It's All About the Wordplay.

(Lyrics from a song by Jason Mraz)

I’m not at ALA, but I keep a running list of ideas on my desktop to tap into. Today’s idea is really punny.

My grandfather loves corny jokes. He has an affinity for them. It’s like he has a gigantic list of homophones in his head, and just sits there waiting to use them. He called while I was making bread the other day and started going on about how I’m a “crusty, crumby guy”. It was painful. But at least it was deliberate, and years of deliberately horrible jokes have led me to develop a love for them. I’m a big fan of “I’ve got her right where she wants me,” but this one is my favorite: (it is not from my grandfather)

“You look like you have a little Taiwanese in you. Would you like some?”

Yes, I am a teenage male. Insert any nationality that you can claim as your own and try it yourself!

Anyway, like I said, at least my grandfather is deliberate about his puns. Some people at ALA are not. In fact, they’re not even aware of their own wit. And neither is anyone else; they foolishly think of it as ear-paining mispronunciation. Well I alone have seen the hilarious brilliance of it all. Today I shall focus on the two main ones:

The first isn’t that common, but if you listen for it, Mr. Peter says “pacific” instead of “specific”. Normally, it doesn’t make much sense to have the name of the world’s largest ocean just slapped into the middle of a sentence, (“Child, that makes no sense! Give me more Pacifics”), but sometimes it does, in an odd way. I like to play those conversations out in my head, often with a touch of elemental magic:





I wish.

Second are the West African Anglophones, pacifically the Ghanaians. Nothing is more typically Ghanaian than saying “aks” instead of “ask”. At first, it annoyed me. For goodness sake, “aks” is not a word, and saying it makes you sound like a fool. Hearing it is like watching someone cut hard cheese with the wrong edge of a butter knife; it’s almost correct, but it’s also excruciating to sit through. Then it dawned on me… “aks” IS a word, I just spell it with an “x”. In fact, axes are as old as civilization itself. Ghanaians are very connected to their roots.

So now, whenever I hear a West African attempt to use the word “ask”, I just think of how excellently passive aggressive they are. As with Mr. Peter, I imagine playing along.

SOON AFTER...

This is one of the first cartoons I’ve ever done without a fountain pen. I used to use them, but my room kept flooding and I got tired of mopping up...

But seriously, if you are a West African Anglophone student, most Americans do not listen to you with cartoon opportunities in mind, and there is still time for you to change before college.

Lastly, a bit of unrelated advice I once saw on TV. I can’t say I follow it to the T, but a lot of ALA’s Francophones do, that’s for sure (and in particular Michel). Here it is: “Only say God if you want to talk to him, otherwise say Gosh. Don’t distract him from helping the poor.”

Good stuff.