TOTALLY UNAWARE OF THE SCORE

The best Singlish conversations are, obviously, Singaporean. Which mixes Hokkien Chinese and English in a way that's both unintelligible and stylish. The first adjective describes the first part of the mix, the second the latter. American Canto Singlish doesn't do that.
Neither can regular American English mixed with English.
Footblish.


Yesterday several conversations in which I periferally took part discussed football. Not soccer, which is what the rest of us understand by the term football, but something involving pigskins, shiny spandex, junk food, and a popular fetish among Americans.

Sorry, I never got into "football".

I prefer my circles more circular.

Several conversations yesterday involved activity on screen behind me. To which I was paying no attention.

A very dear friend in Georgia was in hog heaven all day. With his dogs, who presumably also enjoy watching informative television programs about chasing things, though the fetish for shiny spandex rumps likely does not speak to them.

Welcome relief from the tedium was provided by pipe smokers, with whom matters medical and political were discussed. As well as McConnell's Scottish Cake.

[ROBERT MCCONNELL – SCOTTISH CAKE: Virginia and Kentucky with a smidge of Burley. Lovely thin-sliced broken flakes. In the tin-aroma the Virginia dominates, less so in the smoking. Grassy, citrusy, earthy. Creamy. It's good stuff.]


Most of the time I'm an all-American boy, proudly wearing my bib-overalls and sucking on a long juicy hay stalk while stroking my tractor out in the corn field, dreaming of grease-burgers (please imagine Johnny Cash playing in the background over the idling farm vehicle), but during football season I revert to my Euro-trash identity, and think fondly of other things.

Between now and the first Sunday in February, many of my fellow American males will make as much sense as a flock of wild turkeys, possibly fighting over a cadaver in their midst, all gobble gobble gobble gobble gobble gobble gobble gobble gobble gobble.

Many conversations will be impossible.


A gender hadicap.




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