-Monkeys angered but still working hard.
Jackson, MS - Gov. Haley Barbour's initiative for the state of Mississippi to put its first complete sentence on paper is well ahead of schedule and almost complete. This is the first of Barbour's campaign promises to come to fruition and the new Governor intends to make sure Mississippi gets it right the first time. "We have a few subject/verb agreement issues to work though, but all in all I think we have a winner on our hands", remarked Kirk Manzeer, special linguistics assistant to the Governor.
Elected officials at the State House declined to speculate exactly what words or phrases the sentence contained and even brushed aside questions about specific topics. Inside sources have pegged the work as a compound sentence and have even suggested that it might contain a wry simile and/or metaphor about shoes.
In direct contrast the proverbial room full of monkeys with typewriters has yet to generate anything other than the word "poop". While funny, it is still not considered a sentence by 49 of the 50 US States (The Arkansas Supreme Court did rule in favor of the word as a full sentence earlier this year. See related story: Arkansas Judges Approve Monkeys' "Poop".)
Previous attempts at putting nouns, verbs, conjunctives, and adjectives into one whole thought sequence and also committing it to paper have to this point been unsuccessful. Senior State Historian Bobby "Bob" Appleton lamented on the state's turbulent history with respect to the alphabet and its bastard cousin the paragraph, "Historically speaking we have had a rough go of it for dotting our ‘i's' and crossing our ‘t's'. Everybody seems to want to shorten everything in Mississippi. Even when finding a date at the family reunion most people about these parts don't go much further than ‘Yur pruty, I like yur mouth'. Why that's not even a complete thought. And don't get me started on ‘ain't'."
Delegates from every county in the state were sent to Jackson almost three months ago to begin what most feared would be a true hornet's nest of problems. "We compiled the biggest brains around these here parts. Why we even got together four people that took the ACT," stated Governor Barbour. One of those making the long journey, Yazoo resident Jackie "Jacky" Toater viewed herself as a pioneer, but couldn't stop from wondering what might have been. "We'z got to talkin' bout that ol' intranet and trying to figure ways to dial into it. I even hollered up to the operator to see if she couldn't call up Napster, but she was all ‘Beep Boop Beep Boop Boop…No.'."
The smell of burning midnight oil, or possibly fumes from the state's many crystal methamphetamines labs, was palpable for miles around the Capitol every night during the past few months. Proud citizens have taken to task this latest initiative one that they believe will remove the notion that as a state, Mississippi mainly just "gets in the way".
Misconception is something Mississippians are already all too familiar with. Jimmy "Jim" Turner relayed that he just wanted Mississippi to be known as something other than "the setting for Gone with the Wind". When told the movie was actually set in Georgia, Turner could only reply "Damn".
As the good people of the state of Mississippi get ready to cut their own Sherman's Swath through the confusing maze of punctuation, grammar, and "damned Yankee spelling arrogance" the world buzzed on, unaware of the winds of change blowing in Dixie.
