A bit off-topic, but amusing.
My wife is living on the island of Curacao for a while for a variety of reasons. I was there with her but returned to America because frankly I despise the island and all of its inhabitants. I'd be happy to explain why at length; send me an email and I'll write your ear off about it. Back to the topic at hand.
For a long time now I have been trying to think of an idiom that would
succinctly sum up the lifestyle of the inhabitants of the island of
Curacao.
Finally I have it.
My wife is currently living in
an apartment on the second floor of our building, above our neighbors Hermann (a German) and
Cian (an Indonesian.) Hermann and Cian bought themselves an aging Mitsubishi, which
unfortunately died shortly after they bought it. The reason for the car
death was a faulty electrical system: specifically, the battery would
not work, and so the car was dead on the pavement.
The car sat on the driveway of the house for awhile. The tires all went flat.
One
night, a local hoodlum was wandering past our house and noticed this
fine auto. Presumably he looked at the flaking paint, the flat tires,
the rusting body and the battered interior. For some reason he decided
that this car would be the perfect car to chop.
The thief opened
the door and popped the hood. He examined the engine, perhaps trying to
maximize his profits from this heinous crime. But instead of taking any
actually valuable engine parts, like copper wire or functioning pieces
of the engine, he lifted the battery.
The dead battery.The one
that didn't work, that was years old and covered in a thick layer of
grime. This was the thief's chosen quarry, and he made off into the
humid Curacao night with his treasure.
Quite frankly I hope he
spills battery acid all over himself and gets a horrible, debilitating
infection that eventually drives him to his grave. It's the only hope
for Justice: it's not like the "Polis" (the island police force) could (or would) catch him, and
really that sort of ineptitude is bound to be lethal at some point. After all, this is the same police system that failed to do anything at all about Natalee Holloway's death on Aruba, Curcacao's neighbor in the Dutch Antilles. You may see pretty ads about Aruba and Curacao and other places, but they're all lies: the islands are badly broken, defective places and I hope they sink.
So
anyway, that's the Curacao idiom: incompetent thieves stealing broken
parts from dysfunctional cars that aren't going anywhere fast. It may
sound stupid and defective, but that's why it's such an excellent idiom
to describe their lifestyle.
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I'm surprised that the thief stole the dead car battery of your neighbors' mitsubishi because I thought he would want to steal the rims of the car's tires because maybe your neighbors had chrome rims on their tires.
Anyway, I wonder why he stole the dead car battery because what would he do with a dead car battery, you know?
Read my blog!