Death of a Language

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8498534.stm

So, apparently, the fact that language which has had exactly one speaker for the last thirty years has now died with that speaker is news worthy of the BBC's full attention.

Cry me a river.

I grew up in Alaska, a state where the languages of the native population die out at an alarmingly predictable rate.

The reason is laughably simple-

English has been made the language of government by State Constitution.

"Big deal," you say.

"After all, latino kids in the Southwest may have to learn English if they want to get ahead in the world, but they can chatter away in Spanish all they want."

Perhaps.

But those kids can get TV from Mexico. They can cross the border, if they want. We, as a nation, have decided that like it or hate it (I love it) Spanish is here to stay. My University had a "Latin-American Cultural Center." We also had an Asian Student Union.

Back home, that simply doesn't happen.

Yu'pik kids in the Yupiit School District speak very poor English. The problem is, they also speak very poor Yu'pik, as their parents, long-since marginalized, let their vocabulary trickle away to practically nothing.

There are no Yu'pik-language television stations. The market is simply too small. There are no Yu'pik language advertisements, because it's a language with no written form, and Yu'pik people form such a small commercial block it's laughable.

And Yu'pik is FAR from being a dead language. It has a population that COULD learn their mother tongue- but more and more, it's being shown as a language that no one wants them to know.

So while intellectuals whine and snivel about the death of the last speaker of a language, we, as a culture, merrily go on setting up conditions to kill off languages we find "inconveient."

Spanish in the United States has a future. There are simply too many Spanish-speakers in this country for their concerns to be ignored. Good for them.

Meanwhile, slowly but surely, we're choking off the linguistic heritage of people who were, in fact, born in this country.

One wonders what the BBC will say then.

Goals

I think it's time we had a talk, you and I.

As many an overpaid, overstuffed waste of skin guidance counselor has said, it's important to have goals.

What they don't tell you is that if your goals are even slightly off the rails, you will get little help.

And that is where I and mine run into trouble.

Our goals, on the face of it, are simple.

We want a patch of land to call our own and the right to manage it as we see fit. Our Fearless Leader has a dream of a palace of rusty shipping containers for his family. I'm partial to a log cabin on the edge of (or maybe within) a forest with a pack of dogs running loose and an arsenal in the basement.

We want a place to call our own, to sit on the porch when we're all sixty, seventy, eighty and beyond.

Nothing too extreme, right?

Where OUR goals run into trouble is in our "why."

We have looked around, taken stock of the world as it is and where it's going, and have concluded that it is, in a word, fucked. We see a planet run by irresponsible fuckwits with no eye for the future and no conception of how to deal in the here and now.

We've seen this, and we want out. We want off the goddamned ride before the damn thing jumps the tracks and kills us all.

We are, of course, not ready. We're a bunch of basically broke losers cursed with enough intelligence and awareness to mind our situation. There are so many things we need to know how to do... and so many pieces of equipment that we either cannot afford, or that we cannot legally obtain. We've got to do our share before we have any right to truly complain... but for once in my miserable life, I actually believe in the people I'm in with. I think we can, and will do it. After all, why should anyone care?

We want to self-sustain. That's it. We don't want to conquer the world, or save the whales, or make the planet safe for Afghan babies. We don't want to tell you what to do. We don't want to tell you who you can sleep with, or whether or not to buy a gun, or which chemicals you want to get good and wasted on. And we ask to be extended the same courtesy. To be left in peace by the powers that be- the powers that have run the world into the shitter.

"Your choice is who you choose to be,
And if you're causin' no harm, then you're all right with me.
My choice is what I choose to do,
And if I'm causin' no harm, it shouldn't bother you."

Three More Goddamn Weeks

... on crutches.

This is not a good thing.

Without my left foot, I cannot operate my car (stick shift, dontchaknow).

Thus, I cannot do the ONE THING this miserable fucking state is allegedly good for.

I cannot drive to a range and get the practice with my firearms I so desperately need.

I am far too poor to afford actual training. This I can accept, until I land a real job (which being on crutches is also making hard- I can't even work part-time until I can stand up without using both hands).

But I cannot even log basic, elementary, ESSENTIAL practice.

I have never been a great marksman, but back when I was shooting at red squirrels eighty feet up on a regular basis, I at least didn't suck harder than Heather Harmon. Now, in addition to watching my left leg atrophy in the name of the healing process, I am also looking at my guns.

They look back at me accusingly.

"Motherfucker, you haven't even LOADED us since you got here."

Sorry guys. But its like buying condoms when you KNOW you're getting nowhere...

But there are silver linings. I have been accepted into a program which, if my luck stays at least tolerable, should land my pasty white ass in the middle of rural Alaska for two years. My tactical firearms training will suffer, of course, because out there, they use guns to get food, not kill people efficiently.

But I hope to learn a few key survival skills (building decent shelters, starting fires with crappy materials, preserving meat without the use of modern technology or abundant salt, trapping, navigation) and a few bells and whistles (like piloting small airplanes, maybe how to operate a boat bigger than a small Boston Whaler, perhaps some carpentry stuff). This is, of course, highly ambitious, especially since I'll have plenty of other things to do with my time, things that will earn money (for the co-op my degenerate tribe of misfits is going to purchase) and pad my resume so I can get a few more decent jobs before the whole mess goes tits-up and I have to eat what I can grow or kill.

I have a lot of time to think about this lately, because I, in my infinite wisdom, moved to a state I hate where I know no one and promptly gimped myself.

So, in summation- Time is finite, and the stuff my comrades and I need to learn is only BARELY surmountable.

Fuck me, I hate it here

Zombies

Now, I KNOW I'm not alone in wishing for a good, old-fashioned Romero-style zombie apocalypse.

These fast zombies they've come out with lately kinda make survival tougher... but slow, shambling, mindless things?

Bring 'em on.

Last night's dream featured myself and a few of my good friends holed up in a diner as an outbreak started, and I swear, I must be out of my mind... 'cause a dream with rotting undead cannibals trying to eat myself and my compadres was one of the NICEST I've had in ages.

My Fellow Nerds...

... are, true to form, driving me mad.

Since receiving this lovely pair of crutches, I've been free to devote even MORE time than usual to hearing the blatherings of geek culture online.

And they have found a new way to annoy me.

"Well, see, in the EXTENDED cut of the movie..."

"Well, if you read the tie-in comic book..."

"Well, as the SERIES makes clear..."

Fuck you.

Anything the filmmaker decided not to include in the theatrical release is not going to change Jack Shit.

Speaking as a fan of the series Firefly, there's a reason its associated movie, Serenity, did not revitalize the franchise. The movie made sense, there was enough exposition to see to that... but unless you'd watched the series, your investment in the universe and in the characters was minimal, and there was not enough time in the film to draw in new blood.

By the same token, trying to tell people they need to read, say, the comic-book tie-in to the new Star Trek film to address their concerns, or that the plot of Avatar actually makes some kind of sense if you sponge up all of the associated material is bullshit.

Don't defend a shitty script with an equally shitty comic book. Extended universes are for those who actually dig your little nerd-verse enough to want more.

For the rest of us, they're a goddamned waste of time.

Life in the Theocracy

So, as a direct consequence of my injury, I've had a lot of time on my hands.

And what better way to pass the time than by doing a little social research experiment?

So I've been watching TV.

No, not the "good" stuff- nothing you pay for.

No, all I've been watching is the stuff an aerial can pick up.

And man, is it revealing.

We get some channels all the way from Mexico, but those aren't really at issue here. They still broadcast on analog down there.

No, I'm viewing the stuff that the good people of Utah make sure are on free TV.

Did you know that you can watch the Lawrence Welk show in Utah?
Or that the Andy Griffith Show still airs on regular hours anywhere on Earth?
Or that Perry Mason and Matlock alike continue to never lose a case in the Salt Lake State?

It's all so white-bread wholesome it's easy to lose sight of a few crucial facts- like the fact that the Mormon Church never acknowledged their role in the Mountain Meadows Massacre... or that Brigham Young was basically a North American Ayatollah.

And so on.

But no matter!

The good guys continue to triumph in every iteration of Utah TV. Evil never prevails, injustice is a myth, and we can all sleep safe at ight with the feathers of the Angel Moroni tucked beneath our heads.

This state is a fucking time capsule to the 1950s, desperately trying to distance itself from its bloody past.

If I didn't have to live here, it'd be funny.

North Country Blues

So, it's been a while.

After finally deciding Indiana wasn't so bad- for reasons I'll hit a little later- I ended up leaving.

For Utah.

Yes, Utah.

A state where I know no one. A state where I have no history. A state more or less white-bread sanitized by the dominance of the Mormon Church.

But I'm living rent-free, and that counts for more than somewhat.

But back to Indiana.

As my time there wound down, I was shocked to discover something truly appalling- while I still haven't got much use for that state, I've made the best friends of my life there. Seriously.

There's a certain Scumfuck and his wonderful wife and his beautiful daughter who I regard as family. And that definitely goes for the ugly dude in their basement, too... and all the other insane nerd revolutionaries we ran with.

There's an old redneck in the southern part of the state who's like a second father to me.

There's my aunt and her common-law husband, who I barely knew when I went to college- and who now rank higher in my estimation than almost anyone not on this list.

There's the Usual Gang of Idiots I worked with, who were always up for a jaunt to the greatest bar in the known world.

Then there's the staff of that bar, who I've come to regard as dear friends.

All of that.... and I've left it.

For Utah, which, as of this writing, will now ALWAYS be the state where I tore my ACL and fractured my tibia.

So, while I sit in an Anchorage, Alaska hotel writing this, I only have on thing to say about my move...

God, I hate it here.