Lolwut?

Oh ho ho ho! Devillish laugh!

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My friends, I have succeeded in the thorough befuddlement of all with my expansive, extraordinarily literate vocabulary. I shall thoroughly enjoy my new cachet forthwith.

(As you can clearly see, I'm now trying to push it up to "Genius" level.)

Word Association With TWEM

Wow! I just beat Psychonauts! That was an amazing game. Tim Schafer is a mad genius. Thank you, GameTap, for letting me enjoy this masterpiece free of charge (and legally, at that), and thank you, Richard Horvitz, for bringing yet another one of my now-favorite characters to life.

Hey, there were a lot of characters in that game with weirdly-spelled names. Like Lili instead of Lily or Lilly. And Dogan instead of Doogan. And Razputin instead of--

Wait. Rasputin. Wasn't he some evil guy?

Yeah, he was! He was that evil Russian dude who, like, killed the Romanovs or something! They made a movie about that. He had a talking bat.

AWESOME! He was a zombie in that movie! I have got to see this.

...Mom, where's the tape that had Anastasia recorded on it?

Oh, God, I remember this song! "Faaar away, loooong ago, glowing dim as an eeeemmber, things my hearrrt, used to knoooow, once upon a Deceeeemmmber!"

Wait. It's not December anymore, it's January! Why am I watching this again?

Hey, there's Rasputin! He's got singing cockroaches! His head comes off! Cool!

Hey, isn't Razputin the name of the main character from Psychonauts...?

Clearly, We Have Different Definitions Of--Oh, Never Mind.

Standing in line at the store today, several yards of fabric under my arm, I scanned the covers of the tabloids, gossip rags, and miniature "recipie" books.

Is it wrong that I giggled about Michael Jackson being on the cover of "Jet?"

(Happy birthday, Nikolai Griffin!)

In memoriam of a man with a language all his own:

I am a frequent frequenter of the blog, The Comics Curmudgeon. It is a blog dedicated to making fun of--or as those in the blogosphere call it, "snarking"--on old, assembled-by-committee, chronically unfunny, badly-drawn newspaper comic strips. They tackle both the strips that are allegedly comical--Garfield and Marmaduke being prime examples--and the absurd "soap opera" comic strips, such as Mary Worth and Mark Trail. (Here's a tangental question: Why do all of the soap opera strips seem to be named after their principal characters? Mary Worth, Mark Trail, Judge Parker, Rex Morgan... only Apartment 3-D seems to escape this odd trope.) However, at least one strip on the blog was, despite its frequent ribbing, actually rather admired by the patrons of the blog.

They'll Do It Every Time is a slice-of-life comic strip that makes note of life's little ironies. Nearly all of its strips are based on reader submissions--a great many of which, as of late, have in fact been those of the Comics Curmudgeon readers themselves. Although initially lambasted by many for being an unfunny funny, many of the site's readers admitted that they had grown to non-ironically love the strip, for a couple of reasons.

For one thing, the strip is full of amusing little anachronisms, such as an allegedly modern-day teenager blaring loud music on a record player. Right next to a lovingly-detailed flat screen computer, albiet one in "Tandy Tan."

For another thing, the art is actually quite good. The backgrounds have a lot of detail put into them, and the people are drawn in a distinctive style. Before taking over the strip (previously helmed by a man with the curious name of Hatlo) the current cartoonist got his start in, and worked for, Cracked Magazine.

For a third, the strip has a curious dialect all its own. Often dubbed Scadutoese by CC readers (after the cartoonist, Al Scaduto) It cannot be perfectly pinned down to any one geographical region or time period, though it seems vaguely relate to the 1950's. Filled with odd little catchphrases like "Howcum," "The Urge," and "Oh Yeah-h-h-h," it is nearly indescribable but immediately identifiable. It is also confirmedly fun to use in everyday conversaion, if only to pepper one's conversation with curious little phrases: "I've got the urge to e-mail him to the moon!"

And finally, the spoken-of cartoonist was a real gentleman. Friendly and affable in all of his communications with readers, he replied warmly to all of the missives sent to him and often let those who sent the ideas he delegated to strips in on his creative process--showing off sketches and the like. One CC submitted noted how he'd credited a woman with her idea even months after she'd sent it, and even though he also drew on his own experience--a real mensch was how some of the commentators described him.

Being a lover of language, especially unique ones, I've been wanting to a post on "Scadutoese" for a long time. The lexicon, the unique sentence structure, the patterns it invokes--but as I admit that I lack certain faculties with regards to linguistics, I don't think I could do a proper, scholarly analysis of the dialect. Yet one can still single out particular, notable examples of the tongue--"Oh yeah-h-h-h" being a particular favorite--and wonder, thinking, "I wish I was creative enough to say things like that." One can still look at the unusual ways it organizes its sentences or toys with its words and think about how they differ from standard English. Indeed, it's something I've been wanting to do ever since I began this blog, once I had enough time to simply sit down and devote myself to such an exercise.

Alas, the dear Mr. Scaduto is no more. He shuffled off his mortal coil today, the 8th of Devember 2007, at the age of 79. Quite thankfully, his passing was peaceful--to borrow a term from not-just-for-children's author Chris d'Lacey, he simply wuzzled off, heading toward that great drawing room in the sky.

I've toyed with the idea of sending in my own They'll Do It Every Time idea, largely concerning my soon-to-be-former-roomate's obsession with opening and closing the windows of our room. Although the nearly centennarian comic strip will doubtless be picked up by another author, it just won't be the same without the same man at the helm. I hear from submitters that his written replies to ideas were in the exact same ageless, nationless tongue of the comic strips--although it was likely empty of any Dragbutts, Migranias, or Loopinas.

Perhaps now would be a good time to write that article, in honor of the man and the unique language he took with him.

See you in the funny papers.

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As I was saying.

This is a nifty little gadget that rates blogs based on readability. It looks at the words you've chosen, sentence structure, and other dandy doo-dads and pieces together the reading level necessary to read a blog. Or any webpage with a lot of text on it, really.

Only high-school level? Clearly, I am slacking. Quickly, to the big words!

Vituperation! Denouement! Demense! Antipodes! Pismire! Crepuscular! Ineluctable! Filigree!

Did it work?

Today's Post is Brought to You By the Atomic Symbol "Bi"

Which, by the way, has nothing to do with bisexuality.

In the "I Never Noticed That Before" department, I was picking up some Pepto-Bismol up at the store for a stomach complaint I'd recently had. I was reading the front of the box (because there's not much else to read in the OTC meds aisle) and noticed that the official, chemical name for the rancid anti-barf bubblegum is "Bismuth subsalicylate."

Subsalicylate? Oh, there's aspirin in this stuff. Does that mean that you shouldn't give it to kids? I used it all the time when I was a kid and...

Wait. Bismuth. Bismol. Duh.

Medicine brand names are weird stuff. But it's interesting to see where they come from.

And yes, my stomach feels much better now.

T'su Kipasium Biblium Zihio

I get bored. (Incredible but true.)

I am also quite adept with language. (Incredible, yet also true--really, I'm far too modest.)

Utilizing both my boredom and my faculties in the language department (ho ho--wordplay), I have created my own language. (So what? Some guy callin' himself Dr. Espera-something did the same thing like a century or two ago.)

One which has significantly different grammatical rules than my mother tongue, English. (Um, yay?)

The benefits of having your own language, however, are quite limited when no one but you knows how to use it, and even I admit that I lack fluency in conversational Valencian. The Valencia in this case having nothing to do with anything Spanish (although the verb conjugation system owes a few dues to the Hispanic way of going about verb/subject agreement), but rather refers to the Valencia, the goddess to whom the mythical peoples who spoke this language prayed. One can, however, translate random things into one's personal language just for fun. Which is incidentally what I have been doing for the past half an hour.

I am merrily working away at translating Fine, the sarcasto-go-lucky, synth-happy tune from Lemon Demon, into Valencian. Naturally, the translation is not exact. Few translations are. Colloquialisms and idioms have to be localized, adjectives must be modified to fit the Valencian way of things, oh me oh my... But it is enjoyable, and a chance for me to stretch my linguistic muscles.

It's not done yet, but here are the first two verses for you.

English:

Today has a way
Of scarring your eyes
With negative light
But it’s a disguise.
I put on my shades
And see through the lies.

The convenient truth is:

Light is on the way;
We’ll be having a fun time.
It’s such a lovely day
We should pocket the sunshine
And never give it back
Even if there’s a heat wave
Or terrorist attack
It’ll just be a close shave.


Valencian:

Aleut mediuo
Cul raduo foruo di t’su
Pepii mul
A paal cul piimul.
Suum velan liuln
I opiu faru ul ninvarinh.

Ul varin tesiol cul:

Pii cul adderon;
Halahar.
Cul ale olplisuo
Sostiaut deus nurius piira li valesolot
I ninrio genus pepaal valesolot
Jinin paalut oligiuo
Re olrad tu “terrorist”
Sostia widi ato a pesirit.



You don't have to know how to pronounce words in Valencian to know that it doesn't quite have the same flow.