Hi! So for about 7 years I taught English as a foreign language to adults. Because of this I still have a good sense, in my head, of how people sound when they are at various levels of English. (Today’s comic: roughly halfway through book one.) I read an except of Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything Is Illuminated, and I couldn’t take it. Maybe the book had other merits, but the voice of the Russian guide just rang false to me. It really bugged me.
Anyway.
So meanwhile Prism Comics just published this analysis of comics on the Apple iPad and problems with censorship. It’s worth reading. Pass it on. (And it’s not just about gay comics; it’s about double standards with the major comic publishers and independent comic publishers.) Go read.
↓ Transcript
[Charlie, in class with three students]
Charlie: OK class, let's
Mônica: Teacher, I have a question.
Charlie: Yes?
Mônica: How you say: you beard is... little hair?
Tomoslav: Few hairs!
Ichiko: Mm... maybe, not so dense hair?
Charlie: Uh, "sparse", I guess.
Mônica: "Sparse." It's a sparse beard.
Tomoslav: Teacher has sparse beard.
Ichiko: Mm... also, not so EVEN hair beard.
Charlie: OK let's move on now.
Charlie: OK class, let's
Mônica: Teacher, I have a question.
Charlie: Yes?
Mônica: How you say: you beard is... little hair?
Tomoslav: Few hairs!
Ichiko: Mm... maybe, not so dense hair?
Charlie: Uh, "sparse", I guess.
Mônica: "Sparse." It's a sparse beard.
Tomoslav: Teacher has sparse beard.
Ichiko: Mm... also, not so EVEN hair beard.
Charlie: OK let's move on now.
Well, not that I was considering purchasing any Apple products to begin with, but that article has certainly given me enough reason to have made a decision to not do so.
My 80G Zune mp3 player, at $270 (with additional decorations on the back), had a base price EQUAL to that of the 8G iPod I looked at when I purchased my original Zune. I didn’t want to pay an inflated price for a name-brand product I’d have to replace for a larger capacity within a couple years. With anything from Apple, you’re paying for the name, not the product.
Given a choice, I’d choose Amazon’s Kindle over Apple’s iProduct. And right now, I don’t even like Amazon, because of them throwing their weight around over ebooks.
ha ha poor charlie.