Grandads, Dads, Sons, & Grandsons

In my reply to rollick's Monday Mini-Poll, I mused whether the time to tell my father about how his selfish behaviour is alienating his sons would ever come. I said I rather doubted it would, but the events of this past Christmas might have made things a little easier.

Dad is, in my stepmother's words, "the most insecure person I have ever met". Like many insecure people, he hides it well behind a wall of outgoing bluster. Only after a horrendously upsetting argument some years back did he admit that he's humbled by his children's erudition and feels grateful that they condescend to talk ideas with him at all. I've kept that in mind and avoided trying to "win" any debates with him since (which is an excellent exercise for overcoming my own deep-seated insecurities).

Given this, it's no surprise he's most drawn to those relatives that offer no threat whatsoever, namely his grandsons. Awi, who's now two-and-a-half, has been the apple of Dad's eye almost since birth. Any time they're in the room together, he's drawn to my nephew like a cat to catnip; other objects don't even exist. After too many occasions where what was supposed to be time together for the two of us with Awi in the room became time for the two of them to play with me in the room watching, I learned that the only way to get any quality time with Dad was to remove my nephew from the situation.

That worked well this year. Dad picked me up from my sister's and brought me to his place for dinner and good conversation. That way, I was prepared for a Christmas Day visit where his attention would be focussed on Awi alone. However, things didn't work out. Both my nephews have been sick, little Eci with a cold and big brother Awi with a double ear infection. For most of the week, he's been whiny and disconsolate, clinging to his parents and crying at the very suggestion that anyone else play with him. Even getting near his playthings set him off.

Fortunately, he started to improve on Boxing Day and let me play PlayDo and puzzles with him. (He has the most darling habit of suddenly turning to you and saying, "Hi!" in lilting voice as if discovering your presence for the first time. He had a distinctly wary tone at first, but on the 26th, he must've done it five times or more and given me countless high-fives. Saturday morning, he hugged me good-bye.) But that was too late to make Christmas morning anything but a wash-out for my old man. He was put out enough by having to leave shortly to drive to Chicago to catch his flight to SF (don't ask!) and he looked simply crushed to miss out on playtime with his grandson.

Hopefully, this will lead to a realisation that the little guy isn't the inexhaustible reservoir of unconditional acceptance my father would like him to be. That would be good news for both my nephews, who shouldn't be tasked with propping up a grown man's self-esteem, and my father, who would she he could get a lot of affection from his children if he would only concentrate on approaching them thoughtfully. I might try to help this realisation along with some prodding and leading questioning of my own or I might trust in my fantastic stepmom to point it out.

Language snob speaks out!

(If you read through--or at least skim over--all the pedantry, you will be rewarded with a quiz.)

I'm looking to sign my mother up for a few cooking classes as a birthday gift (for whom? you might well ask...) and I came across one that offers to teach the following recipe:

Pera Còtto Rose con Zabaglione

I know some of you are asking "Why the hell can't they just use good English?" and others are dying a little inside. For me, it's both. My feeling is, if you're going to abuse a foreign language that badly, you should have your right to use anything but English (and maybe play languages like Pig Latin and Esperanto) suspended indefinitely.

How badly? Oh, let me count the ways:

1. The grave accent, when used in Italian at all, only appears on stressed final vowels (e.g. Niccolò). Some dictionaries will put it over stressed antepenultimate vowels as well, but this is strictly a crutch for learners and not part of the written language proper. There is no excuse for putting it over a penultimate vowel, particularly in a two-syllable word.
2. Pera is a feminine noun; if Cotto modifies it, it should agree in gender, i.e. Cotta.
3. Presumably, the recipe requires ones to cook more than one pear. Thus, it should be plural, i.e. Pere Cotte.
4. Why the hell is everything In Caps anyway? This is Italian, not German!
5. I don't know what in the name of all that is lemon-scented that "Rose" is doing there. Are the pears pink? Is the wine a rosé? Are there roses in the dish? Even if the answer to any of these questions is "yes", the syntax is still wrong, wrong, wrong.

I think five errors in the first three words is about enough, don't you? Someone with first-year Spanish could've done a better job than this monolingual clod with nothing more than an English-Italian dictionary. Need I add that no mother of mine is going to take cooking classes there, at least not on my dime!

Now, the promised quiz: In the same mall as this cooking store/school, there stands a branch of the Ohio-based home furnishings store named Arhaus. Does the pun work in your native dialect of English? (If you find yourself saying, "What pun?", then you should answer "No.")

Smug Mock for the Quick Schlock

Remember back before the holidays when Halliburton was accused of overcharging the US military? Remember (those of you who read febrile's entry) that I said I was witholding judgement on the case until I heard more details?

Here's the latest, courtesy of Andrew Sullivan's stand-in:

An examination of what has grown into a multibillion-dollar contract to restore Iraq's oil infrastructure shows no evidence of profiteering by Halliburton, the Houston-based oil services company, but it does demonstrate a struggle between price controls and the uncertainties of war, with price controls frequently losing.

Who could be the source of such disgusting pandering to the government line? Radio Al-Hurra? The New Republic? The Washington Post?

Kudos to those of you who guessed shamelessly pro-Bush propaganda rag The New York Times.

Stupid Request of the Day

I'm on the front desk for a coupla hours today since the reglar guy is sick. I thought it'd be real slow, this being the middle of the Dead Week, but it's been surprisingly not. There are compensations--the cutest big, black-haired and bearded bear daddy walked by a few minutes ago--and then there are the aggravations.

Patron: Hi. I'm trying to win a contest and the site only lets you vote once from each computer. [indicates staff PC] Can I use this one?
Me: Actually, that computer is for staff only.
Patron: Then could you vote for me?
Me [indicating banks of public computers]: You can use any of those.
Patron: I've already voted on all of them already, but I'm still a few votes away from winning.
Me: Y'know, actually, these computers are for research, not winning contests...
Patron: Oh, they're for research...
Me: ...and I don't mind you using them for that, but I'm not going to go out of my way to help you.
[phone rings]

Last I checked in my harried search for a phone number that should've been in the rolodex, she and her friend were studying a campus map for other public computer facilities. Knock yourselves out, girls.