BONEHEDs Unite!

First published September 30, 2005

A few weeks ago I suggested in this column that we should completely update the English Language. I mean, here we are text-messaging ourselves into the twenty-first century and we have to waste our time fooling around with outmoded concepts like “spelling,” “grammar,” and “punctuation.”

My idea was to form a group called the Bureau Of Nearly Everybody Hacking English Down, or BONEHED.

Well, as you might suppose, I got a lot of feedback on that one. Here’s one example:

Deer Mistur Funny Guy,

As Leedur of the Free World, I unnerstand that I oughta rip yur arm off and beat u with the bloody stump.

Ha, ha, ha.

Seeriusly, I unnerstand what u mean about them Spel Chekrs. They nevur wurk rite. That’s y I’ve appointed a krak team of guys who wurked on my my kampain to chek stuff like this note ovur for me. My dad was the eddukayshun president, so I unnerstand the importens of gud gramur and spling.

Sinseerly, yur friend,

Name Withheld By Request,

The White House, Washington, DC.

I even got a call from my eighth-grade English teacher, Miss Knucklebuster. “Well, young man, I suppose you think you’re smart,” she said.

“Wow, Miss Knucklebuster,” I replied. “I haven’t seen you for more than forty years. And you weren’t exactly a spring chicken back then! How come you’re alive?”

“Well, I might as well not be, if you and all your little friends are going to go and ruin the English language. You always were kind of a meathead.”

“That’s BONEHED. And we’re not ruining the language, just fixing it.”

“Fixing it? I never considered it broken. Except for a little bit of word-rot I’ve noticed in the last few years.”

“What do you mean?”

“Strange words keep popping up. Like ‘Blog;’ what the dickens does that mean?”

“It’s short for ‘Web Log.’ It means that people who can’t get their ideas published anywhere else can put them on the Web. Then other people can read the blog and add their own un-publishable ideas.”

“And that’s a good thing?”

“Of course it is. It’s information.”

“Accurate information?”

“Well no, not necessarily. Bloggers can write pretty much whatever they feel like writing.”

“And people who find factual errors can post corrections?”

“Well they could, but the blogger would probably just delete them.”

“So how do you know if a blogger is telling the truth?”

“If you agree with what he’s saying, you assume it must be true.”

“And if you don’t agree?”

“You just start your own blog, where you can write about what total jerks all the other bloggers are.”

“And in all this blogging you can also ignore spelling and grammar?”

“That’s the beauty of it! Lots of bloggers are BONEHEDs!”

“Indeed!”

“Anything else you’d like to know?” I was enjoying educating my former teacher.

“Bear with me,” she said, “I wrote down another word with which I was unfamiliar. I have it here somewhere.” I could hear Miss Knucklebuster digging around in her purse. “There, I found it. Oh yes. What is a ‘podcast?’”

“It’s the latest thing! Instead of taking all the time and effort to write things down for your blog, you just record an hour or so of yourself and maybe some friends mumbling things you believe to be clever, then you post the recording to the internet so people can download it and listen to it on their iPods.”

“And why would they want to do that?”

“Usually because they hope you’ll say something dirty.”

There was a long pause on the other end of the line. Finally I said, “Miss Knucklebuster, are you all right?”

“Yes,” she replied. “I was just sitting here listening to William Shakespeare spinning in his grave.”

After she hung up I realized that I forgot to invite her to join BONEHED.

Copyright © 2005 Michael Ball

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Confessions of a Kamikaze Athlete

First published September 23, 2005

It was just after a session of sunset barefooting, and two of my friends were carrying me up the dock from the lake. My wife was standing on the shore with her hands on her hips in that universal wife-pose that clearly says, “All right, Einstein, what happened this time?”

I simply smiled bravely and said, “Aaaaaaarrrrrgggh.”


In an attempt to flesh out my explanation, one of my buddies told her, “Sorry. We broke your husband.” On the up side, I didn’t break my hip, like the doctors thought at first.

I’m willing to admit that I sometimes make questionable athletic decisions. And while I never make the same mistake twice, I have lived long and enthusiastically enough to make plenty of mistakes the first time.

As a result, the receptionist at the physical therapy clinic has my Blue Cross number memorized, and they keep a coffee mug with my name on it in their break room. Over the years, these teams of dedicated professionals have helped me fight my way back to a productive life after dislocations, strained muscles, compression fractures, torn ligaments, crushed fingers, concussions, contusions, and one injury involving the elbows that I don’t think anybody has even bothered to dream up a name for.

From my wife’s point of view, every one of my wounds has been self-inflicted. I’ve had a lot of trouble getting her to understand how things really are, so I’ll explain it to you. Then, if you’ll be so kind, you can explain it to her.

It’s just that all my life I’ve been the kind of meathead who is willing to lay down in front of a slap shot and take it in the ribs to prevent a goal in a pick-up hockey game. When nobody’s keeping score.

You should understand that I’ve never been a goalie – goalies are actually a different species, bred to do goofy things like that.

Now, you might think that I exhibit a certain lack of perspective when it comes to participating in sports. You would be right.

And I think my problem got a whole lot worse the day that I realized, at about the age of forty, that the odds had become pretty slim that the Detroit Tigers would be calling me to pitch short relief - especially since I haven’t thrown a baseball since the late ‘60s.

To compensate, I began to charge headlong into every activity that even resembles a sport, throwing my body into the fray with the reckless abandon of a gladiator auditioning for a starting position in the Pompeii Lions lunch buffet.

Along the way I’ve also developed a fairly high tolerance for pain. This comes in pretty handy whenever I come up with a great idea for a new trick I want to try on shoe skis and all the drugstores are closed.

Now I’ll bet there are lots of other kamikaze athletes like me out there. Well guys, I’m going to share with you the secret mantra I always use when I come to the sudden realization that the mountain bike trail I’m on is rated, “Are you out of your mind?” I simply close my eyes, transport myself to a “happy place,” and say:

“Uh-oh. This is really gonna hurt…”

Copyright © 2005 Michael Ball

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Butterfly

First published September 16, 2005

Last Friday I held a monarch butterfly on my finger and carried him out into the blinding afternoon sun.

I had first known him as a scrawny little caterpillar, crawling around on green leaves like an eating machine, converting what seemed like acres of milkweed into a bigger, juicier caterpillar. Then I watched him climb up and hang in the air for a whole day, looking as nervous as a caterpillar can look, working up the courage to do what he had to do.

I watched that caterpillar turn himself inside out – I don’t know any other way to describe it – and transform himself into that distinctive bright green monarch chrysalis, with the row of tiny gold nuggets across the side. And earlier last Friday I watched him fight his way out of his chrysalis, turned whisper-thin and transparent after hanging motionless for two weeks, then I watched him unfurl his monarch’s gold and black wings.

I just got off the phone with my son. He was telling me that he was getting ready for his first real “I’ve-gotta-buy-a-suit-for-it” job interview. He wanted to know if he needed to wear a belt along with the suspenders that came with that new suit. I told him not unless it was a gun belt.

As I hung up, I couldn’t help thinking about the first time I held my son, minutes old and not much bigger than my two hands. I looked at his wizened little newborn-reptile face, and he looked at me with an expression that was every bit as amazed as I felt. I think we were sizing each other up.

We both decided on the spot to go ahead and give it a shot.

I couldn’t help thinking about watching that scrawny little infant crawling around the house like an eating machine, converting what seemed like acres of cheerios and strained peas into a bigger, juicier kid.

I couldn’t help thinking about standing him up on his Big Bike for the first time, or about taking him to get braces on his teeth. Or about buying us both rollerblades so I could teach him how to skate, then accidentally tripping him with my hockey stick so those brand new braces completely mangled the inside of his lips. Or about the day he informed me that I could no longer hug him in front of all the other kids when I dropped him off at school.

I couldn’t help thinking about when he hit sixteen, and I watched him turn himself inside out – I don’t know any other way to describe it – to transform himself into that distinctive moody, non-communicative teen-ager.

For the next few years I didn’t really see too much of him. He always seemed to be “hanging out” with buddies, and didn’t really have much to say.

And now he’s bought himself a suit for a job interview. Even though he told me that it was light gray – with suspenders – I can’t help picturing the jacket as somehow being monarch gold and black.

Last Friday when I held that butterfly up to the sun, I had to shake my finger a little bit to get him to let go. But when he finally did, he flexed those beautiful wings and soared away into the sky.

Copyright © 2005 Michael Ball

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Beaucoup Sad

First published September 9, 2005

It was a muggy afternoon and I was twenty-five years old, sitting in a bar on Bourbon Street, next to a screenless window that opened to the sidewalk outside. Somewhere in one of the neighboring bars, a trumpet, a clarinet and a tuba carried on a musical dogfight around the melody of some gospel song.

My friend and I had a pile of iced crabs on the table between us, and I was banging on the shell of one with the blunt end of a butter knife. My friend was holding another one up to the light, apparently looking for some sort of pull-tab on the little critter.

A tiny immaculate grey-haired man dressed in a clean but very well-worn black cutaway suit, with a grey vest and a carnation in his lapel, stopped on the sidewalk next to us. “Pardon me sir,” he drawled, “but there is a particular technique to that. Would you permit me to demonstrate?”

Then, still standing out on the sidewalk and leaning through the window, he showed us how to elegantly disassemble and eat a fresh Louisiana blue crab, along with a gentle lecture on proper application of lemon and cayenne pepper sauce. When we invited him to come inside and join us for a drink and more crabs, he smiled, bowed slightly, and said, “Alas, I am required elsewhere. But do enjoy your visit to our city.”

I wonder where that wonderful little man is now.

New Orleans is not like any other place I’ve ever been. In a single ordinary weekday afternoon and evening there I saw my first Dixieland jazz band, hooker, Creole funeral, street-gutter drunk, antebellum mansion, transvestite – and iced Louisiana blue crab.

In New Orleans I first heard someone speaking Cajun, that verbal gumbo of French, English, Spanish, African, Choctaw, and maybe a little Martian. I listened to barkers on the street delivering impassioned sales pitches for jazz joints, and strip joints, and a few jazz-strip joints.

I walked down streets that had been used by general Andrew Jackson and Jean Laffite the pirate. I stood in a square where slaves had been bought and sold. I sat in a tavern where Laffite and Jackson may have shared a pint and I heard Al Hirt do things with a trumpet that were not humanly possible. I wandered through a city founded on a sort of unashamed decadence that would probably take several lifetimes to understand.

I wonder where that wonderful little city is now.

Last week I watched a group of overfed white men on television, standing in a hanger in Mississippi with their shirtsleeves symbolically rolled up, as they staged a “situational briefing” for the cameras. They told each other things that anyone who could read a newspaper had known for days, and congratulated each other on the wonderful job they were doing.

At that moment in New Orleans more than 50,000 trapped and helpless people had been waiting for days to be rescued. Some of these people are probably descendants of the slaves that were traded in the streets of the French Quarter 170 years ago. Virtually all of them are among the poorest people living anywhere in the richest nation the world has ever known.

Cut off by the floods and not having worked their way up in the priorities of the leaders of our nation – who needed a couple of days to wrap up their vacations and plan their photo-ops before sending help – these people lived through the nightmare of an almost total collapse of civilization. They watched helplessly as the oldest and the youngest and the sickest among them died. They watched a few morally bankrupt young men, armed with looted guns and liquor, carry out a reign of terror unchecked by the handful of police officers in the city.

I guess New Orleans will be drained and rebuilt some day. Eventually the French Quarter will sputter back to life, and the musicians, and the blue crabs, and the strippers will all resurface to take their places on Bourbon Street.

But I wonder if New Orleans will ever regain that sense of innocent debauchery that would allow an old man with a carnation in his lapel to lean through a window to give a young man a lesson in Bayou dining.

God, I hope so.

Copyright © 2005 Michael Ball

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Spl Chkr Blooz

First published September 2, 2005

Hey, I have an idea. Let’s completely redesign the English language.

First a little background. Earlier in my career as a writer, sandwiched in between the days of chiseling my prose into the walls of King Tut’s Tomb and working on my PowerBook, I did all my writing on a thing called a “typewriter.”


Back in those days, writers had to have at least a vague idea how to spell the words we wanted to use. And if we screwed up, we had to try to spot the problem ourselves. We sometimes even had to “look up” words in a thing called a “dictionary!”

Boooooooring!

These days, whenever I hammer out a piece on my computer, the word processor’s spell-checker does a lot of the heavy lifting for me. All I have to do is get within a few bytes of a real word, and the computer will correct me or give me suggestions that are programmed right into the software, based on similar mistakes made by a scientifically selected panel of other morons.

Unfortunately, a guy like me who types with his elbows can easily slip right past that little electronic genius with a sentence like, “Let’s go to the beech with same friends!” They’re all words – just not quite the ones I had in mind.

Some people have suggested that we should improve spell-checkers to the point where they can analyze and correctly interpret the context of what you’re writing. I’m not even entirely sure what that means, much less how it would work.

Instead, I propose that we change the English language to bring it in line with spell-checkers. For instance, we can get rid of problems like “it’s” and “its” by simply getting rid of apostrophes. You could just write, “The dog is very happy; its licking its…” whatever it is he happens to be licking.

Likewise, you can get rid of your you’re issues, just like they can resolve their they’re problems. Over there.

Got that?

This wouldn’t be the first time our language got itself updated. Four hundred years ago, a teenager might stick a quill in the old quill-sharpener and dash off a note like this to a friend:

Soft, sweet companion, know that as friend do I love thee, and I would that thy visage light up this house, gracing this week’s end, dismal in every aspect without thee. Hearken thou hence after two of ‘t afternoon, for my mother deemest that I must practiceth my clarinet first... eth.

These days, a kid would handle that whole transaction in a text message:

CM OVR THS WKND FTR 2.

To which the friend might craft a heartfelt reply:

K

All right, maybe it’s not exactly a sonnet, but it gets the job done.

To get this whole thing started, I propose that we form a group called the Bureau Of Nearly Everybody Hacking English Down, or BONEHED. As a brotherhood and sisterhood of BONEHEDs, we can work together to bring our language at last into the twenty-first century.

So snd mi n email tday n syn up. Wi cn strt bi splng wrds lik thy snd n wthot al ths xtra ltrs!

And whatever you do, weep not for English – you can bet it ain’t weeping for you.

Copyright © 2005 Michael Ball

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