Uh-Oh, The Feds Are After Me

A rare advantage of posting my blogs on Blogspot is that I have it linked to “Sitemeter” which lets me see the number of visits, what post was seen, the ISP of the visitor and often the city of the visitor. OK, don’t get bored and move on…hopefully this will get just a little bit better.

Unfortunately, far too many of the “hits” to this site are for people looking for pictures of Giada DeLaurentiis’ cleavage, Joy Hickey, banana hammocks, the V-22 Osprey, used car salesman cartoons and Sarah Palin as a Zombie (actually I’m kind of proud of the Sarah Palin/zombie connection). Oh yeah, and Buckwheat.

Yep, Buckwheat. You know, the cute little African-American kid from “The Little Rascals". The one who Eddie Murphy parodied on “SNL” and in his shows. That Buckwheat. The one who’s brought me to the attention of the Feds.

The Feds. As in Federal Government. As in Department of Justice. As in Drug Enforcement Administration.

You see, I wrote a blog post in September of 2010 featuring Buckwheat and how my wife and I like to talk in his unique language that we call “Buhweet”. Like, “Otay Buhweet”.

This particular blog post was inspired by a newspaper article I read which said that the Atlanta DEA office was looking to hire translators—in Spanish, Vietnamese, Korean, Farsi and…are you ready?...Ebonics. So that got my imagination going and I made the connection to Buckwheat. And I wrote a tongue-in-cheek blog post. Here’s a link:

http://open.salon.com/blog/just-walt/2010/09/14/the_dea_ebonics_and_buckwheat--whassup

So how does that bring me to the attention of the DOJ and DEA? Well, in the interest of interesting illustration, I did a Google Image search and included a DEA logo in the blog post. And, the other day (see this is where Sitemeter comes in handy) I noticed that someone had spent the better part of 6 minutes in my Blogspot blog. Hmmmmm, I wonder who? The ISP was “US Dept of Justice” and the ISP is “usdoj.gov”. The search was for "DEA Logo". To quote Ralphie from “A Christmas Story”: “Oh fuuuuuddddggggge.”

And I asked myself, “Self, do these guys have a sense of humor?” And, of course, the answer is, “Hell no.”

Anytime now I expect to hear the sound of doors slamming on several Crown Vics, the sound of multiple feet thumping up the flight of stairs right outside our door and then the crash of a sledgehammer on the door as they come after this serious miscreant. Half a dozen guys in jumpsuits and bullet proof vests and helmets wearing windbreakers that say “DEA” on the back.

Will they Mace me? Will they tackle me and kneel on my back (hey guys I’ve got some pretty bad arthritis in my right shoulder so take it easy when you cuff me, OK?).

The music from “Dragnet” is going through my brain. “Dum, dee dum dum. Dum, dee dum dum, dum!” “Just the facts, ma’am,” they’ll tell my wife.

And it’s all DEA’s fault for stepping on my funny bone about hiring Ebonics translators. If they hadn’t done that, I wouldn’t have had my brain-fart about Buckwheat. I wouldn’t have started writing. I wouldn’t have uploaded their damn logo into a blog post.

But that’s OK. I know they have to do their job of protecting the American public. From no-good-niks like me. At least there’s no one at DOJ.gov checking out Giada DiLaurentiis’ cleavage.

And if I have to go to the slammer all I have to say to my wife is, “I wubbu”.

The DEA, Ebonics and Buckwheat--Whassup?

As Dave Barry used to say, “I’m not making this up.”

Seems like the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration is looking for a few good translators. 2,100 to be exact. These folks will be employed to transcribe wiretaps.

This is all according to a short article in my local newspaper on Sunday which was contained on the “Backpage” under “News of the Weird” with the headline “Professional Training Required”.

The short piece listed some of the openings for DEA’s Atlanta office which include 144 Spanish experts, 12 Vietnamese and 9 each for Korean, Farsi and Ebonics. Jeesh, I’m surprised that someone like Glen Beck hasn’t gotten hold of this one. Ebonics?

OK, so I know that DEA isn’t necessarily interested in my language skills which consist solely of having to wade through 3 years of French in college in order to get 2 years worth of credit—although I have sold 2 cars over the years to French speaking buyers using the fractured phrase “voulez-vous acheter c’et voiture?” (I think I spelled that right).

I actually remember more of the 1 year of Latin I took at Madison Junior High School in Tampa way back in 1965. “Tempus fugit” anyone? (Actually, if anyone’s interested, I can still recite “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” in Latin at the drop of a hat and can still give a rousing rendering of “Quadiamus Igatur” in “basso profundo”--but I’ve never come across it in a Karaoke version).

And unfortunately, the DEA isn’t interested in the other language my wife and I have been working to translate into a useable communications tool. We discovered the “Rosetta Stone” of it a while back and have been using it for a while to discover the nuances of pronunciation and grammar of this unique, spellbinding language from our childhood.



Yep, I’m talking about Buckwheat. Or, pronounced in the vernacular, “Buhweet”.

Carolyn and I can actually carry on something resembling a conversation in Buckwheat with only occasional pauses to figure out the vowel sounds and hard consonants and we find this to be quite an endearing language. Buckwheat was the most loveable of the characters in the “Little Rascals” with his wide-eyed innocence and grin.

People have been speaking in “Buhweet” for more than a half century. Virtually every adult has at one time or another invoked Buckwheat by making an “OK” sign with thumb and index finger and saying “Otay”. That’s the most famous “Buckwheatism”.


So, we often speak to one another in Buckwheat in our silly conversations at home about such “weighty” topics as what to have for dinner or what to watch on TV and sometimes our e-mails incorporate Buckwheat.

But alas, there is no demand for the language by the DEA and consequently it’s not likely to be embraced in the world of literature or journalism anytime soon.

But, just visualize in your own mind if you saw a Shakespearian actor, on a stage in the costume of a Roman Senator saying:

“Fwens, Rohmas, caweemen; wenme ya eah, I comma bawwy Teedar, naudu pwaiz im.”


Or, perhaps what you may wish to do is to look your spouse in the eye and tell her (like I often say to Carolyn):

“I wubbu!”

That’s because she’s “tree tines a mady”