SRS BZNS

[slammerkinbabe]

Also, this is highly important and I need to inform the world at once:

I am working on a computer keyboard that is clearly about twenty-seven years old. Most of the letters have rubbed off, and the patterns in which they have done so are almost entirely in accordance with the letters' Scrabblic value. With the exception of C and V, which are low-use and therefore high-value letters in the English language, but which are constantly used on a computer keyboard because of the Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V commands, the only letters that are left are Q (10 points), Z (10 points), X (8 points), J (8 points), K (5 points), W (4 points), Y (4 points), half of H (4 points) and half of P (3 points)...

AND THEN THERE IS A RANDOM U. WHAT THE HELL. I have ALWAYS KNOWN that U is a TERRIBLE, TERRIBLE SCRABBLE LETTER BECAUSE NO ONE EVER USES IT AND YET IT IS ONLY WORTH ONE POINT. I do not CARE that it is a vowel. IT IS A CRAPPY VOWEL. NO ONE EVER USES IT. I AM CONSTANTLY GETTING STUCK WITH HUGE EXCESSES OF U'S ON MY RACK AND I DON'T EVEN GET ANY POINTS TO MAKE UP FOR IT. IT IS A TRAVESTY, THAT. And now my computer keyboard is providing PROOF POSITIVE that the Scrabble game is WRONG WRONG WRONG in its U-point assignation. This is extremely serious. I believe I deserve significant compensation, numbering at least in the thousands of dollars, for the emotional suffering and strain I have undergone over my Scrabble-playing years as a result of this grave error.

I need to write to Hasbro posthaste and include a picture of this keyboard and tell them YOU JUST GO RIGHT NOW AND MAKE THE U BE WORTH AT LEAST FOUR POINTS IMMEDIATELY, MY COMPUTER KEYBOARD SAYS YOU HAVE TO. I have no doubt that they will listen to me. This is just common sense.

Comments

[ems.livejournal.com]

Hahahah. May I metaquote?

[slammerkinbabe.livejournal.com]

Sure, if you like. MORE PEOPLE MUST BE AWARE OF THIS TRAVESTY

[ems.livejournal.com]

Done!

[fanboy-of-zeus.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but have you ever tried making words with a set of letters that (almost always) looks something like OOOUUIZ? The U's come in pretty handy, actually.

[everypoembreaks.livejournal.com]

The way your brain works is really very strange. But also very awesome. U is the devil's letter, I swear.

U know who U are...

[devifemme.livejournal.com]

But, dammit, I always get the freaking "Q" and am therefore insanely desperate to find a "U" -- and never do, so I get stuck with the "Q" at the end! Boo!

But hugs, anyhow! Justine

Re: U know who U are...

[slammerkinbabe.livejournal.com]

Best word in all of Scrabble history, just introduced in the 4th edition Scrabble dictionary: QI. LIFESAVER. SRSLY. Q is finally a valuable letter instead of an intolerable nuisance. And we got za and zo (if you're playing SOWPODS instead of TWL) in the 4th ed., too. It was an exciting edition.

Re: U know who U are...

[devifemme.livejournal.com]

OK, my mother warned me about this! I've fallen into a den of scrabblefreaks, no doubt trying to seduce me into a sordid underground life of sin and degradation.

Who knew there was a Scrabble dictionary?

In the Wild West days (and no, one dasn't use words with Capital letters...sheesh!), resort to a dictionary could get one shot by the glinty-eyed hombre on the other side of the poker...er, scrabble table.

Actually, we're talking dogma here, with appropriate reverence (and NOT reference!). Namely, the vast community of non-pro scrabblers out there simply won't accept crazy coinages like QI. LIFESAVER...(inter alia, there're no punctuation tiles!) and, to boot, SRSLY is an abbreviation unto the Lord (hey, srsly, that's pretty good!) -- and, as we know, abbreviat. are simply hors de combat.

So, who ARE you and what have you done with my friend Slammer?

Speaking of which, surely you (i.e., Slammer) would possess an actual FIRST NAME that you'd share with a few intimate pals such as me.

And it ain't "asparagus," of that I'm sure!

Hugs (a good, legitimate use of the "U"), Justine

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

It's clear to me that Noah Webster is wholly responsible for this, with his unfortunate insistence on demanding people use his own VERY SPECIAL spellings of words. So, for those of us who SPELL THINGS PROPERLY, we'd take bonus points for use of 'u' as QUITE A FAVOUR, thankyou kindly. :)

[slammerkinbabe.livejournal.com]

This is true! You Brits have all the Scrabblic luck - but THEY SHOULD HAVE SEPARATE SCORING SYSTEMS FOR BRITISH AND ENGLISH SPELLING, THEN. They do it with other foreign languages. I think your inexplicable overuse of the letter U qualifies your dialect as officially foreign.

[fanboy-of-zeus.livejournal.com]

And while you're done sorting all this out with Scrabble, you can go on and tell Firefox to stop underlining words like "channelled," which JUST LOOK WRONG WITH ONLY ONE L IN THEM, DAMN IT. And "pyjamas," which HAS A Y IN IT, and I did not even know there was another way to spell it until less than a year ago.

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

You can get a proper British English dictionary for it, which knows about pyjamas and manoeuvres and orthopaedics and every other word that looks prettier with its proper spelling. The list of dictionaries is here.

[fanboy-of-zeus.livejournal.com]

Yeah, except I spell most words the American way, at least the obvious ones - it's just the sneaky ones, like the extra L's, and the pyjamas, that I somehow ended up British on. (And interestingly, I *pronounce* "pyjamas" differently from most Americans; I say "pihjamas" while my mother, and presumably others who spell it with an A, say "puhjamas").

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

But you could have the red squiggly line for the horrid Americanisations. Or, alternatively, add to dictionary is your friend.

Also, on what planet is it sensible to have a dictionary for Esperanto but not for Lolcat? Firefox dictionary people, you have failed me.

[fanboy-of-zeus.livejournal.com]

Yeah, well, I usually ignore spellcheck anyway. You get used to the red squiggly line when you write fantasy...

And there's an easy answer to your question: Lolcat doesn't have standardized spelling yet (is that supposed to be an S or a Z in standardized? Or is that another British vs. American thing?). You are, of course, free to become the Noah Webster of Lolcat and come up with your own standardization and write a dictionary - but good luck getting anyone to use it.

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

...or sci-fi, or weird, or. Yes.

I think I'd prefer to take an approach more like the OED, and compile it as a complete etymological and historical record of Lolcat. With luck - and appropriate help - it might even be possible to finish it before the 3rd edition OED is completed in, um, 2037.

[fanboy-of-zeus.livejournal.com]

Good luck with that.

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

1) Not a Briton, but plenty of people here manage to think I am, so. Something.

And, 2) Overuse? If anything, it's your country's ritualistic underuse, all from one of your own deciding in 1828 that American English should be ZOMGSPESHUL. If anything, US English should officially be the foreign one.

[ticktockman.livejournal.com]

Got Netflix? Watch Word Wars, a documentary on four hardcore Scrabble players during the year leading up to the National Scrabble Championship. It rocks. You can even watch online with their Instant Watch thing, if you've got high bandwidth and a PC running Internet Explorer.

*daha*

[llnaughty.livejournal.com]

I AM CONSTANTLY GETTING STUCK WITH HUGE EXCESSES OF U'S ON MY RACK...

at least you're not constantly getting stuck with huge excesses of i's on your rack...?

[llnaughty.livejournal.com]

closing the italics tag woulda been good.

jumping on the metaquotes bandwagon...

[anydelirium.livejournal.com]

FINALLY! I have found someone else who agrees with me!! I hate, hate, HATE it when I get U's. I think that the last time I played, I had three U's in one draw. WTF? Normally, I'd just be all "what the hell, let's just get a sharpie and change that one to a four...", but my #1 opponent is my grandma.

And grandmas always follow the rules.

Re: jumping on the metaquotes bandwagon...

[(Anonymous)]

Haha! My #1 opponent is my grandma too, at least when I'm not playing online. Except in her case I think she'd insist that the U should be worth 4 points for her and 1 point for me. She's already tried to rewrite the dictionary in very inventive ways, more times than I can count. ;)

P.S. ICON ICON ICON. ♥ ♥ ICON.

Re: jumping on the metaquotes bandwagon...

[slammerkinbabe.livejournal.com]

Ack! That anonymous comment was me. I lose at logging in. Your icon still winz though.

Re: jumping on the metaquotes bandwagon...

[anydelirium.livejournal.com]

Ha, I was kind of thinking it was you. I'm quite fond of showing off that icon- it gets more comments than any other one I have.