Pho Pas

(okay, I know the Pho needs some sort of mohawk on the O, but I don’t know Vietnamese. Sorry.)

It’s been a while since the last mission to Manglish. I’ve moved, gotten a new client or two, deferred doing my taxes, trying to get health insurance for me (Blue Cross still insists I’m too heavy at 6’2″, 220???) and we’re entering month two of the Check Engine Light on my SUV. Why did I move back to the states again? If anyone reading needs a web 2.0 guy, photographer, writer, or heck, even a bodyguard in China, Japan, Malaysia, Taiwan, Indonesia, Thailand, or Singapore, let’s talk. Barring that, I’m braving some Dilbert and getting my crap together. I’ll be in China again in the fall – it can’t come soon enough. In the meantime, the antics of the stateside Chinese are plenty to keep us all occupied. Not only do they have the same mangled product names here, add in the extra dimension of tension and trash talk between ABC (American Born Chinese) and those from the motherland. Someone get me some popcorn!

You know, I’ve never had a big problem with dandru.

it might be grammatically correct, as in two nouns as direct objects, but in American English, this makes you sound like Lotka from Taxi. How do you say “nuance” in Chinese?

again with the RandoM CapitalS.

Handwritten signs are the best – my daughter could do better with a marker between her toes. Would a place that couldn’t be bothered to get to Kinko’s really be bothered to wash hands or not drop my Beef Balls onto the greasy floor?

“Hey I know! Let’s just throw some random English words onto our product that describe it but sound like someone playing $25,000 Pyramid!” Egg….Flour…Cake… “Things you find in a kitchen?” Flour…Soft…Egg… “Um – things in a bakery?”

Again, it’s correct, but sounds like one of my buddies from college. “Hey man, sure, I’m definitely going to call you – definitely.” Then you hear that he impregnated some girl and moved back to Wyoming. Good Times.

Aren’t these Donald Duck’s nephews?

So what, the coconut jelly was on a vegetarian diet? Apparently the hairiest fruit can also eat meat? I never trusted them – they look too much like Captain Caveman‘s balls.

What kind of Snoopy-knockoff cadet-looking dog would wear space age crap that wouldn’t make the cut on Buck Rogers? And by the way – he isn’t even WEARING shoes!

Someone painstakingly spelled out “exforliating” not once but twice. Hopefully they take more care with my corns and bunions.

make our blog world more funny!

You could really help my “new enjoyment” by limiting yourself to less than SIX fonts. For the love of god.

That duck looks kind of guilty – maybe because he’s the Jeffrey Dahmer of Avian Chefs. At least he doesn’t waste much – what the hell are HINGE feet?

Again, handwritten signs are gold. This was in Chinatown, of course. You can see their complete misunderstanding of punctuation, the word fixe (unless they’re french,) and I’m not sure I’ll give them the G in “ring.”

This struck me as funny – 20% off what? You just opened! Say you have low prices, but any discounting you’re doing is all in your head.

salt backed? is this like the chicken equivalent of a crown of thorns?

I’m really not sure why they had to put up a sign telling us we were on the sidewalk – it was painfully obvious to me.

How verbose – and check out the right. “Seeds. Ha. Tasty!” To which I’d add. “Better spit that shit out, n00b! ROTFLMAO!”

This was from a mostly blank diary bought in Foshan for a friend. read it carefully – this page mentions “news,” but why? The book is blank. It does drop some names, like “the global coalition against terror” and “Joint Strike Fighter.” From what publication did they cut and paste this stuff? Are they pirating CIA documents, now, too?

This is the bathroom of a Safeway in San Francisco – not mangled, just filthy and disfigured as all hell. It also reeked of bum and bumpf. Even the dankest bathrooms in China aren’t vandalized like this. Why are we so different? So disrespectful? God, I’m sounding like a parent, aren’t I?

these dudes sound really busy. How would you ever know if they put you on hold?

from the same diary – Fom the first time I read it, I was terribly confused.

Man, I bet these sell like hotcakes. Followed closely by a Heroin Hoagie and a Roofy Wrap.

More soon, I swear!