On Reasons

The person can drink sake for
the following five reasons.
First of all, for the national
holiday. Moreover, it fills
with the nectar. Finally, for
reasons. Next, to heal the
dryness of the place. After
that, to refuse the future.

source

While I am amused, in a 4th-grade way, by the shapes English takes on in the hands of people armed with dictionaries but without any knowledge of idiom or understanding of syntax, I am not sure that 4th-grade part of me isn't a bit mean. After all, my [insert language other than English here] is for crap. Even my Pig Latin is rusty, um, usty-ray.

On the other hand, is it right to ignore the work of non-native speakers of English entirely? What of Tom Stoppard? Could a native English-speaker have come up with "There's no need to use language, that's what I always say"? I can't find an online version of Salman Rushdie's essay "Commonwealth Literature Does Not Exist", but I am considering having it printed in religious tract size to force on people who use the word "authentic". A bit of it here:

What seems to be happening is that those people who were once colonized by the language are now rapidly remaking it, domesticating it, becoming more and more relaxed about the way they use it -- assisted by the English language's enormous flexibility and size, they are carving out large territories for themselves within its frontiers.

and

If history creates complexities, let us not try to simplify them.

[note to nit-pickers: he's talking not only about British political colonization but also American cultural hegemony, so Japan counts.]

With all that in mind, this sign -- which is not a clumsy chopstick-wrapper translation, but an ad intended to be printed in English -- has such music in it that it would be unfair to exclude it simply because it was written in Japan. I like it as a double-feature with this e.e. cummings.

On The American Agricultural Ideal

Georgia Fire Ants!

They were big and aggressive. They died soon too.

I threw away the farm a few weeks ago.

source

It's difficult to explain how I came to be reading Amazon customer reviews for Uncle Milton's Ant Farm. Sometimes these things just happen.

And sometimes, on the third page of variously cloying and bloodthirsty (and sometimes just weird) comments, the history of America appears, condensed and perfect.

"Georgia Fire Ants" recapitulates the beginning, middle, and end of the Jeffersonian dream of a farming utopia.

The first line throbs with manifest destiny, American Exceptionalism, all the tumescence of a new nation.

Line 2: loss of innocence. Inevitable conflict and shocking revelations of vulnerability: the Civil War, Sherman's burning of Atlanta, Manzanar, Vietnam.

Line 3: "I threw away the farm" -- as we have thrown away Jefferson's dream of a nation of small farmers in favor of our current nation of shoppers -- "a few weeks ago". The final, Eliot-esque touch. The dream dies and is denied even a funeral; the obituary appears too late to send flowers.