Rocky Nuttfield's Debut

http://ridonkulosity.blogspot.com/

I wish I could have made this a link, but I couldn't. So here it is in full.


The Washington Post
March 23, 1997, Sunday,
Final Edition
SECTION: STYLE
Ebonics? It's Just Talk.
By Lonnae O'Neal Parker
Washington Post Staff Writer


The Oakland School Board caused a firestorm recently when some thought it proposed teaching "Ebonics" in schools. I agree, there is a real danger in that. Teachers might get it wrong. Ebonics needs to be taught in the home.
Oh, I wish I had a witness. Stay wit' me now. (a)
I am an educated woman, and I speak Ebonics fluently. With subtlety and nuance, accent and inflection, and much, much attitude.
Fo' real tho', yo' girl can go. (b)
At work, I can toggle between software applications in a keystroke. I am constantly reading, researching and importing text between applications with different rules, different aesthetics, different sets of assumptions.
It kind of reminds me of what black people in this country do all the time.
I spend my days alt-tabbing through competing realities. I doublethink.
Y'all don't know nut'n 'bout that George Orwell. Baby was all that. That 1984 was da bomb, yo. (c)
Ebonics is more than slang and fractured verse and fodder for political pontification. It is, for me, subtext, context and pretext. It is the filter through which all of my ideas flow. It is my first language, the one I think in. The rest is just translation.Tha's real. (d)Sometimes I'll have an "Ebonics moment" in front of the water cooler or standing at the mirror checking my lipstick. It is a word, a turn of phrase, a gesture or a meaningful look. It is a way of understanding the world and of understanding yourself, seldom seen by people in the office.Lessin' they black folks.It is the reason why black people downtown, who may be unknown to one another, almost always speak when passing. It is a tacit acknowledgment:We out here, ain't we? (e)For a creative writing assignment, I once wrote a letter in Ebonics and had a professor -- tryin' to school yo, girl (f) -- tell me, "Educated black people would not talk like that."I was like, yo, P, "Ain't I a Woman," yo? (g)To say he didn't get it would be an understatement. Maybe I need to 'splain myself. Check it:I grew up steeped in the classics. I was a journalism major in college and I am fond of citing the philosophical underpinnings of a free press as an argument for diversity. I can talk Dante, and Bronte.But you know, I gots to brang a li'l Ha'ay Belafonte. And y'all be straight sleep on that Roxanne Shante, see. (h)Ebonics is the spoken rhythm of my home. It is kickin' it with the sisters while washing dishes and watching "Star Trek."Girl check out Number One, baby is fine. (i)And it punctuates the sweet, intimate moments spent at play with my little girl.Dat mommy be nibblin' on dem baby toes. (j)Ebonics is not unknown, it is not misunderstood, even by those blacks who would have you believe in its aberrance. For a generation, it may be a shameful little secret. A way to distinguish one kind of black from another. Negroes from African Americans. But it is the tradition we all come from.It is one not unfamiliar to Colin Powell, a tradition that gave rise to Thurgood Marshall and Clarence Thomas.MCs act like they don't know, but you know Clarence get to them family reunions and be talkin' up some stuff. He from Georgia too. Please. (k)I've seen white people claim not to get it. But oh, they want to. These are the same folks at the office Christmas party singing:Whachoo want?/ Baby I got it./ Whachoo need?/ You know I got it.(They axin' fo' respect, chile.) (l)When it comes to Aretha Franklin, or the Temptations or B.B. King, white folks "get it," all day long, because they understand there is a range of emotion that simply cannot be expressed in standard English. It's got to be infused, embellished.You feelin' me? (m)It is the reason black people gave the world jazz and rap. It is why we sing the blues.It is creative, resilient; fluid. And for me, it is my ticket to ride: uptown and downtown. It reminds me that if I get too far from where I started, I'm lost.An' you know, forget where you come from an' you might get to thinkin nobody'll eve'try'n sen' you back. (n)So my husband and I might cold break into Ebonics at the Smithsonian with my daughter.No shame to our game. (o)Because dance is a pas de deux and the Bankhead Bounce. Because French is the Champs-Elysees and the French Quarter. Because Spanish is Madrid and a rose in Spanish Harlem. And because the world is so much bigger than subject-verb agreement when I sing to her,You are a chocolate star/ Though you may not be a bass guitar, baby bubba,It's all good. (p)My daughter giggles. She doesn't think I'm ignorant, and she never questions my elocution.She be lookin' all like, oo-ooo, represent, represent. 'Cause my baby know. That mommy ol' school. She jus' be keepin' it real.Peace Out. (q)Ebonics to Standard English translation by letter:a. Although the comment is meant flippantly, author is "testifying," and checking the audience for like-minded sentiments. Author makes an entreaty to closely follow her line of reasoning. Stems from the call-and-response tradition of the black church.b. Honestly, the author speaks it well.c. To self-conscious effect, author is calling attention to use of George Orwell "doublethink" (the simultaneous acceptance of two opposing propositions). As an aside, author thinks highly of the novelist and novel.d. The author is not joking.e. Reference to kinship and being outnumbered.f. Equivalent to "as if." Disbelieving. Author takes umbrage at and feels patronized by professor's instruction on this matter.g. Truncated expression meaning, "Hello . . . hello? Aren't I the exact thing this person is talking about?" Derived from famous quote by former slave and women's rights activist Sojourner Truth refuting pronouncements of women's gentility and feebleness by pointing out how hard she had been made to work and how often she had been beaten.h. Deliberate use of rhyme. (1) Reference is to black activism and Caribbean consciousness. (2) Tongue-in-cheek reference to mid-1980s "old school" female New York rapper. In toto, appreciative reference is made to street slang and sexual bravado.i. SS Enterprise first mate Cmdr. Will Riker is a handsome fellow.j.k. Despite their protestations to the contrary, author suspects that masters of ceremony -- Establishment black people such as Clarence Thomas -- occasionally slip into black vernacular, particularly when surrounded by family. Author contends, implying some intimate knowledge, that Georgia has large Ebonics-speaking contingent.l. This is Aretha. Aretha needs no translation.m. Do you get it?n. A reference to slavery, and the ensuing political and economic subjugation of black people.o. Author is unabashed.p. (1) Bootsy Collins lyric, widely familiar and harking back to late-'70s and early-'80s "P-Funk" musical sound. (2) The sentiments thus expressed are self-evident, easily accepted, and celebrated.q.
Author takes literary license to leave unexplained. Strongly urges use of context clues.

Happiness Was

The 1983 World Series champion Baltimore Orioles.

Repercussions

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/10/AR2006051000929.html

"Appeals court Judge J. Michael Luttig, a leading conservative jurist and a short-list Bush administration candidate for the Supreme Court, announced today that he is resigning from the bench to serve as senior vice president and general counsel of the Boeing Co."

My boy J. is resigning because he has two kids approaching college age and needs money, the article implies. And judges must avoid lucrative whoring.

"Federal appeals court judges earn $171,800 per year and generally must avoid any lucrative outside activity. Vice presidents and general counsels for huge corporations may earn anywhere from a quarter million dollars to several million, including various non-salary forms of compensation."

IN MY OPINION, Luttig got scared because of recent exposes in Salon and at the Center for Investigative Journalism that caught a coupla judges with their robes down, ew gross, documented judges who unethically presided on cases involving parties they are invested in. Luttig knows he can't get away with it, because the guardians of the disinherited, yes -- journalists, will be on his ass in 2.4 seconds. And don't even give this knucklehead credit for his impotent questioning of President Bush's wartime authority. He took us 500 steps back, and half a pretend hokey pokey step forward. Dick.

Anyways, is it just me, or is it frightening how easy his jump from potential Supreme Courter to a Boeing executive appears? I think everyone agrees that the corporations set our country's agenda and dictate in large measure the interpration of our laws, but does he have to make it so obvious? Dick.

My Spanish Teacher is Awesome

Ever have those moments where you are happy? Those moments come to me in my Spanish class at 7 a.m. Mondays and Wednesdays. With the Croation guy who sits next to me and greets me with "namaste" and other words he learns from yoga, and the French guy who is a model student, or the Korean guy, the Czech girl, we make a motley but enthusiastic set. And it's all because of Carla, our Spanish teacher. My Spanish teacher does her job so well, she makes you remember how work is supposed to be: a job you love, that you do well, and that gives to others. Anyhow, point is I love my Spanish teacher and want to marry her.

I love me some Bruce

Two things I love: New Orleans Jazz Fest and Bruce Springsteen.

From the Washington Post:

"Out-of-town performers also paid homage to the city. In one of the weekend's most exuberant performances, Springsteen and the Seeger Sessions Band played a slew of songs that resonated with New Orleanians. Using a full horn section, fiddlers, a banjo player and an accordionist, he delivered a two-hour set Sunday evening that opened with "Mary, Don't You Weep" and included his rewritten version of the folk song "How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live?"
Before a crowd of thousands he sang the new lyrics:
There's bodies floatin' on Canal and the levees gone to hell
Martha get me my 16 gauge and some dry shells
Them's who's got got out of town
And them who ain't got left to drown
Tell me, how can a poor man stand such times and live?
Before the song, Springsteen also delivered a scathing assessment of President's Bush response to Hurricane Katrina, saying that having surveyed the city on Saturday, "The criminal ineptitude makes you furious. This is what happens when political cronyism guts the very agencies that are supposed to serve American citizens in times of trial and hardship."
But the most emotional song of the set came when Springsteen performed "My City of Ruins," as the crowd joined in the refrain, "Come on rise up, come on rise up."
Other times, the crowd drew its own interpretations from lines musicians had penned long ago. Ani DiFranco -- who moved to New Orleans a year ago and has decided to stay -- drew a roar from her audience, including women sporting dragonfly and mermaid tattoos, when she belted out feminist lyrics. "I live for the fight/Every tool is a weapon if you use it right," she sang.

From the NY Times:

"Mr. Springsteen led his large but never unwieldy Seeger Sessions Band — with horns, fiddles, banjo and more — in a set featuring folk songs from Pete Seeger's repertory, with arrangements that gleefully veered toward south Louisiana Cajun music and New Orleans traditional jazz. Mr. Springsteen wrote new verses about New Orleans for Blind Alfred Reed's "How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live," and he dedicated it to "President Bystander." Introducing it, he said, "This is what happens when people play political games with other people's lives."