Question: Take a typical Las Vegas cholo with his pants sagging to the point where one inch lower might get him arrested, and with one of the pants cuffs being swallowed by his shoe a bit more than the other. What is the logical answer to his situation?

“Not even.”

Wrong! The words might be correct on paper, but the articulation of these words proves simply that one can’t always give an accurate rendering of certain words merely by looking at the orthographics.

Let me explain:

No self-respecting cholo would ever say, “not even.” Rather, that expression requires a warmup, a running start. Therefore, “not even” ought really be spelled, “hhnnott eee-vun.” Now doesn’t that give a more faithful rendering of this bit of Las Vegas Speak? Continue reading →

The response to last week’s Work of Art, in which I planned and planted misuses of the English language, was great. The reaction ranged from the concern that your resident Language Cop somehow had “lost it” to a let’s-do-it-again attitude.

A half dozen readers either e-mailed or dropped off their responses, and one person went even farther, finding a stray question mark in my column and catching me on my capitalizing a word that shouldn’t have been.

The column was mainly about how people use words and expressions that seem correct but carry a different — sometimes humorous — meaning. It’s like cutting off your nose despite your face or getting knocked over with a fender. Continue reading →

A few weeks back, I told the saga of Heidi, my dachshund whose manners were bad, and in an effort to train the dog, my friend Bob McIntosh suggested we have Heidi meet and live with Bob’s Great Dane, “Duke,” the canine with perfect manners.

There was a doggone education that followed, but I don’t think Bob ever forgave me for owning a dog that passed her bad culinary habits on to Duke.

“I knew just where that was going when I read the first few lines,” said Mayor Alfonso Ortiz. And Travis Reames told me that dog-teaching-dog scenario couldn’t have ended happily. It’s a doggy-dog world. Continue reading →

Except for the fact that more than half of them are Dallas Cowboy fans, it looks like a fairly balanced account of how this Sunday’s Super Bowl will turn out.

At 4:28 p.m., as the world sits down to a big helping of football and meatball stew, the New England Patriots take on the New York Giants. The game features some of the cleverest, new commercials on TV, and that’s the reason at least one person interviewed plans to be watching on Sunday.

And even though some of those randomly interviewed on their Super Bowl predictions are inveterate Dallas Cowboy fans, let’s still respect their opinions. Continue reading →

Remember when status in school meant something? Remember when the more popular kids thought of themselves as royalty?

As a senior today, four times older than when I was the other kind of senior, I look back and wonder why popularity, or lack thereof, mattered.

Let me explain:

The other day my wife told me about the frantic preparations for basketball homecoming at the school where she teaches. She said some of the candidates for king and queen are taking matters quite seriously, going into debt to finance a campaign that might enable them to wear a crown for an hour or so.

Now at our school, Immaculate Conception, back in the ‘50s, we didn’t have homecoming goings-on; we merely had misgivings. We did have something like a prom, in which the biggest fund-raisers were lauded and lorded during their 15 minutes of fame.
Continue reading →

At least we passed out a syllabus. Yes, the course outline that we gave out on the first day of class explained what a student needed to do to pass the class.

So, the students at least had some direction: In order to earn a certain grade in this class, thou shalt accomplish certain things. But that’s only part of the issue in that some students believed that simply by performing various tasks they were guaranteed an “A.” The other part of the equation was how well they performed the work.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I refer to the grades awarded to New Mexico schools, just like the report cards students receive. The Public Education Department of New Mexico just last week released grades, all the way from an “A” to an “F.” No doubt the grades raised a few eyebrows.

But it seems few people fully understand the criteria employed by the PED. As a now-layman, I certainly don’t understand how to negotiate all those hoops and won’t try to explain them here. It seems strange, though, that nearby Mora High School receives an “A,” whereas the local Family Partnership gets an “F.” Does that give the Rangers bragging rights? Continue reading →

Several years ago, I made a trade: a bicycle I hardly used for a dachshund. Heidi (what else does one name a weenie dog?) had acquired bad manners, gulping her food, piddling on the carpet when chided and scratching and chewing on wooden items.

My friend, the trader, who lived next door, bought an expensive, kennel-trained Great Dane to teach Heidi some manners. The trainer promised my friend, Bob, that in no time, the bigger dog would set such a good example that Heidi would soon follow suit by eating only with a napkin around her neck, using knife and fork, wearing a pad, chewing each morsel 17 times and eschewing wooden furniture.

You can imagine where that experiment went. Soon both dogs were behaving like Heidi. They growled for their food, wolfed it down, dog-in-the-manger style, and in short, behaved badly. People often imitate the animals.

Let me explain: Continue reading →

Like Banquo’s Ghost, “it will not down.” The Stapleton-Espinoza-Gov. Martinez brouhaha keeps appearing in the press and on TV. Since it seems everybody has had a turn, here’s mine:

To review: Angry at KRQE’s Larry Barker for his investigative piece, the Albuquerque Democrat State Rep. Sheryl Williams Stapleton, directed some of her umbrage at a Republican representative, Nora Espinoza, from the southern part of the state, accusing her of “carrying water for the Mexican on the fourth floor.”

Now that Mexican in high places happens to be Gov. Susana Martinez, whose office is on the fourth floor of the state capitol. Then all hell broke loose.

Stapleton was angry because of Larry Barker’s exposé about how Stapleton has a high-ranking job with the Albuquerque Public Schools and is a state representative. Though not the only one in that position, Stapleton gets two checks, one from the schools, another for her legislative work.

We call it double-dipping. Continue reading →

It’s a pity to be guilty of what I condemn, but just a few weeks after criticizing the “ignorance is bliss” stance of some people, particularly politicians, I find myself having done the same thing.

Let me explain.

I refer to the admiration Herman Cain received a few weeks ago by professing his ignorance of world affairs, matters that a prospective U.S. president ought to know something about. You may recall that Cain prided himself on his dearth of knowledge on geography, politics and history. And I quoted passages from Sam Cooke’s song, “Don’t Know Much About History,” trying to make the point that to many people, lack of knowledge is admirable.

Well, ignorance is not bliss. Really. Sure, it’s true that “what you don’t know won’t hurt you,” but the ignorance/bliss saying goes beyond that. Thomas Gray, an 18th-century English poet, wrote, “Where ignorance is bliss, / ‘Tis folly to be wise.” And that’s not quite the same as saying that being in the dark makes people happy. Continue reading →

Like many people, we Trujillos have problems with “stuff.” Problems not as in “We can’t get enough stuff,” but as in, “We have simply too much stuff.”

Let me explain:

A trip to Samaritan House or Salvation Army is supposed to put our household on a diet: The intention is to take clean, usable stuff to either repository in order to 1) help someone else out, 2) help keep a few people employed and 2) help clear out our own place.

But when we return from these places with much more than we took, the “stuff” issue gets exacerbated. The same goes for this column: I have millions of ideas for each week (I’m approaching 500 columns, from May 2003, never having missed a week), and lots of submissions from readers. Sometimes it’s difficult to get to these contributions, and they accumulate like a lot of our “stuff.” Continue reading →