Offensive Things to Say in Yiddish

Several years ago, my parents gave me a book called Drek!: The REAL Yiddish Your Bubbe Never Taught You by Yetta Emmes. (Of course, my bubbe did teach me some of what was in the book, like kurvah, which means "whore." She pretty much bitterly refers to any woman who is not yet widowed as a kurvah, but I digress.) With apologies to the adorable Millie, whose online Yiddish lessons I so enjoyed yesterday, here are some choice phrases in the book that I enjoyed learning this afternoon include:

• Gey tren zich - go fuck yourself


• Ich cock ahf im - I shit on him!


• kish mich in tukhes - kiss my ass


• Bareh nit - don't fuck with me


• Drek oif a shpendel - shit on a stick


• Groisser potz - big prick

I wonder how to say these things in Ladino, which is a mix of Spanish and Hebrew, the way Yiddish is a mix of German and Hebrew...

For a Good Laugh, Watch Millie

I'm working on a story about growing up as the grandchild of Holocaust survivors, and as part of the work, I want to include a lot of Yiddish to convey what my grandfather was like. He loved telling jokes in Yiddish, so I looked around online to see what I could find (and falsely attribute to him, but whatever - that's why it's a memoir and not a biography; lower standards of accuracy).

My good search yielded this hilarious woman, Millie, who has an blog in which she dispenses little Yiddish lessons. She is completely adorable and her joke (which I sadly am not able to embed - never mind; I found it on YouTube, so see below) is good for quite a laugh. Definitely check it out.

It's more how she tells the joke than the joke itself, but the joke strikes me as a very good example of one of the cleaner ones my grandpa used to tell. Millie reminds me of some strange cross between my mom's mom (Granny) and my dad's mom (Bubbe). I just want to hug her!

New Title

Starting sometime in June, I will officially be known as Aunt Suzanne to my sister's baby! I am so, so, so, so excited. I am also really sad that my sister lives so far away.

My sister told my parents on Tuesday night. My mom had asked her to print some pictures from my grandmother's birthday party last summer, so she stuck pictures from her sonogram in with the others. As my mom looked through the batch, she came to the sonogram shot.

"What's this?"

"That's your unborn grandchild," my sister replied.

"What? I don't have an unbor.... Oh!" my mom exclaimed. "Wait! How did this happen? I, mean, I know how this happened, but how did it happen?"

Last nght, my dad told me that he has not stopped smiling since he found out. "I go to bed with a grin on my face, and when I wake up, I am smiling." I know how he feels.

Thanksgiving

With all that is going on in the world lately (and always, I suppose), it seems harder than ever to focus on the positive things in life at Thanksgiving. But maybe that's the point: it's a time to think about what is good and to ponder what one can do to make those good things go further.

Of course, as I typed this, I managed to gouge a large chunk of skin out of my kneecap. (Perhaps a reminder that I am better at cynical sarcasm and righteous indignity rather than sincerity?) So, I'm cutting my Thanksgiving post short to mop up the blood oozing out of my knee.

Hope you have a great day!

Furry Beaver

I went to the gym yesterday morning. One of the TVs in the room had the Today show on. It was right in my line of vision. The teletype was on and I half-watched without sound while running on a treadmill. A woman brought some animals onto the stage, and Kathie Lee and some giantess reacted to each one as if I were a serial killer on the loose. I rolled my eyes.

Then, it happened. The animal lady's assistant carried an enormous brown beaver out. It was adorable, although understandably terrified of the women poking at it with a stick of celery and kept trying to escape. "Damn, that beaver is large and furry!" I said to myself and cracked up. "I want to touch that soft beaver!"

Unfortunately, I almost fell off the machine at that point, so I missed one of the women's comments, looking up just in time to see Kathie Lee wrinkling her little button nose and the teletype reading, "No, this is just the way beavers smell."

Trust me, my furry beaver was no better after a six mile run. Heh heh.

Resisting Urges

I discovered an individually wrapped string cheese in my backpack. It's been in there for about a week, I think. I seriously considered eating it for a second or two, as cheese is really damn expensive these days and I hate waste, but then I noticed that the hermetically sealed package reads, "KEEP REFRIGERATED." Better judgment prevailed.

Jane & I

Whenever I get my hair cut, I initially hate it. Then, I wait seven to ten days to see how it turns out. This is my haircut from Nov. 6 (and lipstick!):


I asked a stylish British woman in my literature class where she got her very short hair cut, and then I made an appointment there. When I sat down in Nelson's chair, he said, "Don't worry! I'll give you a very feminine hair cut, not butch at all." Of course, that made me worry. Was he implying that my current (overgrown) cut made me look butch? And why make assurances like that in the first place? I assumed that he didn't plan to make me look butch.

Anyway, when he was done, I thought it was way too short and that I looked dykier than ever. However, my friends from school thought it was very chic. (Although when I saw Steph on Sunday, the first thing she said to me was, "Holy Christ, is your hair short!") I'm still undecided about it. Sometimes it looks great and other times like I am a pointy headed weirdo. It can't be that bad, or a random guy would not have compared me to Jane Weidland Wiedlin last week (updated with picture below).

Whatever the case, I won't need it cut again for a while, and saving money is always a good thing.