ZOMG LULZ
Somebody in Sweden found my blog by googling Fat Megan. I don’t know what possessed them to enter those keywords but I think that is just awesome! Beers!!!
January 31, 2008
January 30, 2008
Out
It seems that John Edwards is calling it quits. It was a good run. Let’s give him some nice send-off music.
January 29, 2008
My Biggest Fears
1. A midget with a crossbow
2. Chinese NASCAR
What else should make the list??
January 28, 2008
Language Debate
The following is portions of an online debate I was having about race and language. My words are in black:
It’s not just about self esteem, there are also other very real differences,
such as the fact that when an African learns English, he is learning
standard English, whereas many black Americans grow up learning non-standard English. What makes this so problematic is that it’s not actually *wrong* English, non standard dialects all follow internal rules and are correct within that system. It’s not a wrong language so much as it is a rival version of the dominant language. Please note that I’m not making any blanket assertions such as “all black people speak black English” or any nonsense like that. The point is that while being truly bilingual would not be an obstacle in speaking standard English, being brought up speaking a
non-standard version of English could very well be a hindrance, at least inasmuch as English is a tough enough language to master as it is because of all the conflicting rules and logical inconsistencies. Tossing in a rival dialect just makes it that much tougher.
Non-Standard Dialects”….?? Are you suggesting ebonics is an actual dialect?
I read three of Steven Pinker’s books so I don’t remember exactly which one it was, but he demonstrated that the rules of “black English” are internally consistent and that they follow logic in many cases where standard English demands the speaker depart from it. There is no reason, for example, that a double negative should be improper and in fact many languages consider it proper as a re-enforcement of a point rather than canceling it out. I couldn’t begin to replicate Pinker’s examples that show that American black English are just as valid a dialect as any other. Another example, if only one person in the world were speaking Australian, he would be considered an idiot. When millions of people do it, it’s a dialect.
That sounds like an extremely liberal use of the term “dialect”. Arabic has a number of dialects. Some of these dialects so greatly different from one another that some people find themselves incomprehensible to those who do not speak their dialect. I would consider ebonics nothing more than a black American accent.
That is because you are biased. What is it about black English that disqualifies it from being considered a dialect? An accent does not affect sentence structure and syntax.
Fine…let’s not call it an accent. We’ll call it what it is…an fine example of poor language skills.
You say dialect….I say merely bad english.
Consider:
I done told you.
That means the same thing as “I have already told you.” It’s a quicker way
of saying the same thing, it’s logical. It is not an error. It also cannot
be categorized as an accent.
Poor language skills are not the exclusive province of any particular race. You will find the same phrase used by members of various races. Calling poor language skills its own dialect is a cop out and doesn’t make the bad english any less wrong.
If I go to Columbia, or Honduras or Mexico or Spain and speak spanish to anyone there, making the usual, jacked-up mistakes make by your typical American who is not a native spanish speaker, does that make “my” spanish its own dialect merely because millions of Americans make the same mistake (even though they understand each other perfectly in spanish)?….No…and it is unlikely anyone in the spanish-speaking world will tell you otherwise. They are just going to tell me spanish sucks…even if they can understand me…my spanish still sucks. Why should ebonics be considered any different? “That’s how say it at home” is no excuse for poor language skills.
It’s not errors. If it were errors then the results would be random and black English would not have the consistency that it does throughout the US. I said you’re biased because you acknowledge different dialects among Arabs but for some reason you don’t seem to think that black Americans are capable of having their own dialect of the English language. Why is that? Are they not smart enough? Linguistic differences among Arabs are evidence of different dialects but black Americans are bumblingly making the same mistakes over and over again? Mistakes although that language adheres to consistent and logical grammatical rules? When I get back to work I’m going to see if I can find the part of Pinker’s work that addresses this.
Different rules that are both valid because they are logically consistent.
Hot chocolate
In English, we put the adjective before the noun it modifies
chocolate caliente
In Spanish, we put the adjective after the noun it modifies.
Are we to conclude that all Spanish speaking people are idiots? Of course not. The rules for each language are internally consistent. Let’s try another one.
Why don’t you go to the family reunions?
I work (white English)
I be working (black English)
In this case the latter sentence is a bit more descriptive and to the point. Yes, the white person said he works, but do we know for a fact that he works on the days the family reunions are held? Not enough information in “I work”. But the latter example implies (I be) that he is in a state of working during the time about which the inquiry is made. But that is besides my point. My question is, is there any reason why “I be working” is a statement that is logically inconsistent? The fact that it is ungrammatical according to standard English standards is neither here nor there, the grammar rules are determined by the more numerous group.
You, however, would not see that because you think it’s all part of an ongoing series of mistakes black people make in trying to speak like you.
You are making certain assumptions, apparently based on your obvious belief that I’m a racist.
I already done told you I don’t know whether or not you are a racist and as such I cannot make that claim. What’s more for the purposes of this argument I don’t even care one way or the other. You are of course free to choose to disbelieve this if you like.
AAVE grew, largely, from what you would call Southern American English (which is no more a dialect than ebonics). In any case, I am well aware they intend to speak the way they do. However, intentions do not a dialect make.
So you think formulating your phrases in Yoda -speak is going to win you points on this list??
But hey, while we are into questioning qualifications and racial biases, lets get some shit on the table (an idomatic expression). What is your problem with me?
I don’t have a problem with you. What makes you think this is about you? My problem is with the fact that you are wrong in this debate.
I said you’re biased because you acknowledge different dialects among Arabs but for some reason you don’t seem to think that black Americans are capable of having their own dialect of the English language. Why is that? Are they not smart enough?”
Simple, obvious facts seem to have escaped you. Arabic is a language thousands of years old.
Yet there is not an Arab alive who is a thousand years old, so what’s your
point?
The point is that it takes alot longer for true dialects to emerge. AAVE has only been developing for 200-300 years…Yet there are no blacks 200-300 years old…(was there something you wanted to prove with your comment about thousand-year-old arabs?)
My point is that Arabs don’t live nearly as long as you think they do. No actually my point is that dialects can develop quite quickly, although I have to do some research to prove that.
It has had time to evolve, as have its various dialects…AAVE has not.
The fuck it hasn’t. You do realize, I hope, that black people didn’t just get here in the 1980s. How old are you??
36…not that it matters…and I am well aware of when blacks began arriving.
Because you were poking them with a stick?
If we have this coversation in a few hundred years maybe things will be different, but they are not now.
Go have a three way gay death pact at Harvard and then come back and talk to me.
What is it with you and homoerotic, suicidal, Ivy league love triangles? And you are complaining about my points being difficult to grasp?
You set up an impossible task for me to further this discussion (come see you after 100 years) so I gave you a task that, while not entirely impossible, is implausible.
I made no comments that would indicate any of the things you implied or outright said. Although I have an idea why you seem to have some problem with me (basically calling me a racist), I thought you would like to get it off your chest first.
So…What gives?
I didn’t call you racist because I’m not certain that you are one. Perhaps you are simply a cultural chauvinist. That would all be speculation and not
useful as calling people names is not particularly useful in making a point
about linguistics.
Yet you imply it anyway, so what is the difference? Are you sure this doesn’t have something to do with a previous post on another topic?
I’m certain we must have debated before but I don’t remember on what topics. I don’t have it out for you. I’m too concerned with hating my ex-wife and as such I don’t have the time or energy to carry an online grudge. I do have the time and inclination to oppose your argument.
January 25, 2008
Overheard Today
“Ah my old nemesis: the alphabet!”
Ok, the reason I overheard it was cuz I was the one who said it. But the important thing is it scored some bewildered looks. Get ‘em in.
January 24, 2008
Stay Black!
Good news, I now have proof that all mankind had black ancestors. Accordingly, I am now down. 
January 23, 2008
Presidential Debates
The thing that is at once the greatest strength and the greatest weakness of the United States political system is the fact that Presidential candidates must win favor in the eyes of The People. It is the greatest strength because no person can merely assume power on the basis of commanding extreme loyalty among the military, such as in a military coup, but it is also the greatest weakness because putting things to a vote is to cater to the lowest common denominator.
For example, imagine an episode of Jeapardy where every question is put to a vote by the viewing audience. Just such a case would end disastrously because the collective whole of humanity is exactly average. People complain about double-talking politicians and dummied down political blather and slogans, but the fact is that in a general election any intelligent discourse is going to blow right by the average voter. As a nation, we will never again have anything like the Lincoln/Douglas debates because it would be a waste of time as people are too stupid to understand it. In fact, if modern political handlers could go back in time and advise those two candidates in that time, the debates would have taken on an entirely different flavor indeed. It would have gone something like this:
Douglas: Popular Sovereignty replaces the Missouri compromise, that’s my thing. I believe that my opponent, while being well intentioned, is incorrect in his interpretation of that and that he also misreads the will of the American people. I now hand the floor back over to Mr. Lincoln.
Lincoln: Thanks slave.
Douglas: I’m not a slave, you’re a slave. In fact you love slaves and want to marry one.
Lincoln: Shut up gay-wad. You’re talking nonsense.
Douglas: You shut up. You‘re gay.
Lincoln: Your face is gay.
Douglas: Shouldn’t you be at the theater? Oooh, burn!
Lincoln: I don’t see your face on the penny.
Douglas: They only let you on there to be contrary. In fact, you’re the only one on a coin facing the other way, what’s all that about?
Lincoln: Bitch, at least I’m on a penny. You better hope they put your ass on a foodstamp and then call it a day.
Douglas: Shut your ass up, I’m gonna win this debate, I’m gonna own you, and then go on to win the Presidency.
Lincoln: You need to get a history book, that’s what you need to do.
Douglas: N***a you don’t even LOOK Presidential. And what the hell is up with that hat?
Lincoln: So fucking what, I bought this hat with my own money, that’s what. And where’s your hat? While you’re talkin’!
Douglas: I don’t need a hat. If I wanted one, I would buy one. But not a big tall stupid one like that. You look like your gonna go and conduct a train or something. You don’t even realize how stupid you look.
Lincoln: So what? People don’t even have any idea what you look like. What does that tell you?
Douglas: You did drugs in college.
Lincoln: You’re on drugs right fucking now, you didn’t even GO to college, you went to fuckin’ LCC.
Douglas: And what do you think LCC is?
Lincoln: It ain’t college.
Douglas: The hell it ain’t!
Lincoln: Shit!
Douglas: Lansing Community COLLEGE! Hello-oo!!
Lincoln: Motherfucker, community college ain’t real college! What world you livin’ in?
Douglas: Your mom goes to college.
Lincoln: Fuck you.
Douglas: Your mom goes to college.
Lincoln: I see your lips movin’ but I don’t hear a goddamn thing!
Douglas: Yes you do. Your mom goes to college.
Lincoln: Say that again and I’ll be in your ass like R. Kelly at a slumber party. Go ahead test me. THINK I’m playin’.
Douglas: I just said it three times, your mom goes to college.
Lincoln: That’s tears it (throws the mic down).
Sigh!
January 18, 2008
Open Tables
Xiaoting Pan is now my computer wallpaper. Ice Angel, bitches!!!
I went to the bar on Wednesday night to shoot pool and give my clicky-finger a rest from WoW. I was waiting for Kman when I noticed that they had opened the pool tables for the night. Since I didn’t have to pay for the games, I grabbed a diamond 9-ball rack and started practicing some 9-ball. Normally the game of choice for bars is 8-ball but 9-ball is strategically a different game entirely and learning the game forces me to try some shots I wouldn’t ordinarily try in 8-ball so I play it when I can as I think it will strengthen my game overall.
So anyway I’m playing 9-ball and at some point I had ball in hand (after having snookered myself with a vicious safety) and I had an easy shot but one for which I needed about four feet of drawback to get on my next shot. I lined the shot up, aimed as low on the cue ball as possible without popping the ball off the table, and hit the shot. My object ball goes in and the cue ball spins backwards and comes right back at me down the table: one, two, three, four feet, bumps the headspot, and comes back about another half foot. Counting the bounce I got about five feet of drawback on that shot, lining me up perfectly for my next shot in the 9-ball rotation. And THAT’S how the pros do it.
Except the pros are actually consistent at it and they get paid to play pool whereas I have to put in quarters unless it’s open pool Wednesday 
January 16, 2008
Hillary’s Remark Disected
It’s too early to tell but, in a close Democratic primary race, Hillary may have doomed her campaign with her civil rights remark. Black Michigan democrats have overwhelmingly favored uncommitted over Hillary Clinton in the Michigan primary and with the South Carolina primary on the horizon, this could be sign of things to come. But the question has been posed, is Hillary Clinton a racist? From what I have read about her I would vote that she is not a racist, she’s simply an elitist bitch.
The interesting thing is how race even entered into the debate in the first place. Hillary had been criticizing Senator Obama for raising up “false hopes” and she claimed that some of his views were unrealistic. Obama replied what if people like JFK and Martin Luther King had given up their goals as being unrealistic, to which Clinton pointed out (perhaps in hopes of a Senator Bentsen moment), that Obama was no Kennedy or MLK. Then curiously (and I’m not sure if this remark was made in the same exchange or even on the same day), Hillary, as an aside, pointed out that it “took a President” to pass the Civil Rights Act. It was this apparent sleight of MLK that spelled the beginning of the end.
One would wonder why a Presidential candidate would make a remark deliberately downplaying the efforts of America’s most prominent civil rights leader in the midst of a primary campaign and the only thing I can think of is that this is probably dogma that is so ingrained into her psyche that she simply stated it as a matter of course. I think she really thinks the actions of government officials are infinitely more important in the course of human events than the opinions and the actions of private citizens.
Now anybody who has read my blog entries on Kelly Tilghman’s Tiger Woods remark is probably ready to call bullshit on me now. “But teh Mexigogue”, I can hear the protesting now, “How can you excuse Kelly Tilghman for a ‘poor choice of words’ whereas you condemn Hillary’s statement as being ‘what she really thinks’? Isn’t this blatant hypocrisy?” No it is not and I will tell you why. Kelly Tilghman’s mistake involved the use of one word. ANYBODY can screw up a single word and it would be unfair to condemn someone for a selection that, while making a correct denotation, happens to have an unfortunate connotation.
Hillary’s remark, however, was not such a mistake. She didn’t use a wrong word, she correctly stated an opinion she has that the majority of the people do not share and that she shouldn’t have said out loud. Personally I have such thoughts that pop into my head when certain people are brought up in conversation (Thomas Jefferson owned slaves, President Lincoln fought the war to preserve the Union, not to free the slaves, and MLK had affairs with white women while he was leading the civil rights movement). I think these things but I wouldn’t necessarily mention them in a presidential primary. I think Hillary Clinton slipped up and said what she really thinks.
This is no way means that Hillary Clinton is a racist. It merely means that she very likely thinks that the government is responsible for effecting racial justice and equality, that black people are therefore owned by and owe their allegiance to the Democratic party (and that they periodically need to be reminded of that), that the efforts of people like Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King Jr., and other civil rights martyrs was “cute” but that ultimately the real work of the movement was done when a government official signed his name on a piece of legislation and that he is the real hero of the movement (it took a President it took a President it took a President). No, Hillary Clinton is not a racist, she is simply an elitist with a very low opinion of the people that will become her subjects if she happens to win the Presidential election. I will do everything in my power to make sure that doesn’t happen.
