Entry 90: Let Me Axe You This

For some reason, I've always gotten a huge kick out of people who talk differently than me. In high school, I had a friend who immigrated to the US from Korea when he was 12, and although he spoke pretty good English overall, he had a few quirks that would entertain me to no end, like he could never get the 's' at the end of a word right, even in a name ("My favorite third baseman -- Wade Bogg.") I used to poke fun at his linguistical foibles so often that my sister once claimed that the only reason I hung out with him was because I liked the way he talked. Not true, but it certainly add to the friendship. (I had a Chinese friend in grad school who had some similar speech patterns. He's the feature of this old post.)

[My high school friend's favorite third baseman.]

Along these same lines, it was great being in Australia where people didn't "want to do" things, they were "keen on" them, and where Madonner is a classic pop star and Florider is a uni in America with a good gridiron squad.

Now, being in the DC region with it's large urban population (urban is the word white guys use when they don't want to sound racist, by the way), I hear other gems like "the PO-lice" and "MAC-donalds". But, my favorite is "axe", as in "let me axe you a question". I don't know why, but this cracks me up inside every time I hear it just a little bit. When my car was towed I called the DC DMV, and the automated voice suggested I go to the DMV website and read the "frequently axed questions". I laughed a little even though I was trying to track down my goddamn towed car.

["CussWords" by Too $hort. One of the most ingeniously bad songs, lyrically speaking, of all time. "Ronald Reagan came up to me and said, 'Do you have the answer? To the US economy and a cure for cancer?' I said, 'What are you doin' in the White House, if you're not sellin' cocaine? Just axe your wife Nancy Reagan, I know she'll spit that game.'" This video is highly unsuitable for work, by the way.]

My friend likened the axe-ask phenomenon to the way Southerners say "y'all". It's a pretty apt analogy, and it shows that America still has residuals of racism running through it. For ask yourself this, if there are two exactly equal presidential candidates one a folksy, "aw shucks" Southern who says "y'all", and the other an inner city black man who says "axe", who's getting elected? If Obama says "axe", does he even have a political career?

It's ridiculous too, because by and large you just speak the way you were brought up to speak. You don't have all that much control over it. After a certain age, you can't really change your speech without considerable effort. I don't think speech reflects on your personality or intelligence, just on your upbringing. I used to work with a guy -- very smart, math Ph.D. -- who said "axe" and also pronounced the "rth" sound as an "f" sound. ("In those calculations, did you account for the curvature of the Earf?") That's just how he learned to speak. I don't think there's anything wrong with it. (But of course, I also don't think there's anything wrong with me poking fun at it.)

OK, enough about that. On a different topic, S and I each bought an iPhone when we returned to the States a few months ago. I like mine so far. The apps are great, and it's pretty simple to use, but there are two main things I don't like about it. The first is that it automatically leaves open apps after you are done using them which drains your battery. To close open apps you have to double click the main button and then hold an icon until it starts to jiggle and then you can close them. Why such a process? Why not just close the app automatically when you're done with it? And if there's a good reason to keep apps open, why not have them turn a different color or glimmer or something, so you know which ones are open and can close them easily. If a friend didn't randomly show me how to close apps, I never would have figured it out. It's not really something you'll stumbled upon in regular use.

[Notice something missing from this keyboard?]

The second, much more annoying thing is that there are no left and right arrow keys in the text editor. If you are typing a text and realize you made a mistake at the beginning, you have to delete everything and retype it, or hit the screen with your finger in the perfect spot, which is very annoying for an adult male with fingers of normal adult-male thickness like myself. This makes absolutely no sense to me. How difficult would it be to add arrow keys? It's mindboggling, really. I recently read about what a micromanager Steve Jobs was. How he held up production of early Apple home computers because he didn't like the way the cursor looked. How then does the iPhone not have arrow keys? I mean, I know that Steve Jobs recently passed away, which is very sad, but I'm still not giving him a pass for this. I feel like even if I was dying of cancer, I wouldn't have let the iPhone be released without arrow keys. (C'mon, I'm kidding, I'm kidding, we all go at some point, lighten up.)

Anyway, in other news, S and I went to an Indian wedding this past weekend (in Virginia, not India), and at the mehndi party, some kids were running around and I thought it was cute, so I surreptiously started filming them. Watch the clip below before you read the rest of the entry. It's not very long. Pay attention to the really little girl in the white top and dark pants.



It's OK to laugh, the girl was completely fine. Little kids have some sort of super resilient plastic bones. My favorite part of this clip is the other little girls. They stop, watch the commotion for a few beats, and then start playing again. They're like, "Screw it. I'm just gonna go right back to jumping around and twirling my pompom."

Well, that just about wraps things up for this week. Join me next week, when I lay out just how better a place our country would be if everybody would just learn to think like me. No, I'm not being egotistical as a joke. I'm being egotistical and serious.

Until next week...