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Tower of Babble

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I know the espionage news is serious, but I can’t help thinking about what a strange word we’ve added to our vocabulary.

“Wikileaks”.

It sounds funny every time I hear it. And when I hear a funny word, I immediately want to use it in a sentence. Or better, a headline. But you know how it is with headlines. For a truly historic one to emerge, conditions must be right.

For instance, if a 1990’s talk show host got an exclusive interview on Twitter with Julian Assange, it might be called:

Rikki Lake’s Wikileaks Tweets

If the interview was altered and delayed for seven days due to illness:

Sickly Week Tweaks Rikki Lake’s Wikileaks Tweets

If Arab royalty became annoyed by the sudden changes:

Sheiks Piqued As Sickly Week Tweaks Rikki Lake’s Wikilealks Tweets

But if Ms. Lake sent her technical staff to calm the disturbance:

Geeks Speak To Piqued Sheiks As Sickly Week Tweaks Rikki Lake’s Wikileaks Tweets.

And if those emissaries had been recklessly eating fudgesicles before the meeting:

Sticky Cheeked Geeks Speak To Piqued Sheiks As Sickly Week Tweaks Rikki Lake’s Wikileaks Tweets.

If tangential observers darkly predicted unsatisfactory results, thus annoying the pocket protector wearing ambassadors:

Oblique Critiques Freak Sticky Cheeked Geeks Who Speak To Piqued Sheiks As Sickly Week Tweaks Rikki Lake’s Wikileaks Tweets.

Although those unkind observations about the work of such resourceful techno-wizards might draw an attack by angry pecking birds of prey, who show no reluctance to cover their antagonists in rivers of their own blood:

Eagle Beaks Wreak Icky Streaks Over Oblique Critiques That Freak Sticky Cheeked Geeks Who Speak To Piqued Sheiks As Sickly Week Tweaks Rikki Lake’s Wikileaks Tweets.

But I digress.

Does the rain in Spain stay mainly on the plain?

78 thoughts on “Tower of Babble”

    1. Thanks for the link Steve. I think this piece is hilarious, as do the people in Symphony Space. I remember when David Letterman tried a variation of this when he hosted the Oscars in 1995 and opened by introducing Uma Thurman and Oprah Winfrey to Keanu Reeves.
      Just as the guests in Thomas Meehan’s story hate what is happening with their unusual names, the Hollywood audience froze at Letterman’s joke. Things went downhill from there.
      I guess clever wordplay doesn’t go over with a mass audience.

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  2. Rise and Shine Babooners:

    Ummm, I think so, but it is too early for me to think that way. This is like limericks–I’ll have to wake up more before I can do that.

    Meanwhile, morning all. To the treadmill.

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  7. if they were digging in the ribs with those aerodynamic snouts they would be tickly sleek
    eagle beaks wreak icky streaks over oblique critiques that freak sticky cheeked geeks who speak to piqued sheiks as sickly week tweaks rikki lake’s wikileaks tweets.

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  9. It’s the vessel with the pessel! … and your mother was a hampster.

    I can’t do original…I can just repeat what I hear.

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  12. We have no leaks, just fog that is thick, that ices the roadways ’til they are terribly slick, that leaves a rime on the sloughs and cricks, and makes me fall like a ton of bricks.

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  13. Eagle Beaks Wreak Icky Streaks Over Oblique Critiques That Freak Sticky Cheeked Geeks Who Speak To Piqued Sheiks As Sickly Week Tweaks Rikki Lake’s Wikileaks Tweets.

    Make him stop, Mom!!!! Ple-e-e-e-e-e-e-ze! 😉

    Chris

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    1. Chris, I think my son said this very thing in the car one day when the question came up about possible wedding matches for then Channel 5 news anchor Kent Ninomiya. Is there a woman somewhere named Tina Rowena?

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  14. If I remember right, this is from Garrison Keillor. I use this one for vocal warm ups:

    She stood on the balcony inexplicable mimicking his hiccuping while amicably welcoming him home.

    Couple weeks ago, my wife and my sister were on vacation; they had breakfast at a place called ‘Toast’ and lunch at a place called ‘Coast’. I commented on that and my son, without missing a beat, said “Is it a magical place where everyone speaks in rhyme?”

    Hi Anna– sorry to hear about the sick chick!

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    2. Daughter is just sick enough to want to be home, but not so sick that she won’t play with words herself (with mixed success…she is only 6 after all). I think she would like to have Toast at Coast. 🙂

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    1. I remember this guy entertaining the YMCA staff at a long-ago retreat with
      “Rindercella”. I’ve never laughed that hard, that long in my life!! Thank you
      for the memory, Barbara (can’t be sure it’s the same ditty until I open your
      link, though).

      I’m devoting the entire day to getting my Caringbridge journals published in
      hopes of gifting all my kids. It’s an astounding 256 pages, complete with prologue, journals, notes from followers, photos, and epilogue. Come to think of it, my kids probably won’t want to read my heart’s song while I’m still very much alive and kicking, but maybe someday……….

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    2. Zilch is fabulous (and a great guy besides). He does “Romeo and Juliet” in spoonerisms – and if you catch the right show he will launch into the “Now is the winter of our discontent…” speech. Great fun for the Literature (or Theater) major in all of us. 😉

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  17. Genius 144
    1 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. 2 As people moved westward, they found in the rain a plain in Spain which would all them contain and so there they did retain. 3 They said to each other, “Come, quick lets rick bricks and into the oven stick until done to a trick.” They used brick alone, not stone, which would have been a pain to the bone, and tar for mortar to keep the bricks in order, well, sorter. 4 Then they said, “Come, let us for pity build ourselves a pretty city, with not just a bower but also a tower of power and no lower from which we can glower which the roof of heaven will skower, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be left on the shelves; otherwise we will be battered and clattered and scattered over the face of the whole earth.” 5 But the LORD came down in the fog and sat on a log near a bog to blog about the city and the tower the people were building. 6 The LORD blogged, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us have the prophet Con-o-leaha use their language to obscure their minds so they will not prattle forever about small and trivial topics.” 8 So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city and took a path 9called Trail Baboon—because there the LORD distracted them from ever building or completing anything again and made them speak as if they were lower order primates.

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      1. I am not worthy to dwell among you; I can only lurk in wonder. I once had illusions of creativity, but I am now aware that the Trail of the Baboons is on a plain apart from the world at large.

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      2. Caroline, just go ahead and participate. I think everyone is very welcoming and anything you have to say will be welcomed, I’m sure. New voices are needed to keep this going. I think it would be very nice to have your voice in the mix.

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      4. Caroline, we need new chicks’ voices added to fix the mix that is disrupted when sick chicks catch the icks and make multiple trips to the ceramic throne (the Loo) where they do Numer One or Number Two (pee or poo) while looking through new books about the zoo.

        So please add your voice!

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      6. If the ‘boons in this band think they can stand to have a new chick try to pick up the tricks of the litter of critters that travel this trail, I’ll do my best to live up to the test of the rest of the ‘boons in the band.

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      1. Did mistyping prophet give me away?
        My wife and I both do light-hearted parodies or updates of Bible verses, which offends some, but I hope not anyone here. I do think God has a sense of humor; ample proof of that abounds in creation and in human nature.

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      4. I’ve been here too long, did not even notice the typo, figured it was just some clever word-play I hadn’t had enough coffee to get yet.

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      1. I’ve watched “White Christmas” twice already this season… I love watching him dance in “The Best Things Happen When You’re Dancing”.

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      3. C – I have my own little collection of holiday videos/DVDs that I like (since what you find on TV these days stinks (IMHO)). I started playing them on the day after Thanksgiving and go right through New Years.

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      4. I have not yet unpacked mine. The day the s&h experienced Rudolph on tv with all the commercial breaks was not a pretty one.

        Went right out the next day and got the collection of the Rankin-Bass Christmas shows to put in his shoes from St Nicholas.

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      6. Hey Steve… I’m well loaded up w/ “Wonderful Life”. I actually did a paper on colorization in school and used WL as my “show and tell”. I lined up the same scene (the honeymoon in the leaking old house scene) on a black and white version as well as a colorized version. Showed the B&W first and then as the colorized version played, I talked about how the process works, the history, the politics, etc. That’s a particularly colorful scene with all the travel posters.

        Anyway, your copy should definitely go to someone who doesn’t have one yet…. that would be the best gift there is!

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  20. My wife starts Christmas, and playing the music CDs, on July 5th. This is not a joke. In September, October, twice in November and several times in December, she announces proudly she is done with shopping after just buying her latest present.
    She is also one of those very scary women who always says (Oh, don’t buy me anything.”

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  23. Wow, you guys. I was swamped at work all day. I come home to read this and I feel like I missed an episode of Dr. Seuss.

    I Am Sam.

    Sam I Am.

    I do so love my Green Eggs and Ham.

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  24. Greetings! Not enough sleep and lots of data entry make for a dull and addled brain. Thanks for the brain-waker-uppers and good cheer!

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    1. “Data-entry” always echoic (like onomotopoea). Said it slowly, laboriously ten times in a row and it will sound as dull and numbing as the task.

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  25. I keep trying to read the master’s whole sequence, but before the end I feel like he has screwed up my brain wiring. Neat trick, as if Dale has discovered how to short-circuit the brain with creatively insane sound patterns.
    When at the equator on the equinox, the equestrian lost his equipoise because his equine equipage became entangled with equiseta and the local equerry used several equivoques, egad.

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  26. OT, except for the joy of language: a 93-year-old woman sent my wife a get well card with this unintentionally funny and charming note in it:
    “Sorry to hear you have been in hospital and now home. Saw Lori at the funeral.”

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  27. Just got back from our choir’s version of the Cast Party, and remembered this gem that our conductor sometimes uses as an enunciation warm-up —
    Try saying unique New York 10 times in a row.

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