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Today a colleague thanked me for helping him:

“Here in Brazil when somebody does stuffs really quick and help us we say: YOU ARE THE GUY!.. don’t know if that means something…”

I laughed for a moment, but I’m not even sure where this got lost in translation. Did our phrase get translated to Portuguese wrong originally? Does Portuguese have two words equivalent to “man” and “guy” even? Or perhaps he just chose “guy” when he translated it back for me. But those possibilities betray our pretentious ethnocentricity, I think. Perhaps it was a perfect translation of a Portuguese idiom unrelated to ours, or perhaps our idiom derives from theirs; in any case, “you’re the man” is not intrinsically more sensible than “you’re the guy”.

Completely reasonable mistranslations illuminate the silly subtleties of English; as I work with more of our overseas friends in a language of obscure minutiae, where “you’re the man” means something completely different than “you’re The Man”, I can look forward to even more moments of confusion knowing precisely the words being said but not the meaning intended. Now I’m even more curious what an Indian colleague means when he says “people are dancing on my head”.

And yes, my punctuation is outside of my quotes, because Lynne Truss says it’s okay.

The laptop is free. It’s better described in pictures than in words.

Though sawing through a laptop lock is not hard per se (though it is fun), it’s not exactly the kind of thing someone could do while you nip off to the bathroom for a minute. But, I still don’t think the manufacturer should send step-by-step instructions without more significant coaxing.

Unfortunately, we’ll have to discover a new target for Trapped in the Closet jokes now.

Go watch or read Obama’s candidacy announcement speech. It’s refreshing. Good snippet (there are many more):

What’s stopped us from meeting these challenges is not the absence of sound policies and sensible plans. What’s stopped us is the failure of leadership, the smallness of our politics – the ease with which we’re distracted by the petty and trivial, our chronic avoidance of tough decisions, our preference for scoring cheap political points instead of rolling up our sleeves and building a working consensus to tackle big problems.

I’ve used less than 18 gallons of gas since December 14. I’m proud. That is all.

[This message was approved by Al Gore.]