he world of professional spelling garnered national attention this week, as well as controversy, when under-age spelling wunderkind Anurag Kashyap went first in the National Spelling League draft to the Anaheim Syllables. Kashyap is the youngest wordsmith to ever skip college and high school to go straight to the pros.

Pro spelling has had to face criticism from those who claim the major leagues have gone after younger and younger wordsmiths ever since the formation of the National Spelling League in 1998. Detractors claim the NSL is luring away some of America's brightest young minds from academic careers that could help them in the non-spelling world.

Mere mortal Kashyap was selected from among 150 other stellar spellers for a lead position on California's Anaheim Syllables, a major contender in the Eastern division of national spellers. In previous drafts, students as young as 15 have skipped completion of high school and college to enter professional league spelling, but Kashyap, a "spelling monster," according to sports writers, will be foregoing high school and college in entirety for a 3-year $18 million contract.

"People raise hell when an athlete, or even a mathlete skip college to go pro," said Kashyap's coach, Oxford Associate Professor of Spelling Chip Bustero, "but these are Anurag's prime spelling years. He's only got another few years of language mastery before the memory starts to go. Every year he puts off going pro he not only loses that salary, but all the lucrative endorsement deals. Nike is thinking about going into notebook and paper production—Anurag's just the kind of brainiac they're looking for to promote those products. And we're already in talks with Bic and Pilot. Whoever's got the deeper pockets can lock in a deal now, before he really puts professional spelling on the map."

However, opponents among the living argue that word jockeys like Kashyap not only lose college opportunities and training for careers outside the spelling world, but other prospects, like being a part of the 2008 Olympics spelling team. Spelling Coach to the American Olympic team Ruben Fartstarter expressed worry about the future of Olympic spelling if other star Englishologists like Kashyap lose eligibility.

"We were beginning to make real headway in the 2004 Olympiad. Then Hattie Page and Yukio Konichi both go for top dollar to the Seattle Suffixes and the Pittsburgh Homonyms, respectively. We're losing top talent and the word nerds of tomorrow aren't even going to college teams anymore. We were ranked third to England and Australia last time, which means we're only beating countries that don't speak English. Can you imagine a few under-scoring amateurs getting up on a stage in front of the whole world and misspelling 'misspell'? We'll look quite the fools."

The potential scandal comes at the worst time for the new professional sport, following accusations over the last few months that some of the sport's most notable stars have been taking spelling-enhancing drugs. The damaging allegations came in the form of a book by 19-year-old retired San Francisco Palindromes speller Anita Watt, I Before E Except After Steroids. Also in the book are damning accusations of excessive alcohol use and well-known spellers taking cocaine, even during the 2004 Olympics, including harrowing descriptions of all-night "speed-spelling" matches.

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Hey commune folk. Stu here.

Thanks to a little bird who gave me the word I'm now officially up to speed on the whole situation. The Cubans, the whole acid rain deal, and the clandestine adventures of your friend and mine, Senior Swashbuckle. Some pretty wild shit if I do say so myself, and in case anyone's taking notes: I do. Now that I've got it all under control I feel comfortable sending you this. Yes! A human pancreas! Gross! No, but seriously, that was a joke, and if I really scared you then I think it's time to admit that you have absolutely no idea what a human pancreas really looks like. I think they have informational pamphlets down at the DMV that can help you with that. In actual actuality, I have sent you this column, at least in some loosey-goosey futuristic sense of the word "sent," you beamed it down or whatever from the intergalactic informational alcove where I had seen to it being stored. You know the score.

This is it, folks, the Stu Umbrage Show. What you see is what you get, and that includes more topless birds than the Tropicana and Charlie Sheen's house combined. So if you don't like it you can blame me, and also kiss my black ass while you're at it. On a side note, I was trying to get Diana Ross to be my column sidekick here, but it didn't work out because she had no idea who I was and also I use phrases like "kiss my black ass" far too often.

Sure, the idea of a sidekick for a humor column is a fairly revolutionary one, but I think it's solid. After all, I don't hear any of you laughing. Which may be some kind of technical issue we haven't resolved yet, but in the meantime I could use somebody to sit over here and laugh like I just pulled the tonsils out of the lead guy from Weezer when I type the punchlines. Carson made it work on the Tonight Show, which revealed the show's roots: him and McMahon sitting in Johnny's basement, smashed on Absolut and babbling incoherently about current events and Ed's supernaturally large goiter. But damnit, it worked. They didn't make an afterschool special about it, but it worked.

This has been a crazy year already, and I'm not even talking about those cannibals they found living in the walls at the White House. Those guys got a bad rap, you know what I'm talking about? It reminded me of the last few Public Enemy albums.

Anybody else out there realize that salsa is a food as well as a dance style? I've never been so embarrassed in my life; I always thought you had to be a bum to get kicked out of a Mexican restaurant. This country's going to hell and nobody's stopping for bathroom breaks, be advised.

I've often wondered what our medical profession would be like if cancer gave you really big breasts instead of just rotting out your organs and whatnot. Dollars to dodos says they'd be force-feeding skinny blonde broads asbestos in day spas all over L.A., and the doctors would all turn their attentions to curing whatever the hell is wrong with Pauly Shore. Mark my words, on the off chance something truly freaky happens and that situation actually comes up.

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Don't soil your couch or anything, but I've officially been banned from the Saturn dealership. Actually, technically I think I'm banned from all Saturn dealerships worldwide, but I don't believe for a second they're so organized I couldn't walk into a showroom in Iraq someplace with a fake beard and test out a car or make off with an armload of donuts if I wanted. At best I think the overseas dealerships have a vague description of me and some trademark sayings, but that shit's easy enough to fake. I've already got some hilarious platform shoes saved up and I've been itching to use that accent from Scarface for something for a while anyway, so I'd like to see those Iraqi bastards try to keep me out of one of their gay little toy cars.

Not that I was really sold on the idea of buying a Saturn, mind you. Where I'm from, that shit'll get you bitchslapped like you were carrying around a book. "Nice car, Oppenheimer." Right, like I need that noise. But the thing is, I was watching TV the other day, trying to find that channel with the temperature on it to see if it was cold outside, when I spied that ad about how Saturns are made out of some insane Klingon plastic where you can hit that shit with a golf club and the dent pops right out like superman's balls.

So right away the gears start turning and I'm thinking about the advantages to having a car made out of that stuff, gay little shitbox or not. Like what if that shit is bulletproof? Holy God would that be sweet. Then I could finally go to that Taco Bell on the bad side of town that has the bitchin' nachos without worrying about getting a Gunshot Bell Grande. Sure, I might catch some flak over the squaremobile every once in a while, but kiss my ass man, have you tried these nachos?

So I head on down to the Saturn dealership, and I'm not there for five minutes before the guy is getting all in my business about how you've got to be wearing shoes to test drive a car, like he was listening when I said "test" and then just tuned out and assumed that I added the "drive" part. As if I was going to waste my time driving the piece of shit, I already know it's a Saturn. Maybe he figured I was some hillrod who thought they had a bunch of Ferraris in the back or something, I don't know what his problem was.

But the guy's trouble from the start, and two minutes later he goes all psycho and starts yelling about how he's gonna call the cops, even though I kept explaining that they were going to tell him the same thing, that there's only one way to test if a car is bulletproof. Cops know about that kind of shit, that's why they're cops and not working at a Saturn dealership someplace. But he didn't want to hear about it; he was all hung up on "You shot my car! You shot my car!" so finally I had to agree to disagree with the dude and just slip out the back while he was looking up the number for 911.

Needless to say, the damn thing wasn't even bulletproof. And that was the last straw, really, because I can't think of any other reason people would even buy one of those things. Maybe they just assume from the commercial and can't borrow a gun to test it out. Or maybe Saturns work underwater or something crazy like that, maybe that's the angle and I just haven't seen that commercial yet.

If that turns out to be the case, I may have to brush up on my Tony Montana accent. Bricks out.

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