Final Baby Talk Winners

The Jackalope is No Longer A Threat

Like the Passenger Pigeon Once Blotted Out the Sun…

My office walls were once lined with steely eyed Jackalope heads. Since January 24th, we’ve been spouting Baby Talk. So much Baby Talk. But today only two prizes remain to be awarded. Let me remind you, Baby Talk isn’t the only game in town; your forte might be legalese or pidgin or faux-Lovecraft (which would make a worthy contest…). The point is to “try on” a style or voice that might be in keeping with your story — or be completely at odds with the topic — but in some strange way, put the story over.

Gimmick-y, yes, but so is everything in the canon. Do you think Samuel Taylor Coleridge asked himself, Why so stylized and back-asswards? Is that really necessary? Fuck no, he just smoked his opium and made literary history:

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree:

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea.

As Oscar Wilde spouted:

“Being natural is simply a pose, and the most irritating pose I know.”

What matters is commitment to… and successful selling of the “pose.” As in song lyrics, what matters is successful distortion. And Mia Maeve finally got it right! Shorter is better! Don’t exhaust your reader, and this reads like a baby leprechaun got beat senseless with a shillelagh. AND with a touch of the Pirate Tongue. Nicely done!

Celtic Cure by Mia Maeve

Unwewcome guest! Ah fed ye vewvain an’ foxgwove miwk wi’ yer suppa evewy nite. Ye wouwdnae weave. Fwung ye up the hazel twee in the wildest wintew gale—by God, ye were aye there come mownin’, face doon on the gwavel. Tied ye tae the bed—an’ stiww ye wouwdnae go. Aye, they sed the hoose were cuwsed—biwt on a faiwy moond. Ah didnae bewieve it, no tiww ye stopped speakin’—stopped smiwin’. Nuffin’ but scweamin’, battawin’ yer heid aff the wa’w. Taen, ma wee ‘un, swapped—wi’ YOO, ye unbidden guest! Bwing the hot shovew—wight the fiwe, aye! We’ww see ye off noo! Be gone wi’ ye, ye demon baiwn, ye devil’s changewin’. Out wi’ ye—OUT!

The remaining Jackalope head goes to Andrew Rutledge for what I assume is a cocaine/heroin-related tragedy. Witnessed by a baby? Reading this is like reading Jabberwocky for the first time. Annoying, perhaps, but this is how you reinvent the language and get copyright!!

An aside, in 1980 at the age of eighteen I worked as a messenger alongside a guy named David from South Africa who told me that the secret to Jabberwocky was that Lewis Carroll thought the Scottish accent was rubbish, and he’d meant to write a poem that sounded like Irvine Welsh on acid. This is CLOSE, but David would tell this man, “Keep Rolllling your R’s! RRRrreally, rrrroll them!” And it’s not pronounced “WAY-bah” it’s pronounced “WAH-bay” according to David, who would now be about seventy years old. Anyway, here’s Andrew:

Pic-a-boo by Andrew Rutledge

Dada sneak ma eyes and dada went buh-bye, poof! Dada says’d pic-a-boo and dada face come back. Yay baby! One day dada says’d pic-a-boo and dada face stays poof and mama cries. New dada sneaks ma eyes and mama laugh. New dada says’d pic-a-boo and stays poof. Mama sads again. New new dada sneaks my eyes, sniffs sniffs bum bum powder. Mama sniffs too. New new dada says pic-a-boo and both they faces stays poof.

Andrew, with a name like Andrew Rutledge you need to be rolling your R’s more. Wear a kilt. Really lean into the bit.

You know the drill. Please contact The Cult and let me know how you’d like the books inscribed and where to send them. The Jackalopes they are no more, at last.