BS I Love You

This text-messaging thing can  be hard on us literary types, and not just because it seems like one  more step in the steady march to our own utter irrelevance, but also  because we can’t help wanting to correct the messages we receive,  supply the proper punctuation and capitalization, the proper spelling.  At the very least, we would like our own messages to be grammatically  and orthographically sound. This, one quickly learns, is pointless.  One learns this quickly because that’s how things happen in the texting  world: quickly. Which is exactly why tending to the grammar and spelling  in text messages is pointless. There just isn’t time. Of course, seeing  as this wtf-btw-lol-2nite business started way back when, with e-mail  and IM, maybe most of us are over it by now, desensitized.

Maybe.

You might say I was getting  over it just before I took a job in Spain. I had come to accept the  wtf-btw-lol-2nite business as a kind of language in its own right, and  I had quit actively begrudging and/or pitying the friends who used it.  Then I pulled up stakes and moved to Spain, and if learning the fourteen  conjugations of a thousand some-odd Spanish verbs wasn’t tricky enough,  I was now obliged to learn Spanish texting. That is to say, before I  understood how to properly put the language together, I had to learn  how to properly tear it apart.

The task was complicated by  the fact that some Spanish texting looks like English texting. As an  example, the letter “k.” In the States a “k” is commonly used  to mean “okay.” (Typing “ok” takes way too long.) Spaniards  use “kk” in texting, but not to say “okay” in an emphatic way.   In Spanish the “k” is pronounced “ka.” “kk”, then, stands  for “ka-ka,” which stands for caca, which  means “poop.” So if a love interest writes “kk,” they’re not  giving a cutesy, eager yes-yes to your dinner-date proposal.  They’re saying something more along the lines of BS.

While we’re on the subject,  it’s important to remember that in Spanish texting, “bs” is not  related to caca in any way whatsoever.  It stands for  besos, or “kisses.” This is a common way for men and women to  sign off with each other, both in person, with one beso on each  cheek, and in text, with a “bs.” Americans in Spain should keep  the bs = besos equation in mind. My first few weeks in Puente Genil  I thought every Spanish woman I commenced a texting relationship with—my  boss, two female colleagues—was either bitterly anti-American or had  an especially sarcastic sense of humor.

gns  dl cafe tarde      bs!      I look forward to coffee this afternoon.   BS!

l dpt ingles 15:00    bs!   See you in the English Department at 3:00.   BS!

q  sientes n casa bs! Hoping you feel at home here.  BS!

In fact my colleagues were  just signing off, with besos. Nice of them. In person I would  have of course gotten actual kisses. This might be counted as an advantage  to the in-person way of doing things. Or not, depending how you feel  about kisses on the cheek.

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Correct Me if I’m Wrong

Here in Puente Genil we have a baffling number of portrait studios, almost one per block. Because there are so many portrait studios and so few people, to stay competitive the portrait studios constantly update their window displays. Normally the display presents some variation of the standard wedding/graduation/first-communion portrait, but every now and again a display will crack the mold and, for better or worse, really catch a visitor’s attention. As an example:

I may be missing something, here. I hope I’m missing something. Correct me if I’m wrong, but this appears to be two newborns (and I mean newborns, as in recently fetal) affixed to a colossal tangerine. Besides the obligatory What-the-flying-fuck?, another question comes to mind: Could the recently-fetal not have been made to look a little happier about their situation—whatever that situation is meant to be? I once read that mammalian young are cute for a reason: so that adult members of the species will want to hang around and take care of them. Maybe I’m not cut out for mammalian fatherhood, but when I saw this, I wanted to run.

Before I ran, I had to get a photo of the neighboring display, which, in the interest of what-the-flying-fuck, I’ll let speak for itself:

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Raising South Carolina

So the other night a Spanish  friend and I watched Raising Arizona, which in Spain is  called Arizona Baby. My friend is a big fan of Los Hermanos Coen, but she’d never seen this one, and I thought it might contribute to her understanding of American culture.

Boy, did it.

As it happened, the most difficult  part of the movie for my friend to accept was perhaps the most realistic  aspect of the plot: the fact nearly everyone in the movie is armed.  Mind you, this film requires the suspension of more than a little disbelief.  A lot of unlikely things happen. Gale and Evelle Snopes tunnel out of  prison.  H.I. McDonough dodges a shit-storm of lead from the firearms  in question, plus a pack of riled-up dogs. The Lone Biker of the Apocalypse  snatches a housefly out of the air with two fingers. Nathan, Jr., an  infant, survives being left on top of a getaway car (twice), and then  one hell of a ride on the handle bars of a Harley. All of this was easy  enough for my friend to accept. She did not question it. But the fact  that H.I. McDonough is armed, Gale and Evelle Snopes are armed, the  teenage cashier at the Quick Stop is armed, the manager at the supermarket  is armed, and Nathan Arizona (née Huffhines) is armed—she had to  wonder if this wasn’t exaggerating things a bit.

“I  do not believe this,” she said. “All these guns? What is this?”

It  had never occurred to me that the-better-part-of-a-population-packing-heat  might seem a little odd, if not downright psychotic. My friend had a  point. All I could offer was a lame, “Well—you know—it’s  Arizona.”

She  squinted at me, as if that had not really settled things. “Yes? So many guns? Like the Middle East?”

I offered something about a lingering frontier mentality in the West, a cowboy ethic that had never quite died.

“Ah,” she said—not totally reassured, but a little. “So then not in your part? Where you live not so many guns?”

“Well…” I hesitated. I’m from South Carolina. “How ’bout that Holly Hunter?!”

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Punky Tapersex

Spanish will often modify an  English word to suit her own needs, change the word’s spelling and/or  pronunciation and/or part of speech. It’s as if the language will  take a little globalization, but on her own terms. So: a tuxedo is known  as un esmoquin, from the English “smoking jacket”;  a standard is un estándar; a parking lot is un  parking; a punk rocker, un punky. Paddle ball is  padel, and a comic-book fanatic is un friki (pronounced  like “freaky”). A popular nightclub is sometimes called un  trendy; an after-party, un after; and the jet set,  la jet*.

Then there’s el  tapersex. What’s el tapersex? Is it some kinky Mediterranean  love-sport that involves adhesives? Or video? Or maybe Tantric feats  of stamina (“Easy, now…taper  off…taper…taper…”)? In fact, none of the above. El  tapersex is what happens when a group of women get together to learn  about the latest sex toys over light hors’ d’oeuvres.  That  is to say, el tapersex is Tupper sex. The short “u”  sound does not exist in Spanish—when hesitating, Spaniards don’t  say umm…, they say emm…—and what happens is the  short “a” frequently gets used instead. Hence, el tapersex.  Pronounced “TAH-per-sex.”

*La  because even thought the word for ”jet” is masculine (avión),  the Spanish expression for high society, la alta sociedad,  is feminine. Conversely, The Rolling Stones are known as Los Rolling despite the fact that the word for stones is feminine (piedras)—presumably  because, whatever Mick was up to in the early eighties, they are a group  of men.

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Sign Language

Fun with Gerunds

Fun with Homonyms

Fun with False Cognates

Fun with Hershey’s Kisses

No Fun at All

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Digital Aging

Like a lot of historic marvels,  the Alhambra in Granada swarms with visitors, and offers as much in  the way of people watching as it does in the way of Moorish splendor.  To best record the splendor, you are advised to take aim the camera  up. Otherwise you will end up with pictures of your fellow visitors—taking  pictures. What most people do at the Alhambra, most of the time, is  take pictures. The digital camera, of course, allows this.  Maybe  the digital camera even expects this of you. With a digital camera,  you can shoot hundreds of pictures, and later select a decent picture  from the comfort of home, which picture you may then send to family  and friends as evidence of your experience. In fact your family and  friends, viewing the subject on a screen, are having much the same experience  you did, maybe a better one—they are probably viewing the subject  on a larger screen, without the distraction of fellow tourists taking  pictures. All of which is simply to say that although the digital camera  makes recording life easier, it makes actually living life harder. Socrates  suggested that the unexamined life is not worth living. That may be  true, but the over-examined life is not really lived.

I don’t have pictures of  the Capilla Real, the Catholic jewel in Granada’s crown, because photography  is not permitted in the Capilla Real. This might make for a more enhanced  visit—an experience rather than a recording of an experience—but  for the fact that, perhaps precisely because photography is not permitted,  visitors tend to tour the chapel at a brisk, noisy pace. It’s as if,  since the wonders of the Capilla Real cannot be photographed, they are  of little value. Granted, the Capilla Real does not hold a votive candle  to the Alhambra, but again, the contemporary tourist is not known to  be selective with shots. Visiting the Capilla Real, a body almost gets  to wishing photography were permitted, so that folks might slow  down, and be a little quieter.

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Market Share

This is one of the wonders  of Córdoba. Córdoba was founded in 152 BC. The Burger King was built  a few years ago. It is located in the historic Judería district, directly  across from Córdoba’s famous mosque, the Mezquita (785 AD). At the  Burger King you will find standard BK offerings. At the mosque, you  will find not only the usual Moorish splendor, but several Catholic  chapels and assorted Catholic iconography. This is because in 1523 the  Catholic Church turned the mosque into a place of Christian worship.  In Córdoba, as in much of the world, the quest for market share has  been going on for some time, now.

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Charlie Geer is the author of the novel “Outbound: The Curious Secession of Latter-Day Charleston.” His work has appeared in Tin House, The Sun, Bloomsbury Magazine, and The Southern Review.

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