(I’m only serious when I’m lying.)
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Here’s some advice…which, like facebook, is free and worth every penny. If you’re thinking to try and make a living writing a humor column, there are a few things you need to know:
- You’re an idiot.
- A lot of people will never figure out you’re just joking.
- Don’t waste your wallet trying to advertise your books on facebook. After all, the people who live their lives on facebook live there because they don’t want to read.
I’ll share a secret with you. One of my favorite things to do, now that sex is not an option, is to make absurd comments on facebook and then watch as various members of the Highly Indignant Truth-Checking Posse trip over themselves in their rush to point out that I’m wrong.
Example: Let’s say I make the comment that Hillary purchases her pantsuits in bulk, even when she only buys one. Inevitably, someone will huffily respond that Donald Trump spends his weekends eating live kittens. (Understand, this is what victims of Trump Derangement Syndrome call “counterpoint.”) Or I’ll point out that if China is planning to slap a tariff on US soybeans, then surely hot mustard and duck sauce are next. Within minutes, I’ll hear from some anal-retentive online scholar, posting a link to a graph charting statistical soybean futures analysis, a data model which, if I actually knew such a thing existed, I’d be embarrassed to admit it.
(That actually happened. Maybe. Or not. Tricky, isn’t it? And people wonder why I’m still single.)
Maybe I should just put a disclaimer on my facebook page: Never confuse anything I say with actual facts. Especially my facts.
So, now that you’ve been forewarned…here’s a list I found on the internet, that thoroughly vetted, infallible source of all true wisdom, and porn. The list is purported to consist of actual subtitles that have appeared in Asian movies, translated into English by someone for whom English is clearly their eighth or ninth language. (To be fair, their English is waaaaay better than my Mandarin.)
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- Quiet or I’ll blow your throat up
- A normal person wouldn’t steal pituitaries
- I’ll fire aimlessly if you don’t come out!
- Beware! Your bones are going to be disconnected!
- I’ll burn you into a BBQ chicken!
- Fatty, you with your thick face have hurt my instep
- Greetings, large black person. Let us not forget to form a team up together and go into the country to inflict the pain of our karate feets on some butt of the giant lizard person.
- I am very unsatisfied to be killed in this way
- Take my advice, or I’ll spank you without pants
- Who gave you the nerve to get killed here?
- You always use violence. I should’ve ordered glutinous rice chicken
- You daring lousy guy
- I have been scared silly too much lately
- I got knife scars more than the number of your leg’s hair!
- The bullets inside are very hot. Why do I feel so cold?
- How can you use my intestines as a gift?
- This will be of fine service for you, you bag of the scum
- I am sure you will not mind that I remove your manhoods and leave them out on the desert floor for your aunts to eat
- Yah-hah, evil spider woman! I have captured you by the short rabbits and can now deliver you violently to your gynecologist for a thorough extermination
- Gun wounds again?
- Beat him out of recognizable shape!
- Same old rules: no eyes, no groin
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Some of these phrases, I think, we’ve heard elsewhere.
WARNING: SARCASM AHEAD
For example, former Congressmen Andrew Weiner practically made a career out of sharing photos of his “manhoods,” not to mention his “short rabbits.” “I’ll fire aimlessly” was basically the cornerstone of Barack Obama’s foreign policy. And I guarantee you “I’ll spank you without pants” was overheard several times during the Clinton administration.
For some of the subtitles, I’m still trying to figure out what was happening in the plot at the time. “Fatty, you with your thick face have hurt my instep” might have been uttered in a Fred Astaire flick, but would have required a level of creative choreography that wouldn’t have been approved of in the 40’s. I suppose “how can you use my intestines as a gift?” might have been pensively uttered by Godzilla while shopping for a wedding present, or by a caller on the Cannibal Home Shopping Network. And though “a normal person wouldn’t steal pituitaries” seems obvious, it was actually taken from a verse in the timeless Woody Guthrie tune, “This Gland Is Your Gland.”
At the end of the day, though, it’s good to realize that people are people, everywhere, no matter their background, location, or choice of glutinous rice dishes. And that heartwarming, humanity-bonding news could not have been summed up any better than by this ageless axiom:
“Same old rules: no eyes, no groin.”
Go in peace, my Asian brother. You daring lousy guy.