exclaim away!

Should we adopt a new punctuation aesthetic in these heady days of digital writing? Jacob Rubin says, "No!!!"

To risk sounding like an old schoolmarm: If everything is emphasized, nothing is. Pedestrian e-mails "kicked up a notch" or juiced up on bangers simply contribute to the noise.

But that doesn't mean the exclamation point should be tossed to the scrap heap. In fact, a stable of contemporary writers is waging an ingenious campaign to redeem the devalued punctuation mark. I'm thinking of people like Rebecca Curtis, Sam Lipsyte, and Arthur Bradford, who have all been influenced by Denis Johnson, a modern master of Io. No curmudgeon, Johnson sprinkles exclamation points at a rate that would dizzy Elmore Leonard and with such ingenuity that they do capture a true, and nearly religious, "wonder." Most critically, they attend moments of fragile feeling rather than, say, wild interconnectedness. Moments that might easily escape notice (especially if you have your nose in a phone), and moments of quiet, too. Take Johnson on a woman's scream after receiving news of her husband's death: "What a pair of lungs!" Or Johnson on an MS patient in a hospital: "No more pretending for him!" Or Johnson on pink baby rabbits: "Little feet! Eyelids! Even whiskers!" That's better than any conference I've been to.

What? No love for Tom Wolfe?!

Great Wall Motor Company

If you're going to publish a website in English, shouldn't you have an English speaker vet the site?

Hover CUV incorporates the features of passenger car, SUV and station wagon, and meets the desire of urban appealing for off-road.... Incorporating the features of commercial vehicle and off-road, Hover CUV owns strong traffic ability.

(It will also keep you from manufacturing a truck called the Socool: "First class technology and omnipotent equipment redefine the concept 'Pickup' and bring consumer more care.")

of all the disclaimers

Tax titan H&R Block, not wanting to dash any hopes, warns us that the past tense declarative statement "I got people" is "not an offer of employment."

Imagine the lawyerly hypothetical that conjured up the disclaimer. Joe / Josephine Net Surfer sees the ad, and thinks, If she says she 'got people,' then maybe she's looking for more. Hey, I'm people, and I could use a job. Also, I am the world's only functionally illiterate accountant.

For further clarity, I suggest that H&R Block add the following disclaimers.

*Not an endorsement of Mafia tactics
*Not a joke
*Not a recipe for a lip-smacking bouillabaisse
*Not a guarantee of dream fulfillment
*Ceci n'est pas une pipe.

a morbid question

Which waxes more per annum: lightning strikes, or copper theft electrocutions?

[via Obscure Store]

outlawing "murderabilia?"

No matter what you think about banning inmates' sales of their possessions to collectors and freaks, you have to agree that the word "murderabilia" just doesn't have the right ring to it.

[via Obscure Store]

the questions just keep on comin'

How appropriate: on PZ's 50th, one of the most popular posts on this blog turns fifty questions old. Oh, and what is silent turnip, anyway?

a little more outside the box

British psychics couldn't find Osama bin Laden. No cause for dismay, though:

"I don't think this was a waste of public money. Many people will say so, but I think it is marvellous that the Government is prepared to think outside the box. And this is as outside the box as it gets."

No it isn't.

In accordance with this blog's tradition of envelope-pushing, I offer the following outside-the-box solutions the British government could have considered in tandem.

1. Training capuchin monkeys to recognize bin Laden; wiring them with GPS transmitters and releasing them into the Afghan mountains.

2. Announcing that Osama has won the lotto for over $250 million, and if he would please come to the nearest office to collect remuneration.

3. Holding auditions for "Cabaret," OBL's favorite musical, if the debris discovered in Tora Bora caves gives any indication.

4. Killing Chuck Norris, and then calling upon his disembodied spirit to roam the hills of Afghanistan until OBL is found.

5. Having all adult males in Britain surgically made to look just like OBL, so his forces couldn't figure out who the real leader was, thus quitting in frustration.

I'm sure readers can suggest their own outside-the-box scenarios, thus proving yet another governmental "failure of imagination" in the war on terror.


[link via Kerry Howley]

how to pronounce "decorabilia"

I wasn't aware that my blog name is difficult to pronounce correctly, but apparently confusion exists.

“Deck-urabilia” or “Day-core-abilia”? I don’t know the correct way to type out the phonics, but you get the point. Can we get a ruling on this?

We certainly can.

Etymologically, the word is a portmanteau, as I explained when starting out.

The title: a word I've coined (at least, I think it's original to me--but one never knows, with memes). You know those chain restaurants--Red Robin, Chili's, Applebee's, whatever--that plaster their walls with fake old-timey posters, photos, and knickknacks? Decorative memorabilia. Decorabilia.

As such, it should be pronounced "deh-cor-a-bil-ee-uh," or, as an acceptable variant, "deh-cor-a-bil-yuh."

(As it turns out, the word wasn't original to me, even though I'd never heard of its use before I "invented" it. No attorneys have sent threatening letters, so it's my title and I'll use it in perpetuity.)

Pronounce in peace.

Update: A cousin, who will not be named unless self-identified, sends along these helpful phonetic renderings. (Helpful if you're an amateur linguist.)

ˌdɛkɔrəˈbɪliə

ˌdɛkɔrəˈbɪljə

There. No excuses.

preservation and transposition

We're pulling out of the Albertsons parking lot when I notice a vanity plate attached to a Chevy Suburban that reads "CRE8MEM." "Through scrapbooking," says the license plate holder. How clever.

Except when I first see it, I think it says "CREM8EM," which is just a little different.

numbers to surprise and delight

One of the benefits of a subscription to The Economist is its annual "Pocket World in Figures," a nifty compendium of economic and demographic statistics the globe over.

For instance, though the United States is by far the global leader in consumption, it's not first in nitrogen emissions (9th) or sulfur dioxide emissions (16th), and isn't in the top twenty for threatened mammal species. Also, everyone who carps about SUVs and overcrowded highways had better look at this list:

Number of Cars Per 1000 People
1. Lebanon 732
2. New Zealand 613
3. Brunei 576
Luxembourg 576
5. Iceland 561
6. Canada 559
7. Italy 542
8. Germany 516
9. Switzerland 507
10. Malta 505
11. Austria 494
12. France 491
13. Australia 488
14. United States 481

Considering that about half of the U.S.'s cars currently are rusting in a yard in Oakville, Washington, and that the U.S. also ranks 14th in vehicles per kilometer of populated land and 17th in overall road use, perhaps we should direct our vehicular wrath elsewhere. Like at Lebanon.

no respect

Someone recently found my blog by searching on Google.bs. What does Google have against the Bahamas?

BC sucks, part CXIV

Usually I let the Comics Curmudgeon take care of BC's overwhelming suckitude, but since he hasn't, I will.

Lazy two-panel setup. Lame joke. And the word that is so egregiously misspelled, I had to ask someone else to read it just to make sure I wasn't crazy.

"STERIODS."

Saturday randomness

Dueling edits dog Wikipedia's Cuba entry
...the Times' tough-to-scan headline from a couple days ago, initially incomprehensible because the first three words can either be nouns, verbs, or adjectives depending on the context.

Another 'burg considers banning smoking in city parks. How far are we from total prohibition?

The Kentucky Derby is profoundly weird. The hats, the incessant parading, the expensive drinks, and worst of all, the post-race interview-at-a-trot. Some white-haired commentator was babbling on about how the Derby field was the "cream of the crop." He appeared to have shampooed that morning with the cream of the crop.

I will not watch next year.

zen and the art of wasting time

Today's daily zen ponderance:

Sitting on this frosty seat,
No further dream of fame.
The forest, the mountain follow their ancient ways,
And through the long spring day,
Not even the shadow of a bird.

- Reizan (-1411)

We are free to speculate how the meditation might have changed if Reizan had the joyful experience of a toasty toilet. Speculate, indeed...

Sitting on this toasty seat,
A daydream of physics.
The water courses clockwise, following the path of fate,
Immune to the long reach
Of Coriolis.

Incidentally, for a cheap and easy form of meditation, watch a baseball game on ESPN's Gamecast (now in a fresh Beta version!). The plodding pace teaches patience. The soothing colors reunite the soul with nature. Concentrate on the twinkling yellow baserunners.

Breathe.

worst ever?

They've had some groaners in the past, but this one... ay me.

yet again, no comment

"Moongazing reveals the chaotic world of Uranus."

riding the Narnian wave

Because Aslan knows what's best for your finances.

somebody call the feds

Starbucks' fourth quarter sales are up 8% over last year's. But their earnings are up 14%.

14% is 75% greater than 8%.

Gouging bastards!

self-referential maxim violation

[picture deleted, thus joke lost]

In the spirit of The Comics Curmudgeon, I just have to ask: isn't a comic strip an essentially visual medium?

yes it is, and no it isn't

They have an award show for doublethink, right?