Mission to Japan, German speaking

*** Dreamt June 20-21, 2011 ***

I had just arrived at my first area of my 2nd mission. This time I was serving in Japan. I was feeling kind of stressed, though, because since I'd been on a mission before, I didn't go to the MTC again, so I had no language training AT ALL. I met my first companion who was Elder Hiller (the same name as my first companion in the Philippines), but he looked EXACTLY like my roommate/slumlord from BkE, Thad. I told him about the language problem, and he seemed kind of surprised that I didn't even know the Japanese alphabet, so he said he'd help me. I was very excited to learn German (Yes, the language suddenly changed mid-dream) because I know several people who speak German, but as time went on, he kept putting it off and never did help me learn it.

Then I woke up.

*** ***

You know...Colt.

*** Dreamt Feb 14-15, 2010 ***
I was at Butterknifes Estates and we were all downstairs having a little party. We decided to play Mafia, but instead of normal Mafia with the ordinary roles (Mafia, detective, etc..) we were going to play Monty Python Mafia, where all the roles were based on characters from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail".

We went around the room, drawing our roles from a hat and when I got my slip of paper I saw I was supposed to be "Colt". I was confused. I thought these were supposed to be characters from The Holy Grail...I've seen that movie at least a dozen times...who is 'Colt'???

So of course I asked someone, to which they replied, "You know...Colt." He could apparently see from my expression that I didn't know, so he pantomimed Colt for me by doing a little dance and singing in a high-pitched voice "Heeey, I'm Coooolt....". I had no idea what was going on.

My old high school drama teacher was sudden amongst the party guests and started laughing at me and said, "Geez, I thought you knew that movie!" I was so confused!! I DO know that movie!! I demanded access to a computer and immediately looked it up on IMDB. Sure enough, there was the character Colt, but turns out he was a character in a DIFFERENT Monty Python movie!! I felt super vindicated and woke up.

*** ***

Odd Man Out

*** Dreamt January 9-10, 2010 ***

I was at a Singles Ward activity that had been planned by my former roommate, and Butterknife Estates Slumlord, Thad. Here was the activity: We were going to take a flight to California, and make-out with a random person the whole way. Yes, it was a ward-sponsored NCMO trip to California. We were still at the church, though, partners for the make-out session needed to be picked. Thad was in charge and the way he organized it was that it was going to work like a white-elephant present exchange, where a girl in the ward got to pick a guy, then the next girl could either pick an un-picked guy, or steal a guy from somebody else, but a guy could only be stolen 3 times, then he was stuck with that girl. The real rub was there was less girls than guys, so at the end there'd be some guys left who had to just go home. And you guessed it, when it was all over I was left behind. One of the girls told me, "Sorry, you're kinda cute, but you just didn't really have much of a personality."

*sigh*

So I left, and then the very next day I met an incredible girl whose head at one point strangely reminded me of a bottle of hand lotion. I thought the girl was amazing, but suddenly I didn't know where she was. Her brother was with me, but before I could ask him what her name was, he choked and died.

I started going through the receipts in my wallet to see if I could find anything with her name on it and I found one on which I had hand-written the name "Vaselli". I figured that must be her. So I started looking through my phone to see if she was one of my contacts.

Then her brother came back to life. He got up off the floor and cleared his throat and started mocking me for not having just asked him what her name was. I tried to explain to him that were thought he was dead due to his not breathing and having turned blue, but he simply said that doesn't die unless his windpipe is COMPLETELY blocked, and as it was, there was still a tiny bit of air able to get through.

Then I woke up.

*** *** ***

All I have to say is: Huh?!?

"Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit..."

*** Toned-Down on September 4, 2008 ***


Undoubtedly by publishing this I'm just opening up a can of worms, however, this is my soap box to the world, so I feel it necessary to vent.

My roommate Thad invented this game called "Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit". In a devious act to back up the claims made in his game, he then wrote a wikipedia page about it, so that he could say he didn't invent it. In a stroke of pure genius he changed some of the rules on the wiki page from his own rules, so it appears that he plays a variation of the "original" version.

The basic idea is that if you can convey the phrase "Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit..." to a person on the first day of the month before they have a chance to say it to you, you have successfully stolen their luck for the month.

You may be surprised to hear that Thad doing this to me doesn't annoy me...although I'm sure you won't be to learn that something else does!! "Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit" is one of the bizarre little Thadisms that I've come to know in my tenure as one of his roommates. When he does it to me, it's almost endearing, 'cuz he's such a strange little fellow from time to time. When other people do it to me, however, it kind of makes me want to KILL PEOPLE.

When Thad 'Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit's me I think, "GAH!! He got me again!!" When other people do it to me I think, "This isn't my game!! What's wrong with you? You're supposed to get Thad!". When Thad gets me, I don't try to get my other roommates who aren't around...I warn them and advise them to get Thad before he can get them.

To be honest, what annoys me isn't the game or that others are using this Thadism against me...it's that they think that they "got me", that they somehow beat me to the punch and out-smarted me. The truth of the matter is that I couldn't care LESS about getting them. The only person I care to 'get' is the originator Thad

Now I'm sure I just offended several people, because several people did it to me this month whom I KNOW read my blog now and then...although ALL of them got me HOURS after Thad did, I might add, at which point I could have text messaged all of them and got them WAY before they "got me", but I don't WANT to get them!! GAAHHHHH!!!!!

Okay. I've said my peace. I'm sure that several readers of this will, out of spite, "Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit" me next month. And once again I'll be incredibly annoyed and be forced to verbally abuse them to myself.

"Halt Die Klappe!"

So last night my trying-to-sleep roommate texted me to "Halt Die Klappe!". I, of course, don't speak German, so it seemed like an absurd thing to text me, because if it was instructions of some kind, I sure wasn't going to be able to follow. Luckily another roommate was in the room who claims to know some German, and he told me it meant "Shut up!". I thought surely that can't be right...if anything my roommate would have just said, "be quiet", right? Nope, I looked it up today on multiple sites and all of them interpretted it as a harsh way of telling a German to shut up (several of the interpretations included swear words to define its more precise English meaning).

Now I don't take offense to my arian roomie, because - as stated before - I don't speak German so a harsh phrase in it just sounds like gibberish to me (although I was a tad annoyed that he didn't just open his door and say something, as it was several people being loud). But it got me thinking about curse words. Now language itself is a very odd phenomenon if you think about it...this odd collection of sounds which somehow have meaning to us, but swearing is extra-odd. The concept that certain sound combinations OFFEND us is really kindof mind-boggling. What is it about these words that offend us anyway? It's obviously not the actual meaning behind the word, 'cuz there's a non-swearing way to say the same true meaning behind every curse word I can think of.

Is it bad to swear in another language? I guess it's the same bad-ness that is if you swear when you're by yourself. I've heard it said that the reason it's "bad" to swear is that the offender is exhibiting a loss of self control...but what if you say a swear word NOT in a moment of anger with no malice AND it's in another language...it's completely meaningless to you and your audience...that's not really bad, is it? But then if that's the case is it bad to simply SAY a swear word in your native tounge if you're by yourself (so as not to offend anyone) if you're not saying it in anger and are just saying it for fun? lol. Anyway, just some random thoughts that came from an evening of keeping my poor, sleepy roommate awake. ^^