Why Y is a Vowel and a Consonant

I will answer for you this evening one of the greatest riddles ever given to man by pomp and circumstance. The next few paraphrases shall reveal why the letter Y is considered both a consonant and a vowel. But first things first, the future, or present depending on your point of view.

When people learn to read they’re told that every word consists of vowels and consonants. That no word in the English language is nothing but vowels and no word is only consonants. Eventually we figure out the exception to the rule. Usually in Gym glass. We bring this fact to the attention of our teacher who reminds us that the word is actually an abbreviation for the word gymnasium “which we can both tell has not only one vowel but three: ‘A’, ‘I’, ‘U’,” then he or she proceeds to remind you that abbreviations are not words which is why you can’t use them in Scrabble. You try to remind me of the time they used the word scuba in a Scrabble game because this teacher happens to be a family friend and on one occasion you played Scrabble against them. “Scuba’s an acronym for self-contained underwater breathing apparatus”. Aren’t acronyms abbreviations and if Scrabble recognizes scuba as a word why not gym. And if gym is recognized as a word in of itself wouldn’t that mean there’re words without vowels.”
“Well that’s a very good question.” Suddenly he or she jumps up from their chair and tells you there phone rang even though you didn’t hear anything. “Trust me it went off,” and then they leave the room. Oftentimes enough you don’t need to go into the scuba/scrabble example. The word gym being short for gymnasium is more than enough. Your faith in the linguistic dogma of vowels and consonants is once again restored (in fact one could argue it is a little stronger because it survived scrutiny). You go about the rest of the day until you come across another problem with “the dogma”. Usually in music class. While you’re pretending to play the trumpet and resist the urge to tell the tuba player that the tuba is the cymbal of The Brass World, as that is in the percussion, you realize that there is another word without a vowel. But unlike gym it doesn’t come with an easy way out for the teacher. You return to the teacher during his lunch break and ask him, while he’s eating fast food, “What about the word rhythm? It’s got no vowels.” The teacher might answer, “The word rhythm is Greek and short for rythmos, which contains one vowel: an O. Man you’re pretty smart. Have you considered talking to the principal to see if you can skip a grade?”
“No, I haven’t,” you say and just after you decide to leave you realize something while casually glancing at him eating a part of his meal. “What about the word Fry? There’s no vowels there.”
“Yes but ‘fry’ is short for frying.”
“Doesn’t an ‘ing’ at the end of a word only mean it’s the present participle. Wouldn’t that mean that the word the actual word is fry and not just a longer word built from F-R-Y.”
“That is a very intelligent question but my phone is ringing. I must see to it before I can see to you.”
“I see it on the desk, charging. It’s not doing anything…but charging, I guess.”
“So it is,” he says, “Very perspective of you to notice that. Like I was saying if you should talk to the principal I could put in a very good letter of recommendation. In fact if we talk to the principal or the superintendent today I’m sure we could get you into the fourth grade first thing in the morning.”
“Today’s Friday. That would make tomorrow Saturday. Wouldn’t school be closed?”
“You know how they say there’s time better than now. Well I happen to think that starting tomorrow is highly underated.”
The kid, realizing something right there and then says, “Are you just saying this stuff tom avoid answering my questions?”
“Avoid your question? I would never dream of it. So how about we talk to the principal about getting in the fourth grade right nowish.”
“Yeah we can but can we just answer my question.”
“Fine,” he says while chewing on a fry and sipping his soda, “I’ll answer your question. Sometimes Y can be a vowel to.”
“But what about the word ‘you’. If ‘Y’s’ a vowel that means that with the word ‘you’ is a word that has no consents and I learned in class that every word has a consonant in it too.”
“Well in the case of ‘you’ and words like it y is a consonant too. In fact it’s more a vowel than a consonant than a vowel but it’s a both regardless.”
“Why?”

This was an answer the teacher did not have for the pupil. But I do. Now we travel to the past, or the future, depending on your point of view, to find the answer. In the year 2067 a series of government documents were declassified. This in itself would not be particularly important if not for one little fact. Unfortunately copies of these declassified documents found there ways into the hands of a very clever Elf named Randy who used his magical powers to break into one of the leading archives in this future word, which to him is the present and then used his power to send himself several decades into the past. He gave these documents to several of his contacts in the past, bloggers mostly. One blogger named Opium Android posted the following paraphrase of the documents contents. Because of the actions of one renegade elf from the future with way too many powers and the assistance of his associates we can finally know why Y is both a vowel and a consonant. Here is the story:

It happened sometime in the 1950s. A teacher was teaching her students about vowels. On the previous day a student was eating French fries during lunch, trying to ignore a stomach cramp while playing the saxophone in 6th period and visiting his grandparent’s grave after school, where the groundskeeper of the cemetery, a stranger to this kid, for no apparent reason says to him, while he's mourning, “It should have been you.” This student’s mother tries to assault him with her purse but the groundskeeper is able to run away as fast as his feet will carry him. It was while recollecting these otherwise obscure events of yesterday when he realized something. “FRY. RHYTHM. CRYPT. These words don’t have vowels in them.” He raises his hand and when the teacher calls on him she soon regrets her decision when her student says, “Umm. What about the words fry, rhythm and crypt. They don’t have any vowels in them. They’re all consonants.”

On the spot she improvises an explanation that the whole class quickly realizes is false and something made up on the spot. When five consecutive students each ask her progressively harder questions for her to answer she uses her mouth to fake the sound of an alarm going off and says, “Well that’s the bell. You better get to your next class.” One of the students reminds her that “we still have twenty-seven minutes left”. Suddenly the teacher says, “Oh my god. It’s a fire alarm. We better go outside because this might not be a drill.” She quickly runs out of the classroom and towards the faculty room to hide. She hides there for a moment, assuming she’s alone, until a few of the teachers call out, “Mrs. Walter. What are you doing?”“Hiding.”
“From what? Why would you be hiding?”
“One of the students asked me about the grammatical rule of words always containing vowels and consnants. He brought up the words Fry, Rhythm and Crypt.”
“My lord,” one of the teachers said, “Well it was wise for you to leave the students alone and come here without saying a word. That was thinking.”
“Actually I did say something.”
“What? The fire alarm business, right.”
“Before then.”
“What could you have possibly said before then?”
“I said the whole vowel, consonant thing was because of something Aristotle said.”
“Something Aristotle said. You foolish strumpet do you know what you’ve done. You’ve just opened a modern day’s Pandora’s box but unlike that one ours doesn’t contain hope. We are done for. The very fabric of our reality shall now come undone when it was locked into irreconcilable paradox and causality contradicts reality so much that it negates it. You have doomed us all.”
“In my defense, what was I supposed to do? What was I supposed to say?"”
“You were supposed to give them all detention and perpetuate the myth of a permanent record should inquire any further into a question you cannot answer. Of course you don’t tell them the part about not being able to answer their question but you still threaten them with reprimand none-the-less. Now in your sloppy discipline you have doomed us all,” then he monologues, “You foolish, foolish girl straight out of university. It was certainly a dangerous thing for the superintendent to believe that maybe women could teach English to students instead of just home economics and art with a component of crafts. This is what happens when school districts elect eye candy for teachers over educators. If this vowel business is brought up at the next PTA meeting we are done for”
Another teacher cries out in despair, “What will we do? I don’t want the universe to unravel. I like the universe. It’s where I keep all my stuff.”

A different teacher says, “I don’t think reality itself will come undone but certainly the education system, through endless reforms that will take the soul out of its body and reduce its limbs to hunks of liability, will. In addition to demanding our resurrections they will probably ask us to die in the manner of Bushido, or perhaps we may spare ourselves of this and allow us to elect to drink Hemlock instead. That is if we found ourselves among a compassionate jury of course,” he turns to the woman teacher and says, “Aristotle, really? What were you thinking?”
The last teacher of the bunch to reveal their opinion says, “I recommend we find new professions before all of this hits the fan. I myself have always secretly desired to become a long shoresman working in Alaska or perhaps I could just as easily relocate myself to Massachusetts and Maine and become a sailor there just as easily there as in Juneau or Seattle."
“Our hope is lost,” said the first teacher to be upset, “We will soon be seen as disposable and possibly replaced by a computer one day. You may laugh now but one day we will be replaced by machines. Machines that are capable of teaching our children about consonants and vowels and punctuation; the functions of conjunctions and all manner of grammatical relevance. I feel that all hope must now be abandoned at the entrance of our own inferno, Dante style, in the most unfunny comedy ever written.”
“Perhaps all is not lost,” one of them says, “I have a friend who has connections to powerful people. Connections so close to the president that they could scratch his nose for him. I will give him a call.”.
“Pray that he answers or else may God have mercy on us all.”

Later that day the teacher called his friend in Washington. The friend in Washington ran from one end of The White House to the other until he found his way in The Oval Office while President Eisenhower was meeting with a trusted advisor for a daily brief. The President noticed this man’s apparent shortness of breath and asked him about it. This was the answer he gave, “Mister President I have news for you that is of the utmost importance.”
“Does it have something to do with the commies.”
“It’s bigger than that, sir.”
“What could be bigger than that?”
He explains the situation to President Eisenhower, who after his jaw drops in disbelief says, “My god. I’ll put my best men on it. We will not let any resource this country has at its disposal go unused. If we must incur Armageddon just to discover a solution to this problem than I would say that Armageddon under such circumstances would be most welcome.”

A few days later after the President consulted his top advisers including a new one named Randy who was “vertically challenged” and had pointy ears. It was he, the time traveling elf who released declassified documents from the future into a time when they were still classified who recommended the following solution. “They say you can’t have your cake and eat it too. You know what I say: Why have one cook when you can have two? If you got two cakes there’re no problems with having or eating. You can do both. I say we do that for the letter Y. I say we call it both a vowel and a consonant. Problem solved.”

One of the president’s advisors says, “He might be short and possibly evil, imbued with Satanic powers, but he does have a very good suggestion.”
“So it’s settled,” President Eisenhower, “From here on in Y is both a vowel and a consonant. This way all problems are resolved. Get the news out through the usual channels. Let this news leak like no news has ever leaked before.”
“Yes, Mister President,” said Randy the Elf, “we’ll get right on it.” Then he walked out of The Oval Office, into the hallway and teleported himself into the future to give a series of declassified documents to a blogger named Opium Android.

Stay Still

The following is a story that could have happened. In 79 A.D, a model was posing for a statue of Ganymede that a sculptor was in the middle of creating in his workshop. The model was wearing a toga, a Phrygian cap, and holding a dead rooster when all of a sudden it's residual dander floated up to his nostrils and caused him to sneeze. The sneeze caused him to move considerably. The sculptor noticing this sudden change in the model's movement says, "Ah! What are you doing? You were perfect. Why did you move? Do I not pay you enough already that you can't learn to stay still."

"Sorry," the model apologized, "It won't happen again."

"You're aware that sculptures don't move therefore those who pose for them must remain as still as they."

"I understand that sir. I apologize. It'll never happen again."

"You need to learn to stay still."

"I agree, sir. Again I apologize."

"Move your head a little to the right and up a little. To where it was before."

"Yes, sir, to where it was before. Exactly where it was before."

"Statues also don't talk."

"Yes, sir. I mean sorry. Sir. Not a word."

Suddenly there was a loud sound blasting sound and the Earth shook a little. The model said, "What was that?"

"It sounded like it came from Mount Vesuvius. Now be quiet and stay still."

From Prussia, With Love

Once upon a time, during the Franco-Prussian (a.k.a The 1870 war), sometime after The Battle of Wissembourg, a soldier was in battle triumphantly firing his weapon, while hiding behind a wheel barrell from return fire. When the carnage was over, and he could claim that a dozen souls had perished to "his shot", his ranking officer walked up to him and said, "You know, son; typically in war, we don't fire on our own troops."

He answered, "Oh shut up," as he was reloading his sidearm.

Two Assignments for Noel

In 1990, Noel was in his apartment working on a couple of assignments. Assignment # 1 was to write a brief profile on the first blaxploitation movie "Sweet Sweetback's Badassss Song" for a film festival in North Carolina that wanted to do a "Black's in Cinema" retrospective. They had a print of King Vidor's "Hallelujah!" proved that an all-black cast could carry a movie. They had "Gone with the Wind" which proved a black woman could act. "Lilies of the Field" proved a black man could act as well) and a couple of contemporary movies like "The Last Dragon", "Breakin'" and "Action Jackson" to fill in the time. The festival originally wanted "Song of the South" for the slot Sweet Sweetback would take. The reason was that even though Sidney Pottier was the first man of African decent to win an Academy Award for acting, the first black man to win an Academy Award, period, was James Baskett for his portrayal of Uncle Remus in the aforementioned movie. They were set to include a print of this controversial movie in the film festival but a very intimidating phone call, given after the plan was announced, persuaded them not to. They decided to go with Sweetback instead. Noel watched the movie several times and couldn't figure out a one word summary that would best describe the movie's cultural relevance. A one sentence summary that would promote it to the status of art. What exactly did this movie prove? "It proved that racking focus was over-rated, I guess, but I can't put that into an article." In his confusion of how to proceed, he decided to go onto his second assignment.

The second assignment was different. It required Noel to write a humorous story about a Bostonian kitten in 1775 inadvertently causing "the shot heard 'round the world" by rubbing against a British officer's leg. While the battle of Lexington & Concord was going on the kitten comfortably walked away from the danger unaware of the devastation he just created. Now even though the second assignment sounded very easy, for Noel it was not. He struggled for hours to work out the logic that would make such a premise plausible. "A kitten," he reasoned, "would panic as soon as a single shot was fired." For Noel, it was a cute story, but it betrayed what he considered a fundamental law of reality. Kittens get scared when shots are fired. Period. "How could you base an entire story on an outright lie," he thought. Suddenly, his mind gave him the answer. "Because your being paid to." When he realized this, he finally understood how to finish The Sweet Sweetback profile as well. "It proved," he wrote in his legal pad, about the movie, "that black people didn't need the white establishment in order to make a movie. It also proved that racking focus is overrated."

Showdown on Ceres in the City of Aki

On the dwarf planet of Ceres, in the Asteroid Belt, a man named Jinketsu is tending to his flock of sheep. He lives in some kind of dome bubble that resembles a giant, invisible, igloo. The official name of this "igloo" is Kisetsu. Suddenly, The postman arrives with urgent news in the form of a letter. "What brings you here today?" he asks the postman. "Well," the Postman answers, "Are you the type to kill the messenger?"

"Not if he's doing his job right." The Postman hands him the letter, which Jin immediately opens, "A letter, huh? He couldn't have called me."
"He felt this was more dramatic."
"Thank you," Jinketsu says to The Postman, "You may leave."
The Postman does so. As he does Jin opens the envelope and reads the brief message inside. DUEL AT NOON. STATUE. BRING PISTOLS. FIRST ONE DEAD LOSES. - KATAKIYAKU. Jin crushes the note in his hand and says to the postman on his way out, "If you see Katakiyaju you tell him 'I accept'." The postman nods his head, acknowledging that even though they were a good distance away he could still hear him fine.

A few minutes later Jin is in his home cleaning his pistol when his wife returns from running errands in the town of Aki. When she walked into the home carrying groceries she was expecting her husband to help her with the rest of them. Only in mid-sentence did she realize that he had other plans. "Honey I'm back from the store and boy do I got a lot of...what are you doing?"
"Cleaning the gun."
"I see that. Why do I see that?"
"Because I am."
"Why are you cleaning the gun?"
"Because I plan to use it."
"No," she says, "I thought this business with you and Katakiyaju was over."
"I thought so too but a letter in the mail, written in his handwriting, told me otherwise. Now I got to do what I have to do."
"If you do I won't be here if you come back."
"Don't you mean when I come back?"
"When is the duel?"
"Noon."
"You don't have to go."
"Yes, I do," he says just after he finishes with the cleaning of the gun but just before he begins the loading of its ammunition, "Life in the asteroid belt is hard enough without men like Katakiyaju making it harder. I'd dare say unbearable for everyone except Katakiyaju and friends."
"We'll pay him," his wife pleads, "We have the money."
"We have the money to pay him once but if he mistakes us for a golden goose and tries to shake us down every time he's short of cash. But if we take a stand now. Tell him that in The Asteroid Belt men honor their contracts, their pacts, their truces and they don't terrorize the weak through the illusion of strength." And with that he heads to the door with his loaded laser pistol,. "And if you lose? If he sees 12:01 PM and you don't. What then? What about me? What about the children?"
"They'll say they're father stood for something. That men on Ceres stand for something." And with that he was gone.

Now due to the tremendous difference in gravity between the dwarf planet of Ceres and the planet Earth, after leaving the invisible "igloo" called Kisetsu, Jinketsu was able to hop, like an astronaut on The Moon, to the nearest town, Aki, in less than ten minutes. He arrived with only five minutes left for the duel.

Aki is a primitive town with no remarkable features except for a large statue of Ceres, the Roman goddess of agriculture, grain crops, fertility and motherly relationships, in the city square in commemoration of the namesake of the asteroid Aki is on. The statue is a thirteen foot structure of a young, beautiful woman in her early 20s, wearing a long flowing dress, holding wheat. One could easily imagine that the model for this statue was probably the sculptor's daughter. It is at the statue Jinketsu finds Katakiyaju. When Jinketsu is close enough to him Katakiyaju says, "I'd hate to orphan your children and widow your wife when all I want to do is make my bankers happy. You sure you don't want to be so frugal and give me what by a more modern interpretation of 'divine right of kings' is practically mine by default."
"All I ask for is a fair fight. Tell your men to step aside and unload their clips, and should you not be among the living at 12:01 you're men better swear that I don't join you shortly after."
Katakiyaju says to his men, "You heard the man." They followed his command. "You sure you still want to do this Jin? No going back from a duel, especially when I'm the duelist."
Jin nods his head. One of Katakiyaju's men, who was looking at his watch says, "Fifteen seconds to do or die. Fourteen...thirteen...twelve..." At eleven the two men get into formation for the duel, ready to fire in, "...five...four...three...two...one..." Suddenly shots are fired and two laser shoot out. Only one hits their intended target. He walks over to him, as he's lying on the floor, "How did this happen?" he asks "How could this happen?"

What happened was that when Katakiyaju fired his laser Jinketsu was able to jump out of its way and let off one laser himself. However his laser hit the statue of Ceres and ricocheted off and landed somewhere in Katakiyaju's torso creating a hole his chest that started from the spine to the ribcage. "How?" he said before he surrendered to his injuries. "How?". No twenty seconds in the universe lasted as long or was as awkward as this moment of time was. No one knew what anyone else would do next or even knew what they should try. Suddenly Jinketsu said, "Are you honorable men. Do you honor your contracts, your pacts, your truces and don't terrorize the weak through the illusion of strength."
The answer given, by the groups defacto leader was, "Yes. We honor all of the above."
"Well then you better find another town or asteroid to call home."
"Agreed."

Kinketsu left the town of Aki shortly after Katakiyaju's former gang did the same. Before he left Jin bought a bouquet of Jupiter roses. While he hopped back to the invisible "igloo" of Kisetsu, his home, he wondered how many times he'd have to say, "I'm sorry. I'll never duel again." before he'd be allowed to leave the futon and return to the their bedroom. He figured a hundred wouldn't be enough. "Maybe I should have bought more roses."

Perpetual Phoenix Polis

While waiting inside a hotel/casino parking lot for a bus to take me to The Hoover Dam I had the following thought.

Las Vegas is a city always being rebuilt. The city itself as history but so many of the buildings on that "All American Road" are too young to have originally been a part of it. A lot of them weren’t even around when Ronald Reagan was president. In some ways, I think the city is a metaphor for people, and indirectly a metaphor for life. The face of it remains partly the same, and yet it always changes, yet it some ways remain the same. The casinos change but never does the strip, (since 1932), stop having casinos. In some way we are no different. We were five once and had our greenish eyes. We are no longer five and only barely resemble the five year old we used to be. In fact, the thing that connects me to that long ago child is memory and multimedia (such as a photograph or a video clip from some long ago yesterday). However, we still have our green eyes. Details change but others remain the same. The Las Vegas Strip long ago said goodbye to The Silver Slipper, Hacienda, El Rancho, The Sands but Las Vegas Boulevard remains quintessentially the same. A modern day Rip Van Winkle could fall asleep today, wake up a hundred years from now and recognize The Strip. That, like actors playing characters, from Macbeth. The actors change but the characters and their dialogue remain the same. “If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me” may have been uttered by Orson Welles or John Finch, but it’ll always be said by Macbeth. New actors fill the roles of the same characters. Such, it seems to be the destiny of Las Vegas, perpetually reborn like a phoenix in the helio-womb called sun, cremated, resurrected only to renew the cycle ad infinutum.

Suddenly, my bus arrived.

Stork Story

Simon was about to be a dad. Of course he didn't know this until Melanie said, "I'm pregnant." For some reason he answered, "I'm a pices," then Simon smacked himself on the head and said, "No...Aries," and further corrected himself by saying, "I was born on the 26th."
"Did you hear what I said?"
"Yes," he said, "I hung onto every word and you're right I think it's been long enough. Your boss should've given you a promotion by now. You've certainly been there long enough. And you know what, if it weren't for you that whole company would fall apart. I know and most of all he knows it too. If he isn't smart enough to realize that you should quit and start your own company."
"I'm pregnant Simon."
"Pregnant?" he said, "No the word is preguntas," then said, "You studied Spanish for four years. You should know that. That's like not knowing the word for friend is amigo."
"Listen 'the stork' came and I'm going to have a baby now."
"Baby? How are you going to have a baby. First you have to be preg..." and before he could say, "-nant" his jaw drops. Then after carefully analyzing everything he could have said next he settled on, "So what are you going to do?"

Simon was about to be married. Of course he didn't know this until Melanie said, "Well I am Catholic." A few weeks later Simon was at a tailor getting his tuxedo fitted. The following thought popped into his mind, "What's the smallest outfit this tailor had to make? Did he ever have to make any for a baby? A newborn maybe. A fetus perhaps. Is it even possible to give a fetus a tuxedo?" After thinking about this question for a while while being measured he asks the tailor what's the smallest tuxedo you ever had to make for someone. "A dwarf needed a tuxedo for the prom. He was three foot eight."
"Is it harder to make a tuxedo for a big person or a small one?"
"I think it's harder to make a suit for a small person. Then again if I catered to that niche more I'd probably be very good at making smaller suits and be rubbish at making suits for larger people."
"Is it possible to make a tuxedo for a fetus?"
"Not until he's out of the womb."

A few months later Simon was driving to the hospital because Melanie's water broke. He was listening to an audio-book about improving your vocabulary. He was driving with alacrity. He paused the book before the reader could describe in detail what the word inveterate was all about, to have the following thought, "Why do parents tell their children that The Stork brought them," he thought while he was heading to the place where many of them are born, "Why tell them that they were created on some cloud and brought to mom and dad instead of with a more reliable courier like a pelican, or an eagle, or The Pony Express. Why did they use a stork instead? Has a child ever run away from home because he wanted to find his real parents, feeling that the ones who were raising him didn't have the right to force them to eat broccoli because "they aren't really my parents". That some stork and cloud were. Did these runaways ever go out on a quest to find them? A fruitless quest as ill-fated as The Children's Crusade ended up being? Suddenly Simon's car approached the hospital entrance. The guard let him through after asking him a few brief questions about "his purpose for being here". Simon ran inside after parking and went to the pediatric wing to find out where his wife is. He did so in haste. He ran to the room while she was still in labor about to give birth. He had in his hand a camcorder and was looking through its viewfinder, while his other eye was shut closed. All he saw was whatever the camera saw and when he saw what the camera saw coming out of Melanie he dropped the camera, nearly breaking it, and screamed, "Ah, god no".

Simon was about to be end his marriage. Of course he didn't know this until Melanie said, "I'm so, so sorry," and he answered, "Save it for somebody else." While looking at the baby ts half-human, half stork form - a hideous creature not taking the best characteristics of either a human or a stork, a hideous hybrid of both.Simon says, "I want an annulment."