New Alphabet Part II- The rest

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a brilliant essay on my plans for a new alphabet.  It was new, fresh, and invigorating.  I don't know if anyone actually read it (besides Amanda)...but rest assured, it took the world by storm.  And then I went away, leaving everyone breathless on the edge of their seats.

Now I have returned to finish my work.  Like Anakin brought balance to the Force, I will bring balance to the alphabet.  Even if that means I have to kill some of it and disfigure the rest.

To bring you up to speed, the new alphabet of my creation is so far ABDFGHIKLMN.  The rest of this exercise is elementary, really.  Having taken out the letters 'E' and 'C', no others would dare oppose me.  My logic-flawless.  My execution-deadly precise.  My aim-true.  My grip on reality- slipping.

Today, I'll take O-Z to task.  Which of them will survive to carry on my vision of the English language?  Tune in right now and find out!  Isn't this exciting?  WHAT COULD YOU POSSIBLY WANT TO DO MORE THAN READ THIS BLOG!!?!??!?

As with before, I'm taking all letter facts from Wikipedia.  And I'm taking all letter commentary from my brain.

Due to a scandal that was recently brought to my attention (thanks TBS), our thumbs up/thumbs down part will be played by legendary lemon Simon Cowell!

Would it kill you to smile, Simon?  Oh.  Oh, it would.  It actually would kill you.  My bad.  Carry on.

Let's get it started!

O- Inspired by the Egyptian hieroglyph for 'eye', and the fourth most common letter- I'd say this is pretty much a no-brainer.  Don't ask why it's a no-brainer.  When someone says "It's a no-brainer", they're really saying that they don't want you to ask any type of question that will expose their lack of knowledge about the subject.  I will say that elimination of 'O' would be to the 'O' face what prohibition was to alcohol.  And we all know how that turned out.

Simon says: Thumbs up

P- According to my friend Wikipedia, P is a voiceless bilabial plosive.  What the what?

Let's break it down
 
There's a lot of stuff going on there.  On one hand, being voiceless is a pretty useless trait in an alphabet whose sole purpose is to represent audible sounds.  It's like a company having a mime as their spokesperson.  But then it's also a bilabial plosive.  No one really knows what that means, but it sounds an awful lot like 'Explosive', and so I'm afraid that if I try to forcibly remove the letter 'P' from the alphabet, it will blow up and take the alphabetical midsection (not to mention my hands) out along with it.  So we're just going to keep 'P' right where it is and just back away...very slow like....

Simon says: Thumbs up

Q- I've been advised by my lawyer not to talk about 'Q', due to 'Q' being a minority letter...and with affirmative action...and the public relations backlash...but why can't I just say that 'Q' doesn't do anything 'K' and 'W'  couldn't do?  I mean, 'Q' can't even go into a word without taking 'U' with it- how weak is that?  You're can't even start off a word without some vowel holding your hand lik....

Pause ten seconds for station indoctrination

(Ten seconds later) I would like to issue a public apology to (do I have to do this?  ZAP Okay, okay., jeez..) the letter 'Q'.  I can only imagine how hard it is to be a (relatively useless and redunda ZAP ow ow ow ow) misunderstood and underutilized letter.  On behalf of the new alphabet, we welcome you into our tolerant and totally non-confrontational society.  Also, thank you for not suing me.  ZAP Hey- what was that for?

Simon says: Thumbs up

R- 'R' is like 'P' with a second leg.  That means that if 'P' is considered to be secure in the new alphabet, then 'R' would have to be like, twice as secure.  Get it?  Because he has a second leg to stand...oh, never mind.


Simon says: Thumbs up

S- Sometimes a place of employment will fire somebody so that they can promote someone else.  Whether it's because they're a better worker, or younger, or cheaper, or cuter, it's a harsh reality of the economic climate.  Animals do the same thing when they purposefully run faster than their older, sicklier third cousin.  It's called The Circle of Life.

That's what 'S' is to me.  There was excess, and I needed to make some cuts.  'C' was the old, sick letter that got taken down by the wolf pack, so I took it and threw it on the ground.  Naturally, 'S' is going to getting a lot more action.  I didn't promote 'S' because of his work ethic/age/letter capital/big booty.  This is all about fat trimming.  Let's just call it what it is- a marriage of convenience- and move on.

Simon says: Thumbs up

T- Ugh.  'T'.  It's just so boring.  No exciting backstory.  No exotic function.  No air flow.  Just frequent, brutal, boring, efficiency.  Well, and its own steak cut.  Maybe if we dressed it up a little bit.  Gave it a couple of griffins as bookends, put a magic wand on the top, like a Voldemort's wand...made it look like a tree...

Nope.  It's still 'T'.  But now it has boobs.  So there's that.

Simon says: Thumbs up


U/V- Details are sketchy, but I'm pretty sure there was some weird sort of incestuous disambiguation going on in the history of 'U' and 'V'.  I think 'U' used to be 'Y'...or was it 'V'?  I don't know.  This stuff is just weird.  It's like leafing through a yearbook from 'The Hills Have Eyes'.

Class of ARRGGHHRRGHHH rulzez!!!!!!!1!!!!

I don't know what kind of kinky crap you guys used to pull back there, but that all ends now.  'U'- you're done.

(Allows a moment for the shock of brutal truth to wear off) How you ask?  Simple.  I'm going to pair 'Y' with two 'O's, or two 'A's for the soft 'U' sound (just think Boston accent).  No-brainer.  Let's move on quickly.

Plus, without 'U' around to emasculate him, maybe 'Q' will man up and finally start doing something productive.  Otherwise there's going to be a 'Q coup'.  And 'V'- shape up, or I'll enlist 'B' to take your place.  And don't think I won't do it, either.  Because I will.

Simon says: U, thumbs down.  V, thumbs up

W- Definitely proof that some weird crap happened between 'U' and 'V'.  How else do you explain a letter that is named "double U" but looks more like "double V"?  Oh well.  I'm keeping it around.  It's good for office morale.  And by 'good for office morale', I mean 'all the other letters can point and laugh and stare at Freakshow'.

Simon says: Thumbs up

X- Oh jeez, this again?  I thought we were done currying favor with the alpha-proletariat.  How much longer can we expect the upper class letters to keep picking up the slack of the bottom class lose....

Pause ten more seconds for station indoctrination

(Lobotomized, with feeling) welcome to the new alphabet mister x

Simon says: thumbs up

Y- 'Y' is one of the cornerstones of a new alphabet.  Its sleek design and bialphality (it's both a consonant and a vowel) makes it trendy and helps us connect with the yuppies.  Its presence in the out-back of the alphabet makes it popular amongst the rebellious outcasts.  Its position as the Rarest IPA Sound by a Letter of the Latin Alphabet makes it sound like an Oscars category.  'Y' is my ace pitcher, my star quarterback, my leading lady- all rolled into one.

Simon says: Thumbs up

Z- Semitic 'Z' represented a weapon.  And what a bad-ass weapon it is.  It's got those two hook things on top and bottom, which can be used to trip an opponent in melee combat, slice open his intestines, or to scale a wall.  It also has the pointed corners, so you can use it in short quarters to stab your foe, like you were using a dagger.  Again, with the brilliant dual-design, if you miss your stroke in one direction, merely double back in the other for a sure severing.  In addition to melee combat, it also has ranged capabilities- much like a Chinese throwing star. Truly the weapon of a dynasty.

Oh.  Were we talking about 'Z' as a letter?  Eh, sure.  Let it in.  It can protect our backsides.

Simon says: Thumbs up

After analyzing the back half of our alphabet, only one letter came off the board.  Perhaps I was feeling generous today.  Maybe the back half of the alphabet is like an untapped natural resource of sound potential.  It's possible my heart just wasn't really in it.  But whatever the reason, our new alphabet is:
ABDFGHIKLMNOPQRSTVWXYZ

ALL HAIL THE NEW ALPHABET!

I'm going to begin a massive Twitter campaign to get the ball rolling.  Because people on Twitter aren't really working with a fully functional alphabet anyways.


PICS- Egg- http://antifraudintl.org/imagehosting/244b29c537e5924.jpg
Simon- http://cbskmvq.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/simon_cowell-thumbs_down.jpg?w=385&h=294
Color bars- http://bagelradio.com/blog/uploaded_images/off+the+air+color+bars-761961.jpg
Letter T- http://www.fromoldbooks.org/DelamotteOrnamentalAlphabets/051-16th-Century-letter-t-q85-468x500.jpg
Sloth- http://images.icanhascheezburger.com/completestore/2008/12/4/128728747597485642.jpg

The Oscars- A plea to get a collective bargaining agreement in place for football

So I watched the Oscars last night. Not the whole thing, mind you- I was in bed by 10. And it wasn't because the Oscars sucked last night that I was in bed by 10 (although...they did suck)- it was that I was just plumb tuckered out. I decided to conduct a mad science experiment with my sleep schedule over the weekend and concluded that most nights, I should probably get more than 5 hours of sleep per night.

And I realized something- I desperately need football to not go away next season. Sure, the Oscars take place after football season, so it's not an interference there. But it was like when Frodo looked into the mystical punch bowl and saw the Shire set ablaze- I saw myself sitting home on a Sunday afternoon, watching some show about housewives...or was it house hunting...maybe Dogg the bounty hunter. I don't know. All I know is that I saw life without football- and I didn't like it.

Anyways, back to the Oscars. I don't really have too much to say about them- after all, I didn't watch the whole thing, and I honestly don't think I had seen any of the movies that were nominated for awards- except for the back half of Alice in Wonderland on Netflix Instant. I had forgot that movie came out in 2010- largely in part because it was on Netflix Instant. Isn't that like, the kiss of death for a movie? I mean, if it's legitimately good...you have to go through the whole rigmarole of sending in your last disc so that they can send you the DVD a couple days later. But if it's kinda lame (or for kids)- you get to stream it right to your PS3.

Speaking of Netflix- I think that wonderful piece of movie viewing technology is at least largely responsible for my lack of awareness about what was going on in the world of movie-dom during 2010. Seriously- I think the last movie we saw was (oooh- Palindrome) the Voyage of the Dawn Treader- and there weren't many movies before that. Because we pretty much stopped watching regular TV and started watching things on Netflix- we missed out on all sorts of movie trailers. I think I probably saw more movie trailers during the Super Bowl than I did in all of 2010.

While I lacked a clear baseline for assessing the choices of the Academy, I was able to gain an appreciation for who the Oscars are really for- those people whose names get lost in the shuffle of the end credits- the behind the scene folks who don't get to be on the cover of People or Weekly Us- but who can many times make or break a movie without us even knowing it. Those are the people that the Oscars are all about. The tabloids make it about ridiculous dresses and celebrity couples- but those people already have their fame. The Oscars exist so the no-namers get to have their day in the sun- even if they get to go right back to anonymity right after the after parties. Congratulations, guys- your hard work helps to keep movies from being school plays with famous people in them.

Here are some random thoughts on the presentation of the 83rd Oscars:
- Maybe I was just spoiled by guys like Billy Crystal and Jon Stewart and their writers, but come on- last nights show was LAME. The jokes were lame, the opening film montage was lame, the presenters that tried to be funny were lame. It was simply a train wreck. It was a combination of really poor writing and two hosts that really don't have enough ad-lib ability to fill in the blanks. I like James Franco as an actor- I like him a lot, actually. But he's no Hollywood funny man, and he's definitely not a very attractive woman. When James and Anne had to call out their mothers to get applause- I knew we were in for a very, VERY long night.

- Who knew that the dude from Chuck could sing so well? Seriously- I've only seen Zachary Levi in the Alvin and the Chipmunks 2 and some clips of his TV show. I would have never guess he had a set of silky-smooth pipes like that. Kudos, Zachary.

- I'm not sure what was a more awkward moment- Melissa Leo's rehearsed speechlessness or Christian Bale forgetting his wife's name. I'm not saying that Leo wasn't initially speechless- just that she obviously thought she wasn't going to win, and so prepared herself for the moment by concocting a speechless 'speech'. It was really painful on the eyes. And Christian- I don't care that you won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. You are on couch duty until further notice.

- Literally had to Wikipedia the name 'Trent Reznor' to make sure that the guy that accepted the Best Original Score Oscar was the same guy that wanted to 'F*** me like an animal' in the 90's. Yup. It was.

Overall, I'm not mad at myself that I watched the Oscars. I just wish we would have spent that time watching Inception.