In a move completely out of the blue, on Friday I decided to try and learn French. There's really no reason behind it. It's just a new challenge. I've been at it for, oh, 48 hours. And I can't pronounce for shit. I read the phrase in a book. I hear the phrase spoken from a CD. I then try to repeat what I've just read and heard out loud. And it sounds like a garbled mess of, well, my trying terribly to speak French. I can't quite figure out which half of the letters to ignore when pronouncing them. I've gotten as far as thinking to myself, "Everything seems to run downhill in French." Meaning that the stress tends to be earlier in the word than I'm used to. So, next time you see me, don't say anything in French because I'm really not that far along yet (and I'll go all Kevin Arnold on you, repeatedly asking you if you'd like some butter - And if you know what I'm talking about, you too watched too much TV as a kid). Plus, by the time you see me next, I'll have most likely quit this whole, "I'm gonna learn French" kick.
Onto what I did learn in French (if you took French in school, you already know this, so just move along). I learned that they must've been drunk when they were inventing numbers. They were doing just fine through the 60's. Then, when it came time to invent a word for 70. They just said, "Eh, fuck it." So they continued with "sixty ten, sixty eleven, sixty twelve". Insert your own, "I guess they got stuck on 69 and... (fill in the ending here)" joke. By the time you count to 80, it's "Four twenties" and 90 is "Four twenties ten". It's like some sad, inefficient compromise between Roman Numerals and a real base 10 number system.
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If Super Troopers went all Brokeback. (Sadly, only the background music has changed). If you've never seen Super Troopers, all you need to see is the intro and you'll be hooked.
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