A Connection Only Kate Would Make

As my dear readers may recall, I can only claim to be Louisianian by association, a fact which allows me to objectively observe and comment upon their cultural quirks and oddities. One of the many, many things which make this state unique is their habit of mispronouncing words. These mispronunciations are not simply a result of their difference in accent, though that has its own effect. Louisianians simply refuse to pronounce certain letters, and this strange phenomenon tends to be most apparent in the names of various places around the state.

One of my Louisianian friends’ favorite games is, “Can you pronounce the words on that sign?” The answer is invariably no. I good-humoredly give it a go, but I simply end up butchering it and having to be corrected (and laughed at). I lay the blame for their nigh-unpronounceable names on the combination of bastardized French and American Indian words,  based on their insistence that the letters “eaux” should sound like “oh” or that “Tchoupitoulas” and “Atchafalaya” are legitimate words. However, I realized that a similar phenomenon occurs here in the United Kingdom. Imagine my disappointment when I realized that the home of the language which I so frequently implore Louisianians to adopt also insists on mispronouncing their words!

Considering that I blamed the French influence on Louisiana for their tendency to skip out entire letters in their pronunciations, I was more than a little surprised to see the same thing happen in Britain, which has historically been at odds with France. But Britain has incorporated many French-ities into their language, replacing an American’s eggplant with aubergine and zucchini with courgettes. Not only that, but the names of many British places retain that annoying habit of ignoring certain letters.

Take anything that ends in “-cester,” for example. Forget that half of those letters are there and you’ll be set. Leicester is pronounced “Lester” while Gloucester is “Glosster.” The suffix “-wick” is not to be pronounced the same way as the bit you light on a candle; Warwick is “Warrick” and Berwick is more like “Berrick.” And in Edinburgh, which is pronounced as though it ends in “burr-ugh” instead of “berg,” there’s a Buccleuch (Buh-cloo) Place and a Cockburn (Coe-burn) Street. They may ostensibly speak English here, but I have yet to see that evidenced in their place names.

Louisianians’ general tendency to ignore the majority of the letters in a given word makes them difficult to pronounce, but at least they can point to the French and Indian influences which combine to create the effect detailed above. Britain, on the other hand, as the home of the English language, should be held accountable for their mispronunciations. They have no excuse for their mistreatment of such perfectly good words, containing entirely pronounceable letters, as those listed above.

Although I have to admit, without their alternate pronunciation, “Cockburn” would hardly be an acceptable word for mixed company. Maybe there’s a method to their madness after all.

Memory Lane: Louisianian by Association

Preface: This is the very first column I published in The SpringHillian. I thought I would post it in the spirit of Mardi Gras, The Princess and the Frog and the New Orleans Saints’ recent Super Bowl victory. It is unedited, remaining exactly as it appeared in the newspaper that day.

I’m not from Louisiana. My ancestors were not French, they were not Canadian, and they certainly were not French Canadian. Spicy food doesn’t particularly appeal to me, Cajun French words are not sprinkled throughout my vocabulary, and I consider spoons eating utensils, not musical instruments. My first visit to New Orleans was in high school—with my parents. I’m not from Louisiana.

Then why is it that after a few years at Spring Hill College I pretend that I am? Maybe it’s the sheer overpowering numbers: everyone knows that 78 percent of the student body comes from Louisiana, 14 percent from St. Louis, and the other 8 percent of us losers come from somewhere else. Maybe that number is a little low on the St. Louis end. We’ll bump that one up to, say, 23 percent. That’s probably better. (Sure it’s a little imprecise, but 34 percent of statistics are made up on the spot anyway. And hopefully more than 2 percent of readers got this joke.) Whatever the reason, I have succumbed to Pretend-to-be-from-Louisiana-itis.

I lay some of the blame for my affliction at the feet of my roommate, who really is from Louisiana. She taught me to peel and eat crawfish, not an easy feat if you haven’t been reared on a bayou. She has introduced words like “booksack” into my vocabulary, which is slowly replacing “backpack,” and “elementary school” is in danger of becoming “grammar school” forever. After visiting her a few times, my limited knowledge of small Louisiana towns has been expanded just enough to serve as fuel for my disorder. For example, someone may mention to me that he, unsurprisingly, is from Louisiana. “Oh, where?” I will ask, instantly curious. “Outside of Lafayette,” he answers, obviously unaware of my thorough knowledge of the Lafayette area due to my extensive visits of, oh, about ten days total in the area. “Really? Where?” I probe. “Erath,” he replies. “Oh, Erath, of course!” I reply, knowingly. Well, I have never actually been to Erath. But I have seen its name on one of my roommate’s checks before! That’s good enough, right?

It seems to be good enough for me, just as I’m sure it’s good enough for the others who were not blessed with the good fortune to have been born in Louisiana. It’s not as though I’m actually trying to trick people into believing I’m from Louisiana. I’m pretty sure it’s just something I do in an unconscious effort to fit in.

That being said, I’d like to make a case for all those people from states underrepresented at Spring Hill. The 8 percent of us who come from somewhere else would like some recognition for our own states’ great qualities. This may come as a shock to some of you, but important stuff happened in other states, too. In fact, and brace yourselves for this one, other states even have tasty food! We should stand together, that 8 percent of us, and declare with one smallish voice that we are proud to not be from Louisiana. What’s so great about Louisiana anyway?

Despite what you may think, I’m not trying to get back at or pick on the folks from Louisiana. I actually seem to have taken a liking to the place. Rather, what I’m trying to do, along with boost the morale of my comrades from Elsewhere, is to remind you Louisianians that you may be big fish in a little pond now, but sooner or later you won’t be. That is, unless you plan on going back to Louisiana. In which case scratch everything I just said and—when can I come visit you?

(originally published in The SpringHillian 30 Jan 2008)

Memory Lane: A Nation Obsessed

Preface: I wrote this column for a journalism class I took in the fall semester of my fourth year at Spring Hill. After watching the New Orleans Saints win their first ever Super Bowl title and the Vince Lombardi trophy, I though it would be a fitting tribute to post this. Congratulations to Drew Brees, Sean Payton, and the New Orleans Saints. And to the city of New Orleans who watched their Saints go marching in, who dat!

We are a country that eats, sleeps and breathes sports. Americans will watch anything from the NBA Championship to the World Series, even the Stanley Cup and whatever you win in golf. We follow plenty of sports, collegiate and professional, as a nation. And, boy, do we love our football.

The testament to our love is the sports paraphernalia we don whenever there is a game: t-shirts, jerseys, hats, and anything else that screams, “I’m a fan.” And when that game is on television, we drop everything to watch it. It takes four hours out of our lives to watch sixty minutes tick away on the scoreboard. Depending on the strength of our devotion, a win or loss could make us ecstatic or dejected for anywhere from hours to days.

If you happen to miss either a college or professional game, due to some unavoidable event such as the birth of your firstborn child, never fear. After a football weekend, news websites are chock full of scores, rankings, players and stats. You can even buy cable or satellite packages that ensure you never have to miss a televised game. Our nation is obsessed with sports.

Maybe we overlook the fact that each player is paid an exorbitant amount of money to run around a field with a ball, following arbitrary rules to score imaginary points. To be more specific, they get paid millions of dollars. The median salary on many professional football teams is around $1 million. A professional football player can be guaranteed to make at least a six-figure salary, something people spend years going through medical school to accomplish. And all they have to do is play a game. In a country going through an economic crisis, is it fair that so much money is funneled to the people who play professional sports?

Then again, think about what sporting events can provide. It’s more than just watching a game. It can foster a sense of community across the nation and across the world as you cheer for your home team. It fosters pride in one’s self, team, nation, and even race and gender. Look at Jackie Robinson: he proved to a segregated nation that an African-American could play professional baseball just as well as any Caucasian and gave a sense of worth to a people who were discriminated against. Jesse Owens demonstrated to the world that the Nazis’ superior race theories were wrong. Michael Phelps and the U.S. Olympic Team stirred patriotism in 2008 as Americans were awarded medal after medal. And after Hurricane Katrina, the New Orleans Saints brought hope back to a devastated city. These days headlines about football bring some variety to the many reports covering the continuously dropping Dow.

Maybe sporting events are more than just a game. Maybe they provide a bright spot in someone’s otherwise dark life. Maybe they give a poor student a chance to succeed on his own terms. Maybe they give us something we can all rally around, no matter our political affiliations, skin color, salary, education level, or anything else that may divide us. Maybe there’s nothing wrong with watching a little bit of sports.

(written 7 October 2008)

The Five Stages of…

Everyone is (or will be) generally familiar with the Kübler-Ross model, more commonly known as the five stages of grief: 1) denial, 2) anger, 3) bargaining, 4) depression, 5) acceptance. For some reason they decided not to add “6) seek vengeance” to the list, but I suppose it’s their list, they can put what they like on it. The point, dear reader, is that grief is only one aspect of the human experience that can be broken down into five (or possibly six, if one’s name is Inigo Montoya) distinct stages. Something else that can be thus analyzed is the process of waking up in the morning. I am confident in saying that everyone has experienced each of these stages at some point in their lifetime, though depending on the person they may or may not all occur on the same morning. While they are similar to the stages of grief, the stages of awakening vary slightly. They are as follows:

1) Unconsciousness: the period before your alarm goes off when you remain blissfully unaware of the world around you. Your level of unconsciousness can be reflected in whether the sound of your alarm was first incorporated into the dream you were having before you realized what it was. On certain mornings you may realize that you hit the snooze button before becoming fully conscious, unknowingly buying yourself another nine minutes before you begin to be pulled back into the real world. Which brings us to the next stage,

2) Denial: the point at which you pull the duvet up over your head to pretend that the sun isn’t shining or to trick your alarm clock (especially if your alarm clock takes the form of a human being) into believing that you are still unconscious. Occasionally it involves grabbing the timepiece off your bedside table and examining it closely to decide whether it is possible for that to be the correct time. When you have accepted that your alarm clock is telling the truth, you proceed to the next stage,

3) Bargaining: the moment during the process at which you might ask for “five more minutes.” Other variations on this theme include deciding that a shower is an unnecessary part of the morning, thereby allocating more time in bed, or that setting your poor bare feet on the floor would literally start your day off on the wrong foot so staying in bed longer is the only option. Eventually, though, you must start

4) Moving: the dreaded point at which you must finally steel yourself for the world outside your bed and begin the day. Depending on how much time you have taken for stages one, two and three, stage four may progress slowly or quickly. Leading us to the final stage,

5) Panicking: the moment at which you realize that you stayed in bed too long and are now late to class, work, the petting zoo, or whatever else you had to do that day. You must frantically gather your things to get out the door, resolving that tomorrow will be different.

As with any theory, I cannot claim entire accuracy on these five stages. More studies will need to be conducted and more data collected to revise and improve my work. However, as the pioneer and visionary in this field, I fully expect it to be named in my honor.

On why being in a movie (or TV show) wouldn’t actually be that great (part 2)

Because members of the high school cheerleading squad apparently own only one outfit. Of all the movies or television shows that have ever featured cheerleaders (and there are quite a few), only a handful show them wearing something other than their cheerleading uniform to school. This costuming device is handy on a number of levels. For one thing, it clearly delineates the school’s caste system, separating those who are cool (the ones who are privileged to wear the uniform) from those who are not. Without wasting time attempting to explain the high school hierarchy and which teenagers belong where, the uniform says it all. It is also conveniently skimpy, allowing movie producers to have scantily clad teenagers scampering about. Finally, it simply makes costuming more efficient. If your character only ever wears one outfit, your production team is saved the effort of designing, purchasing, creating, and putting together each day’s look. For Hollywood, cheerleaders wearing their cheerleading uniforms to school makes sense. But everyone who has ever been an American high school student knows that that simply isn’t the case.

Honestly, consider the implications of a cheerleader wearing her uniform to school everyday. No matter how skimpy the outfit, any self-respecting cheerleader would want to show off her fashion sense by wearing something other than her uniform. Besides the fact that she would want to vary her choice from time to time, it would be very inconvenient to wear the same thing day in and day out. Unless she is like a cartoon character that has a closet full of the same thing (which is highly unlikely and would be rather silly), that uniform would need to either be washed everyday for the subsequent day’s use (time-consuming and inefficient) or else she would smell. And cheerleaders are not among the class of high school students who smell (unless she just got out of practice, though you would never assume that the smell of gymnasium combined with sweat was emanating from her). Though the option to have their cheerleaders continually clad in uniform may work best for Hollywood producers, it wouldn’t work in the real world. And it’s just another reason why being in a movie wouldn’t actually be that great.

Memory Lane: the North American Wife-Carrying Championship

In this day in age, chivalry is generally thrown aside as women seek total equality with men. It has gotten to the point where you can hardly find a man who will lay his coat over a puddle to keep your delicate feet dry anymore. But rest assured that there are some men on whom gallantry has not been lost. These are the men who participate in the North American Wife-Carrying Championship.

While this competition is obviously a throwback to the good old days in Finland where Rankainen the Robber made wannabe members of his outfit audition by carrying big sacks on their backs, or women they had kidnapped, they have modernized the rules to fit with society as it is today. The woman does not have to be the legal wife of the man with whom she is competing; she could be a friend, girlfriend, or a woman he has kidnapped while plundering the next village over. And in keeping with the equality of women with men, competitors have the option of having the “wife” do the carrying.

Just like any competition here in America, the Wife-Carrying Championship takes the course to an extreme. Rather than settling for a small puddle to help her over, the competition includes such extremes as carrying the “wife” through waist-deep water for ten meters and jumping over three foot tall hurdles. No obstacle is too difficult when a woman’s honor is on the line.

This competition, quite possibly the only thing to come out of Finland and find any kind of following in the States, is in its ninth year here. The prize for winning the North American Wife-Carrying Championship is, obviously, the wife’s weight in beer plus cash in the amount of five times her weight. And that’s where the Wife-Carrying Championship, the most chivalric competition today, makes its fatal flaw.

You are never to ask a lady how much she weighs.

(written 28 December 2008)

On why being in a movie wouldn’t actually be that great (part 1)

Because people in movies have a hard time buying a train ticket. The hero/ine, after rushing up to the counter and by-passing the queue, demands a ticket on a certain train at a certain time. The employee-of-the-train-station-currently-working-behind-the-ticket-counter gives a reply in the negative. Said hero/ine becomes frantic, says something that is perhaps out of line, and before you know it, the ticket window is slammed in his/her face. Hollywood might make you believe this is a frequent occurrence. Honestly, it’s probably not, because for one thing, no one in America actually travels by train anymore. But let’s suspend our disbelief about the necessity of this train ticket for a moment and consider the very act of slamming the window in the customer’s face.

After a person has just waited patiently in the queue, you, as the employee behind the counter, respond in the negative to his/her enquiry. He/she becomes upset, you respond accordingly—next thing you know, you’ve slammed the ticket window closed. For one thing, you might want to look into anger management, especially if you’re going to be working in customer service. For another thing, what are you planning to do next? Did that upset customer happen to coincide with your smoke break? ‘Oh, perfect, if I make the next customer mad, I can slam the window in his face just in time to grab a cigarette.’ If not, which is more likely the case, now you have to open the window back up and hope that said customer has left. If luck is on your side, which may or may not be the case, you open up the window as if nothing had happened and calmly say, “Next,” even though everyone in the queue just saw your performance. I guess it does have its benefits—odds are, your next few customers will be really polite. But slamming the ticket window closed just doesn’t seem like a very effective means of doing business. And, though it has the benefit of adding both action and drama to the scene, it would make buying a train ticket a much more complicated process than it needs to be.