So I've got OS X now and I've been futzing around with Sherlock. The other night I discovered the "translate" function. I've been abusing it all night.

My favorite thing so far is the Japanese - English translation feature, because it makes for absolutely perfect production of quality Engrish (for your enjoying life!) if you translate something from English into Japanese and back again. If you're wondering just exactly what Engrish means, Engrish is the ubiquitous, unique and wonderful kind of English syntax that appears everywhere in Japan. And I do mean everywhere.

In my estimation, there are three distinct categories of Engrish.

There is Engrish used as a name that makes no sense whatsoever. Once, while going through Osaka in the back seat of Maki's car, I saw in one afternoon, and I shit you not, a hotel called "Come On My House", a convenience store called "GETTA FUN!!!", an auto shop called "Good Speed", and a restaurant - "Meatopia" - which apparently serves... meat. This photo is one I took at a mall in Kyoto. I still haven't figured that one out.

Then there's "lifestyle" Engrish. You see this all the time on Japanese consumer products like cosmetics and snack foods, describing a happy and fantastic lifestyle. It is Haiku-like in its structure, sometimes conversational, sometimes strangely poetic.

The third and most enormously frustrating is instruction Engrish. You know those awful directions you get printed in some nameless klunky typeface on a slip of paper wedged into the bottom of the box from your cheap-ass answering machine? That's it. It's hard for an English speaker to properly re-create because it requires such complete disregard for grammar and proper word choice (not to mention a letter or two). It's also what Sherlock, unburdened by any human notions of proper English, is exactly perfect for reproducing.

I immediately got to plugging in advertising copy. Out pops a perfect example of synthesized lifestyle Engrish:

Prepare the rush of refreshing taste? Rising Pucker lemony destruction intensity of excitation of the oranges includes mind pleasantly. The palm do the thirst and the taste for venturing the Coke of diet of the taste where the lemon is new tastily.

So of course I had to plug in some web-porn.

Suling it is slow, on the surface and front and back in next door of movement she clear played straw raincoat pleasantly in star cutting, therefore I reached, that my finger could be slipped easily in her cat, was simultaneously. Now I had done my share me presume harmony and truth writhing, mean thing!

One thing can at least be said for the Japanese, at least. I've never seen one of them getting a tattoo in English.