tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Aug 14 17:30:53 1997
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Re: juice
- From: Guido <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: juice
- Date: Thu, 14 Aug 1997 20:30:45 -0400 (EDT)
>Aaargh! If you guys thought the word for "root beer" was bad,
>just wait until you see the word for "juice":
>
>vIychorgh.
>
>He even had the gall to hyphenate it on page 27 because of the
>justification.
>
>But then, I guess we are supposed to admire gall, right?
Well, the people with gall seem to think so. Somehow, electromagnetic
radiation emitted by beacons signaling countless wealthy shareholders of the
old North American free exchange economy of their various food products via
commercials were received by radio relay satellites light-years away within
the early Empire, and after evaluating the signal under several
delinearization algorithms, Kronos scientists got their first direct contact
with humans, and the Klingon culinary establishments have been greatly
appreciative of this unwitting inspiration from deep space ever since.
Obviously, I hope the man comes up with a better explanation than that. Even
if the commercialized punning has been restricted to food names, Okrand's
whimsy will bring some entrepeneurial bastard to identify Klingon as a cross
between ancient Mongolian and Boontling. Incidentally, anyone who's ever
kept track of Boontling will find that it too has been thoroly capitalized
under the sponsorship of a beer brewing company, and the only mainstream
information on it is a book you can buy in their gift shop.
One theory entertains that Okrand was pressured by the TV people to spot
them in a subtle but annoying way in the context of Klingana. This is not a
move of any great originality; it is almost universal -- Klingons make the
best spokespersons, and the Ferengi were reputed to have single-handedly
eliminated unemployment on Kronos by shipping in the faces and soundbites of
numerous otherwise ordinary Klingons, persuading you in their most natural
way to buy some dumb cluck's hair tonic, shoe glue, or vegetable oil. What a
grim picture, but hey, if you're popular, what matters the species?
Personally, when I see commercials concerning which number would save me the
most on collect calls, I would MUCH prefer any Klingon over Paul Reiser or
'Murphy Brown'. In fact, to draw this fantasy to its logical conclusion
would probably see Murphy skewered onto an 'aqnaw for not upholding the
straightforwardness virtue, and instead either dressing up in a matador
costume, hanging around a grocery store letting nonexistant admirers do all
the advertising for her, or even sending unsuspecting yuppie-cousins to this
mysterious euphoria dimension called the Dime Zone, and never really quite
getting to the point. Need I add that a Klingon's idea of a "Dime Zone"
would probably pass for a bad mock-up Martin Scorsese picture where everyone
in line for the phone in front of you would be gagged one at a time by your
personal body guard.
But they don't make quality television like that on this planet. And all
because V-8 is now immortalized in the lexicon of tlhIngan Hol, there to
remain as a caustic reminder of the horrible capitalism endured by the
struggling few that dared try their hand at a little real intellectual
stimulation. The moral of the story is, TV will never cease to haunt you;
amino acid disproportions will not generally make you walk sideways; those
who go into business constructing languages can only stand to lose face with
cross-linguistic puns; and finally, preventative maintenance is best when
working with fossilized dinosaur DNA (because those damn frog genes just gum
up the whole project in the end).
Guido