What Fires You Up?

9/21/2002

 

The Daily Probe: This is a list of their current "Headlines", ha ha! Technically, I think I am supposed to ask for permission to copy this, but considering that this is personal use only among friends, I do encourage those who'd like a weekly laugh to check new issues they put online every Tuesday. Bush Denies "Saddam On Grassy Knoll" Tape Faked Gore Vice Presidential Library Opens in Nashville Starbucks "xXx" Key Grip Really Into End Credits of "xXx" Paleontologist Finds Love Through Carbon-Dating Service Opinion: Cinnabon's "Let's Roll!" Campaign Last Fucking Straw Killer to Plead "Frostee Brain Freeze" Defense NFL Week Three Preview: Have You Checked Your Buttcrack for the Remote? Bush Smirk, Cheney Sneer Join Clinton Pout in Facial Tic Hall of Fame 14-Month-Old Snoop Dogg Protege "Poopy D" Signs 7-Album Contract CAPS LOCK UNLOcked Tyson Still Batshit

BJ 9/21/2002 08:16:00 PM

9/20/2002

 

This is from dlowan THE MAN CODE Rated R 1. Thou shall not rent the movie "Chocolat" 2. Under no circumstances may 2 men share an umbrella. 3. Any man who brings a camera to a bachelor party may be legally killed and eaten by his fellow partygoers. 4. When you are queried by a buddy's wife, girlfriend, mother, father, priest, shrink, dentist, accountant, or dog walker, you need not and should not provide any useful information whatsoever as to his whereabouts. You are permitted to deny his very existence. 5. Unless he murdered someone in your immediate family, you must bail a friend out of jail within 12 hours. 6. You may exaggerate any anecdote told in a bar by 50 percent without recrimination; beyond that, anyone within earshot is allowed to call BULLSHIT. (Exception: When trying to pick up a girl, the allowable exaggeration rate rises to 400 percent) 7. If you've known a guy for more than 24 hours, his sister is off-limits forever. 8. The minimum amount of time you have to wait for another guy who's running late is 5 minutes. For a girl, you are required to wait 10 minutes for every point of hotness she scores on the classic 1-10 babe scale. 9. Complaining about the brand of free beer in a buddies refrigerator is forbidden. You may gripe if the temperature is unsuitable. 10. No man is ever required to buy a birthday present for another man. In fact, even remembering a friends birthday is strictly optional and slightly gay. 11. Agreeing to distract the ugly friend of a hot babe that your buddy is trying to hook up with is your legal duty. Should you get carried away with your good deed and end up having sex with the beast, your pal is forbidden to speak of it, even at your bachelor party. 12. Before dating a buddy's "ex", you are required to ask his permission and he in return is required to grant it. 13. Women who claim they "love to watch sports" must be treated as spies until they demonstrate knowledge of the game and the ability to pick a buffalo wing clean. 14. If a man's zipper is down, that's his problem, you didn't see nothin'. 15. The universal compensation for buddies who help you move is beer. 16. A man must never own a cat or like his girlfriend's cat. 17. When stumbling upon other guys watching a sports event, you may always ask the score of the game in progress, but you may never ask who's playing. 18. When your girlfriend/wife expresses a desire to fix her whiney friend up with your pal, you may give her the go-ahead only if you'll be able to warn your buddy and give him time to prepare excuses about joining the priesthood. 19. It is permissible to consume a fruity chick drink only when you're sunning on a tropical beach... and it's delivered by a topless supermodel... and it's free. 20. Unless you're in prison, never fight naked. 21. A man in the company of a hot, suggestively dressed woman must remain sober enough to fight. 22. If a buddy is outnumbered, out manned, or too drunk to fight, you must jump into the fight. Exception: If within the last 24 hours his actions have caused you to think, "What this guy needs is a good ass-whoopin", then you may sit back and enjoy. 23. Phrases that may NOT be uttered to another man while weight lifting: "Yeah, baby, push it!" "C'mon, give me one more! Harder!" "Another set and we can hit the showers." "Nice ass, are you a Sagittarius?" 24. Never hesitate to reach for the last beer or the last slice of pizza, but not both. That's just plain mean. 25. If you compliment a guy on his six-pack, you better be referring to his beer. 26. Never join your girlfriend/wife in dissing a buddy, except when she's withholding sex pending your response. 27. Never talk to a man in the bathroom unless you're on equal footing: either both urinating or both waiting in line. In all other situations, a nod is all the conversation you need. 28. If a buddy is already singing along to a song in the car, you may not, unless you are gay.

BJ 9/20/2002 04:01:00 PM

9/17/2002

 

This article was posted by a Crone friend today in another website forum I visit. Here is the article, quoted. There should be a link available for NPR to get more information on the writer of the commentary. This is too good to be missed, so I'm passing this along today for your enjoyment. Parlez-vous Bushonics? By Tom McNichol March 19, 2001 The day Lisa Shaw's son Tyler came home from school with tears streaming down his cheeks, the 34-year-old Crawford, Texas, homemaker, knew things had gone too far. "All of Tyler's varying and sundry friends was making fun of the way he talked," Shaw says. "I am not a revengeful person, but I couldn't let this behaviorism slip into acceptability. This is not the way America is about." Shaw and her son are two of a surprising number of Americans who speak a form of nonstandard English that linguists have dubbed "Bushonics," in honor of the dialect's most famous speaker, President George W. Bush. The most striking features of Bushonics -- tangled syntax, mispronunciations, run-on sentences, misplaced modifiers and a wanton disregard for subject-verb agreement -- are generally considered to be "bad" or "ungrammatical" by linguists and society at large. But that attitude may be changing. Bushonics speakers, emboldened by the Bush presidency, are beginning to make their voices heard. Lisa Shaw has formed a support group for local speakers of the dialect and is demanding that her son's school offer "a full-blown up apologism." And a growing number of linguists argue that Bushonics isn't a collection of language "mistakes" but rather a well-formed linguistic system, with its own lexical, phonological and syntactic patterns. "These people are greatly misunderestimated," says University of Texas linguistics professor James Bundy, himself a Bushonics speaker. "They're not lacking in intelligence facilities by any stretch of the mind. They just have a differing way of speechifying." It's difficult to say just how many Bushonics speakers there are in America, although professor Bundy claims "their numbers are legionary." Many who speak the dialect are ashamed to utter it in public and will only open up to a group of fellow speakers. One known hotbed of Bushonics is Crawford, the tiny central Texas town near the president's 1,600-acre ranch. Other centers are said to include Austin and Midland, Texas, New Haven, Conn., and Kennebunkport, Maine. Bushonics is widely spoken in corporate boardrooms, and has long been considered a kind of secret language among members of the fraternity Delta Kappa Epsilon. Bushonics speakers have ascended to top jobs at places like the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Health and Human Services. By far the greatest concentration of Bushonics speakers is found in the U.S. military. Former Secretary of State Alexander Haig is only the most well known Bushonics speaker to serve with distinction in America's armed forces. Among the military's top brass, the dialect is considered to be the unofficial language of the Pentagon. Former President George H.W. Bush spoke a somewhat diluted form of the dialect that bears his family's name, which may have influenced his choice for vice president, Dan Quayle, who spoke an Indiana strain of Bushonics. The impressive list of people who speak the dialect is a frequent topic at Lisa Shaw's weekly gathering of Bushonics speakers. That so many members of their linguistic community have risen to positions of power comes as a comfort to the group, and a source of inspiration. "We feel a good deal less aloneness, my guess is you would want to call it," Shaw says. "It just goes to show the living proof that expectations rise above that which is expected." Some linguists still contend, however, that the term "Bushonics" is being used as a crutch to excuse poor grammar and sloppy logic. "I'm sorry, but these people simply don't know how to talk properly," says Thomas Gayle, a speech professor at Stanford University. Professor Gayle was raised by Bushonic parents, and says he occasionally catches himself lapsing into the dialect. "When it happens, it can be very misconcerting," Gayle says. "I understand Bushonics. I was one. But under full analyzation, it's really just an excuse to stay stupider." It's talk like that that angers many Bushonics speakers, who say they're routinely the victims of prejudice. "The attacks on Bushonics demonstrate a lack of compassion and amount to little more than hate speech," says a prominent Bushonics leader who spoke on the condition that his quote be "cleaned up." Increasingly, members of the Bushonics community are fighting back. Lisa Shaw's Crawford-based group is pressing the local school board to institute bilingual classes, and to eliminate the study of English grammar altogether. "It's an orientation of being fairness-based," Shaw says. A Bushonics group in New England has embarked on an ambitious project to translate key historical documents into the dialect, beginning with the Bill of Rights. (For instance, the Second Amendment rendered into Bushonics reads: "Guns. They're American, for the regulated militia and the people to bear. Can't take them away for infringement purposes. Not never.") Bushonics activists say they'll keep fighting as long as there are still children who come home from school crying because their classmates can't understand what they're saying. Lisa Shaw hopes that every American will heed the words of the nation's No. 1 Bushonics speaker, and vow to be a uniter, not a divider. "We shouldn't be cutting down the pie smaller," Shaw says with quiet dignity. "We ought to make the pie higher." About the writer: Tom McNichol is a San Francisco writer whose work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the Washington Post, Spy, Punch and other publications. His radio commentaries have aired on National Public Radio's "All Things Considered."

BJ 9/17/2002 07:54:00 AM

9/16/2002

 

Miscellany of current abuzz links I'm enjoying: http://nytimes.abuzz.com/interaction/s.290671/discussion/ Romance! What a Guy or What a Gal! http://nytimes.abuzz.com/interaction/s.287272/discussion/ A ROUND-TOPPED TRUNKFUL OF INTERESTING WORDS http://nytimes.abuzz.com/interaction/s.290583/discussion/ Fired Up Part 26 - the Power of One http://nytimes.abuzz.com/interaction/s.288285/discussion/ Emerson Drug Cobalt Blue Bottle and the Sea Since this is a rather obscure list that may only interest the most intrepid of Fired Up Folks, I'd love to hear your comment in abuzz or in this blog. And surely, any suggestions of links within abuzz and out are most welcome. It's like getting a recommendation on a good book to read - when it's from a friend, it means so much 'more'.

BJ 9/16/2002 07:19:00 AM