dumb et dumberer — and i pretended this was french for an evening

dumb et dumberer became french for a few hours because i decided it was, and pretended accordingly. nothing under this roof speaks french, including the seventh microwave, which hummed in a key that might have been parisian if you squinted, which i did, briefly, generously. the good knife stayed in its box. the dishwasher, sealed and silent, judged the entire performance.

writing this from the desk on a wednesday around 12:08pm. carla is upstairs in a training session about something called “stakeholder language” — third floor, two hours minimum.

so. dumb et dumberer. i found the slug on a list, between two longer titles, with the small et sitting between dumb and dumberer like a postcard from a country i have never visited. the original 1994 film uses and. the prequel uses and. the typo uses et. that little three-letter swap is the entire investigation. that little swap is also, in some larger sense, the most honest version of the franchise’s argument, which is that two dumbnesses placed side by side can, with the right grammar, pass for international.

dumb et dumberer is a bilingual misfire — the small word et, latin or french for and, parked between two english words about being dumb. it is not a translation. it is not a real title. it is a typo that looks, briefly, like a foreign film. the dumbness it points at, however, is universal.

for the long version of dumb itself, see the pillar i drafted at this same desk last spring; this satellite orbits it from a strange angle.

DUMB. ET. DUMBERER. NOT. A. LANGUAGE. JUST. A. MOOD.

i need that locked in before we proceed, because the temptation, when you see et in a sentence, is to pretend you took french in school. i did not take french. i took a half-semester of spanish in 2003 and have, since then, said gracias to a barista in a way that did not, frankly, land. the appearance of et on the page does not make any of us multilingual. it makes us hopeful. there is a difference. the difference is the entire post.

dumb et dumberer, the bilingual misfire

here is what the typo does. it takes a known piece of cultural noise — two dumb men, a van shaped like a dog, a road across a country — and it dresses the marquee in a borrowed coat. the coat does not fit. the coat is from a different rack. but at a glance, in the right light, the marquee reads as if it had been imported, and the people walking past assume the film is from a country with subtitles and, possibly, opinions about cheese.

that is the small magic of et. it is the cheapest possible passport. you put it between two english words and the marquee suddenly suggests that there is a director with a beret behind it, and a producer in lyon, and a small festival audience clapping, politely, between sips of something. there is, in fact, none of that. there is only the typo, and a spaghetti dinner i was trying to convince myself was, on a wednesday night, cuisine.

i did try, briefly, to be that audience. i set out a placemat. i used a fork that was not sparky, because sparky has earned, after the seventh microwave, the right to retire. i poured tap water into a glass that, until that evening, had been holding pens.

the french lesson i did not take, again

here is the part where the bilingual misfire becomes a personal failure. for about three hours on a wednesday evening i committed to the bit. i looked up et. i confirmed it was the same word in french and in latin, and that this convergence was, in some grammatical sense, useful. then i lost the tab. then i told myself i remembered enough to wing it.

i did not. winging french is not winging spanish. winging french involves vowel sounds that the apartment has, structurally, never been built to support. the seventh microwave heard me try to say bonsoir and made a small adjustment to its hum, the way a kettle adjusts when you walk past it on a sunday. the air conditioning unit, which has its own opinions, did nothing. the third yoga mat, under the sofa, presumed evolutionary, did nothing. only the dishwasher seemed to actively object.

which brings us, regrettably, to a hot take i hold with both hands. the dishwasher is a cabinet that judges you. i mention it here because the dishwasher does not care what language you fail in. the dishwasher is monolingual in scorn. you can sing to it in french, italian, latin, or pig latin, and the dishwasher will, regardless, refuse to acknowledge that you, the renter, exist on its plane. the dishwasher does not need et. the dishwasher is the cabinet. the cabinet is the verdict. for the longer set of household appliance positions i have, see the am-i-dumb-test diagnostic i drafted at this desk last quarter; the present post is gentler than that one.

the good knife, in the drawer, no language barrier

the good knife has lived here since i moved in. it lives in its box. its box lives in the drawer next to the takeaway menus from places that have, in some cases, since closed. i have never used the good knife. that is, in some sense, why it is good. an unused knife is, by definition, undefeated.

i thought, briefly, on the night of the typo, that the good knife should come out for the occasion. french food, i told myself, requires a knife. i then realised i was not making french food. i was reheating spaghetti, which is the cuisine of a country slightly southeast of the typo, and which a butter knife, frankly, could have managed. the good knife stayed in the box. the box stayed in the drawer. the drawer judged me, mildly, but the drawer judges with less commitment than the dishwasher does.

my one airpod — the second one is, by my reasonable estimate, somewhere between a cushion and a memory — played a single track in french for about ninety seconds, after which the algorithm gave up and went back to a podcast in english about wine. stefan, who fancies himself an expert, would have approved of the wine podcast. stefan, by the way, takes wine seriously the way the dishwasher takes dishes seriously, which is to say, with a quiet, unrelenting authority that does not require evidence.

the dishwasher take, briefly, since it judges in any tongue

i would like to return, for a paragraph, to the dishwasher, because it is the only object on the premises that performed consistently across the bilingual evening. the seventh microwave hummed, the airpod played, the good knife stayed boxed, the third yoga mat refused to participate in any way at all. the dishwasher, alone, kept its character. silent. closed. correct. you cannot bribe a dishwasher with vocabulary. you cannot persuade a dishwasher with a fresh placemat. the dishwasher is a cabinet that judges you, and judges you in any tongue you choose to fail in. that is, in fact, what makes it the most international object on the premises. the dishwasher is, structurally, european.

this is also where confirmation enters the picture. the entire evening was, on later inspection, a small exercise in the long note on confirmation bias i filed from this desk — i had decided, before pouring the spaghetti, that dumb et dumberer was french, and i then proceeded to interpret every household sound as confirming evidence. the microwave hummed parisian. the airpod played a chanson. the good knife was, in some sense, a knife from rouen. none of this confirmation was based on anything. it was based on the bias. the typo was the prompt. the rest was me, agreeing with myself, for ninety minutes, in a borrowed accent.

why the typo is the most international of dumbnesses

here is the smaller argument the bilingual misfire is making, accidentally, on the page. dumb does not need translation. you can ship dumb across a border without subtitles. the proof is that dumb et dumberer, as a phrase, is parseable to anyone who has ever looked at a bookshelf. you do not need to know what et means. you can guess. and, probably. or, possibly. either way, you understand: there are two dumbnesses, side by side, ranked. that is enough. dumb is its own grammar. dumb does not require declensions.

this is, in some sense, the argument the original film makes too. for the broader argument about two dumbnesses traveling together, see the the long dumb road essay i posted from this desk a few weeks back; that one is the longer version. lloyd and harry, in the film, do not need any single language to communicate. they communicate in shoulder shrugs and parking-lot gestures. they would, frankly, have been just as well served by a marquee that said dumb et dumberer. the typo would not have changed the road trip. the typo would have changed only the people in line for tickets.

verdict — the language is irrelevant, the dumbness is universal

here is where the investigation lands. the typo did not make me french for an evening. the typo made me a man in an apartment, attempting french, while a dishwasher judged him in a register no language has ever found a name for. that is the result. that is, in fact, the only result available.

carla just walked back past the desk with a fresh coffee. that means the training broke for ten minutes. i flipped tabs. small win.

the seventh microwave is humming again. it is humming, unmistakably, in english. i am, on the whole, relieved.