Stay home, save links

Lynne Murphy wrote about the original UK slogan coronavirus slogan—“Stay at home/Protect the NHS/Save lives”—and its replacement (“Stay alert”), which was “mocked relentlessly on UK social media within a day of its announcement.” My own thoughts went immediately to an old joke, which I see is still alive and well.

Via Zazzle

 

Because Lynne’s a linguist, she went deep on some interesting points of grammar. I hadn’t realized, for example, that at-less “Stay home” marks you as a speaker of American English.

It appears some of you idiots can’t follow a simple instruction so here’s THE NEW AND MUCH CLEARER Government COVID Slogan generator pic.twitter.com/t6tXmfp75E

— Olaf Falafel (@OFalafel) May 11, 2020

I’m a fan of this balanced two-part slogan from PassItOn.com: “Stay apart. Pull together.” Their other pandemic-related billboards—“First In. Second to None”; “Nursing a Country Back to Health”—are good, too.

 

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My American friend Diana Howard wrote about her experience of COVID-19 “confinement” in Aix-en-Provence, France, where she has lived for several years. Diana and I met when she was a graphic designer; we worked on a number of projects together. She’s now a full-time artist, and the accompanying illustrations are charming. 

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And speaking of France (h/t Jesse Sheidlower):

BREAKING NEWS: The Académie Française, the French language police, have just announced that while Covid19 *could* be a masculine word because of “le virus” that it’s preferable to be feminine because of “la maladie.” https://t.co/rsYWY97VEJ

— Dr. Jen Schradie (@schradie) May 8, 2020

 

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Erin Griffith interviewed me for a New York Times article about all those Zoom-y business names. And then she … zoomed away with it. It’s hilarious, and just the teensiest bit deranged. (Check out the URL.)

I wrote a few weeks ago about ten of those Zoom names.

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And speaking of me, my latest story for Medium is about my adventures in picking up trash during the pandemic. Medium says it’s a four-minute read, but you can stretch it out to six if you pace yourself.

 

Comments

[Duchesse]

Be a Lert takes me back, to Imagine Whirled Peas and the footed fish with "Darwin" inside its outline. Is it me or has this kind of whimsy vanished now that everything flashes by as a meme? One thing you can say for bumperstickers is that they lasted for years.