Understanding Women - Part 1

A recent study asked men to list a few of the things women do that are the most difficult to understand. Their responses will be addressed in a new series entitled: "Understanding Women".

Item One: Why do women always ask "What are you thinking about?"

I know it is annoying, but this has to do with Women's Intuition. Fully devoloped Intuition is not something a girl is born with, and it doesn't suddenly just sprout into existence as soon as she reaches womanhood. These are actual mental powers that she spends most of her life carefully honing and developing (often without realizing it). For example: all mothers can read their children's minds (up until they reach the age of 14). This isn't a gift that is given to her the moment her child is placed in her arms. She has to work on it. And most women do that by practicing on their significant other. A girl will ask her boyfriend "What are you thinking about?" Not because she doesn't know, but because she's pretty sure she DOES know, and she wants to see if she is right. In this way her mind reading abilities with be tested and strengthened and ready to use on her unsuspecting children.


(Incidentally, if a girl does ask you this, what she WANTS to hear is "I was thinking about how great we are together", or "How beautiful you look in that sweat suit" or "I was coming up with names for our future children." Even if it isn't true, you will still get points for saying it.)


Stay tuned for our next installment, when we address a related frustration men share: "When women expect us to read their minds"!

Heavy goods

It might seem that at least the English portion of this Welsh sign does not need interpretation. However, a better understanding of this sign and all of it's implications will save you from a lot of pain and inconvenience.

Imagine that you need "heavy goods" delivered directly to your home; Say, perhaps, anvils. Alas, the Anvil Delivery Truck is not allowed in. You could try to hand carry the anvils in, but that often leads to smashed toes.

One idea might be to try to make a case that the anvils reside in the residential area, and as such are not violating the rules in any way. Good Luck with that.

The Welsh portion of this sign is more understanding of this type of difficulty.
If your Welsh has grown a bit rusty, I'll help you out.
"I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated."

Hence, all you need do is pretend that you only speak Welsh, and that the anvils really need some translating, and could they please wait in the office for a while?

Problem solved.

Understanding "2001: A Space Odyssey" - Part 1

There has been some buzz on the blogosphere lately about the confusing nature of the Movie "2001: A Space Odyssey". If you feel this same confusion, never fear. You have come to the right place. (Also, never fear, I promise never to use the word "blogosphere" again.) I understand the crap out of this movie. So hold on, cuz you are about the get the interpretation of your life:

The Movie begins with a segment depicting prehistoric man: Australopithecus Afarensis. A fun fact is that this scene doesn't actually go with the rest of the movie. It is a short film the director originally created for his filmography class in JR. College. Ironically, his teacher really hated his movie, so it didn't get to debut on Student Movie night as planned. The director never quite got over it, so he added it on the front of this movie just to stick it to his teacher.

So, the real movie begins at the beginning of the 21st Century. It is a little hard to tell, but most of this movie takes place in space. We actually never get to see what life on earth is like at this point in time. However, judging by the furniture in the space station, it is safe to assume that Ikea is the ruling power.

What we see starts out pretty strait forward. There has been a discovery on the moon, and a bunch of guys sit around in a room and talk about it. But this is all very symbolic, and without coming to terms with some of the symbolism, you will feel like a fish out of water.

(You will also really start to notice by now that the movie is moving very slowly. That is something you are just going to have to get used to. Everything in this movie takes a long time. Things that could be shown in one or two minutes take five or six minutes in this movie. This was a very revolutionary way of filming. Back in the day, movies moved so fast you often had to watch the WHOLE time, just to keep up with the story. But the director's vision was to have each shot move so slowly and take so long that the audience would get bored enough that their boredom would cycle all the way back into interest. No one had ever tried anything like this before. That is why the movie got so many stars.)

He used the idea of a monolith in his short film about prehistoric man, and decided to run with it. This monolith, which later resembles a large, smooth chocolate bar, symbolizes impatience and greed. (And it doesn't like to have it's picture taken, just like all those people out there who are impatient and greedy.) He really wants to warn against impatience, because it is the number one thing that will insure that people will walk out of his movie.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of the interpretation of "2001: A Space Odyssey", which will be published as soon as I can come up with it.

Rolling Out The Welcome Wagon

Translation: I really, really need a hug. Right away. Pretty please?

engrish.com

Peeking into Nerdhood: Episode 1

I realize that this post begins with a long preface. I couldn't help the flow of words, much like the flow of bees out of a hive that has been disturbed. Please wade through the preface, I promise to get to the interpreting at some point.

I am sometimes asked to do tech support for people, which is probably one of the most enjoyable and rewarding efforts a human being can be involved in. I find it equally as enjoyable as activities like:

• Brushing my teeth with a fully charged cattle prod.
• Cutting my toe-nails with armed, pin-pulled hand-grenades.
• Eating my own face.
• Watching Dancing with the Stars.
• Death
  

Ah yes, as you can see, the joys of tech support are limitless. Often when I am helping someone configure their new bluetooth-enabled cluster of geosynchronous brain lasers, I end up having to explain some of the technical jargon. So, I thought that I could begin a series of episodes that would take a handful of tech terms and explain them for the normal Joe, or Joe-ita. You are the people that aren't concerned by the fact that Data didn't have a bluetooth or wifi connection into the main computer of the enterprise. Why oh why did they have to always hard wire his head into the system for him to communicate directly with the computer? Oh, am I off topic again? Sorry.

In this Episode, I will interpret the terms: Power Cycle, and Modem.

Power Cycle:

Sometimes when you are on the phone with a kind, caring, non-spongebob-squarepant-pajama-wearing tech support agent, you may be asked to power-cycle something. Usually your cable modem. The reason for this is that cable modems were forged from the same fires as the ring of power that Frodo had to destroy to save middle earth. When the ring was destroyed, so was any sanity in the way that cable modems and many other electronic devices are programmed.

Definition

There are two forms of Power Cycling: The first is the act of spinning one's body 360 degrees with one leg extended which results in the kicking of an electronic device during the last part of the spin. This action is very similar to what ninjas and karate types call a "roundhouse."

The second form is that of holding the device by any of its cabling and spinning the device in a circular motion like a windmill. Best results are achieved if the device is allowed to hit the floor, ceiling, counter-top, or other hard surfaces as it spins around. At least 10 revolutions are recommended for a complete Power Cycle.

Modem:

Modems were invented by a husband and wife team of computer nerds to solve two huge problems that nerds everywhere were facing. Number one: Nerds needed to be able to communicate with each other and other humans, but needed a way to remove all emotion, tone, and personal interaction from the transfer of ideas. Number two: Nerds had been having little to no success making friends with other humans because of their sociological and hygienic deficiencies. Thus they needed a way to contact and communicate with new people, without the new people seeing, smelling, or hearing them.

Interesting fact: Windows Millennium (Windows ME) was developed as a weapon against modems. The developers on the Windows ME project believe that computers should never be allowed to communicate with each other, lest they all band together and tear a hole in the fabric of space with their infinite floating point calculations. Anyone who installed Windows ME would find that their modem would stop working, as would most everything else on and attached to their computer.

Definition

Modem is short for "More of them." Referring to the amount of friends that nerds thought they would acquire through the use of the device.

I hope that you have found this article useful. If there are other terms that you would like me to explain, please email them to me at lance@orbsix.com.

Beads Jewels

One of our faithful readers recently received a solicitation from a bead supplier. The closing statement was a bit confusing, so she sent it over to us for interpretation:

Hope soon we will get a chance from your side to became your loyal customer by providing us a sample order to judge us.

Regards,
Beads Jewels


I think I have finally cracked this one. If you are into beads, you may have seen some that are so cool, it seems they must have been made by magic. Well I think "Beads Jewels" is a supplier of these "magic beads". And they operate out of a different dimension. Each year at the autumnal equinox, they "cross over" to our side to drum up business and to stock up on ketchup packets, and they were sending you a "heads up" so that you could be "prepared". Once they arrive they plan to "loyal customer" you until you are so sick of them you either sign them as your vendor and place a sample order, or you send them to small claims court. I think it is kind of a bold "business" move, but it just might work!

Found these at Quote Mountain, and knew right away I had to make sure all those who read them understood them. A little known fact about proverbs from this era, is that they were rarely symbolic. Imagine all the confusion that has been caused by poeple looking for the deeper meaning in them. Few things will bring you more pain and destruction than misunderstanding an old proverb. Here we go.


Chinese Proverbs*

Public before private and country before family.
Despite how it sounds, this is simply a mantra referring to proper alphabetizing. C before F. Pu before Pr... Well, yeah, it's incorrect, but I'm not the one who came up with this proverb!

Waiting for a rabbit to hit upon a tree and be killed in order to catch it.
Similar to the saying 'You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar', this old proverb is saying that the best way to catch a rabbit is to just camp out next to a tree and wait. Odds are that EVENTUALLY some speedy rabbit will come flying along, run straight into that tree and break his neck, and then he is yours!

Do not use a hatchet to remove a fly from your friend's forehead.
No other interpretation needed. I know you want to. It seems logical. But just don't, OK?

Once on a tiger's back, it is hard to alight.
Lighting a candle while sitting on a tiger is difficult. Heck, sitting on a tiger is difficult. It is best to light your candle first, THEN climb on the tiger.

A tiger never returns to his prey he did not finish off.
If, while trying to ride the tiger as a family, the tiger manages to catch one of you and carry him off, that is it. Even if he doesn't eat the whole person, he is not going to bring you the leftovers.

Talk doesn't cook rice.
This, of course, refers to the infamous Talk, that Chinese help servant who burnt his masters rice so badly that his master was stuck in the outhouse for days (didn't know rice could do that, did you?) This is just to remind people, that if you meet Talk, don't let him cook for you, even if he asks nicely.

There are always ears on the other side of the wall.
This is very similar to our old saying "The grass is always greener on the other side." If you are in the market for ears, (or kidneys, or the perfect black dress, or other things that are impossible to find) good luck. No matter where you look, they will always be "just on the other side of the wall".

Steal a bell with one's ears covered.
This is actually supposed to read 'Steal a bell with one ear covered'. Don't ask me, it is an old ninja trick. Of course it doesn't work to cover both ears, because you are still gonna need one hand for carrying the bell. However, covering one ear confuses the bell so that it can't tell whether you can hear him or not, so he just won't bother to expend the energy.


There you have it. You now have the information you need proceed with your life in wisdom and prudence!


*We really do not mean to pick on the Chinese here. It is just that there is so much to work with. Don't worry, soon we will move on to another culture and make fun of their bad translations instead.