Can I borrow a feeling?

So, in a previous post, I mentioned my neighbors' love of Karaoke. They practice(? perform? not sure what you would call it, or what on Earth they'd be practicing for...) at all hours of the day and night. Thankfully, not consecutively, but we have heard them as early as about 8am, and as late as around 2am. I can't confirm whether my dreams of bludgeoning someone with a microphone mean that they push on till morning, or if that's just residual hatred after they've gone to bed next to the ol' Leadsinger LS-3700.

When we first heard them TESTING, TESTING the mike some time last fall, we were at a loss to explain what the sounds were that we were hearing. It sounded like their 10-year-old was babbling into some kind of echo-chamber microphone. After months of listening, I still have no idea who is singing at any given time.

Since the dad is Hispanic (though maybe mixed with something else), and the mom is East Asian of some sort (Filipino, maybe?), I figured maybe they were singing in some other language, and the cadence of that language sounded kinda like off-key English singing. But no, when I poked my head out into the hall, I could clearly hear "looooooooooove! liffffffffffffffft us. uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuup! where. weeeeee!! beee-lonnnnnngggg." Except I can't do it justice in print-- those varying fonts and extra punctuation are the closest I can get.

And in case you were wondering, I've spoken with the dad a few times, and he is absolutely not just learning English.

Speaking of karaoke, it's pronounced "ka-ROH-key". This is how I believe the Japanese word is pronounced: karla-oh-kayyyy. I'll admit that I honestly have no memory if I made this up at some point in the last 10 years, or if I actually heard the word pronounced this way, but it sounds right and I'm sticking to it. I also have no idea if "karla" is the appropriate way to represent the combined liquid sound I often hear in Asian languages, but that's the best I've got.

Anyway, I can tell you, with or without my English degree, that "carry-yokey" can not, and should not, be taken from the spelling of that word. It's ludicrous.

This sounds like a job for Wikipedia!

I just went to the page for Karaoke, I encourage you to go as well, if only to listen to the hilarious clip of someone saying the word, though admittedly it's probably only hilarious when played in my version of Winamp with fade-in/fade-out turned on. It's actually kind of frightening at the same time.

Anyway, I submit that my pronunciation is much closer to the original, which interestingly enough, is partially taken from English. What a crazy post-WWII mutual infatuation we've got going on with Japan.

Disclaimer: It may be lame, but I just want to say that I hope all my statements regarding Asian people, culture, and languages make only, or at least mostly, me seem ridiculous, and that they impart my curious fascination and reverence for them. I hope my statements regarding horrible karaoke, however, impart my hatred for horrible karaoke.

Now that's home cooking

This morning, I thought that M- had created something unholy in her diaper, as she is wont to do. It was something I hadn't smelled before, though, so I was confused, since we hadn't fed her anything unusual the previous day. And the random things she eats off the floor (we're not the best housekeepers) don't usually add up to enough to affect herrrrrrrrr... output. By the way, yes, we do try to stop her from eating off the floor. Except of course when I've put pieces of cereal on the floor in a trail leading her wherever it is I need her to go.

But I digress...

Anyway, upon further review, the smell did not seem to be emanating from the baby's direction. Rather, it seemed to be emanating from the walls, floors, appliances, and my eye sockets.

I had faint, unbidden recollections of the dog food factory we used to live near, which I do understand does not sound all that unpleasant to anyone who has never lived near a dog food factory. Just trust me on this one when I tell you I was quickly looking to find the source of the smell and smother the life out of it.

It slowly dawned on me that it really was seeping through the floor and walls, and pouring in from under the front door, as our downstairs neighbors were "cooking" again. Generally, we are treated to (literally) stomach-turning waves of powerful East Asian spices, which is at least understandable compared to this smell, though in the past the smells have been so powerful we have literally been driven out of our home for an evening or longer. In answer to the inevitable "what on Earth are they cooking?" question, we have received such items as Styrofoam coolers labeled "Frozen Whole Cooked Octopus" amongst their voluminous garbage piled on our shared porch, as well as right next to our THREE ENORMOUS GARBAGE CANS. Sorry about that... sounds like this might be a few separate posts.

Anyway, this smelled nothing like food, and I cannot imagine what it was. But the weirdest part was that this was the morning, so either it was a very elaborate breakfast/brunch (no waffles and cereal for them!), or just the awful-est phase of an even more intricate dinner, because the smell faded by mid-afternoon. The world will never know what it was, of course, because we almost never even see our neighbors, much less speak with them. On a side note, all interactions we have had with the one representative we do see have been appropriately polite and friendly thus far.

Screamingly loud, predictably off-key karaoke sessions at all hours don't count as "interactions", right?