Wednesday, December 27, 2006

The Internet Is Dumb

Let's say for the sake of argument that a haiku, in modern dumb-American English, is three lines, the first containing five syllables, the second seven, and the third five. Pretty basic shit. I saw on Extra Bases this haiku contest at some blog with a lot of ads forgrimy ticket-selling agencies. It shows the results. I started counting syllables, with almost no doubt in my mind that mistakes would be made. We are talking about humans here. So I looked at first place:

The Bash-o Prize (first place): Yanks Fan in Boston

hub's opening day
signs read: "we love daisuke"
manny asks, "who's that?"


Well, since it's a Yankee fan, we could've expected he didn't know that "Daisuke" is two syllables. Dice-K? Ring a bell? Oh, not paying attention til October, Yankee fan? I guess it wouldn't, then. (Again, note, the correct Japanese pronunciation could be way different, but we've been told "dice-kay," which is clearly two syllables.) Also, great job on the part about Manny not knowing who his teammates are. That's really funny and original and totally accurate. And apparently a hit with the judges! To me, this "haiku" is the perfect candidate for last place.

Then we see the second place haiku:

The Blue Jay Prize (second place): John

Matsuzaka hears
Sox fans on WEEI
Hari kari next


And our brainiac judges went crazy for this poem, which has NINE syllables instead of seven in line two! What the shit, people?

This contest should've been called "Repeat lame shit you've read online about Boston and the Red Sox in a haiku that contains the wrong amount of syllables."

Here's a shitty haiku for you:

Terrible job. Ter
rible job. Terrible job.
Terrible job. Ass.

Comments:
Thanks. I mean, yeah, it could be three, but the whole point of "dice-kay" is so people who don't speak perfect Japanese know how to say the name. I'd prefer if we all learned other languages instead of just Americanizing everything. But Americans seem to be very stubborn about this.
 
And nice job on the Armas name!
 

Post a Comment

If you're "anonymous," please leave a name, even if it's a fake one, for differentiation purposes.

If you're having trouble commenting, try signing in to whatever account you're using first, then come back here once you're signed in.



<< Home

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?

My Photo
Name:
Location: Rhode Island, United States