Photoessay #2860 - Double twist

I have been so amused by another New Yorker article (you can tell I have some time to read).  In the DEC 24th/31st issue "Utopian for Beginners" by Joshua Foer.

It has a double twist, just as the Rodriguez story I wrote about last month.  A ton of irony.

John Quijada, a middle-aged employee of the DMV (state agency for vehicle licensing) for the State of California in Sacramento...

So stop right there.  I grew up in Sacramento and lived there for a time as an adult.  Even though my impressions might be 35 years old, this brings a whole image of bureaucratic dullness.  How could you start a joke about somebody 'working for the snake' as we used to refer to it in the 1970s.  Hmmm, those people who did work for the State now have pensions, oh yeah, forgot about that.  Anyway that actually is a great setup for a joke.

OK, so Mr. Quijada was fascinated by linguistics since college and always intended to return for graduate study.  But that never happened.  Instead, he embarked on his own study and creation, developing an esoteric constructed language called Ithkuil, a language designed to be precise and concise.  Illustration is some of the written characters.  Very arcane and geeky beyond belief.  Eventually he hooks up with others interested in constructed languages.  Conlangers, they call themselves.  Klingon would be the most well-known but there's lots of these guys with their crazy languages only they know.

First twist - he finds out that there's a group in Kiev and this little autonomous region called Kalmykia who have been studying his language and invite him to come and speak and work with them.  He finds followers he never knew he had and returns later to the University of  Efficient Development in Kiev which is developing a discipline Psychonetics, a discipline of developing the mind using Ithkuil.

Second twist - He finds out that this is associated with some pretty sketchy people specifically those involved with a right-wing violent anti-semitic Ukainian nationalist organization.  Fire-bombing etc.  They are interested in this sort of mind discipline.

Whoa, way more that he bargained for.

So there's this guy in Sacramento....crazy story!

Happy 60th birthday to my husband!