Things Are Looking Real

Eva's mom told me today that I'm not allowed to post anything in French on my Facebook timeline, since she won't understand it if I do: I'll get a "wtf?" which I'll translate as "what the French".

So of course, upon reviewing the best music of the year on iTunes this evening, a song literally jumped out and slapped me. A French song, naturellement.

I'm going to have to write an attempt at an English translation to this, for my mother-in-law. Warning, there's a solitary dirty word in here.

NOTE--SKIP TO ABOUT 50 SECONDS IN FOR THE SONG.

 Serge Fiori-LE MONDE EST VIRTUEL ("The World is Virtual")

Ken's hopefully semi-accurate English translation:

When I watch a show in the Bell Center (arena in Montréal)

I see people everywhere tripping on the show on their cells

It's me that's lost but it's not natural

The world is virtual

I have my Facebook profile linked to my Twitter

The Twitter's linked to my toaster

So my English muffins can receive emails

The world is unreal

CHORUS

All alone, everyone's all alone

Gone, everyone's gone

So far, everyone is so far

I'm bored, I'm bored

Give me some Viagra, give me some Cialis

Give me high performance, the rest can go fuck itself

Give me porno flicks in my dishwasher

The world is sexual

Forget politics, give me the computer

Forget culture, give me something that makes me hard

Everyone in their gizmos, everyone all alone on their cells

The world is virtual 

CHORUS

The more things change, the more they're the same

Is there someone in the machine?

Is there someone to talk to me?

Send me a private message

Is there life in my friends?

Is there truth in my keyboard?

Is there blood behind the screen?

Or is it just the wind, just the wind?

I'm bored

The world is virtual

The world is sexual

The world is virtual

-------------------------

Without a doubt, my song of 2014. Have I not written most of that lately?

BUT MEANWHILE IN THE REAL WORLD:

Things are looking up.

This has been the best week of my year, socially, and it's not over yet. I want to thank each and every one of my friends--you know who you are--who has taken time out of a busy life to see me. I've been craving human contact, not just words on a screen, and what I got over the past six days (and more to come) will keep me going for a while. Thank you. You have no idea how much I appreciate you all. 

French final on Tuesday: I'm going into it with something like a 97% grade. I feel like a bit of a fraud. I'm one course away from supposed fluency--and let's just say that their idea of fluency and mine are VASTLY different. I had thought being "fluent' in French meant, for example, that I could take any one of these blogs I have written over the past ten years, sit down and translate it into coherent French. Or take a French blogger's posts and make them understandable in my native tongue. I am so, so far away from even thinking of considering the possibility of imagining attempting this. I wrote an essay, about 400 words, most of which I had written in English already here in this blog, and it took me three hours to do it. And I still made a few mistakes. I wasn't marked down for some of them because the teacher said I was using concepts I hadn't been taught yet (he actually had to get his dictionary out once)--the things he marked down were errors I should have known to avoid. I'm awful at that. Always have been, in everything. Get the hard stuff perfect, mess up on the easy stuff. Driving: parallel park easily, botch a simple right hand turn. Hockey: make an impossible toe save only to have the puck shoot between my legs ten seconds later.

But I'll take the mark I get, thankfully. And I will certainly cherish the contact. Gratefully. I hope to have other positive news soon as well.