Wednesday, January 18, 2006

"Keep Husband Around" Campaign

It occurred to me one day that, from time to time, we all feel underappreciated. This can especially happen if there are tasks in a marriage that fall primarily on one spouse or the other (lawn, cleaning, etc.)

So, since this is the USA and there is an instant fix for every problem (no matter how trivial), I propose the "Keep Husband Around" campaign. Not propaganda per se, but rather a proper allocation of credit, these signs can be left wherever a task has been accomplished that otherwise might go unnoticed. Here is an example of the understated design.

Of course for every task there should be a specific sign. To wit:

Saturday, January 07, 2006

Mor on speling

I found this some time ago on a British language site. I think it's a poke at ze Germans trying to take over the EU. But it's a funny commentary on our spelling discussion.

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Having chosen English as the preferred language in the EEC, the European Parliament has commissioned a feasibility study in ways of improving efficiency in communications between Government departments.

European officials have often pointed out that English spelling is unnecessarily difficult; for example: cough, plough, rough, through and thorough. What is clearly needed is a phased programme of changes to iron out these anomalies. The programme would, of course, be administered by a committee staff at top level by participating nations.

In the first year, for example, the committee would suggest using 's' instead of the soft 'c'. Sertainly, sivil servants in all sities would resieve this news with joy. Then the hard 'c' could be replaced by 'k' sinse both letters are pronounsed alike. Not only would this klear up konfusion in the minds of klerikal workers, but typewriters kould be made with one less letter.

There would be growing enthusiasm when in the sekond year, it was anounsed that the troublesome 'ph' would henseforth be written 'f'. This would make words like 'fotograf' twenty per sent shorter in print.

In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reash the stage where more komplikated shanges are possible. Governments would enkourage the removal of double letters which have always been a deterent to akurate speling.

We would al agre that the horible mes of silent 'e's in the languag is disgrasful. Therefor we kould drop thes and kontinu to read and writ as though nothing had hapend. By this tim it would be four years sins the skem began and peopl would be reseptive to steps sutsh as replasing 'th' with 'z'. Perhaps zen ze finktion of 'w' kould be taken on by 'v', vitsh is, after al, half a 'w'. Shortly after zis, ze unesesary 'o' kould be dropd from words kontaining 'ou'. Similar arguments vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of letters.

Kontinuing zis proses yer after yer, ve vud eventuli have a reli sensibl riten styl. After tventi yers zer vud be no mor trubls, difikultis and evrivun vud fin it ezi tu understand ech ozer. Ze drems of the Guvernmnt vud finali have kum tru.

Wednesday, January 04, 2006

oops

I must admit this is one of "ours," the cover of the prayer booklet for Covenant Week of Prayer (observed January 8-14). Maybe one of our first prayer requests should be for the gift of proofreading.
The folks at the office of Church Growth and Evangelism apparently caught it sometime after printing the booklets, but before running the companion poster (featuring the same artwork but a more conventional spelling).
Our youth pastor, Mark Swanson, observed that "Shepard" is not flagged by the Microsoft spellchecker, thanks to American astronaut Allan Shephard (thus the revision at right). What a wag! Too bad he went to North Park; we could have made a Theologiggler out of someone with his mutation.