One of these days you're going to say to yourself, "Gosh, I sure wish I could turn some Web text upside down!" And then you'll be glad I told you about Flip. Or, if you prefer:
˙dılɟ ʇnoqɐ noʎ ploʇ ı pɐlƃ ǝq ll,noʎ uǝɥʇ puɐ
From the wonderful folks at Reverse Fad Productions, who also make a GPA calculator (too late for me) and something called SearchToHTML that I'm going to test as soon as I have a little free time.
(Via Errata.)
Apologies to any readers who may have wondered about my absence. My father died last week, and I'm just now returning to my normal schedule. Expect new posts beginning tomorrow (Friday).
OK, this has nothing to do with naming, writing, or branding. But it does have to do with language, and besides I just can't resist sharing it.
Turns out there's a Finnish word, valituskuoro--literally, "complaints choir"--that describes a situation in which a lot of people are complaining simultaneously. One winter day a couple of artists in Helsinki decided to turn the expression into an actual Complaints Choir with lyrics and music. One thing led to another, and to date some 15 or 16 similar choirs have organized around the world, from Juneau to Jerusalem.
What do Complaints Choirs complain about? The fundamental things, mostly: deadlines, dead-end jobs, high prices, weak beer. And there are some idiosyncratic kvetches: For example, a large and spirited Budapest choir complains, to an infectious beat, that "my clothes look better on others."
You can read about Complaints Choirs, including how to organize your own, on this web site. And if you're in Chicago today (Sunday), watch for several surprise performances around the city, and one non-surprise performance at about 4:15 p.m. at the Cloud Gate in Millennium Park.
Watch a worldwide Complaints Choir compilation video.
Hat tip to Rob Walker of Murketing.
In the beginning, which is to say January 2007, there was I Can Has Cheezburger, a special place for cuuute kitty photos with absurdist, oddly spelled, strangely syntaxed captions. The captioned photos, also called image macros, became known as LOLcats, a blend of the "laughing out loud" acronym and "cats."
In April, Anil Dash (vice president of Six Apart, which begat TypePad, which begat this blog and many others) acknowledged and analyzed the phenomenon in his post Cats Can Has Grammar. Dash identified three primary formulas in LOLcats syntax:
Infinite variations indeed!
Here, for example, we have "Geoffrey Chaucer's" LOLPilgrims, a.k.a. I Can Hath Cheezburger, a witty mashup forsooth:
The LOLwalrus has a fetishistic attachment to a bucket.
Jezebel leapt gracefully into the act with LOLVogue (and here, too)--actual fashion photos with LOLcats-type captions. ("We're in ur magazeen, puttin werds on your mod-uls.") Which in turn spawned French LOLVogue. You'll have to link over to Jezebel to see the very clever, fashion-insidery images; they're in Bitmap format, which TypePad doesn't support. (Are you reading this, Mr. Dash?)
Mark Liberman at Language Log reported on the geeky LOLbrarians and the über-geeky LOLcode, or Feline-Oriented Programming.
LOLSecretz is a mashup of LOLCats and PostSecret (to which people send anonymous revelatory postcards). I love this one:
(Hat tip to Verbatim.)
Recently we experienced a fleeting visitation from the aristocrats of LOLcats: Realisticats, who use "proper grammar" and tell brutal truths, e.g.:
And now, lo, we have been blessed with The Holiez Bibul, a translation-in-progress of Old and New Testaments into kitty pidgin. Jump into the collaboration if you're feeling up to the task. For inspiration, here are the opening verses of Job 1 (all spelling and syntax intentional and authentic):
1. In teh land of Uz wuz a man calded Job. Teh man was goodz, afraid of teh Ceiling Cat and evilz.
2. Teh man hadz seven sunz and tree doters,
3. And lots of sheepz and camlez and rinoceruseses and servnts, srsly.
4. His sunz tok turns mading cookies, and they all eated them.
5. And Job wuz liek "Oh noes! Wut if cookies were sin? Gota prey, just in cased."
My "official" web site, Wordworking.com, has just relaunched with new navigation, new projects, and a new About Me page, which now includes a Not About Me section.
Many thanks to Lynn Bell at Monroe Street Studios, who designed and programmed the site.
This blog got slammed with Italian pornospam over the weekend, so for the time being I'm going to moderate comments. Better than the alternative, I think.
Nothing to do with names, brands, writing, or words: just a rainy-Saturday diversion.
While you're waiting for Ryanair to start offering cheap flights between the United States and Europe--as cheap as 10 euros, or $13.50, from New York to London--here's an alternative strategy:
1. Go to Google Maps.
2. Select "Get Directions."
3. Type "New York, NY" in the first field.
4. Type "London" in the second field.
5. Click "Get Directions."
6. Be sure to follow step #23.
Hat tip to fellow Dolphin Club member Shane.
I got an email today from Pam at Escape from Cubicle Nation, inviting me to play a little blogging game called "Five Things You May Not Know About Me." The game is a sort of Internet chain letter, a meme that spreads semi-virally, semi-intentionally. Now, one of the things you may not know about me (but which I'm not going to include in the Five) is that I have never, ever participated in a chain letter, even when great riches were promised or catastrophic misfortune threatened. But "Five Things" seemed more playful than a conventional chain letter, and besides it involves original writing rather than recycling someone else's lame prose. So when Pam posted her own Five Things, and then invited me to join the game, I told her to count me in. I can't compete with Pam's tale of the green Hornet and the ambassador from the Maldives, but who mentioned competition? Not I.
Five Things You May Not Know About Me
1. When I was four years old, I was on Romper Room (Los Angeles edition) for a week. I can still sing all the lyrics to "Bend and Stretch, Reach for the Stars."
2. The summer after I graduated from high school, I worked as a clerk-typist for the L.A. Department of Water and Power. Eight hours a day, five days a week, everyone in the office did nothing but type rows and columns of numbers. (This was before desktop computing.) Every day, someone broke down sobbing from the sheer misery of it all. I think this may have something to do with my choice of self-employment for most of my subsequent career.
3. I am the author of Everything You Must Know About Tampons, which was published during the big toxic shock syndrome scare of the early 1980s. (For a while I had quite a rep as the menstruation maven.) I hosted a publication party and asked my guests to bring tampon art. My favorite offering was the giant "tampiñata" filled with candy.
4. I don't eat mammals--nothing political or philosophical about it, just never liked meat--but if I find myself in a Peruvian restaurant, I cannot resist ordering the anticuchos, which are skewered slices of beef heart. They're so good they're almost ... vegetative.
5. For seventeen years I swam almost daily on a masters swim team, and I still can't do a flip turn.
Okay, for this to work I need to find five victims willing participants. Over to you, Mary, Sile, Laurie, Matthew, and Sylvia: tell us five interesting things about yourself that your readers don't know. (I was going to tag Mike at Own Your Brand!, but someone else got to him first, darn it. Go read his post anyway. And then read Andy Nulman's.)
