Me vs. Time and the U.S. Government

There has been a sequence of events that has culminated in me booking myself for a day trip to Philadelphia the Monday after next, several frantic phone exchanges, and a lot of money being spent. Here's what has happened:

1. Sometime in June, my American passport expired. I have no other passports, though I have other citizenships.
2. Just before Thanksgiving, as I was due to leave for Mexico, I noticed that my US passport had expired. As a result, I said "shit" a lot.
3. In light of my planned departure for Belgium on December 20th, over Thanksgiving I educated myself on the necessary steps for renewing an American passport. This involved filling out a form, getting some pictures taken, and getting some money ready to hand over, as well as some official documentation. I learned that one needed proof of identity, for which a current government-issued photo ID (such as my driver's license) would suffice, and proof of US citizenship, for which an expired US passport would suffice.
4. The first business day after TG, after classes, I went to a Rite Aid to get photos taken. This went off without a hitch. The lack of hitches would soon end.
5. Immediately after exiting the drugstore with the photos, I went to the post office down the street to submit the bundle of passport renewal stuff. There I found that their hours for accepting passports ended at 3pm. At that time it was 4:15pm. I grumbled and left.
6. I went back to the post office the next day, before 3. I had an agitated and agitating conversation with a clerk. Here is how that went:
   1. The clerk asked me when I was traveling. I told her.
   2. She said I wouldn't have my passport in time. I said I was getting expedited service.
   3. She told me that "other people get expedited too, they got a desk full of 'em". I don't think I managed to think of a reply.
   4. She told me that since my last passport had been issued when I was under the age of 16, it "wasn't enough" and I would need my birth certificate. I told her that that was rather unfortunate, since my birth certificate is in Belgium and is written in Japanese.
   5. She said, "Well, you gotta have your birth certificate, but we can send it in anyway." I spotted a flaw in this. I said, "Wait, I can prove my identity with my driver's license, so are you saying my passport doesn't prove my citizenship anymore?"
   6. She said, "Well, you've changed in how you look from when you were 16, so they can't tell it's you on that passport." My mind was boggled.
   7. I said, struggling to keep my cool, "How's my birth certificate going to solve that?" She said, "You need your birth certificate."
   8. From that point on, that was all she said, no matter what I said. Eventually I took all my paperwork back and left, rather ticked off.
7. I called the National Passport Information Center to confirm the postal clerk's claim that I needed a birth certificate. They confirmed it. I didn't ask why, but I asked how they expected that to help, given that my birth certificate is in Japanese. They said I'd need an official translation.
8. I called my mom to get her to send an official translation, which I hoped she already had handy. She said she'd fax "what she had", the next day.
9. The next day, I got the fax, and it was a "Consular Report of Birth Abroad". I checked the State Department website again and confirmed that this type of document was proof of my citizenship.
10. Doubts had begun to creep into my mind. I knew that even if this fax was good enough, I couldn't count on having the passport in my hands by the time I needed to leave the States. At best I would be cutting it extremely close. I worked out a contingency plan: I would have the passport mailed to a relative in the States, who could then mail it to Belgium so that I could come back with it (I can enter Belgium on my Belgian ID card).
11. My mom saw a flaw: would I be able to leave the States without a valid passport? I thought so. She thought not. We threw various wild plans back and forth.
12. At this point, there were two outstanding questions: would I be able to leave the States without a valid passport, and was the faxed consular report enough? As long as the answer to the first question was "yes", I would be OK. I could submit the paperwork through normal channels, possibly after having my mom courier an official copy of the consular report, and have my new passport mailed over to Belgium via my relative.
13. I called the NPIC again to get some answers. Disaster: both answers were "no". Somehow, I had to have a US passport in my hands before December 20. All seemed lost: by the time I got an official copy of the consular report, it would be far too late for even expedited service to guarantee me a passport in time.
14. The NPIC customer service dude (very helpful) said that my only option was to go to the nearest National Passport Agency, which deals with situations exactly like this. In my case, the nearest one is in Philly. He said I could make an appointment, go in, and have my passport by the next day at the latest. Crisis averted.
15. I promptly called the Philly NPA to make an appointment and found that I can't even set up an appointment unless the current date is within two weeks of my departure date. Nuts.
16. In spite of that, I found a day I could spare, and booked a day trip to Philly. Now, I just have to hope that I can get an appointment on that day.
17. Note to self: do NOT let your passport expire EVER AGAIN.

The Chuck Formula

I've watched all 9 episodes of "Chuck" that have aired, and somehow I've come to like it. This goes against all reason. It involves inaccurate nerd stereotypes, egregious abuse of computer jargon, and is basically just a montage of nerd fantasies. Beneath it all, though, it's kind of sort of hell of entertaining. It has a mildly complicated plot but I don't need to think hard at all while watching. And it makes me laugh.

It is kind of sort of formulaic, though. Here's the basic formula behind every episode:

1. Chuck is going about his business as usual. His socially-challenged friends rib him about whatever hot girl is hanging around him this episode.
2. Chuck sees some innocuous little thing while going about his business as usual, and flashes on it. He flips out and goes running to Sarah or Casey.
3. Optionally, Sarah appears scantily clad for absolutely no reason.
4. Chuck goes with Sarah and Casey on a mission resulting from his flash, which is supposed to be simple. That is, what is supposed to happen is: Sarah and/or Casey go do stuff, and Chuck stays in the car.
5. Shit starts to go down, and Chuck gets out of the car.
6. Chuck gets himself in shit.
7. Sarah and/or Casey rescue him. In the process, it transpires that Chuck has borked the mission.
8. Nobody gets mad at him.
9. Gift Shop Girl and/or Morgan gets upset at Chuck for mysteriously disappearing all the time.
10. Chuck is back to his normal life for a little while. Jokes are made about how his job sucks. Also, wieners.
11. Chuck goes with Sarah and Casey on a mission to clean up whatever Chuck borked.
12. Right about now is a good time for some sexual tension, and/or a new twist in the Chuck/Bryce/Sarah backstory.
13. Some reason crops up for Sarah to do high kicks while wearing a skirt. She does so several times, with strategic camera angles, preferably with another chick wearing similarly revealing attire.
14. Back at the store, Chuck's friends are doing something relatively trivial yet amusing. Usually this involves Morgan being an idiot.
15. Chuck once again fails at staying in the car. Chuck once again gets himself in shit.
16. Just as all hope seems lost, Chuck flashes on something that solves the entire pickle. Sarah and Casey shoot/beat people up until they win the episode.
17. Chuck is praised for saving the day, despite the fact that he fucked shit up multiple times.
18. If, miraculously, no girl's underwear has been shown in the episode yet, an excuse is found to do so.
19. Sexual tension. Chuck is confused.

I think I recommend it. For serious.

Trapped

So here I am, stuck in Pittsburgh for another Thanksgiving while everyone else is gone.

Difference is, this time I really thought I wouldn't be. I had plans to go to Mexico City to visit my dad. I was supposed to leave Wednesday afternoon.

Just as I was heading out the door to get on the bus to the airport, I remembered one very important thing: my passport. It's been almost a year since I left the country (dammit) but I've flown several times since then, so I'm used to not having to take my passport. So I ran upstairs to get my passport. I got it out of my closet, then ran back downstairs. I was about to go out the door when I realized how unfamiliar the sight of my passport was. On an impulse I opened it to the photo page and checked it out. Two dates caught my eye. The fact that both of those two dates were in the past caught my brain. I looked closer.

My passport expired this past June. My flight was due to leave in four and a half hours.

I stood there and swayed a little bit, as the realization started sinking in: I cannot leave the country.

The detail that I actually can leave the country but what I can't do is get back in didn't hit me at that moment. All I could think then was: I'm trapped. I'm stuck. I cannot get out of the United States. When that detail hit me later on, I suddenly felt even more scared as I realized that if I hadn't checked my passport and had somehow landed in Mexico with an expired US passport, I would have been even more stuck.

Being restricted to a single country is not something I'm used to. I've never had a passport expire on me before. All this is weird and unsettling.

'Course, all things considered, I'm glad that the fact that I can't leave the United States at will unsettles me. It seems like a privilege to be able to see that as a cause for concern.

Now I've run out of "Chuck" episodes to watch. I really like that show even though all laws of the universe say I shouldn't. Maybe tomorrow I'll write about it since I have assloads of time on my hands right now (well, tomorrow I have to watch the TG Day football games and Scrubs). One thing I'll say now is that I really like the theme song ("Short Skirt/Long Jacket" by Cake). Later.

Wine Snobs Are Idiots, Part 2

If you remember a long time ago, I wrote about how wine snobs crack me up with the things they say about wine, and how I've always had a sneaking suspicion that they were just making shit up (like "tannins", or hints of mocha in wine).

Well, have a look at this.

Two Great Feats of Language and Linguistics

The Translation of “Astérix le Gaulois”
Making puns involves using language in ways for which it wasn’t intended. It’s like taking the language apart and putting it back together in a different way. And of course, since all languages are made differently, puns are almost completely impossible to translate across any but the most closely related languages.

Yet somehow, the translators of “Astérix le Gaulois” did it. The humor of the writing is based almost entirely on French wordplay. French, with its beautiful idioms and occasionally odd word order, lends itself to puns that you might think are completely untranslatable.

The puns aren’t all that make these books hard to translate. One of the volumes, “Astérix chez les Belges” (Asterix in Belgium), pokes fun at Belgians and the peculiarities of Belgian French. How can you possibly translate that? Let alone the fact that a lot of the Belgian characters in the book are actually caricatures of famous Belgians. On top of that, some of the characters’ names are puns on Belgian things (e.g. “Gueselambix” is a pun on gueuze and lambic, two types of Belgian beer). Forgetting the fact that Belgian cultural references will be lost on everyone except Northern Europeans, what do you do with all these language-specific jokes?

Interlingua
The fate of Esperanto shows that it’s no small task to design a constructed language that is actually used in practice. Well, in my opinion some poor design decisions were made for Esperanto — if you’re constructing a language that’s supposed to be used by speakers of Indo-European languages, why would you make it agglutinative? And why would you use the Slavic phonemic inventory with Romance vocabulary? I digress, though.

Somehow, when I first read Interlingua, I was propelled directly from a feeling of not knowing a language at all to the strange, satisfying feeling of finally achieving unconscious understanding. I can still remember a specific instant in a French class in middle school, when I realized that I was understanding the teacher without translating her words into English in my head. That is the feeling that language learners live for; it’s a well-known line they aim to cross. In Interlingua, if you know any Romance language, that line doesn’t even exist. The feeling of having internalized a foreign language is strange enough; the feeling of having already internalized a foreign language you’ve never even seen before is just mind-warping. The designers of Interlingua seem to have created some kind of archetypical Romance language. It’s quite brilliant.