A Little Wordplay for the Record
Subversion Inc.: Like a lot of journalists, we got into this profession thinking it would enable us to influence the way people think and maybe even change the world. But no matter how many sympathetic articles we write about the Off-Kilter Early Retirement Charity Foundation, readers refuse to donate.
They also ignore our calls for a constitutional amendment to ban the song “Livin’ La Vida Loca.”
So we’re switching gears. If we can’t change the world for the better, maybe we can screw it up a little instead. For instance, the renowned Oxford English Dictionary is asking for the public’s help in cataloging new words for its millennium edition.
Apparently, lexicographers are worried about missing some of the new slang phrases and technical terms that have sprung up in recent decades. So they’ve created an Internet site (https://www.oed.com) where people can submit words. The only catch is you have to include documentation that the word has appeared in print.
That’s where Off-Kilter comes in. If you make up a good word and send it to us, we’ll use it in a column so it will qualify for the dictionary. Our goal is to get at least one fake word (such as “leer-death experience,” which is defined as “when your wife almost kills you for staring at another woman”) into Oxford’s dictionary. We also want to change the spelling of “redundant” to “redundundant.” But don’t tell Oxford about today’s column or it’ll wreck everything.
Our other mission is to throw a wrench into Time magazine’s online poll to choose the Person of the Century. In June, we told you that the battle for first place had turned into a horse race among Adolf Hitler, Elvis Presley and Yitzhak Rabin. That continues to be the case, although Billy Graham is closing the gap at No. 4.
But we’re more interested in the rest of the list, which includes Martin Luther King Jr. (No. 7), Henry Ford (No. 11) and Bill Gates (No. 16). We want to get our own nominee into the top 20. Unfortunately, Time says it will disqualify “whimsical candidates and others who were not alive during this century or [who] do not fall within the spirit of the title,” which eliminates such logical choices as William Shatner, Mr. Ed or Sam Donaldson’s toupee.
So we decided to endorse Ringo Starr. We figure if Madonna and John Lennon can crack the top 20 (they’re now at No. 14 and No. 10, respectively), Ringo can’t be deemed whimsical. But more importantly, it’s time for the world to atone for years of cruel Ringo jokes, such as the time when “Saturday Night Live” offered the Beatles $3,000 to perform on the show and said, “You [can] divide it up any way you want. If you want to give Ringo less, it’s up to you.”
Did anyone stop to think about the effect of such remarks on Ringo’s self-esteem? It’s time to let the healing begin.
No doubt some will criticize our campaign as frivolous and ask why we don’t endorse someone “important” like Albert Einstein, to which we reply: Sure, Einstein discovered the theory of relativity, but did he write “Octopus’ Garden”? No contest.
So tell everyone you know to log on to https://cgi.pathfinder.com/time/time100/poc/century.html and vote for Ringo Starr. He only needs about 9,500 ballots to unseat the current No. 20, Saddam Hussein.
Best Supermarket Tabloid Headline: “Dead Beauty Wills Breast Implants to Flat-Chested Friend!” (Weekly World News)
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