DOUBLE-DUTCHED

Some of my readers disturb me. I cannot even fathom what odd search on the internet brought them to my blog, and judging by some of the things they write, it is entirely unknowable if they found what they were looking for.


Drugs? Sex? Large men wearing horse heads and cut-away chaps? Beef stew?


It is very much baffling. As, indeed, are the comments they place under some posts.
I'm not referring to Grant Patel and his unique point of view - I know where he's coming from, I think - but rather some of the anonymi and near-anonymi.
The people who are not Grant Patel, who always writes in English.
Other people.


Such as the person who wrote this:
Zingbats der hoopten dutchies. O ja. Ja bezicherds. Wir willen noks das tu bainsulted die frummer dutshen, dey iz die bester poopel in der world. O ja. Vould ich gegegen du liest? Ober guntser nein. Dutch di biyutifullest lengevidje aalzo. O ja. Du a grosser meaner man!

---Grompter Puntillish


The dear lord only knows what he thought he was writing. I certainly cannot figure it out; I doubt anybody can. Perhaps mr. (miss?) Grompter Puntillish used a translation program. He left it under this post: ENKELE VLUCHTIGE OPMERKINGEN, which is entirely in Dutch. What Grompter Puntillish (mr? mrs? miss?) wrote was NOT in Dutch. I think he (she?) is reacting to a perceived denigration of the Dutch - the words 'bainsulted' and 'meaner man' in the comment suggest this possibility.


Grompter Puntillish may be labouring under a misapprehension. I would never insult the Dutch, in fact I hold them in the highest esteem. How could I do otherwise? After all, I spent the best years of my youth living among them in their lovely little country, their language is both second nature and sixth sense to me, and many of my closest friends are Dutch.
The Dutch, in actual fact, are a remarkably civilized lot. I would never write anything insulting about them.
As Grompter Puntillish says, they are bester poopel.