If, like me, you are obsessed with dialects, then William Labov’s project, Atlas of North American English is a really handy tool. You can click on interactive maps to determine just what portions of the United States and Canada speak with glides or specific open vowels and hear excerpts of precisely how they speak. This is a godsend if you’re an actor, an impressionist, or you’re just plain crazy about language. And Labov’s work has justifiably earned him a writeup by John Seabrook in next week’s New Y0rker.
Year / 2005
Concerning the Tattooed Lady
Mr. Wilson (if indeed such a Jared come lately can even be called “mister”) has suggested that I am obsessed with bodily fluids. He alludes to an incident that once occurred at my Missolonghi pied-a-tierre regarding a woman with a tattoo of a dagger in a particularly sensitive anatomical region. Understand that I was not the one in the bedroom who embarassingly asked for a user’s manual, nor was I the one who propositioned the tattooed stranger at a watering hole located on the edge of the Gulf of Patras. If Wilson wants to evade the issue here (namely, the poor quality of his novels), rather than address my wholly legitimate concerns about his continued assaults on the written word, then it’s only fitting that he should throw the arc, as it were, upon bodily fluids, a pivotal element of Wilson’s unpardonable disgrace.
Allow me to quote you a stanza from Wilson’s abominable poem “She Stabbed Me in the Heart, She Kicked Me in the Ass” (inexplicably published in The Paris Review #121, where George Plimpton took momentary leave of his fine sensibilities):
In the shade of the glade, her boob had a blade
But the real brain bared was my own
If she stopped with her mouth, and her body swayed south
Then my nightstick might harden to stone
That such doggerel, with its childish rhyming scheme, its crude metaphors (“nightstick,” the “brain bared” ) and the preposterous allusion to the unnamed woman’s body swaying south, would hold any regard among today’s MFAs is yet another telling indicator that the apocalypse is upon us and that Jared Wilson is one of its chief instigators.
I know that my critics have taken me to task about the incident involving the tatooed B-girl (who spoke not a word of French!) and have assumed that my riff with Mr. Wilson stemmed from this unfortunate incident. Regardless of this calumny, my ultimate concern here is over Mr. Wilson’s skills as a novelist. I trust that this puts the matter at rest.
Thomas & McClellan Unexpectedly Create Variation on Abbot & Costello’s “Who’s on First?” Routine
Hilarious. (Video link here.) (via MeFi)
Stop the Illegal Marriages in Texas!
The people of Texas have spoken. They have passed Proposition 2, which states:
This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status identical or similar to marriage.
The time has come for Texas to form the Marriage Police to enforce this law. We need to see special forces units bursting into homes and tearing husbands and wives apart. All marriages must be annulled! No more marriages can happen! This is the will of the Texas people and the letter of the law.
Since sodomy was legislated as a misdemeanor (until State v. Morales, 869 S.W. 2d 941 overturned it), and there is a spirit among Texas voters to legislate against any unsual sort of sex outside of marriage, and since, after passing Proposition 2, there is likely a considerable sum of illegal marriages now being practiced among some 20 million Texans, we must therefore conclude that sex within marriage is the only acceptable form that Texas supports. Of course, since Texas can no longer “create or recognize any legal status identical to marriage,” the time has come to arrest any Texan copulating with someone they may identify as “spouse.” There shall no longer be any marriages in Texas and there shall no longer be any fornication outside of marriage. Which means, in short, that there can no longer be any fornication at all!
I trust the majority of the Texas people, who have always been a pigheaded and law-abiding sort, to enforce this law fully, starting of course with George and Laura Bush, who were married on November 5, 1977 at the Glass Chapel of First United Methodist Church in Midland, Texas. Give this “First Lady” her marching orders right now, George. Your Texas marriage is no longer recognized and you are, as a result, living in sin. In the White House no less! Or marry her in another state, if you truly want to preserve the legal status of your marriage.
Blockbuster: It Was Really About Profiting From the Obonxious Late Fees
BusinessWeek: “The company said it could be forced into bankruptcy protection if a new credit agreement with lenders doesn’t become effective…..Antioco said Dallas-based Blockbuster might sell some game stores, but he stood by the decision to cut late fees, which accounted for 13 percent of Blockbuster’s revenue a year ago.”
Good riddance.