Dios Escucha!

Here is what I look like in my hotel room in Houston:


You know, in the cab on the way to the hotel, I saw a billboard that said "Dios Escucha." Oh, I thought: God is listening. But then as we passed the billboard, I saw the English version on the other side: "God listens." Wow, I thought. Those are two very different statements. The first one is admonishing, the second perhaps comforting. Surely these must be two different verb conjugations in Spanish as well? I mean, you'd have to be able to differentiate "God is listening, so stop your blaspheming, you hellbound sinner!" from "Cheer up, good fellow -- God cares about your problems!"

Ironically, after parsing "Dios Eschucha" reasonably well, I got to my hotel room and discovered that I had a desk but no chair. I flagged down a hotel maid who spoke no English, and I could not, for anything, recall the Spanish word for "chair." Both of us smiling encouragingly at each other, I invited her into the room and pointed towards the desk. Still no dice; if you are not checking for chairs, a chairless desk doesn't necessarily look like a problem. So I went to the desk and, um ... mimed sitting down. She laughed and got me a chair.