A Lad's Log

The Spelling Bee

It’s time for the spelling bee. That’s where we line up next to the stage and take our turns giving it our all. What for? Prescribed decomposition. I hate the spelling bee, but there’s really no choice in the matter: I must compete and I must win. No one likes winning. It’s torture to see your friends hunched over, squinting in defeat. But if I don’t win, someone else will, and then they’ll be faced with this traditional winner’s guilt. It’s best that it’s me. I am very willing to sacrifice myself to victory.
 ”The first word,” Principle Kennley blurts through the microphone across the auditorium, “is fuckpuzzle.” Jimmy Blandon steps one pace forward. His shirt is tucked into his jeans, no belt, the shirt is too big around the sleeves so his arms look really gay. He begins, “F-U-C-K-P-U-Z-Z-E-L,” when he finishes his mouth snaps shut, tilting his head towards the orthophonic overlords seated across from the stage.
 Priciple Kennley turns to the other two judges, Dr. Folly to the left and Miss Mahoney to the right. After a brief exchange, the verdict: “Please Jimmy,” Kennley points to a contraption on the far side of the stage. Jimmy’s face pales, maybe he’s not smart enough to know how to spell fuckpuzzle, but he’s smart enough to know he’s not smart enough. He shuffles over to the chair-like device. Beside it stands our Caves and Secrets teacher, Mr. Hollot, who directs Jimmy to sit in the chair and prop his head against the diagonal headrest. This is more or less something we take for granted at school spelling bees, but this time it feels different, maybe it’s because Jimmy failed on his first word, or, I don’t know. Hollot tightens the polyester straps around Jimmy’s limbs, he draws a large syringe from the metallic table.
 Principle Kennley’s voice erupts from the speakers: “Jimmy has misspelled the first word of the spelling bee. As per the new guidelines, we have been instructed to inject 30,000 nanobots into his bloodstream. They are equipped with tracking devices, bio-signature readers and detonators. Upon entering into a subject’s bloodstream they will scan his organ, circular and glandular systems to calculate his biological age. Upon calibration, a timer will be set and the countdown will begin. On the subject’s thirtieth birthday, the nanobots will detonate, collapsing his veins,  causing a horrible, painful death for Jimmy. Better luck next time, Jimmy!” The new guidelines? No one told me about those. Jimmy was released from the straps and delivered to his parents or guardians.
“Next.” The second contestant was Elisha Gunboat, probably my only real competition in this sorry crowd.
 ”The second word,” said the principal, “is chokemouth.” 
“C-H-O-K-E-M-O-U-T-H,” all smiles from Elisha Gunboat. “Very good, Miss Gunboat.”
So it goes, until finally it’s my turn. I step forward into the spotlit disc floating in the middle of the stage. “The sixth word is: goohole.” No sweat. I give them my best goohole, “G-O-O-H-O-L-E.”
“Contrats, Mr. Muggaloni, that’s correct.”
So you wanna know how I knew a hard word like ‘goohole’? Well it’s not so hard once you realize that my technique is really quite systematic for someone my age. In the late 20th century there was a field of research called Neuroids and Action. There were lots of different research guys involved and they learned loads of new things, but one of them was that our thoughts about things in the real world activated the same parts of our brain that were lit up when we were really doing those things we were thinking. Once you know this secret, all you gotta do is remember to ground each word you learn into your experience. Heck, that’s probably the same technique Elisha Gunboat used for ‘chokemouth’. Another example is ‘goatload’, whose gonna remember a word like that, let alone how to spell it. I tell you, just go to a farm and ask the farmer for 1 goatload of grain. He’ll get out his scale and get a goat and a his grain and show you just how much a goatload of grain is, then you ask him “farmer, my father wanted me to record this, but I can’t write, can you log it here,” and you take out your spelling journal (disguised as an accountant’s log) and have him write “1 goatload grain” in there. Now whenever someone shouts goatload at me with a microphone, the parts of my brain that were used in that experience light up and i remember that log and i remember the word scrawled in the farmer’s script. It’s that easy.

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“So what have you been up to recently, Candy?”

“Nothin- oh, we went to Jixian (mountain)”

“And when did you go there?”

“Eat.”

True story

Me and my friends like to talk in a madeup language that sounds a lot like what we think Danish would sound like, but we don’t know any Danes. We do it just to confuse people and to be honest I like the looks i get from the girls when they think i am foreign. One day we were walking down the street, having a conversation in this fake language and we passed this HUGE BLACK GUY. He was in a tank top and probably had arms thicker than my thighs. He was sweating heavily and panting for breath. As soon as he heard us he perked up and stared really hard like he was Charles Fucking Darwin discovering birds or whatever. As we’re going by he jogs up to us and says that our driver is waiting for us and that he’d just run here thinking he was going be late. Before any of us had any time to respond, this HUGE BLACK CAR pulls up. There was some rap playing in it and the bass was muffled and as soon as the doors opened the music became clear like you wiped the drops of water off the mirror to see your face after a shower. It was like walking into a P-Diddy video. The driver shouted out: “I thought there were supposed to be two of them, what the fuck is this shit?” I start, “No, no, we’re not-” But then the first guy cuts me off and speaks to the driver, “Don’t worry about it, the Main Man said we could trust them.” He hurries us into the back of the car and probably the only way the scent of Marjuanna could be stronger were if the car and all the people in it were MADE OF WEED. There was a slight tinge of vanilla wafting from an air freshener in the front dashboard, but it just made the car smell like VANILLA WEED. The two black dudes didn’t say anything to us, they just turned up the rap and we passed through a couple neighborhoods until we came to the front gate of what must’ve been a really rich person’s house. Immediately behind the fence was all trees and tennis courts and sculptures- the house was waaaay back in the back of the property. At this point Tyler and Zack were totally bugging out, Tyler was texting something to his girlfriend, I looked over, it said: “I THINK WE’RE ABOUT TO DIE, BABY I WILL SEE YOU IN HEA-” but before he could finish typing “HEAVEN”, the guy in the passenger’s seat snatched the phone out of his hands, “What the fuck are you doing!? You think we’re messin’ with this shit?” He read what Tyler had been typing and then looked at him for a second and gave the phone back to him, “James,” he said to the driver, “you aren’t gonna believe this…” I felt the contents of my intestines shift into my bowels. “This little euro cracker is in H.E.A.” The driver slammed on the brakes, I barely didn’t SHIT MY PANTS. He took off his seat belt, Tyler had his hand on the door handle, but the driver just spun around and put out his hand, “Seeeecret handshake, brother!” Tyler hesitated, he looked like he had just seen footage that confirmed that the Apollo 11 mission WAS not only fake, but was filmed ON MARS. He did nothing. The driver smiled, “That’s right my man! The secret is, WE AIN’T GOT NO HANDSHAKE. We just get lifted,” and he pulled out THE BIGGEST BLUNT I’VE EVER SEEN out of NOWHERE. I’d just gotten out of rehab and I did not want any part in that shit, but as soon as he lit up, he handed that thick ass thing to me. I held it in my hand and gazed into the neon orange ember as it grew, eating away the blunt wrap. “That’s no TV, YOU GOTTA SMOKE IT DON’T WATCH IT” someone said. I brought it to my lips and inhaled. And then I choked. I spat everywhere, dropping the blunt on the leather seat and burning a hole in it.

When we are at the park riding our bikes around in circles, shirts off, in black jean shorts, i just get mostly crazy ideas about stuff. I think like, “What if my parents died?” How would my friends try to comfort me? What would it be like when I came back to school? Would they ask me to make a speech at their funeral? I would say something like, “I loved them, but now they’re gone, what should I say?” or sometimes I think, “What if I stomped on Brian with my front wheel when he was sunbathing on basketball court over there?” Would they think it was an accident? Me and Brian are so tight now, he’s like a brother to me, why would I stomp him? Would they let me make a speech at his funeral too? Like, “Brian, like my parents, is dead..or is it ‘are dead’? Brian would’ve known what to say.” Then everyone would laugh, Brian would’ve liked that. He’s still alive, so would he like that? “Hey, Brian! What if I stomped your head with my wheel?” “What?” Yeah he’s not going to like that. Or sometimes I get this idea like “if I just kept riding my bike in a straight line I could probably make it to Sacramento in 3 or 4 hours and see my big sister and her kid, but I don’t even know what she looks like because I’m adopted. If my birth parents died, could I talk at their funeral? I already know what I’d say: “My best friend, my other parents and now my real parents? What’s there left for me?” and then my big sister and her kid would come out and say I could stay with them.” That’s just the kind of stuff that goes through my head when I’m on my bike out here.

Confession for whatever day it is

Went to the bathroom. There was a mosquito perched on the urinal cake. As I began to pee, it attempted to escape and I shot it out of the air with my stream. I continued to direct everything I had in me until I was finished. This really turned me on, so I went into the stall opposite to beat one out before class. When I was just about to bust my load, a mosquito flew out of the toilet and landed right on my thing and sucked all the blood in my boner away. At that moment I cursed G-d.

So you wanna be an honorary queer?

OPRAH AND /AY/: LEXICAL FREQUENCY, REFEREE DESIGN AND STYLE (Hay et al.)

This sociophonetic study examines the monophthongization of /ay/ in the speech of Oprah Winfrey, the African-American host of a popular U.S. daytime talk show.

This is strong evidence that ethnicity of the referee plays an important part in influencing sociophonetic speech style.

Winfrey has in the past expressed strong language attitudes disapproving of African American English, and justifying her sentiments based on the documented history of its reception [13]. These attitudes were particularly salient during the Ebonics controversy of 1997-98. During one show, Winfrey calls Ebonics the “Ebonic plague.” How do we reconcile her negative attitudes toward AAE with her stylistic use in referee design of a feature that has been associated with the AAE-speaking community?

http://www.ling.ohio-state.edu/~jannedy/DOCS/icphs.html

You walk by a kindergarten. The sound of Mambo #5 projected from high hung speakers blares across the playground as the children shake their bodies unaware of the song’s sexy content. Suddenly there’s a car accident. It’s the most preventable car accident you’ve ever seen, but it happened anyway. The driver’s side doors of each car open simultaneously. It’s clear whose fault it is but still they argue . The sound of their shouting mixes with Lou Bega and the squeals from the Kindergartners. The cherry tree beside the kindergarten has bloomed brilliant pink and waves silently, not giving a fuck. It is nearly spring. You continue to walk and you see a classmate in the distance moving toward you in the opposite direction. They see you, too, but neither of you move to greet the other. As you approach, the appropriate distance is decided upon when you will pretend to just notice each other. “Hi.” “Hi.” You pass. It’s over, they’re as absent as though all that you leave in your wake is obliterated, your field of view delimiting existence itself. You go in to your room and smoke a cigarette next to the window. No one knocks on the door or comes to visit you ever, but you leave your door open just in case.