weekend distractions

Once again, I find myself with both school work and school work on a Saturday (curse you StatExact!) So I present to you, weekend distractions.

First up, ChinaSMACK! Ever wonder if YouTube-type comments in Chinese are as stupid as they are in English? Answer: for the most part, no, but unsurprisingly, occasionally yes. It's also just an interesting site for the sake of seeing what's currently news in our slightly batty neighbor across the Pacific Ocean*.

A good place to start is the comments on, you guessed it, Barack Obama's acceptance speech. Some of the comments will make you want to cry, some will make you vomit with rage, and a goodly amount will make you make that Paul Rudd scrunchy-face.

Niubi, by the way, is literally translated as "Ox Vagina". The closest English phrase is not "awesome" so much as "highfalutin". Like that word, it can be either pejorative or complementary. You'll know when you need that if you read it.

Also, luckily for him, Obama's name transliterates nicely into Chinese as 奥巴马. That's pretty much nonsense (profoundly hopeful horse?). It's a terrible nuisance when you're name transliterates into something that sounds like a commonly used phrase. Bush's name in Chinese sounded like the phrase for "is not".

*If world politics was a laugh track sit-com, who would China be played by? What about other countries? The U.S. is Fred Willard, no second thoughts about that.