I\u2019m standing at the urinal, confronted with the usual conundrum: Do I pee the Bonanza theme song or do I play the urinal translation game with the advertisement on the wall in front of me? I have already screwed up my urinary rhythm so I opt for the game.<\/p>\n
Urinal advertisement translation is a self-invented (and until now, esoteric) game which involves combining the 80% understood words with the 20% unknown words and the weird advertisement picture and making an unusual scenario out of it all.<\/p>\n
The girl is sitting on a bed chatting on a webcam with a boy who is somewhere in Asia. There are cartoon dialogue bubbles coming from their mouths. I create a dialogue that would, let\u2019s just say, not thrill any nun I ever had in grade school.<\/p>\n
My naughty avenue of interpretation is not totally my fault. Webcams are impossible to place in conversation without sounding lecherous and propositional.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can chat online, I have a webcam.\u201d<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t care if Kermit the Frog says this to Mother Teresa \u2013 in my mind, someone\u2019s getting naked. I suppose it\u2019s all about jumping to immediate conclusions.<\/p>\n
I blame movies.<\/p>\n
I jump to conclusions every day. A man with a black eye is a brawler; a woman with a black eye is the wife of a brawler. A man with a shaved head is either an athlete, bald as a cue ball or a Russian mobster. A facial tattoo means that person did time in prison.<\/p>\n
A mouth sore is up to your imagination.<\/p>\n
My translation game ends when my hydro-attack of the urinal cake is completed. However, returning the zipper to its upright position happens with too much ease. My zipper is broken.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s hard enough to credibly explain a broken zipper in English, but I am lacking key Czech vocabulary to describe my issue to a woman on the tram or a police officer.<\/p>\n
Pulling my sweater down as far as possible, I leave the restaurant. I get on the tram, which is packed with an inordinate amount of females today. Every one of them notices my shifty eyes, embarrassment-reddened cheeks and my backpack perched in front of my happy zone. I am sure that I appear to be a clumsy, red-cheeked fool with an unhealthy preoccupation with his backpack.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s pouring rain and so I duck into the pub at the bottom of my hill to wait out the storm. I grab a corner table in the back room, order a beer and take out my notebook and Kindle. I finally relax a bit; in the typical Czech pub you are left alone, and it\u2019s a perfect afternoon for a beer, reading and writing. I recline into the Civil War and block out the world.<\/p>\n
About an hour later a man asks to sit at my table and I motion that it\u2019s fine. He sits. I catch a glimpse of him a few minutes later. He is wearing a raincoat and has beady, mouse-like eyes. His hair is cut in a painfully unattractive manner \u2013 as though he uses a one-size clipper on his whole head. His fingers are diddling with a cigarette pack and his nose and eyebrows jump in nervous tics.<\/p>\n
Raincoat, twitchy, beady eyes \u2013 Conclusion: this man is a registered sex offender.<\/p>\n
He looks at me and I nod hello and go off to the bathroom where I engage in neither the Bonanza game nor the ad translation game.<\/p>\n
I get back to the table and the RSO smiles at me and makes a gesture with his eyes. Oh for Christ\u2019s sake, what does he want? I smile back and stick my face in my book, hoping he\u2019ll ignore me. He does not.<\/p>\n
\u201cExcuse me,\u201d he says in English. \u201cCan I come and chat with you?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, hm\u2026no, I\u2019m sorry. I want to read.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, ok. Well, your zipper is down.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cUm\u2026yes, I know.\u201d<\/p>\n
He gives me a weird look and nods his head. He\u2019s hitting on me! I look into my book and avoid contact with him for the rest of his stay at my corner table. A moment later, thankfully, he shuffles away from the table and leaves.<\/p>\n
I decide to leave an hour later and as I\u2019m passing through the front room I notice the shifty raincoat-clad RSO at a table in the front room. He is drinking and chatting with two guys. When he notices me he whispers something to them and they all look in my direction. I leave the pub with my backpack attached to the front of my trousers.<\/p>\n
I want to turn and shout \u2013 It\u2019s broken, I am not a registered sex offender! Don\u2019t jump to conclusions you mousey bastard!<\/p>\n
But instead I hum the Bonanza theme and step into the rain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u2019m standing at the urinal, confronted with the usual conundrum: Do I pee the Bonanza theme song or do I play the urinal translation game with the advertisement on the wall in front of me? I have already screwed up my urinary rhythm so I opt for the game. Urinal advertisement translation is a self-invented […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1EvEu-6K","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=418"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1090,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418\/revisions\/1090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}