Do you know what über means? I’m sure you understand très chic? And when you are tuned to the Weather Channel and they are talking about El Niño, do you see it written in the graphics as El Nino? Let’s get really crazy here and test your smarts…how do you pronounce the word “garçon”?
Sometimes I just get stumped. I live in a world where, as I sat in a surgical waiting room, steps away from where Donny Diva was just taking in gulps of air, Book Boy took pictures with his iPhone and the Dr. who is on the other side of the globe opened his email before I did to view instant pictures. I think I am in the year 2009 – almost through the first whole decade of the 2000’s – living in America…so advanced, so modern, so technologically savvy – then I have to stop and think again.
Like yesterday for instance. Yes, here in America. Yes, in a hospital with a Level 1 Trauma center – one that is hoping to be the next Mayo Clinic…the Medical Mile. Go Michigan! Into the hospital room where Donny Diva and Shop Girl are quietly minding their business walks a minion with the piece of paper that will be filed as the official birth certificate. But wait! A very astute and alert Shop Girl, despite her vicodin haze notices an “error”. She would like his name is spelled with an “ø” not an “o”.
“Sorry – the state of Michigan won’t allow any foreign letters.” What? “The State of Michigan won’t allow any foreign letters.” Yes, now I get it. We are IN America but not OF America. Isn’t our language made up of foreign words that we’ve appropriated into our everyday speech? 
You can’t use foreign letters because…why? Because they are unrecognizable? More so than many of the compilationnamesthatdon’tmakemuchsenseandIcan’tpronounce? I’d rather imagine it is because someone is too inept to be able to figure out that if the ø is already on the iPhone that there is ALSO a way to find it on your stupid non-Mac keyboard too! Dear God, people…we live in a Google world!!! And excuse me, but if Hamid Karzi can speak flawless English, can’t we get our bureaucrats to learn to use a fricking international keyboard? Oh, no…they can’t. When I just looked up how to spell that foreign word, I read the meaning
2. an official who works by fixed routine without exercising intelligent judgment.
I had to do my steely-eyed magic on Shop Girl to keep her flying out of the bed and tearing the poor girl’s hair out. We let her have her way and Shop Girl had to learn the first lesson in mothering…the State don’t mean @(*#&$^@. So what if his birth certificate has his name misspelled. From that official document you get a passport. They won’t be able to read it at passport control anyway!
1eyedmonkee 