Air cats

Yesterday I was in a bar with Fred and his girlfriend. As per usual the conversation meandered in all kinds of directions, until we hit one of my all time favourites: animals. Fred’s girlfriend mentioned that she found it strange that in Dutch we have a product called ‘WC-eend’ (Toilet Duck – I’ve complained about it before), which should really be called ‘WC-swan’ (Toilet Swan) if you think about it. Indeed, the bottle looks much more like a swan than a duck.

Which brought me to the following thought. There are actually loads of animals that have funny names in the sense that they don’t look like the aninal they’re named after. Especially sea animals, it seems.

Oh sure, there’s a sea spider or a sea horse which do look like spiders or horses, but there are others that just don’t make any sense to me.

Like the different kinds of seal-like creatures – you know, those slippery bastards with big snouts and whiskers that shout ‘uh uh uh’ all day and used to stink up your local Aquaworld. They have the most funny names like sea lion, sea cow and even sea bear or sea elephant!

But I don’t get it. What kind of biologist was observing this animal:

and thought to himself: “That kind of looks like a bear! That’s it, I’m gonna call it a sea bear!"? Didn’t it cross his mind that it would be pretty confusing to have a sea bear if we already have a polar bear, which is basically a bear that (partly) lives in the sea?

I mean, it’s almost as if we were out of inspiration when it came to giving names to the sea animals. Instead of inventing something new we just said. Okay that’s a sea eal, that’s a sea spider, that’s a sea turtle, that’s a sea snail. There’s no end to it!

Imagine we’d done that to birds? Look, son, there’s an air cat:

   

Lazy biologists.

Conversationally challenged

This morning I was quietly doing some work at home, when the doorbell suddenly rang. As I live in an apartment building I have that typical phone in my own apartment that allows you to ask who’s there. Unfortunately the phone is broken. So I have two choices: either let the unidentified visitor enter (I can still use the button to open the door remotely) or go down and see who it is.

In this particular instance I wasn’t going to let just anyone in. Call me paranoid, but then again we’ve had somewhat strange visitors before here. So I went down to open the door.

Standing outside was a young guy – perhaps a couple of years younger than I am. He had blackish hair that was combed back with a lot of gel and wore a curious outfit. I guess he’s one of those people who decide, even though it’s freezing, that they don’t need to adapt their outfit to the weather. As if they think: “I don’t care if it’s -5°. A shirt and a summer’s jacket will do just fine”. Strange lot, and the more I keep my eyes open for them on the street the last few days, the more I seem to come across them.

Anyway, there he was. So I open the door and give him a friendly but inquiring look. Eyebrows slightly raised, head cocked to the side and looking slighly upwards. As if to say: ‘Yes?’. At this point the guy doesn’t say anything but just steps into my rather small hallway. Now call me paranoid, but to me that’s odd. Someone rings my doorbell, I open the door for them and they just step inside, without so much as a word. And even though I didn't initiate the conversation, I'm not supposed to, I think. He is.

So I said to him: “Can I help you?”, trying to sound casual and accommodating, but probably not able to erase all notes of suspicion in my voice.

He looked at me sharply and said “I’m here to see my brother. You must know him”. That’s what he said, literally and with the same emphases. Now I found this odd for a bunch of reasons, the most important one being what I subsequently asked him. “So why didn’t you ring his doorbell then?”

At this point the guy was obviously annoyed, as I surmised from his curt answer: “Because his doorbell is broken.” I replied: “Ah, okay, it’s just…” and I left my sentence to trail off. Obviously, I meant to say “Ah, okay, it’s just that I found it a little strange that you ring my doorbell and you don’t tell me why you're there when I open the door”, but I didn’t say it out loud. I mean, that’s the way people handle social situations like that. You leave something unsaid but imply it, rather than being rude by saying it explicitly. It’s called ellipsis. We do it quite often. For instance, why when you accidentally touch someone’s hand in a crowded train you say ‘Sorry’ and not ‘Sorry I touched your hand’. That’s just making things more awkward.

However, this guy wasn’t too socially adept, as I was heavily suspecting by now. And my suspicions were confirmed by his answer to my “Ah, okay, it’s just…”. He said: “It’s just… what?”

So I tried a variety of the same technique of ellipsis. I said: “Well... it’s just that I wanted to know”, again leaving out what I wanted to know. And then I made a conversational mistake, I followed the remark by “It’s not as if I don’t believe you, you know”.

At which point he just sighed. And that was that.

I think this easily qualifies as one of the strangest conversations I’ve ever had. I mean, I can't for the life of me figure out what the sigh exactly meant. Surely he didn’t realize that my “It’s not as if I don’t believe you” actually implied the opposite (i.e. “Yes, I am suspicious of you”)? He'd react more angry if he realized that. Or did he realize that he had been wrong all along by not telling me why he was there in the first place? But that could hardly have been the case, since he was probably lying to me. Indeed, I could clearly hear him knock on his brother’s door and shout his name in the hallway. His brother wasn’t there though. Instead they met a few moments later back on the street. (Oh yes, I confess. I was spying).

But the strangest thing is that I now feel bad about the whole exchange.

Indeed, who is strange here? The guy who rings someone’s doorbell and doesn’t explain why he’s there, or the guy who has spent the whole day analyzing what was said (and not said) in those 30 seconds?

Right.

Perfect strangers

Maybe you're too young, dear reader. Rest assured: considering the average lifetime of Belgians, and ignoring the fact that we are among the even happier few - well fed and employed - that may last longer than average, Freds are bound soon to hit the mid of life; blondes, boats and bottles: here we come.

Silently creeping to old age has the advantage of making the statement 'in our days' more valid. Happily fitting that Statler and Waldorfian complaintive is this: earlier this week, I stumbled upon the first episode of the sitcom 'Perfect Strangers': Balki Bartokomous, professional (mind you) sheepherder (sic) from the Greek island of Mypos, pops up the very day Larry Appleton (can you say "cousin Larry" with your best Hellenic accent?) moved out of his busy parental household to live on his own in the town that's Frank Sinatra's kind and home of the Bulls. Corny? Yes, with a capital maize. Funny? Not up to "modern standards", perhaps, but certainly amusing in the splendid overacting of Bronson Pinchot. I particularly recall an episode where Balki gets hit in the head and thinks he's Elvis: "Who is this Balki Bartokomoose". Perhaps you had to have been there.

So what brought me to mention the show, apart from my virtual walking cane? Here's what: revisiting it made me ponder the setup of the series, and the marvellous applicability of the title in many of its interpretations. Two alleged family members that are repeatedly pictured as exactly what the title says (and I do not refer to the sexual interpretation): two people knowing absolutely nothing about each other and appearing to be as different as they come, are juxtaposed and blended. Especially Balki is presented as a weird dude, though Larry soon is proved to be the owner of quite a few quirks himself. Yet another way in which this odd couple are perfectly strange. Now the english phrase 'perfect strangers' in some uses has come to hold the promise of perfection: although this unknown person is, well, exceptionally unknown, the potential of being fit for you is there: this guy/gal could be the lid on your teapot (pardon the dutchism), or may turn out to (be) quite like you.

Thus it is with Freds! There were lives before Fred-ity, and even before the (westflemish little girl induced) meeting of Freds-to-be. At the time of the introductions, the spectator may have thought no different than me during the first episode: these guys are unalike. I mean: you have Freds with a strong mathematical background, while another is more philologically inclined. Some Freds keep (at least at the current age) their hair lengths near the boxer: short; the use of elastics for style control is not uncommon for another (admittedly, these can also be found near a boxer). There are Freds who actually own the house, and one who will always be a guest.

Then the borderline of differences becomes dashed or even dotted: academia, a sharp keyboard (pencils are so nineties), well (and certainly) wrought english sentences, the love for redneck Nelson M (or other variants of the game that is not to be addressed as one of chance) and verbal humor, an eagerness to debate philosophical issues and much more, unites us, as does, now, the shared name and blog. To quote Maxi Jazz: we come 1. This goes to the point that (disregarding occasional references to past events that were unique to each Fred's life and known to some if not all readers, and a handful of identifiable habits involving dashes, semicolons and comparisons like the aliens in the X-files: out there) it might become hard to distinguish the writing Fred of each individual post - can you? Surely, in some peoples' books we might by now be regarded as equally strange. Now, all we need is a theme song.

Perhaps it is as with beauty and even perfection - and you can mark that as a Fred-ism : strangeness is in the eye of the beholder.