I was on French TV yesterday. As part of my Francisation class we attended the filming of health/cooking show about a month ago. Kampaï!: À Votre Santé complete with Quebecoise superstar (Mitsou), taste-testing, fake laughing clips (see photo above), and my unshaven face directly on Radio Canada, also known as French CBC.

It was interesting to see firsthand how shallow and fake television programs are, especially of the talk show variety. The first thing we did when we arrived in the television studio was practice laughing and smiling and to record these clips for later use, and the rest of the time we just followed the directions of the rodeo clown. We were his docile heifers for sale, while blonde Mitsou jumped and danced around the ring like a bull with its balls in a vice.

Upon arrival the multicultural students of Centre St-Paul and I huddled next to the CBC/RDI gift shop expressing excitement in broken French. I wandered through the building as much as security allowed me to and eventually started to notice the large quantities of beautiful people that were filing in the building; well dressed, hair done, most likely showered as if they were going out on the town, waiting with the weather torn, transit weary language students. I instantly decided that the beautiful, television-friendly girls would be placed in the front rows of the audience during the filming. That was indeed the case, but much to my surprise, wearing a dirty sweater, salt saturated sneakers, glasses, gnarly beard and pants I haven’t washed since I bought them, got me in the front row, but on the side less filmed. Obviously.

If you are interested bad health/cooking shows, or need some ideas for what to cook for Valentines Day (also known as the world’s stupidest goddamn holiday), or if you understand French, or just want to kill forty minutes this weekend, click the photo above to watch the entire episode. Or if you want to see me in all my acting glory, laughing because of the awkwardness of it all, now you’ve got the chance.

I’d say that you won’t regret it, but then I’d be lying.

Due to lack of readable material, not updating in almost a week, and reproducing and distributing copyrighted material/plagiarism, Balls of Rice has been shut down by the US government. Please tell your friends.

It usually only takes me a single sentence to be inspired to write a paragraph, or entry, or poem, or book. This certain sentence will often spring from my subconscious when I’m walking to school alone and thinking but not really thinking about life and a witty or absurd phrase comes to my lips causing me to laugh out loud and hoot out an echoing noise under the overpass. I can go through a dry spell of not having a decent sentence to jot down and later expand on, but sometimes all it takes is a photo of three governmental cartoon-esque eagles.

Upon first glance this graphic looks like it was created by a highschool student in his or her first computer design class, however it is apparently a government ‘document’ of sorts. Originally I saw it as a fake, then I read the paragraph and believed it to be real. I am beginning to return to the idea that it is indeed a fake and that my favourite website for streaming sports, ATDHE.net, is conspiring to change web domains to avoid being too popular. But my once favourite website for streaming tv shows, TVShack.cc, gives the same notice. I’m torn. Things that are real, when done poorly, seem fake.

I no longer force production of anything. Supper, poetry, conversation. Real writers say that you should write everyday to improve your trade even when it hurts. But when inspiration lacks, when images aren’t flooding, when supper ideas are limited, when conversation does not flow, forcing it is worse than doing nothing at all. The forced, even when real, seems fake.

So despite what the government says, Balls of Rice will still be producing its regularly scheduled spouting of complete, regurgitated crap, based on how often dig piss, dead birds or classic literature can inspire me. If readership numbers have anything to say about it, the government will probably leave me alone. I’m not even on the radar.

An author uses words deliberately to evoke images and thoughts in the mind of the audience. A poet does the same but even more deliberately, with the economy of words. I consider myself a man of ideas, in that I can use the English language to share concepts but my actual ability to manipulate the language is somewhat limited. A person’s self perception is often skewed, and that may be the case for myself. I likely don’t even have the idea ability on my side.

I am reading pieces of work by literary heros Camus and Tagore, both authors likely capable in the English language but chose their own mother tongues to write the majority of their collection. I am nearly able to read Camus’ writings in the original language and plan to someday be able to do the same with Tagore’s, which is how I believe they were meant to be read. Reading the translated version is like reading a rough interpretation of the original language; there is a potential that the specific wording and imagery change, and a loss of certain phrases that only work in the original language. Lost in translation. Like an amateur painter who traces, follows and copies a world masterpiece. Just because a person is bilingual doesn’t mean he is qualified to translate a book from French to English. An atheist who understands ancient Greek and Hebrew maybe would translate the Bible more accurately than a Christian, but at the same time his ideals could get in the way. A French aristocrat could likely translate the works of Camus but would miss out on ideas aimed at a different audience. Authors such as Dostoyevsky, Camus, the authors of the Bible, or any other famous author worthy of translation use words purposefully and when translated, retranslated and untranslated, the original magic and authenticity can be lost. In the case of religion, mistranslation has likely caused more problems than the translations are worth. The translated version is a slightly less authentic although equally as important version of the original.

Whenever I’m reading a book that I know has been translated from the original I have it in my mind, through every sentence, that the translator likely missed something huge. He or she didn’t catch the idea that the author meant to communicate and translated in his or her way, and I missed out on what was really meant. That I am not reading what the author wrote, but what the translator thinks the author wrote. It distracts me to the point of having to read each page twice. A solution to this would be to only read literature from your mother tongue, or at least a tongue you are fluent in, but that would reduce English speakers to Shakespeare and J.K. Rowling and not much else. Translations are legitimate, but they are not the original.

When I become a world famous author I hope to be able to chose who translates my books into one of the eight remaining languages in the world, likely just before the apocalypse. I would choose someone that understands the my ideas and my mind, who may not end up being the greatest language student. As an idea man I would hope that although a word for word translation might not happen, and the images I paint may get changed (likely for the better), that the general idea that I am aiming for, the root of the piece, gets through. This may be easier for an idea writer, and not quite as easy for a real, image filled, wordsmith of a writer.

Language is deliberate, and the manipulators of language are precise. Translation is loose, subjective and never precise. The two don’t go together very well. Therefore if you want to read Dostoyevsky, learn Russian. If you want to read the Bible, learn the languages it was written in. If you want to read Tolkien, become an elf. If you want to read properly, learn the language, don’t let some snobby university graduate tell you what you are reading. Don’t trust anyone.

Click on photos above to see a few more.

Nic’s French Lesson #1
My first bilingual try at sorting out my thoughts. This oughta be good.

‘Il faut…‘ can be translated as ‘It is necessary…‘ or at least that is how I translate it in my mind. From the impersonal verb ‘falloir‘.
Il faut manger avant midi.
Il faut faire des devoirs.
Il faut bien lire les journaux.

‘Il faut que je…‘ can be roughly translated as, ‘It is necessary that I…‘ followed by subjunctive verb conjugation because it follows the indefinite pronoun ‘que‘. It is possible to replace ‘je‘ with any other pronoun but the conjugation will change also. More crudely translated as, ‘I gotta…‘
Il faut que je fasse un pain aux pommes aujourd’hui.
Il faut que je sache comment de changer les pneus de ma voiture.
Il faut que je regarde la route quand je conduis.

We practice this phrase with subjunctive conjugation often, and while walking the soaked sidewalks of the city the phrase constantly rolls through my mind. Il faut que… Il faut que… Il faut que… Il faut que… Il faut que… Il faut que…

My knowledge of both French and English is extremely limited, and my vocabulary is also fairly unexceptional, but I cannot recall an impersonal verb in English that is as effective as the verb ‘falloir‘, and I appreciate the French language for finding such an efficient way of expressing the demands placed on us. The phrase repeats itself in my head because my mind is constantly trying to sort out all the new ideas and conjugations and translations, and just as I occasionally dream in French, I think ‘Il faut que…‘ instead of I gotta… I gotta… I gotta… I gotta… I gotta… I gotta…

It is necessary that I finish my book soon.
Il faut que je finisse mon livre bientôt.

It is necessary to read every day.
Il faut lire chaque jour.

It is necessary that I cook dal.
Il faut que je fasse du dal.

Il faut que je trouve un bon emploi.
Il faut que je reste ici pendant dix ans.
Il faut que je paye le loyer.
Il faut que j’aie des enfants.
Il faut que je trouve Dieu, peu importe quel est son nom.
Il faut…

There is an awful lot of things that ‘Il faut faire‘ but not a lot of things that ‘Je veux faire‘. The responsibilities of life can be sorted out and listed with one impersonal French verb and it will make you realize that there are a lot of things that are deemed necessary to do, and although the efficiency of the verb is a sign of a well developed language, I am not convinced that having a verb that makes it so easy to demand things is good for most human beings. We can have the il-fauts roll constantly through our heads and sort out what we are required to do, but just as importantly we need to let the ideas of je fais, present tense, roll through our minds. Because what we are currently doing is equally if not more important to what we feel it is necessary to do eventually.
Il ne faut pas que je fasse beaucoup, mais au contraire, il faut que je fasse les choses qui sont bonnes pour ma santé mentale.

If needed, here’s the link to Google Translate for rough translations.

Men used to fight and kill over supplies of salt, that is, if my knowledge of history is correct. But today my shoes are saturated, crystallized, firm and full of gravel because the city believes that salt and gravel in super-quantities increases sidewalk safety. The streets and walkways are painted and speckled white, salted like fastfood fries.  I have never bought salt, and maybe never will. I always steal salt from my roommate’s Windsor salt box to put on my rice and dal, and if I’m not careful he’ll probably kill me for it. Some things never change. Oil is the new salt, and someday we will find an alien planet to harvest all the oil we need to further destroy our own, and while killing the inhabitants of a foreign planet instead of a foreign country we will wonder how we ever paid $1.259 per litre and how we ever killed innocent people to get it. We could have just been killing aliens. If there were one ‘spice’ I could live without on a daily basis I think it would be salt, although I know it is used for far more than just sprinkling in soups. May the cumin keep coming and let the salt someday halt.

There are so many ways to conjugate a verb, more ways than are even understood. Since July my French grammar has far surpassed my English grammar, so maybe I should be writing this in my second language because according to my engineer editor, my grammar needs work. I write things like this on my hand to remember the difference between conditionnel passé and plus-que-parfait. Drawings help too, they are the salt to flavour my hand. My hand looks like this at the end of most days.I have since added a book, the word ‘devoir’ and a hockey stick. I credit French to teaching me more English grammar than did my first 12 years of English school. The only thing I learned in university English is how to properly use its vs it’s. It’s easier than you think.

After a weekend of high voltage hockey excitement, my life is back to its regular salt-free diet and routine. And as I read about the lives of friends and as my French class becomes more bland by the hour, I realize why people killed other people for salt. Because their dry, tasteless lives demanded it.