MY HEART CAN’T STOP THROBBING!!!11

As much fun as it is to make fun of the people around me who sport various logos in nonsensical English, we Americans do exactly the same thing. We have shirts at the GAP that are emblazoned with random Chinese characters (kanji) that for all we know could say “I slept with my mother and killed my father, what’s it to you?” Unless you can read kanji you really don’t know what you’re promoting with that shirt or tattoo.

However while I’m here I’m going to point, laugh and enjoy the ridiculousness that finds itself on t-shirts, posters and storefronts. For example, there is store in the Aeon Plaza that predominantly sells fashionable looking children’s clothing called “Drug Store’s.” I’m sorry. The Drug Store is…. what or where exactly? It’s also deceiving in that there is not a single drug or pharmaceutical item sold in the entire store unless there’s some under-the-counter thing going on and I’m just not privy to the codeword. They do have some unbelievably cute shirts with joyful-looking bunnies and “DRUG STORE’S” written across them proudly.

I have a feeling this is going to be an ever-growing list, but here are a few that happened to catch my eye:

Japan is the land of unbelievably cute stationary and pens. Every large department store will have an entire section devoted to this stuff. This would lead you to think that people write an enormous amount of letters, but I sort of wonder if this is the case. I’m a sucker for a nice pen and have a habit of collecting stationary yet never using it. I just squirrel it away since it is “too cute” to actually use. People get letters written on free postcards and crap loose-leaf paper, if at all. I am trying to mend my ways however. In any case, unsuitable English quite often finds its way onto pieces of stationary. I noticed a catchy phrase on a package of cute little blue gift bags:

“MY HEART CAN’T STOP THROBBING. WHY CAN’T YOU OPEN UP YOUR MIND?”

This is obviously for a very, VERY specific type of gift. I would hope to never have to use such a gift bag to express my emotions. Ever.

In my opinion if one is going to print random linguistical garbage on items to make them popular and fashionable, one could at least put something USEFUL on them. I don’t know – like the definition of the word befuddlement, or E=mc^2 or ten different ways of how to say hello in various languages, or the second Latin declension or a standard pizza menu so they can practice for when they travel to the States. “MY HEART CAN’T STOP THROBBING. WHY CAN’T YOU OPEN UP YOUR MIND” seems to be an odd combination of something one would hear from an 78 year old man who is experiencing what he suspects is a heart attack and something yelled by Luke Wilson’s girlfriend in Old School after he stumbles upon her with a couple of blindfolded nude people. So much for catching the early flight home.

Such a phrase is unsuitable for stationary and gift bags in my opinion. It also puts the person receiving the gift immediately on the defensive. The bag might as well say, “YOU WILL LIKE MY GIFT OR ELSE I’LL CLIMB UP THERE AND STAB YOU WITH FORKS TILL YOU BLEED, YOU LITTLE FREAK” *kudos if you get the reference.

Another gem was found on a bright yellow shirt worn by a very plain, very unassuming Japanese man. His shirt read: “Handsome is that handsome does is the index of the heart.” This led me to wonder exactly what the clichéd English phrase “handsome is as handsome does” actually means. I always assumed it had something to do with beautiful actions making a beautiful person – beauty on the inside and all that garbage that Shrek tries to teach us. But now I’m not exactly sure. It’s kind of a stupid expression if you stop and think about it. But the Japanese have thrown an entirely different layer into it, deciding that attractiveness is the ‘index of the heart.’ So, by this logic – an incredibly hot person must have a huge, warm, beating heart and the ugly leper down the street has absolutely nothing going on inside.

It’s interesting, as back in Ancient times they believed this to be true. Ugly and perhaps deformed people were assumed to be inherently evil at heart and thus were jeered at, stoned, tossed into a pit or cast down in society. If you were unattractive it was simply assumed that you were, obviously, dumb, socially inept and a waste of oxygen; you could say the genes were linked. Lucky for me this custom has since been changed for the most part.

Just as side note I have experienced my first case of Japanese indirectness and subtlety. Fortunately for me it worked for my benefit this time. Someone must have seen me struggle like the incredible spaz that I am with the rusty tetanus-inducing contraption that some call a bike. I didn’t say anything to anyone regarding my displeasure with this thing in the hopes that I would just learn to deal with it, or perhaps go buy myself a different one. However, I have been granted a new, compact, shiny red bike that I could almost fold up and put in my pocket if I so wanted to. No basket but I’m hoping this one is more manageable and won’t send me tumbling to my demise in front of a large copper-toting truck.

It sure looks a hell of a lot cooler and that’s all that matters. Handsome is as handsome does is the index of the heart. MY HEART CAN’T STOP THROBBING.

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Published:
8.7.06 / 5pm
Category:
what i call life, culture, unschoolish