March 22, 2013
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This don’t happen every day: an odd SMS
Got this MSG from an old buddy who’s supposed to be visiting me here this week.
Don’t worry, I can explain…
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZI replied as soon as I figured it all out. “TNX 4 TEH INFO. CU SN”
See, he’d sent me the latest offering from what’s left of a band we both worked in, off and on, The Young Zygoats. Don’t ask; the drummer came up with the name. I listened to it, gave it a ‘Meh’ on a scale of ‘fail’ to ‘wow’ and was curious what he himself thought of it. Prolly not much, knowing his refined taste.
We’re both about the same age, same physical complaints, memory degeneration, frequent urination… hey, my excuse is that I just plain wore out my prostate . Can’t seem to find any backing for that in the literature, but who knows, they probably just jealous.Anyway, Bruce, my buddy, was trying some new drug, supposed to fix the ‘piss-a-lot’ thing, and I’d asked him how it worked out.
So all I knew, schedule-wise, was to train my ass to the airport, Thursday AM, and to meet up in the visitor parking. Didn’t know which airline he was flying. Also wasn’t sure who’d be meeting us with, like wheels. On my budget lately, 27 shekels for the train one way ’bout maxes me out.
Sooo… here we go:“A ‘B’ CD? (Yeah, that’s what I called it. His mileage varied:.)
‘E’? ‘F’! (Ok, looks like 5 thumbs down from my cuz Brucie.)
“G..HI ‘J’!” Finally, a bit of pleasantry)
“KLM” (Ok, now I know which flight to pray about.)
“NO ‘P’ QR”. (That’s the one took me a while to decipher. Silly backwater me; how’s I supposed to know they spell ‘cure’ as ‘QR’ these days? I had to look up ‘WTF’ less than six months ago…) So, looks like the new medicine’s no miracle drug. Figures, he prolly
got the placebo. They do that in these double blind trials.)
And now for the contact info:
“STU-VW-X-’YZ’“
Yeah, like I don’t remember the hippy bass player. Even know Stu’s real name:’ Stuart Kitchner’. Takes a real dyed-in-the-wool these days though to still drive a VW. I made a note to look for flames painted on the side of it in the parking lot.
And yes, ‘ex-YZ’. The immortal Young Zygoats. Wow, it’ll be a thrill to have 3/5 of the original band all in one basket-case broken-down VW bug motoring up the Ayalon freeway from Tel Aviv to wherever… doesn’t happen every day.
Like I said in the title.
Wu” Nu, can we do the numbers already?
Me: Sure. 80% fiction, 30% fact.
Wu: Something don’t add up.
Comments (23)
I would still be singing the abc song…you must be a jnys! Enjoy your visit.
@mlbncsga - There is, of course, the Muppets version of this on Sesame Street. But I wanted to bring it up to date. Hope I succeeded.
Yet again I am left in awe, and wondering whether being possessed of a talent such as yours is amusing or frightening.
Masterful, Rev Solberg. Sounds like it was inspired by a joke I heard in grade school.
The teacher asked a very agitated student to recite the alphabet, so he said, “ABCDEFGHUJKLMNOQRSTUVWXYZ!” while dancing in place.
“Where’s the P?” asked the teacher.
“Running down my leg!” he responded.
My dad used to do a bit:
ABCD goldfish?
LMNO goldfish
SAR!
LAR!
Took me a little while to catch on and I’m pretty sure my mom would have frowned to know what he was teaching his innocent 7 year old daughter! hehe!
Bravo! You are the alpha and the omega.
I can see we’re going to have to find more difficult challenges for you. How about Cyrillic?
I missed the bike accident episode. Must have been during my protracted xanga blackout. Sorry to hear about it.
Many moons ago, the President visited to inspect his statue, in construction, on mount Rushmore. He took a packed lunch with him, but there was some confusion over which beverage he preferred. His pal Jacob said coffee, whereas Jean-Pierre, his French-Canadian butler, said tea. In fact, he preferred oriental Chai, but with a twist of lemon, as is the way of the East. Jean-Pierre was concerned that they had not taken sun-block, and Pres was fair-skinned and prone to burning.
They took him to the spot, before removing the blindfold, to give him a surprise. However, he was able to cheat by peering through a crack underneath the blindfold. They had made him an egg and cress sandwich, but somebody thought they should have used two eggs, rather than the meagre one.
In the end, everyone remarked on the sagacious expression worn by the statue.
The dialogue went something like this:
“Abe, ‘e see dee effigy?”
“‘Ey! Chai! Jake, a lemon!”
“Oh, peek!”
“You are hasty!”
“UV!”
“Double you eggs!”
“Wise head…”
Note the British, and therefore superior, Zed, as opposed to Zee.
@somewittyhandle - hi duncan! in the middle of a greuling fiscal crisis today it cheers me up indescribably to be effortlessly out-done by a colleague. the honour makes mince-meat of any tinge of envy. bravo, and thanks from the heart.
As to my inglorious fall, I’m googling the various fascinating forms of brain damage on offer, searching for the perfect fit. One of them must surely be just right for me.
@HappierHeathen - Pretty strong praise, from a guy whose own tours de force on seemingly a different field every day inspire competitive envy. Thanks, heath. And I am somewhat at peace with being me… going to sleep early each night in order to dream-state search for a CHEAP PEACH, or to somehow diffuse THE RAT THREAT. ‘Real American letters’ have become my ex-pat allies, here where we have not a functional alphabet.
@somewittyhandle - yessir, use it on ham radio every day. And ‘Wise Ed’ would have abrogated the whole spiel about the fabled ‘Young Zygoats’ band, whose ‘raison’ was, after all, to complete the alphabet. Hmm, short half-life in the pop music trade.
@Roadkill_Spatula - Ah, school-daze. I draw such a blank trying to gauge how smart, or dumb, we all were back then.
my recollection includes gems like:
‘Alphabet has 24 letters; ‘L’ and ‘M’ got kicked out for smoking.
Or ‘TWA’ just took off’.
@murisopsis - I Had to say it aloud, but by george I think I got it. you seem to have turned out Ok in spite. Well… except for the thing with the mice:)
wow, good’un, thought i was dizzy and light-headed before…
best i could do was google: zygote; then lost whatever thought it was that came to me
WOW! You are brilliant. Blew me away with that.
@jsolberg
You flatterer you, Yonatan. You’re not fooling anybody, though. Yours is the seminal Dylan creation, and mine is merely the cheesy and derivative Strawbs number.
Hope the faecal crisis resolves. Easy on the gruel.
@an_OM_aly - Yeah, ‘ZYGOTE’ is a truly odd word; I may even have put it in there with your mind in mind. A potentially life-creating half-a-helix, unless I err. my gr-gr-grandpa at age 80 used one of his to father one maternal line. To which I owe my existence. For better or worse, ha.
@ZSA_MD - Thank you, Zakiah. I blush easily. …And always feel a special kinship with you for our mutual observance of English as ‘A language’, and not simply ‘the language’. I suspect you could do what I did with several of the powerful alphabets from the sub-continent.
@jsolberg - The farce I’m touring… Well, shucks. Your kind words are very greatly appreciated, even if they are almost certainly indicative of either mental instability or inebriation.
The Rat Threat. There’s a great book and/or movie title right there.
I don’t know. Not sure I could have come close to anything as genius as you did here. Please don’t give me too much credit. I tend to get a swollen head.
Zo why ask (pronounced axe by some of my colorful friends) “Double your view?” and I’ll complete the rest of the alphabet backwards (once heard a McDonald commercial where “lettuce, cheese, pickles, etc., on a sesame seed bun was quoted backwards) when I return from Jazz Week today in Fort Pierce. (Can they have a Week in just One Day? I guess they can, if they’re high enough.)
This post is definitely front page material. What’s wrong with those guys?
I had to read that twice to figure out what the hell was going on. Heh. I think I must be so surrounded with the Glaringly Obvious, I’ve forgotten how to interpret anything else!
g.