Tuesday 12th May 2009 – Shopping and Telling Jokes Badly

Whenever I take a wrong turning, or, more likely, fail to take a right one, Dulcinea, who is destined to be called 'Dulcie' before long, pauses, then says "recalculating".  Then she picks up directions for the new route.  It's so reassuring to have someone calm and concentrating when I get lost.  I have decided I will do this myself: from now on, instead of  "you've missed the turning, you stupid cow!", I will confine myself to "recalculating".  Of course, they'll know what I mean.

The fair Dulcinea has wafted me from address to address with never a flutter.  I only have to find an address on the web, and I'm as good as there.  Except for Lyndale Avenue, of course, which Hennepin County has turned into a large pile of soil without bothering to tell her.  I know they haven't told her because I spent a whole night last weekend getting her up-to-date on all the changes in North America.  So I have now joined that growing band of hapless motorists who have driven into a roadworks site because some disembodied voice from the dashboard told me to.

Anyway, the result of all this to-ing and fro-ing has Rossey nearly fully (ha ha) equipped for our adventure.  The fair D is poised and ready: a couple more days.

 

I was parked outside the auto parts shop (or so Dulcinea assured me).  I went in, only to find a single reception counter, as in the service part of a garage.  "Have you got a shop here?", I ask.  "Yes, of course we have.  What do you want?"  "I just wanted to look round it, see what there was", I said.  He looked pretty non-plussed.  "No, you can't do that", he said, "it's too dangerous.  There are people working in there".  It dawned on me.  Another language difficulty: 'shop' means 'workshop' in this context.  "No, no", I say, "parts, retail".  "Oh, that's next door: that way".  He looked relieved to be getting rid of me.

 

Later that night, in the local Irish bar (I have discovered a whole locality constructed entirely of Irish bars) I was regaling them with my mishaps.  'They' were a young man, who had been there some time, and the barmaid, who hadn't.  We got onto the subject of jokes, and our language and accent differences.  I had heard a (I thought) terrific joke on 'Saturday Night Live', concerning Reese Witherspoon and Jake Gyllenhaal (the youngsters reminded me of their names).  So I thought I would give it an airing.

I expect you've all, by now, heard 'The Arisocrats' joke: there's a film about it which has been on one of the dirtier TV channels, BBC2 or Channel Four.  It's a kind of test for comedians.  Well, I've got a new test.  My telling of this joke, which I shall refer to as the 'vowel' joke, was excruciating.  The difficulty in telling it across these divides of language and accent (I think I can just about recognise a Northern Minnesotan accent now) became the joke itself, as we staggered from one misunderstanding to another.  I'll give you the bones of the joke: your test, should you choose to accept it, is to tell it slow enough, and drop enough language and accent hints to get an immediate laugh at the punch line, rather than that puzzled look which people have when they want to be friendly and a joke ends before they expect it to.  If you are telling it to old people, there will be the added difficulty of them perhaps not understanding the basic concept in the first place.  Anyway, SNL (as it likes to call itself these days) was going on about Reese W: a whole series of jokes, about her and JG getting married/together.  And it ended with the one about them even making up their own vowels.  Geddit?  No?  OK, Let try this another way: you see, they were getting married, so there would be vows, you see, and young people these days … NO, NO,STOP, STOP!  … and you have noticed how they spell their names … NO, NO, STOP, STOP!  … Oh, alright.  But, he can't stop himself adding, defiantly, I thought it was funny.