The internet is a strange (and interesting) place. Thanks for the link -- not something I would have expected to read today.
Nice set of Vietnam pics here.
The Cracked piece (I am a Cracked fan, but) reads like some 20-something guy did a trip to Vietnam* and met some guy and then translated the interview into Cracked-ese for publication to help pay for the trip. I guess that's just the point you made in the OP.
*incredible tourist country, wish I could go back right now, am 100% convinced that its excellent touristitude was one of the reasons we got involved there for so long in the first place.
am 100% convinced that its excellent touristitude was one of the reasons we got involved there for so long in the first place
Tell me more, crazy person.
Somebody is going to regret posting this at around the time of the eighth or ninth missive from bobsylvania.
Or worse, a missive from John Burdett.
Tell me more, crazy person.
New mouseover text!
I seem to be missing my cue.
Post seemed dead-on about the article to me. But, like, you know, maybe saying an 80 yr old Vietnamese veteran shouldn't sound like a surfer could be racism or something.
Been a long since Vietnam + movie for me. Maybe I will try Cyclo. Vertical Ray was great but Green Papaya was like, ok dude, your wife is fucking absolutely beatific, we got that in the first hour. A rare walkout.
Norwegian Wood is likely treacle. Murakami annoys me, Merkins like him too much.
I just checked Street Without Joy out of the library, but I haven't started it yet I'm still hanging with my Armée Révolutionnairre séctionaires, and a B Pym novel for contrapuntal effect. As Cobb is basically a character from a Pym novel this is a surprisingly good combo.
Couldn't read more than 3 paras of the linked article, was too hideous. There is something really disturbing in that deformation of voice.
Cracked also had a recent article about people who can't see faces.
You all have no sense of fun.
It's entirely possible - likely, even - that this translation gives readers of the article a more accurate sense of what the subject thought than some broken english spoken by an 80-year-old vietnamese dude would.
its excellent touristitude was one of the reasons we got involved there for so long in the first place
I don't think we knew about the touristitude then, but I don't think we were banking on a corrupt totalitarian state that would provide cheap labor for our sports apparel companies, either. I mean, Nike was founded just months before the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, but let's not read too much into that.
In The Great Railway Bazaar Theroux was effusive in his description of how beautiful Vietnam was. He hit it at an odd time (1973 I think)--when he was able to go from Huế to Da Nang by train.
11: It's not like translation expunges styles. The style in this case is so much of a piece with Cracked's norm - brash and clickbaity, not inherently bad but grating in excess - that it's almost certainly superimposed.
I doubt it's even a translation - it feels like a condensation of some interesting parts of a longer interview.
I think Jake meant "translation" a little loosely. Translation into this style, as well as into English (perhaps).
True, but "broken English" is definitely not the principal alternative to a rendering like this.
Yeah, a bunch of the asides are so rooted in American culture they are clearly the author/translator's riffs on what the original source may have had to say (e.g., would a former VC, who hadn't lived in the US, really think of a kid from Oregon visiting Death Valley as a natural metaphor for US views on the jungle-savvy of Vietnamese peasants?). The question is how much of the rest is a free translation of what Mr. Nguyen said, vs. possibly something more Stephen Glass-like. Losing the source's distinctive voice (which need not mean rendering broken English literally) makes it hard to judge.
16 gets it right - the article is a translation of Mr. Nguyen's words into Cracked-lish. It's the "Carpenter Street" approach version of Crime and Punishment, and why not? Is the author covering up the fact that the VC were actually committed leftists through and through? Seems unlikely.
It's entertainment. Are you not entertained? ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?
(ps - the Danes/DiCaprio Romeo and Juliet was a good movie. So was the Seven Samurai starring Steve McQueen and Yul Brenner)
Sometimes I think I'd like to see a jungle, then I remember that I don't even like Florida and that's close enough in terms of the heat/humidity/insect factor.
20: Maybe try something like Belize in January. My buddy who goes down there sometimes says the weather's nice at that time of year and not real buggy.
20: The island of Bonaire. It's warm and the water is crazy warm (with great diving) but the crosswinds basically debug the place. (It's the B in the ABC of Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao.)
I have long wanted a t-shirt reading "You Better Belize It".
I'm sure I could get a shirt like that without traveling there, but then somebody would ask me how I like Belize and I'm not about to do enough research to have a plausible answer.
That's settled. Now I just need several thousand dollars.
I've set up a Kickstarter. Search for "As a young man I failed to sufficiently ingratiate myself with the ruling class."
I am completely and utterly A-okay being humorless on this particular metric! No problem at all.
It's the B in the ABC of Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao.
ALWAYS. BE. IN CURAÇAO.
Dropping the former Viet Cong guy's name into Google got me a link to an article in the Vietnamese version of Wikipedia that, when put through Google translate says, well try it yourself.
Furūtsu Basuketto!!!
Absolutely stone cold shouko reverse harem romcom classic!
Glad you brought anime up.
Gabriella Ekens of Anime News Network highly recommends last season's Maria the Virgin Witch as a feminist masterpiece. Me too. Grade A. Four stars. Takes place at the end of Hundred Years War, which Maria wants to stop, cause peace, but fucking Archangel Michael says thou shalt not interfere with God's Plan and says it with thunderbolts. I was fucking shocked on how medieval that show got on us, including a disquisition on Pelagianism (sersly) and a sack of a city. GoT got nothing on Maria.
Drop HBO, subscribe to Funimation and watch it streaming! Cheaper!
Interesting that a former V.C. would be so familiar with American-made Vietnam war movies. In the long run, I guess it doesn't matter who "won" that war; we all end up watching the same movies anyway.
It might have made a difference for non-movie outcomes.
Actually, I was assuming that this guy had somehow come to live in the US, and thus did have a working knowledge of some of these things, and was interviewed states-side, in English.
Ideally in Nguyễn Cao Kỳ's liquor store.
35: We sent a writer out to Vietnam to speak with Nguyen Hoa Giai. He fought as a Viet Cong from the late 1950s to the end of the war in the mid-'70s. Here's what he told us.
I
37 is so perfect, I'm too humble to claim it as my own.
OT: How much does taking a redeye suck? I have not done it for many years and rarely fly these days. My choices are spending most of a day flying and getting home 1:00 am (assuming all goes well) or spending an afternoon/evening (with luggage) in a strange city and then flying all night to arrive at 8:00 am. I could sleep, but probably not well considering that I'd have to fly for four hours and then transfer.
It sucks as much as regular flying but without a decent night's sleep. The upside is that most of your wretched fellow passengers will actually be asleep, so you can enjoy some solitude and peace and quiet.
I bet the hotel would hold my luggage if I wanted to wander around town.
No one clicked on the link in 30?
OT: Should I be nervous when Facebook is telling my I have current sessions in places that I've never been? I've only recently looked at this because I keep getting texts with my Facebook confirmation code and I never asked for one.
Vertical Ray of the Sun is the stupidest movie ever. I refuse to believe that the heroic Vietnamese people are in any way accurately represented by that decadent bourgeois filth.
My Vietnamese school chum says on trips back to the homeland, his uncles, who all fought for the North, make fun of his mother for picking the wrong side.
47: Oops. Need to watch it again. Maybe #notallVietnamese? But as a nihilist, I'll believe anything. And I always knew I would have to watch Green Papayas again, looking for irony.
Anime report: Still slowly making my way through Yuri Kuma Arashi. Too intense to marathon. Three works in 26 years, Ikuhara is definitely both genius and madman. "Queer?" "non-normative identities and politics?" You want to be accepted? Ikuhara just doesn't give a fuck.
Reddit has a beloved brilliant commentator/analyst coincidentally nymed "Bob," but don't go there until you have watched an episode, you don't want the experience spoiled.
Trying to think about what Ikuhara does, it's like taking the elements of language:bears, boxes, flowers, walls;completely privatizing them and then communicating the personal vision. To the degree you play along, understand and empathize, it takes ordinary language away and can be terrifying. Get yourself weird.
Not recommending this one: not my role to judge if you're worthy. But my life is more bearable because of Ikuhara.
Two reddit comments from "bobduh" which are accompanied by screengrabs, both involving fourth wall breakaga
"I bet this* also makes some viewers mad. Ikuhara don't give a fuck"
* this being text on screen "Can't Follow Social Cues = Evil..." How about it? Ikuhara doesn't mind being evil, maybe>
15:11 - And now making even more overt* how the male arbitrating influence is both judge and hypocritical voyeur into honest relationships. It's all distant entertainment to them
*Only three males in the show, not involved in narrative, but as judges. This scene has the three guys watching lesbians through binoculars.
This means you, this means me. What am I doing watching this series? Ikuhara wants me to ask that question.
"Tonight the part of 'Guy Watching Lesbians, No 2' will be played by an understudy."
One reason I am slow getting thru YKA, and why I don't read fiction, is that metaphor, symbolism, and convention just seem to confound me. I used to be more confidant in interpretation. Not what even does the eight sentences in "Penelope" mean, but what is it at all?
Many or most of the viewers of YKA think they have gotten "through" the symbolism and metaphor to the story and message. Something like about some characters involved in romance, possession, and jealousy, the society that oppresses them, blah blah.
They're like "ok, locking away people, memories, and feelings (and especially desire) in boxes/labels/categories (there is a cabinet room) is a bad thing. Got it."
And I'm like, how is metaphor possible, how can the infinitely complicated variegated nuanced whatever (refuse to call anything reality) encapsulated in an image or series of images or symbols make any kind of social sense? Singularities, particulars, universals.
When I was a kid, I saw intelligence in the world, unevenly distributed, and felt intelligent. Now that I'm older and less wise, both the world and I feel really stupid.