I Smith Wonderful Puns

Coming off the great success of my very well received Otter Joke, I have set about to craft yet another blow to the funny bone of humanity. For quite some time now I have been testing the humors of the English language to create the ultimate in humor. Today, I believe I have found it.

I now unveil what will become known as, "The Moose Joke."

So two hunters where trapsing through the woods in search of prey when they heard voices beyond the trees. Thinking about acquiring tips on game or maybe just bumming a beer, the two hunters headed for the voices. Stumbling upon a clearing, the two beheld a group of four moose, sitting on lawn chairs taking their tea and talking about the abominable weather. Needless to say, both groups were taken aback by the sudden presence of the other. However, the moose were the first to act, swiftly moving to capture the two hunters.

One moose suggested that there was nothing to do except kill the two hunters, who would doubtless tell the rest of the humans that there were talking moose in the hills. Another moose said no, that killing was against the moose code. So on a suggestion from a third moose, the group sewed shut the mouths of the two hunters, and released them into the wild.

The two hunters stumbled as fast as they could back to civilization, and ran into the first bar they found. Once inside, they made a great scene, motioning to their lips, as if to say, please, someone remove these sutures so that we can speak on the talking moose of the hills. After the initial commotion, though, the bar's burly patrons turned back around in their seats, once more took up their beers, and ignored the two hunters entirely.

Why?

Because in this town of flannel and facial hair, moose stitches are nothing to get excited about.

DA DA CHING.

A Place To Read A Book And Write A Letter: Assisi

I have found that people come to Italy for many different reasons: the architecture, the fashion, the wine, the lawlessness, et cetera, et cetera. (are you supposed to use two et cetera's?). I can only look at architecture so long before I realize it's all the same; I've never been one for fashion and I'm not yet one for wine, and although I do enjoy a good, no-holds brawl time and again, I have not yet really capitalized on the unpatroled dark side streets.

I have read a lot. And I have written a whole lot of letters. So I suppose that the reason I came to Italy was to find a pretty place to read a book and write a letter (I actually came to study, but, you know, et cetera, et cetera). And so this weekend I began my research.

Virginia, Emily, and I left Perugia for Assisi on Friday. Assisi is a small town built on a hill, most famous for spawning some sort of animal rights activist for all I can tell; I can't read latin. But I can tell you that if that was what my town was famous for, I wouldn't advertise it.

None of the streets go straight. They all double back, making little headway against the elevation. We took a bus all the way to the top, and then (in all seriousness) we illegally entered the ruins of a castle and I scaled one of the ramparts. Then I ripped my shirt and answered the Call of the Wild. And only one part of that story is true. Which? YOU decide.

From the illegally entered ruins we could see the whole town: it's all made out of the same white and pink stone, which makes it look like one big Franciscan compound. A deep fog rolled in from my right (that's the best I can do, in terms of cardinal directions), like a high tide. The city looks like what Perugia used to: clean, green, and open. No graffiti, et cetera, et cetera.

Going down is easy: the streets are all sloped. The hard part is figuring where you are, as all these streets are lined with multi-use buildings, and covered in the type of fog that causes shipwrecks. It all added to the ambiance, I think. Or at least it added to my definition of ambiance, because I'm still not sure what it is, exactly.

Overall, I award it 1300 moose, which is David Fish's equivalent of a gold star. And I operate on the David Fish standard.

I Take On A Foreign Accent

Being in Rome these past two weeks has really altered my person. I eat a lot of cheese, cheese which I cannot name. I've read a lot of Italian literature, which, as you might expect, is extremely depressing (nothing ever ends well for Italy, so why should they make it so in books?). I perused a haberdashery, a life long goal, and bought a 50 euro hat (1 euro=15000 Chinese yin, or 70 million tons of rice). I have also gained an accent.

It was Mircea, the Rufio-esque church friend with the Eastern Bloc nose, who first noticed it. I was talking to him in my national tongue, and he stopped me. He said he could not understand what I was saying. I tried again, switching to what little Italian I know. He stopped me again, and said that he could understand English fine; he couldn't understand my English, because I was speaking like a foreigner (not to be confused with Foreigner).

It's true. I find myself slipping down a slippery slope of linguistics, constantly rolling my r's, screwing up my grammar, and inserting frequent pauses, as if I'm translating from one language to another. In the back of my mind, I assume, the logic is that if I'm not able to speak Italian, the best way to appear non-American is to not be able to speak English.

And I say the back of my mind because it's all unconscious, like an internal mechanism meant to patronize the locals and separate myself from the college kids still here shopping. But if I can't control this, maybe one day I'll start speaking uncontrollable Italian.