We Got One Wet, And Now They Are Multiplying
from All of the Editors
(Please don’t feed the editors after midnight.)
On Herding Cats
with Managing Editor Trey Jones
In celebration of Canada Day,
1 we are pleased to present this special
Canadian Edition of
Speculative Grammarian, which features better healthcare, cheaper medications, and an undervalued currency, but without much of a distinctive culture
We have waited to the greatest Canadian linguist of all time, Leonard Bloomfield,
2 on the cover of this special issue.
Also, as I am much too busy to write anything worthy of this space this time, I’ve asked each of the other editors
6 to contribute something. I also gave each article to a different intern to “”. I can barely keep all their names straight, though
—much less their time zones7—so I didn’t manage either process as well as I might have. I suppose the results speak for themselves.
It’s Not Just a Prize, It’s a Job
with Special Guest Editor Sheri Wells-Jensen
[We have a very special Special Guest Editor for this issue, Sheri Wells-Jensen. Dr. Wells-Jensen won her Guest Editorship in a haiku-writing contest3 during the recent Linguist List Fund Drive. If that strikes you as a bit of an odd way to choose an editor, you should consider that Keith Slater won his crucial Senior Editor position from a member of the Russian Mafia in a high-stakes tiddlywinks game in Stockholm. That’s just how we roll around here—Eds.]
I was shocked to receive notice that I was expected to serve as guest editor for the latest issue of Speculative Grammarian. I would like to state publicly that I am not now, nor have I ever been, a writer of poetry poultry and syntactic constituents. I demand an investigation, Congressional if necessary, to rat out the dark-haired semantician who did write it and fraudulently submitted it in my good name!
I’m not a poet.
I am not responsible.
So, just forget it!
I refuse to even read the articles, let alone stoop to editing anything. I have important plans this summer which do not include any editorial responsibilities. I must complete my $400,000 NSF grant proposal: “Preventing Spread of the Aphasic Flu Epidemic: Possible Prophylactic Effects of Country Living and the 2006 Prius.”
11 So, as you can see, I’m much too busy
Besides, as an assistant professor in linguistics in an English department at a university in Rural Ohio, I do not have time to indulge in frivolous trivialities. I wouldn’t want anyone, especially my chair or any of those wise and insightful people who might someday review a certain tenure portfolio, to think I’ve got that kind of time on my hands! I have important duties and obligations. I’ve got to make the coffee for the literature faculty, and keep students from parking in the paved Administration Building lot and feed the dean’s livestock.
Now, I’m going back to work on my grant application and my extremely scholarly and paradigm-shifting grammar of Administerial Deanic for HWG; it’s a very prestigious press I’m told and this will be essential to my career. So, /stapIt/ and don’t ask me for anything else. I’m not getting involved.
I told you: I don’t write haikus: linguistic or otherwise. And to you, oh pernicious Beltway haiku submitter whoever you are, I’ve spoken to the dean’s livestock you. They say “bok! Paxo!” and I can’t help but agree!
[Having prepared space for Dr. Wells-Jensen’s remarks,12 we felt obligated to print them, embarrassing though they are. Those who would similarly care to bring shame to our august journal should know that while we, the editorial board, no longer command the vast global network of power we once did, our reach is still very, very long. Imagine our surprise when we followed the twisty trail back to our own lair! One of our very own Associate Editors has been discovered to have submitted the haiku in Dr. Wells-Jensen’s name. Punishment has been swift and harsh, yet just.13 We shan’t see the likes of these hijinks again.—Eds.]
The Briefest of Chats
with Senior Editor Keith
Trey
—I’ve had a look at the mock-up of the Canada Day issue, and I can’t believe you’re serious. One paragraph??? That’s all you’re going to give me? Come ON!!! This is nearly as insulting as your underhanded trick in the last issue, giving Pulju a chance to savagely attack me. Let’s be clear here, Trey. You may be able to push those junior editors around, but I won’t stand for any more of this . And I don’t want any more of your ridiculous excuses—“there was too much new stuff, Keith, we just ran out of space.” Come on. Look—I’m serious. If you don’t stop treating me this way, I’ll quit, and then who’s going to write
[Oops. Sorry, Keith. Out of space. 
—Trey]
And Stay Off My Lawn!
with Editor Emeritus Tim Pulju
Huh? What? Why are you young whippersnappers always waking me up? Can’t an old man get a decent nap around here without some dadgummed making that infernal electro-mail machine honk and hoot? If didn’t need my beauty sleep I’d come over there and beat the tarnation out one of you good-for-nothing... huh? What was I saying? What. Huhnnh. Huhnngua. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.....
Enough With The !
With The Unwashed Hordes Of Faceless Associate Editors
Help! We’re being held prisoner in a “ from the Editor” factory.
4
1 July 1st is Canada Day, a fact which several Canadians are aware of and which almost no one else in the entire world cares .
2 Bloomfield has not been certified 100% Canadian, but our research department is fairly sure he visited Canada (or possibly ) at least once. It also appears that Bloomfield was awarded the “Friend of Canada” medal by the Queen for his service in the preservation of languages in the Great Lakes Region.
[The fact that Bloomfield refused the award, claiming at the time that he had never even heard of any place called “Canada” does nothing to diminish his Canadian credentials, in our eyes. —Eds.]
3 Her thoughtful and philosophical submission:
Chickens cross the road
to get case from the NPs,
say syntacticians.
4 Ha! Ha! Those wacky Associate Editors! They’re always cracking jokes like that.
The beatings will continue until morale improves!!
6 And I use the term loosely.
7 And I can never keep track of what continent Slater is currently hiding out on.
9 Due to time constraints and the pressures of preparing content with an adequate supply of endnotes, these notes are numbered in the order they were added, rather than in the order they appear in the text. As some notes were also retracted, the numbering is not contiguous, either. You’ll get used to it.
10 If that
is your real name.
11 My theory is that language professionals who drive hybrids and live in large houses in the country are immune, and I am prepared, like Edward Jenner, to offer myself and my family as a test case.
12 And having cut short Mr. Slater’s to do so!
13 The perp has had her
Speculative Grammarian Spa membership suspended for thirty days, her voting privileges for the
Speculative Grammarian Editor’s Holiday Social Committee revoked, and her quarterly pay has been docked 35%. Finally, in the firmest measure available to us
—some will say this goes too far, but we disagree—the editor in question has had her name reduced by one point size on the cover of this issue. That will surely teach her the error of her ways.
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Letters to the Editor |
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SpecGram Vol CLI, No 3 Contents |