Lonely? Depressed? Feeling the weight of the World on your shoul¬ders? Feel like nobody loves or appreciates you? Oh, what’s that, you do?? Well we’ve all got our problems! What makes you so special!?
Dear Uncle Ted,
Dear Uncle Ted, I like to practice my poor Spanish on a beautiful Colombian girl at work but sometimes it gets mixed up with my equally bad Italian. Luckily, she speaks Italian too. My question is: Since the languages are similar, would a hybrid be viable & if so, what would it be called? Spitalian? Ianish? Itspanialianish? Please advise.
Regards,
Confused
Dear Confused,
Ich bein ein Uncleteder!! Ich kann nicht Fremdsprachen sprechen, usted entiende? parce que si vous pas vous devriez utiliser le traducteur de Google comme je suis en ce moment.
Right, that’s you sorted then innit! Next!!!
Dear Uncle Ted,
I’m your standard, garden-variety expat living in Thailand and ev-erything is going just swimmingly. Except for one small problem – my mother-in-law is coming to visit.
She’s best described as a haggard version of Elizabeth Taylor if the plastic surgery went any worse than it already has. And she’s got the personality to match. Every little thing I do not good enough for her – whether it be my engagement ring for lovely Charlene that I bought from Klein’s (it’s the best stainless steel faux-sterling sil¬ver ring they had – what more did she expect?), the sweater with the plunging neckline I bought the horrid mother-in-law for Christ¬mas with straps around the bottom to keep her baps in, or my deci-sion to move to Thailand, taking her one-and-only daughter with me.
How should I cope with her visit? She’s here for two weeks.
Yours in planning to get some action from the missus,
Stewie
Dear Stewie,
Your predicament is a tough one. She certainly sounds like a re-incarnation of Saddam Hussein (Saddy’s dead, right?), but you’re going to have to play her with a straight bat. That’s a figure of speech, not a suggestion to take to her with your Gunn and Moore Diamond.
Keep a smile on your face for the first couple of days and even if she winds you up consistently, just reply calmly and without provo¬cation.
As soon as she leaves the room, have a small soft toy nearby that you can lay into with a flurry of punches.
Towards the end of her visit, see if you can arrange for an animal with a deadly streak (some form of venomous snake or the like) to wander across in front of her path, thus preventing any future vis¬its. You’ll still be in her good books (ensuring a continuing supply of Christmas presents), but she won’t want to come back. Every¬body wins.
GREETINGS AND SALUTATIONS
Hello to alla you. I’m taking over this space from that Dear Rabbi fella – made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. Before you get the wrong idea – I didn’t threaten his life. Just bought him a year’s supply of Yid delicacies and also a delicate little housekeeper to feed them to him. See, I ain’t into the rough stuff anymore. I used to be a big mob boss like that Tony Soprano you see on TV, only I got more hair and I’m a baritone.
A couple years back I was sitting in my favourite restaurant in New York with my girlfriend on the first month anniversary of us sleeping together. Being young, she bought me a hippie neck¬lace with one a those wing wang diagrams on’em, and just to shut her up, I put it on. Then, all of a sudden out pops Jimmie ‘Fingers’ Castro and shoots me while I still got a mouthful of linguine. I fall over and she’s screaming and I think I’m dead but I ain’t. Turns out that Chink jewellery saved my life. So I think, maybe this is a sign. I start reading about Chinaman religion and suddenly it hits me -1 need to clean up my act. I gotta start being nicer to people. And most of all, I gotta get outta town before the next bullet makes it through that ding dong diagram.
So I came here. I like it here in Asia. The weather’s good, nobody tries to shoot you, and a dishonest buck goes a long way. I’ve been learning all about Eastern philosophy and taking it easy. Life’s good. But it’s time I gave something back to the commu¬nity, and so I’m writing this column to share with you my worldly wisdom. It’s a mix of street smarts and spiritual lessons. Think of it as mafia meets the mahatma. Conversations with Godfa¬ther. Deepak Corleone. The Sicilian Prophecy. Chicken Marsala for the Soul. Got it?
In the Mob, we call respected fellas ‘wiseguys’. Here they just call them ‘wise’. After hanging out with some of these Eastern wiseguys I think maybe there ain’t that much difference between the two. The main thing is that wiseguys here don’t kill nobody. And they don’t seem to care that much about money. Other than that, they’re practically the same: They’re short and dark and wear big gold necklaces, just like Sicilians. I feel right at home.
We teach each other lots of things, too. Like one day I was angry
because I found out that my girlfriend’s brother was actually her husband, and when I kicked her out of my house she called me ‘gay’. I mean, I know I ain’t the stud that I used to be but I ain’t no fairy. So my spiritual pal Pornchai calmed me down and told me that ‘gay’ in Thai means ‘old’ and she was only calling me an old man. To make me feel better, Pornchai told me he was ‘gay’ too, which must have been a gag cause he’s only twenty-five. Then he gave me a big hug and a kiss just like we do in the mafia, and asked me for a loan. We’re close like that, me and Pornchai.
I’ve got lots of smarts to share, too. For example, I often teach people that if you really want to get something from somebody, don’t ask them for it. Just stare at them until they say “What? What? What do you want?” They imagine the worst, until you say “I would like a nice cheese sandwich,” and they’re relieved. Plus, you can be sure it’ll be an excellent cheese sandwich. You’re happy, they’re happy. That’s what life’s all about. Right? Come back next month for more pearls of wisdom.