that makes me giggle. Now I picture you running around all over the Internet, taking out your frustrations at dealing with the likes of us and getting yourself banned from Forum after Forum.

 

Pfft. It's not the first time.

I’m still banned from one of the largest forums for interpreters and translators because I didn’t show the proper monastic sense of subservience.

(Cue Gregorian Chant music).

Interpreters can be a very squirrelly bunch of people and it’s one of those professions that has a strong religious presence because for those people who belong to branches of Christianity that demand they go out and do good works for their fellow man, this job counts. It’s hard to explain, but the whole “I am but the humble interpreter here to serve and grovel” is a very real element in my world and that kind of piety sits very poorly with me.

It’s not real; it’s performative, like humble-bragging, so I feel the need to poke it with a stick - hard - in the eye.

 

I know a guy who is an uptight, strait-laced supervisor at his full-time gig and a complete slacker at his part-time job. Says it keeps him balanced...

Ironically, I'm much more even-keeled and considerate online than IRL. Dunno how that happened...

 

That’s hilarious! And annoying, because I’m all for poking that sort of thing with a stick as well. Questioning blind adherence to systems is the stuff of making improvements and advancing everything. You have my sympathies.

(Edited out an extra word.)

 

What actually got me banned was the following:

In the U.S., nearly all interpreters have English as one side of their language pair, for obvious reasons. Polyglot 'terps are quite rare in the grand scheme of things. I am one of those bizarre unicorns that can do Spanish/Russian interpreting. The forum in question had no problem with members creating threads with silly little memes or copy-pasted ditties about the strangeness/opacity/bizarreness/whatevz concerning English. But only English. English was fair game to make fun of, all other languages were verboten, off limits, запрещено (zapreshcheno).

The main reason for this is that - by and large - the community of interpreters in the U.S. is comprised of people for whom English is their second or less dominant language, so their native languages are precious artifacts that can only be spoken of in the holiest of terms, and you're free to figuratively wipe your butt with English.

Of course, I could not see that kind of dichotomy and not point it out.

I got warned.

I got warned again.

I never said or did anything that was rude or something I wouldn't say in polite company. I just refused to obey this two-faced, unspoken rule. I'm cool with a rule that says no language gets made fun of, or a situation where any language is fair game, but not one where one language is treated differently to the rest.

ETA: Add to that my profound distaste for the whole "I am more transparent than thou" virtue-signal game and it was bye-bye Wreybies. Interpreters have a kind of mantra. "I am transparent. I am not here." It has to do with not inserting yourself into the conversation. You are only the linguistic conduit for two (or more) other people speaking. You are not an actual part of the conversation. All of that is true and essential to the job, but again, there's who you are when you're clocked-in and there's who you are on your free time. If you wanna' walk around in your monk's robes 24-7, have at it, but I'm in shorts and a tank top when I'm not at work. A couple of admittedly dorky jokes about 3rd stage Guild Navigators is what got the ball rolling...

 

I still think that's kind of on them for not being able to laugh at their fandom. The creators of my favourite show made an entire episode mocking themselves, the characters, and the fandom.

 

TMW you read a phrase in your book, and then hear someone sitting behind you say the exact same phrase in a phone call.

 

"I recall certain moments, let us call them icebergs in paradise, when after having had my fill of her –after fabulous, insane exertions that left me limp and azure-barred–I would gather her in my arms with, at last, a mute moan of human tenderness (her skin glistening in the neon light coming from the paved court through the slits in the blind, her soot-black lashes matted, her grave gray eyes more vacant than ever–for all the world a little patient still in the confusion of a drug after a major operation)–and the tenderness would deepen to shame and despair, and I would lull and rock my lone light Lolita in my marble arms, and moan in her warm hair, and caress her at random and mutely ask her blessing, and at the peak of this human agonized selfless tenderness (with my soul actually hanging around her naked body and ready to repent), all at once, ironically, horribly, lust would swell again–and 'oh, no,' Lolita would say with a sigh to heaven, and the next moment the tenderness and the azure–all would be shattered."

Yeah, that happens a lot.

 

On a train:
"Lo', want to go to Marble Arch?"
"No," she moaned while disengangling herself from his embrace. "I'd much rather go home and have some fun!"
"But, we're half way there!"
Unlucky moron, I thought.

 

You defended the English language! Why? No one makes more fun of English than those who speak it. It doesn't need to be defended. It's happy to be the bastardised, hand-me-down, mongrel language that is also the de-facto world language of all who care to abuse it; that's why it's so popular. It's pretty relaxed about being moulded and formed into a local dialect. There are even places in the country of its birth that I defy you to understand what is being said, even though what is being spoken is undeniably English or at least a cousin that was birthed by marrying another cousin of English.

 

Good thing Poe never remarried.

 

Well... make that 5oz. I had a bit in my morning coffee.

 

LSD mentioned. I don't like to write while such things are around... Makes writing kinda hard. But the again once opened the stream will just flow.

There ain't, usually, any sense but one can edit later.

 

Tart.

 

But your butter/margarine hasn't melted.

 

Avocado? Avocado on a breakfast plate? AVOCADO ON A BREAKFAST PLATE?????????

I am beaming high-intensity disapproval rays at your breakfast.

 

What's going on? Who are you working for?

 

Ewwww.

 

@dapper -he's not married a lama

 

TMW you randomly purchase a loaf of multi seed granary bread because 'it just looked so good'

followed by

TMW you find yourself wondering when you turned into your mother.