Monday, August 23, 2004

My Favorite Champion of Ringlish Speaks

He emerges from the tundra woods swinging a scaly worm above his head and ululating... an elaborate Mongolian warrior cry echoing among San Francisco's three or four skyscrapers...

This is my coworker Georgii-- or "George" to me. Sort of to spite him when I'm writing in Russian I transliterate it "Djordj." I'm more comfortable (and quite frankly more clear about what we're talking about) if we're both speaking Russian, but he insists on cramping along in English when we speak.

Here below, for your entertainment, is the final bullet point from his most recent weekly report. This is not a snippet of one of his classic-- nay, epic-- missteps, or even his most muscular floridity-- I just think you can hear some of the poetry of Russian still clinging to his words like cheap cigar smoke on a threadbare polyester pantsuit:



    Has killed the Sasser Worm in my home computer. Though, it does not
    relate directly to the work, it was joyful fun. The worm practically blackmails; it commands to download an update from Internet (pretending to be your computer's system), otherwise it shuts down your computer in 60 seconds (and does so). Any reasonable person should show a finger to the worm's commands and Microsoft's webpage provides arms to kill the worm successfully.



This is a special-ity of George's, the flamboyant destruction of a technological foe. Now that we're doing these weekly reports I hope I can offer you spectacular feats of Ringlish as a regular feature. Here's hoping.