Wednesday, March 23, 2011

A Real Sentence Concerning the Vicious Cycle of Livestock Bullying Other Livestock

(With the warmest admiration for William J. Rapaport, professor of many, many disciplines, SUNY Buffalo. Obviously.)

(And by the way, Professor Rapaport's website is here, and the Wikipedia article about Professor Rapaport's sentence is here.)

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

Let me explain.

The above sentence describes a sad but true fact about bullying: victims of bullying often become perpetrators themselves...often upon the very beings that their assailants push around.

This phenomenon is particularly apparent when the livestock in question are buffalo. Not bulls, not cows; only buffalo.

And specifically, it is particularly noticeable when the livestock come from Buffalo, New York.

To simplify things, let's call those livestock "Buffalo buffalo."

Furthermore, it is necessary to describe the kind of bullying that takes place. Simply stated, these buffalo like to push around their own kind. They like to shove them hard.

They like to buffalo them.

Even more insidiously, they like to push them around--or "buffalo" them--in a style not found in any city but Buffalo, New York. In fact, so unique is this style of pushing around, this style of buffaloing, that when the perpetrator does it to another perpetrator, they are said to "Buffalo buffalo" them,

Put simply, buffalo from Buffalo, New York, tend to push around--or "Buffalo buffalo"--other buffalo from Buffalo, New York.

So Buffalo buffalo "Buffalo buffalo" Buffalo buffalo.

But it gets worse. The livestock that these bullies push around tend to pick on other livestock in the same fashion.

In other words, Buffalo buffalo that Buffalo buffalo "Buffalo buffalo" themselves "Buffalo buffalo" Buffalo buffalo.

Or, to put it more simply Buffalo buffalo Buffalo Buffalo "Buffalo buffalo" "Buffalo buffalo" Buffalo buffalo.

Or we could just lose the quotation marks, in much the same way that a track and field coach, upon commenting on one of his or her high jumpers choosing to vault backwards (as opposed to the traditional Western Roll) might just write, in correspondence, that his athlete tends to "Fosbury Flop it," choosing not to put quotation marks around "Fosbury Flop."

Then we could just write this sentence plainly, as a sad commentary on the cycle of bullying among upstate livestock:

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

Tragic.

(And by the way: The Fosbury Flop is named for Dick Fosbury, who used his unconventional technique to win a high jump gold medal in the 1968 summer olympics in Mexico City. You can read more about it here).