Misty

Corruption in the RCEL?

By HASTINGS OATMILD

SEATTLE, 6 January—Scan­dal has bro­ken out in the hal­lowed halls of the Rhyme Com­mis­sion of the En­glish Lan­guage as doc­u­ments have sur­faced in­di­cat­ing that Com­mis­sion­er Gen­er­al Na­tal­ie Weizen­baum sought and re­ceived kick­backs for declar­ing "or­ange" to be the "wild­card" word for the high­ly-an­tic­i­pat­ed re­lease of Rhyme 1.1. This new re­lease rep­re­sents the first up­date to the way mod­ern En­glish rhymes since its ini­tial re­lease in the 15th cen­tu­ry, and has been hot­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed by po­ets and mu­si­cians of all stripes.

The leaked doc­u­ments, which have been ver­i­fied by the cohost post's crack team of fact check­ers as like­ly to be gen­uine, in­di­cate that Mrs. Weizen­baum reached out to nu­mer­ous high­ly-po­si­tioned mem­bers of the fash­ion in­dus­try with what she de­scribed in emails as "a re­al hachi-machi of a sweet deal" in ex­change for "pay­ola of the mon­do va­ri­ety", of­fer­ing in­sid­er in­for­ma­tion and in­flu­ence on a word that would un­doubt­ed­ly make its way in­to thou­sands of songs, po­ems, plays, and nurs­ery rhymes by virtue of its sub­stan­tial ease of rhyming. She re­quest­ed and re­ceived $6,969 in cash and an all-ex­pens­es-paid trip to Du­luth, a pay­ment which fi­nan­cial an­a­lyst Sprulge Throm­bo­sis called "pal­try", adding "She had them in the palm of her hand. She could have asked for the world. I don't know what she was think­ing. My god, Du­luth?"

An anal­y­sis of oth­er leaked emails in­di­cates that "or­ange" wasn't Mrs. Weizen­baum's on­ly choice for a wild­card. She shopped around a num­ber of dif­fer­ent po­ten­tial wild­cards to in­ter­est­ed buy­ers, in­clud­ing "meta­verse", "casse­role", and "Adi­das". It seems that she was per­suad­ed to choose "or­ange" in­stead by an email in which her wife said "if you in­sist on sell­ing the soul of the En­glish lan­guage for pet­ty cash please try to ex­er­cise at least a mod­icum of sub­tle­ty".

The an­nounce­ment of "or­ange" as the wild­card word co­in­cides with the re­lease of or­ange streetwear col­lec­tions from many of the most fash­ion­able cou­touri­ers as well as Pan­tone's dec­la­ra­tion of "rhyming or­ange" as their col­or of the cen­tu­ry. This word is now a slant rhyme with all oth­er words, which un­der nor­mal cir­cum­stances would vir­tu­al­ly guar­an­tee its cul­tur­al om­nipres­ence. How­ev­er, a joint state­ment by the Rap­pers' League, the Guild of Po­ets, and the Singer/Song­writ­er/Syn­di­cate has tak­en a strong stance against what they de­scribe as "rank cor­rup­tion" and "greed of the high­est or­der" and de­clared that no one writ­ing or pro­duc­ing mu­sic un­der their aus­pices shall use the word "or­ange" un­til the sit­u­a­tion is re­solved and an­oth­er wild­card is cho­sen. Their long­time neme­sis Scabs Unit­ed is­sued a counter-state­ment which in­cludes the rhyming cou­plet "Neen­er neen­er you can't stop us / We'll take their cash and rhyme with or­ange".