A Pixelated Mind

Welcome to the fourth annual edition of “the Eli’s.” For those of you newbies, “the Eli’s” is an award show that was made up to make me feel better about not getting any other awards.
The rules are simple: I win at least once.
This entire month, people can comb through the back issues (all the way to November 2004, we’ve got to keep alive this fake pretense that I’ve been writing longer than that). If you find a particular post or comment that you feel deserves a nomination, simply write to me or post a comment giving the link (or a vague description, whatever). At the end of the month, we’ll announce the nominees, then in November, we’ll announce the winners.
You can nominate multiple times and nominate your own comments.

The categories are:

Best Overall Post
Funniest Post
Oddest Post
Most Insightful Post
Most Memorable Post
Most Original Post
Worst Overall Post
Best Meme
Best Post Title
Worst Post Title
Best Overall Comment
Worst Overall Comment

There are at least four nominees for various categories already, and the rest are slowly trickling in. Don’t let your favorite post or comment be left behind. Nominate Now!

This grab bag forced by the hands of Seth and Aeger.

Lame? You want lame? I made a hierarchy of lame! Ironing underwear, living with your parents, chatting online, Klingon conventions, and finally, making a list of the hierarchy of lameness.

2: She died of a broken heart.
1: Heart attack?
2: Yeah.

Don’t sweat it. Cross-examination is tough. Even Jesus couldn’t take it.

2: Say you woke up tomorrow in your mother’s bed, in your mother’s clothes, in your mother’s body. Would you still be you?
1: No, I’d be me in my mom’s body. What does it matter though? What are the odds of that happening?
2: Weirder things have happened. I mean, I’ve woken up in your mother’s bed before. In her clothes, too!
1: Ha. And also ha. But c’mon, seriously, even if that were true, you’ve not woken up in her body.
2: It depends on what you mean by ‘in.’

Why Hate America: the sequel to Why Hate Sweden. Part of the Botswana Fucking Sucks and Nobody Likes Nepal series.

2: I can dance the Tango.
1: I order my partner around.
2: I desist from such activities.
1: I seek them out.
2: I try not to.
1: I only once did.
2: I did do that once too, come to think of it.
1: I think thoughts of rage.
2: I eagerly refuse to ask.
1: I killed your paw.
2: I watched K-Pax.
1: I… you win this round.

Gabe the Sacriligious Beaver here with an insightful thought experiment. The question of the week is: Do you remember how I told you that sometimes I repeat stories?

This is one of those and it’s not something as light and breezy as drug-addiction, teenage pregnancy, or a closeted bulimic drunk-driving a stolen cop car to a driveby to prove his manhood to his homies who he only talks to because his parents didn’t love him.
I am, of course, talking about accents: the gateway speech disorders.

Allow me to tell you an autobiographical story, which I can only assume is true as I’ve yet to research it.

I was a young tot out in Michigan with my French-Canadian cousin Dave and my mother when I saw some Wisconsin-raised children talking in their silly midwestern way.

I tried to talk to them in their local tongue so as to seem ‘cool’ in their eyes (together now: it’s Wis-kaaahhn-sin). It wasn’t like marijuana, PCP, cocaine, methamphetamines, or glue: I didn’t like it at first, but after a while, I just couldn’t stop myself. I would never tell my parents because I knew they wouldn’t understand.

Soon, regional accents just weren’t enough. It got to the point where I’d rent foreign films just to imitate the sounds that came out. I thought I could quit at any time, but whenever I heard toh-MAH-toh, I just couldn’t stop myself.

One day I woke up in a Mexican cleaning-lady’s broom closet wearing a sombrero and poncho listening to her sancho storm in and hoping he wouldn’t find me. That was when I knew I had a problem: I had to go to the bathroom.

But enough of my boring life story. Not everyone moves on from accents to slurs, lisps, dialects, and phonemes. Some people end up doing the ‘hard stuff’ like learning Elven, Klingon, or even German.

In any case, what matters is that you learn from my mistakes and not get started on accents: the middle-volumed killer. When the kids in your playground (or coffeehouse, I’m not sure what the college-age crowd does these days) start making fun of how a Scotsman would sound in bed, just cover your ears.

It’s not that funny: Scotsmen don’t get women in bed. They get [editor: insert sheep joke here]. Man, that was a wooly joke! Ha ha!

Of course, when we say to stay away from accents, we don’t mean people who have natural accents. Even you have a natural accent, I know what I’m talking aboot, I’m Canadian.
The trick is to speak to people who are different in such a way as to not adopt their mannerisms. I suggest plugging your ears and chanting your cultural music loudly (“Barbie Girl” by Aqua) while they speak.

If you explain it as a cultural anomily, I’m sure they won’t take offense. At least Canadians won’t. We do it to Americans all the time.

Looove,
Gabe D. Beaver

“Remember Kids: Allegories are the new metaphors.”

I suppose we’ll never know who lucky #5000 was. *sigh*

On the other hand, I’m a dollar richer.

Hmm… I didn’t believe I was actually going to make it to 5000 views in 17 days, but now it’s a near certainty. I blame it on the six hundred unique page views of one lonely Saturday (Seriously. WTF? I wasn’t even online on Saturday. How did 600 people view my site in one day?).
So if you’re the lucky #5000, comment and I’ll send you a nice shiny Australian $1 coin (at the very bottom it should tell you what number visitor you are).

My stats:
Total Page Views
Tue 09/27 27
Mon 09/26 24
Sun 09/25 15
Sat 09/24 44
Fri 09/23 16
Thu 09/22 20
Wed 09/21 17
Tue 09/20 18
Mon 09/19 32
Sun 09/18 13
Sat 09/17 634
Fri 09/16 4
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Tue 09/13 8