Stolen Property Advisory
SpecGram Major Crimes Division
Four days ago, a person or persons unknown broke into the Speculative Grammarian phonetics laboratory and made off with several pieces of equipment that were being used in ongoing research. Despite the insistence of the police that “there’s no way these punks’ll try to unload that...um, stuff,” the editorial board has decided to issue an advisory to all linguistics departments with phonetics laboratories to report any shady characters that might approach them in the guise of phoneticians with surplus equipment to sell at special low.REDUPL prices. If you are so approached, we urge you to report the offer immediately to the police and, if possible, forthwith to forcefully pummel the person or persons into bloodied unconsciousness and secure them (preferably in a poorly ventilated, mold-infested, soundproof recording room in the sub-basement) with handcuffs, chains, lashes, twist-ties, binder clips, packing tape, very rough twine, barbed wire, or other common phonetic lab equipment. Furthermore, our journal will gladly publish any results obtained from physiologico-phonetic studies (high-intensity long-term myelography, comparative anatomical studies of the pharynx, ultra-high-voltage intrusive myography of the vocal tract, etc.) or instrumental-acoustic studies (acoustic correlates of various classes of nociception, etc.) performed on said subjects.*
- Two (2) Poulsen Telegraphones—As these are the main equipment used to record subjects, we are especially anxious for their return.
- One (1) Kay Sona-Graph DSP 5500—While the majority of the phonetics lab staff considers this instrument too new-fangled to be entirely trustworthy, it is used to train novice staff members who are slow enough to require “hand-holding and baby steps.”
- Three (3) Electro Voice 630 V2 microphones—Naturally, the scoundrels immediately homed in on our most up-to-date microphones, leaving us with only two poorly maintained Astatic D-104s.
- One (1) IBM 5100 Personal Computer—Although a hand-me-down from Managing Editor Trey Jones after he acquired a TRS-80 Model 1 five years ago, it has already gained some sentimental value for the staff, mostly expressed with such endearments as “pee-sajunk,” “pie-locrap,” “andikwatedlump,” and “way-statime.”
- Four (4) Eugene Dietzgen Company Improved Mannheim Simplex Slide Rules—Although we can replace these with the Hawthorn Mechanics’ Slide Rules currently in storage, this would interfere with our efforts to sell them to collectors.
- Three (3) XT Uzi/Reel-to-Reel Recorders—Two of these were loaded, so treat potential sellers with caution. We need them back so we can arm Schadenpoodle to send him on more “trips”.
- Miscellaneous logarithm tables and nomographs of various vintages.
However, if you are offered a 1936 Ditto, Inc., Spirit Duplicator, you are welcome to acquire it. Although it was bequeathed to us by a former intern who lucked into a job as a kindergarten teacher, the majority of the editorial board considered it too modern and untried a technology and refused to have anything to do with it, so stealing it just cleared out some much-needed space, and it turned out that interns are cheaper than copying fluid anyway.
* Suggestions for research topics and general guidelines for research without the intervention of human subjects committees may be obtained from Butch McBastard ℅ SpecGram.
