The Artsaypunk

I think what I like about the English language is that it’s just so ridiculously difficult.  For example, did you know that the word “set” has 430 definitions which take 60,000 words to detail in the full Oxford English Dictionary?  I mean, that’s just silly.  It’s amazing to me that languages like Cantonese or Mandarin, with thousands of characters representing individual words and single words with multiple meanings depending on emphasis and nuance, are still generally considered easier to learn than English.  Take your two parts English history, with it’s Germanic and Norman influences, grind in your Greek and Roman roots, and then mix in the Empire’s habit of usurping  words as well as territory along its travels, and you’ve got yourself one tasty language cocktail.  Of course, as far as I’m concerned (not all that far really), the same aspects that make English so difficult to deal with are what makes it such a versatile, beautiful and fun language.

Take this fun little tidbit that a friend of mine (the intrepid Doggy, I believe) had as his email signature a while back:

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

Surprisingly, that works out as a grammatically correct, albeit baffling, English sentence.  Let’s dig in:

You have to start with the plural of Buffalo being the same as the singular, the benefit being that you don’t need an article (a/an/the) to introduce a plural.

Then you’ve got three definitions of buffalo:

1) Buffalo – the city in New York state, famous for its wings, and probably other stuff as well.

2) buffalo – the largest North American land mammal.

3) buffalo – a verb, meaning to bully or intimidate, as in “The USA buffalo developing countries with the IMF and the World Bank.”

So, if we take the original sentence:

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

Let’s break it down, add some articles, change plural forms and rearrange things a bit, to translate it as, “Buffaloes from Buffalo, who are buffaloed by other buffaloes from Buffalo, also buffalo other Buffalo buffaloes.”  What does that tell you?  You definitely don’t want to be a buffalo in upper New York, because that social scene is a real bitch.

Basically, you can run with weird sentences like this whenever you have a word that is both a noun and verb.  Another easy example would be “police.”  Who polices the police?  Why, it must be the police police.  But then, who would police the police police?  I suppose it would be the police police police.  So, in no time flat, you can put together something along the lines of: Police police police police police police.

Of course, my personal favourite has to be:

Malkovich malkovich malkovich Malkovich malkovich malkovich.

Have you ever been on a brewery tour?  I’ve only been once.  But it was, as I like to say, “One for the books.”  What these books are or who might be reading them is anyone’s guess, but if they contain an index of wild and wacky things that have happened to me, I’d love to track them down.  In fact, I really need those books; I’m starting to realize that I have a terrible memory.  Actually, in retrospect, it’s somewhat amazing that I remember this brewery tour at all given the circumstances, but I’ll give it a shot.

Living in an all male residence back in the undergraduate days has provided me with no shortage of crazy stories.  This was no exception.  It all started when the good people at Moosehead Beer (a staple of any Maritime diet) had a marketing idea.  The big breweries were always competing to represent the residences on campus.  We would wear their logos and advertise for them at our house events, they would give us free stuff.  It really was a win-win-drunk situation.  I don’t ever remember being encouraged to drink the beer of our sponsor, but we probably would have, and given the $1000 we made on bottle-returns every month I think they missed the boat-race on that one.  Anyway, the beginning of the year always saw the breweries wooing and competing for our favour, until we selected the same sponsor we had every year.  It was fun.  I was a representative for Aitken House one year, when Moosehead decided to take the House Committees from all the residences on a brewery tour.  Wicked.  It was early November, and we all piled on a school bus, Men’s Houses, Women’s Houses, Co-Ed Houses, all the colours of the UNB residence rainbow, and headed down the highway to Saint John.  An hour of ribald songs and inter-residence jibes later, we came off the highway into the city in high spirits.

When we arrived at the brewery, we were all shuffled into the lounge, where we were divided into groups for the tour.  I don’t know what your experience of brewery tours has been, but my memory of the tour itself goes something like this: “There’s a copper kettle.  There’s a stainless steel kettle.  There’s a shitload of pipes.  There’s a bunch of bottles going by really fast.  Okay, let’s head back to the lounge.”  It lasted about ten minutes at the most.  For the remaining two and a half  hours, we were given free reign over the lounge bar stocked with every Moosehead product available.  We were told that we could drink as much as we wanted until time ran out.  I don’t know about you, but I’m not sure giving a bunch of college students a time-limit on unlimited beer is the wisest decision. The sole stipulation was that we could only get two beer at a time.  This was hardly a hindrance; some of us even waited until we’d finished two before we got two more.  Moose Green, Pale Ale, Clancy’s Amber, Oland’s Red, Alpine, you name it.  We tried everything available, except the lite beers, because really, what’s the point?  One percent less alcohol?  That’s a waste of my time!  Clock’s a tickin’.

Things got ridiculous fast.  The volume-level in the room steadily increased as impromptu drinking games cropped up.   Someone at our table had brought a bottle of Tums with them, I don’t remember who it was, but he was a genius.  Bloating was averted.  One of the girls’ houses suggested a huge, sloppy game of spin the bottle, which the guys shot down as a poor use of drinking time… priorities people!  Instead, groups of girls started flashing each other from across the room.  What a perfect compromise.  Soon came the slurring, the slobbering, the shouting, the stumbling and the spills.  By that point, we didn’t care.

Then the pizza arrived.  Fifteen boxes of crappy Greco pizza were immediately destroyed.  I usually can’t stand Greco pizza (they’re the type of place that uses canned mushrooms) but I sure liked it that day.  “Fifteen Minutes!” called out one of the frenzied bartenders.  Everyone lined up to stock the table one last time.  As one guy put it later, “It was that last round that put me over the edge.”  Right.  Five minutes left to go, and I had an epiphany.  There was going to be one hell of a line-up for the bathroom.  I took advantage of this foresight and snuck into the washrooms, took one look at the toilet, and promptly vomited litres of Moosehead products and several pounds of pizza.  I performed a cursory clean up, and worked my way back out of the bathroom, only to notice the “Ladies” sign on the door.  “That’s weird,” I thought, and immediately returned to the table to finish my beer.  I still contend that that graceful skip to the loo saved me much hardship, and probably the memories I’m recounting too.

The clock struck the hour and time was up.  We all stumbled our way out to the bus.  One of the girls shouted, “Hey look, there’s the copper kettle… It’s shiney!”  I’m sure the tour guides were proud that something had stuck.  I glanced back at the room, it looked like a killing field.  Dead soldiers lined every table and much of the floor.  As I had predicted, we waited for what seemed like ages for everyone to use the bathroom.  Then the bus-ride home began.

It turns out it’s not much fun being drunk on a school bus.  There were no songs being sung this time around.  If the bus-driver did not renounce his profession completely after that day, I’m sure he told the story of the “Brewery Bus from hell” to his bus-driving buddies for years to come.  We had barely made it onto the highway before the first calls to pull over began.  The driver pushed on for five more minutes before the litanies of, “I’m gonna piss myself!”, “I’m going to be sick”, and “Does anyone have a bottle?” forced him to the side of the road.  Just as we were stopping, one guy ran half the length of the bus shouting, “Too late!”, flung open the rear emergency door and projectiled out onto the pavement.  A rush of guys flew out of the bus to water the bushes and write obscenities in the snow.  The girls held on to their dignity, insisting they’d wait until they got home.

I’m not sure if the the phrase, “breaking the seal” is universal, but suffice it to say that that was the first of many such stops on the side of the highway.  The trip from Saint John to Fredericton, which usually takes about an hour in a bus, took us three.  Every ten minutes or so, we were back on the side of the road, much to the consternation of the driver.  I was ecstatic that my brilliant bathroom escapade had saved me any public humiliation.  About mid-way through the trip, the bus was reeking.  Streaks of vomit coursed down the exterior of the bus, as people resorted to the windows when the urge came on too quickly.  I applaud them really, the ability to puke out the side of a tiny bus window is no mean feat.  The girls suddenly realized that their dignified plan to wait it out was in jeopardy; they were not going to make it.  In solidarity, they all went out to pee at once (what is with that, by the way?).  Unfortunately, this was not the best of all our roadside stops for the female urinator.  There were few bushes and the land sloped up from the highway a fair distance before meeting the forest.  The girls were not discouraged.  The time was now.  The more timid amongst them ran through the snow toward the woods, jettisoning random winter clothing as they went.  I wasn’t sure we would ever see them again. Others crouched behind the minimal cover of the leafless bushes, while still others said, “To hell with it,” and squatted in the open.  Cries of, “Help me,” “I’m gonna fall over!” “Someone hold her hair!” punctuated the still winter air, as a bunch of guys stood outside smoking, laughing and glorying in the fact that the world is our urinal.  I tried not to stare, but the sight of a bunch of drunken girls trying to pee on an open slope made it impossible to turn away… it was a drunken train wreck.  Due to the steep slope, most of them fell over at some point during their endeavour.  Many of them fell, and continued to fall, all the way down the hill.  The memory of several girls tumbling bare-assed over teakettle back down toward the bus has stayed with me to this day.  I just hoped they had finished their business before losing their balance.

It was a somber crew that exited the bus outside the student union building.  Many of the girls wouldn’t look at us, let alone speak.  All plans of continuing the drinking party back at Res. were long since abandoned.  I hit the bed hard and passed out almost immediately.

Yeah, it was one for the books all right.