damigella: (crying Wilson)
[personal profile] damigella
I cannot resist quoting a wonderful sentence my beloved grandmother once shouted at a bus driver (see PS for context; no blasphemy, some very coarse language and very violent sadistic imagery follows).

To anyone who was involved with writing and/or approving the script for Season seven finale and, first and foremost, to David Shore I would like to say:

Vai a fartelo stroncare nel culo!

A brief exegesis of the sentence above: the careless reader may assume it's just a version of the usual Italian vaffanculo, go get yourself fucked up the ass, an insult which is so ubiquitous as to have lost almost all contact with its literal (and possibly homophobic, or more precisely buttsexphobic) meaning. However, the discerning Neolatin languages scholar will remark how the verb stroncare comes from tronco, tree trunk, and refers to said trunk being broken, snapped apart. So I feel a much better translation of what my grandma said is Go and have someone stick something rigid up your ass so violently that it breaks.



Going beyond my grandma's words, I would suggest using House's cane: of course one would need quite some energy to stroncare that, but I think it would be amply appropriate - and House has a muscular enough right arm. It's also a matter of trying long enough and possibly having Wilson eventually saw it halfway through it in case House gets tired. Multiple canes could be used to avoid STD's for different people, and for Shore I suggest inserting the cane from the handle side, and choosing a very knobby and/or sharp handle (one could then leave him to die slowly of his perforated intestine).



Of course I don't mean this literally, and I am opposed to the use of violence against show writers except in dark!humor fanfics (I would not normally spell this out, but on the internet it is probably appropriate). I'm sure my grandma also didn't mean it literally with the bus driver. She just wanted to give appropriate expression to her deep moral disapproval of his behavior, and so do I towards the show writers and especially David "I'm sure he saw the room was empty" Shore.

Personal PS. Context for what my grandma said: it was raining buckets, and my 70-year old granny was standing at the bus stop. The (very full, very late) bus approached; the bus driver looked at the many people waiting and purposefully didn't stop. The next bus wasn't due for twenty minutes at least, and there was no shelter nearby. The weather change was unexpected and no one had an umbrella, or appropriate clothing or shoes.

I was seven or eight years old and didn't understand her sentence at all. I also realized I shouldn't ask. I just remembered it verbatim (I have a very good memory for words) and kept going back to it until I understood its meaning more than ten years later.

I also think she probably meant vaffanculo, except with a very big hard cock and no lube - a fascinating version of the same insult from a different part of Italy suggests adding sand for extra friction. I think that she, like me, liked the musicality of the sentence, and the strong cathartic force of the verb stroncare.

Date: 2011-05-25 10:15 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] damigella-314.livejournal.com
"I wish my country didn't virtually lose its Native Tongue."
That's sad. You don't speak Irish at all?

And you know that Dante explicitly mentions farting in the comedy?
"Ed elli avea del cul fatto trombetta"
And he had used his asshole as a trumpet.

A perfect hendecasyllable (the most common meter of Italian good poetry).

Date: 2011-05-25 10:30 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] resm.livejournal.com
I did Italian in school (cos Irish was overprescribed) and have retained nothing but "non lo so" because that was, generally, my response to whatever question. It's as well my teacher, Padre, liked me. His real name was Peter but hey. I called him Padre lol. (I'm getting a brief flashback of the first ever house ep. with Wilson talking about the patient's name. I call her Rachel lol).

Awk I know phrases here and there and we'd have translations on roadsigns and buildings and things. But, like, it's practically not in use. There's still Irish schools in the North but many people would argue that with lack of funding, other subjects on the curriculum suffer (say, maths or whatever). In the Free State (Down South) there'd be more Irish-speaking schools but then, as you're aware yourself, different regions equal v. different dialects so the Irish-speaking Northerners (i.e. textbook Irish) would be very different to that of Donegal.

We have summer camps for students learning Irish to go off and live with Irish speaking families but it's still predominantly English-English-English. I have friends though, twins, who would have got grounded growing up for speaking English in their home and detention in school for uttering anything that wasn't gaelic. So, to some degree, I was lucky I went to a normal Catholic school.

Date: 2011-05-25 11:01 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] damigella-314.livejournal.com
"Irish-speaking Northerners (i.e. textbook Irish)"

Weird. The North is were textbook Irish is spoken? Can I check this with jezziejay?

"detention in school for uttering anything that wasn't gaelic."

That's really, really strange. That would be in Northern Ireland?

Date: 2011-05-25 11:44 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] resm.livejournal.com
I didn't know jezziejay was Irish too lol! Yeah, NI would be textbook Irish because you're only learning it in school really, if you're learning it at all, whereas Free Staters would have more Irish speaking communities where people were raised speaking it as well as Eng.

Date: 2011-05-25 11:58 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] damigella-314.livejournal.com
My pet project is to find out all the non-North Americans in the h/w community. There's no other Italian writing fanfic, though. And I'm surprised at how few Irish there are.

Date: 2011-05-25 02:20 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] cuddyclothes.livejournal.com
There seems to be a fair amount of Germans.

Date: 2011-05-25 07:55 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] damigella-314.livejournal.com
Definitely - I hope I'll get to meet some next year!

I think it comes from there being a lot of Germans (there's about 55-60 millions of Ita, Fra, and UK, and almost 90 mil of Ger) and them as an average knowing much better English than people with a neo-Latin native language.

Date: 2011-05-25 04:26 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] chocolate-frapp.livejournal.com
I'm Irish-American, I don't know if that counts.

Date: 2011-05-25 07:08 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] damigella-314.livejournal.com
Being Irish makes you more good-looking: when Austen wants to tell her readers how hot captain Wentworth is, she has a minor character look at him and ask whether he's Irish.

The one Irishwoman I know (from Belfast, protestant side) is very beautiful, and full-figured like you I would say. She took early retirement after quarreling too often with her French boss, who resented her correcting his English. We like each other a lot, though I see her much less since she retired, she spends a lot of time traveling.

Date: 2011-05-26 02:45 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] chocolate-frapp.livejournal.com
well, Celtic men are gorgeous anyway, where do you think our darling Hugh got those big blue eyes and amazing cheekbones? that's his Scots DNA!

Date: 2011-05-26 04:16 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] damigella-314.livejournal.com
That's a very interesting analysis. How about Wilson having his own amazing cheekbones from Northeastern Europe? That's where my husband has them from :-).
[No amazing cheekbones have been sighted in my family for several generations, LOL].

Date: 2011-05-27 02:44 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] chocolate-frapp.livejournal.com
RSL is adorable too in his own way. :)

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