Well, I do declare that the good folks of Reno have found themselves in a proper pickle, the sort of mess that makes a man wonder if civilization has progressed all that much since we were swinging from trees. It seems there was a bull at the annual rodeo, a fine specimen of bovine fury, I’m sure, who went by the name of “Nick Gertz.”
A perfectly respectable name for a bull, one might think, until it was bellowed over the public address system for all to hear, at which point it apparently transformed itself into something that caused the assembled masses to clutch their pearls and faint dead away upon their hay bales. Rodeo officials, upon being roused from their slumber by the ensuing kerfuffle, immediately issued a statement declaring their profound innocence in the matter of nomenclature, assuring one and all that they would never countenance such offensive language, and that the blame for this phonetic faux pas lay squarely with the stock contractors, who presumably are now being hunted through the Nevada hills with torches and pitchforks.
What a remarkable time we live in, where a bull’s name can become a matter of state emergency. I can picture the scene: a thousand stern-faced committee members gathered in a windowless room, debating the proper pronunciation of “Nick Gertz” with the gravity usually reserved for treaties between nations.
One can imagine the stock contractor who named the poor beast, scratching his head, and wondering how he managed to accidentally invent a racial slur without even trying. Perhaps he was merely naming the bull after his Uncle Nick, who had a peculiar way of speaking, or perhaps he was attempting to honor the great German philosopher Gertz von Bullenstein, only to have his scholarly intentions mangled by the arena acoustics and the delicate sensibilities of modern humanity.
The irony of it all is thicker than molasses in January.
Here we have a rodeo, a celebration of all things rugged, untamed, and decidedly unpolished, tripping over its own boots because a bull’s name sounds vaguely like something offensive when shouted through a tinny speaker system. Rodeo officials have promised to “review the matter,” which I interpret as them spending several weeks and thousands of dollars to conclude what any schoolchild could share for free: sometimes words sound like other words.
The solution might not lie in forming a committee but rather in changing the bull’s name to something more phonetically distinct, like “Sir Reginald von Hoofenstomp.”
The Old Blog in the Desert 
Leave a comment