From Neil Steinberg's column in today's Chicago Sun-Times, this reader-submitted joke:
What do you call a guy that speaks two languages?
-- Bilingual.
What do you call a guy that speaks three languages?
-- Trilingual.
What do you call a guy that speaks only one language?
-- American.
It makes me tired to have to point out the obvious, but I can stand here in Chicago and go at least 700 miles in any direction before I get to anyplace where English is not the primary language. If we had to speak Hoosier to make ourselves understood in Indiana, or Cheesehead to be able to order fromage in Wisconsin, then we'd speak more than one language.
For a Frenchman, being able to say "I surrender" in German, Spanish, and English is a survival strategy. For an American to learn to speak three languages is a waste of time that could have been better spent sleeping through geometry class, or stuffing his fat face with McDonald's cheeseburgers, or parking his ass in a movie megaplex and watching the latest brain-dead piece of Hollywood worthlessness, hooting wildly at the fart jokes, or pumping the bass through his absurdly loud car speakers to proclaim his individuality just like every other shithead suburban wannabe, or loudly proclaiming his victim status and demanding special treatment as an alternative to taking responsibility for himself.
We're fucked nine ways from Sunday, China and India are already eating our lunch, and we seemingly have no place to go but down. That we don't bother to learn to speak multiple languages is the least of our worries.
Yesterday Lileks pointed out this blog post about how women having higher domestic cleaning standards than men is an example of patriarchy and male privilege.
I would rather die alone than spend one hour married to someone capable of seeing patriarchy in the dusting arrangements.
I don't mean that as some sort of punitive, "I shall withhold my manly charms from the feminine world" thing. I don't have that kind of ego. I'm just saying, if a woman is so hypersensitive to perceived gender-based slights that my failure to clean the bathtub up to her standards can start World War 3, how likely is she to understand my need for nasty, ass-bangin' hookers?