There is almost nothing in the world I enjoy more whole-heartedly than bad translation. If therapists' waiting rooms were papered with poor translations there would be nothing to talk about in therapy. Poor translation can feed the poor, nurse the sick, bathe the dirty. Anyway, www.engrish.com is the place to find Japanese products with English on them and they are SO GOOD. Yeah, calling it Engrish is a little derogatory but the site itself is not making fun of anyone. It is a passionate embrace of Japan's use of the English language on its products. I love the site so much it took me 20 minutes to decide which picture to upload. I was tempted by "Pumpkin Poo," a store selling cakes and pies. I also liked the "I hate myself and I want to die" t-shirt, red with a rainbow.

While working in the Graduate Department of Arts and Sciences at Boston University my friend Tina received a letter from a man in China who wanted to go to school there. The letter was chock-full of classic phrases like, "I have a bone in my throat to tell the truth." There was also some sort of conspiracy he was trying to uncover and explain; something about a man who "got in there" and changed his test scores because this man has never liked him. That's why he had the bone in the throat. The best part of the letter, though, was that at the very end he wrote, "I will come translate documents in Chinese into English for you if you let me come there." I thought they should have gotten him out here just to translate documents. It would have cheered up quite a few peeps. And him. One of my favorite items that has fallen prey to bad translation is a Russian nesting doll of Marilyn Monroe and her men that my friends Wil and Susan gave me for my birthday this year. The outside doll is Marilyn, painted in some kind of traditional Russian digs, and it says, "Merlin." Then inside is F. Sinatro (Sinatra), Dio di Badro (Joe DiMaggio) and if Mantan (I got nothing). The only one they got right is Arthur Miller. It's the fatal flaw that makes me so affectionate toward these items with silly and sometimes absurd English on them. That someone has taken great care to map out a product from soup to nuts and no one notices the drunken elephant in the middle of the room. That no one has stopped for a moment to say, "could this be wrong? Are you SURE we should call these moist towelettes Pocket Wetty? Are you SURE we should call our restaurant Dick & Uprise?" The wrong English sneaks in like a bandit under the radar detector. This is therapy for me. For someone who tends to be a touch too self-critical and a bit of a perfectionist (typos notwithstanding), these uncannily human moments of imperfection make me smile and stop taking everything so seriously.