shower thoughts

I know I said I was going to sleep but the shower always makes me think random thoughts. And since this is my blog I can say whatever the hell I want. So....

you know how sometimes you're performing a task or action and it jogs your memory? Say you're putting your hands together just so and you think of Mr. Burns, so you say "excellent". Well I was in the shower minding my own business, washin' my hair, when out of nowhere I thought: "Shampoooooo meeeeeee"-- in my own defence it was lathering really pleasantly. Back to the quote though, raise your hand if you've ever watched Captain Star. (oh em gee, it's all on the youtubes now!) So Jones (the 9 headed guy) gets this carpet and it spreads all over the planet and every now and again it says: "Shampoo me" in a mellifluous voice. It's brilliant. Or insane. This is what I had to come online to tell you about. Clearly I have no life. I'm not going to write about the show and its satirical bent and how Scarlette is totally Spock because then I'd be here forever. I just wanted to direct you to the awesome.

In other news, I went to the Prague Deli today. It's really home away from home since my mom doesn't cook anymore and I haven't lived with her in seven years anyway. I was listening to people speak Czech and Slovak as much as possible. There are many interesting words that don't properly translate into English. I'll write about those another time though. I started thinking about this in the shower. It's a curse, this inability to make my brain STFU. The trouble is: Czech and Slovak are similar languages. Many of the words are the same, except for the words for the months and some other ones that I don't really remember. So I was looking for a towel and thinking "zatraceny uterak" which roughly means "damn towel" when I realized "zatraceny" is a Czech word and "uterak" is a Slovak one (I'm too tired to accent these properly). Oy. So then I started thinking about which word would be proper in Czech, and it definitely wouldn't be "rucnik", more like..."osuska". Rucnik is more of a handkerchief, and it must come from the word "ruka" which means hand. When I think about it, the literal translation of it would be something like "a handy" (amusing) so it wouldn't work. Osuska works because it means "something to dry with", satisfying.

Don't get me started on the transition between feminine/masculine tenses depending on conjugation, preposition, conjugation of adverbs, conversion to plural, blah blah blah.

When you're born into it, language is easy. You never really try to pick it apart, until you learn another one...and start thinking about useless things in the shower.