Suggestive...

Maybe my mind is in the gutter...


But doesn't Swedish Touches sound like the title to a 70s stag film? Same thing could be said for Delectably Danish. 

However, Norwegian Touches just sounds wrong. Maybe it was the years of Prairie Home Companion, but it evokes disturbing images of a drunk Garrison Keillor doing something inappropriate. 

Perhaps that is why other parts of Scandinavia aren't featured as places of adult film industry. The Faroe Islands doesn't sound sexy. And Finn Touches sounds like it crosses the realm of decency all together by involving sea creatures. 

Forgotten texts

The following index cards contain the forgotten alphabet of George Bernard Shaw. While Shaw was primarily known as a playwrite and author, he was also a linguist. One of his favorite commentaries was how ridiculous the English language was, at least in its written form. While other phonetic scripts have been created, Shaw put out an open challenge to the public for a new written alphabet to replace the Phonecian alphabet we have become accostumed to. 

The following are examples of end result of the challenge. One of his plays, Androcles and the Lion, was published both in traditional English text and in the new alphabet.

 

Needless to say, the Shavian language never quite took off. Some people still grasp onto it like those who try to speak Esperanto. 
 

If it had succeeded, who knows what would have come of our typewriters and keyboards? But it didn't. So there. Now we are left with odd curiousities of forgotten scripts and texts.

Boldly...

A number of people have asked me whether I have seen the recent Star Trek movie and of course I tell them, "No." But I do like to let them know that I have read the following book by Mr. Leonard Nimoy:



Why should I watch Mr. Nimoy dress up as some alien, when I can spend the evening at home reading a book length ballad about the search for meaning in earthly existence?


If I went to see the movie, I would have spent ten dollars or something only to see a few minutes of Mr. Nimoy in some weird time paradox, that inevitably some Trekkie will get bent out of shape about. But I spent two dollars for this book, and I can voyage beyond any star field and galaxy with this book.



Why? Because reading is cool!


Actually...this book is pretty much tripe. Yet, some people love tripe and other offal. I don't quite know if I am one of those people. This orange book is what it is--a book length piece of sometimes rhyming literature written by a celebrity. I still would take it over most any pop-autobiography out on the market today.

Language Lessons

In my professional life, I share an office with a Taiwanese immigrant who recently gained her citizenship. Often, we have miscommunications. She interprets everything I say literally. And almost all cultural idioms are lost on her at this point in time. Figures of speech are orators on a podium or words on a value chart. It makes things, well, a pain in the ass.


My office mate has been in the United States for almost fifteen years and learned English while she was growing up. Although she is quite fluent, we sometime struggle with some of the nuances of my native tongue. But of course, English is not American...and American is not Uh-Merican...and there ain't no "Uh in Merica."


So every once in a while I have decided to help me office mate in learning more about being 'Merican.


For example, I figured I would post this simple daily reminder on our door. That way she remembers every time she enters and leaves the office that...






This is a pretty big lesson to learn at first. Imagine early man touching the Monolith in 2001: A Space Odessy--It is that glorious, but different.

Also my office mate is quite frugal, which is a wonderful trait to have in ever-environmental oregon, but there is a point of obsession, where I have to tell her, "Just throw the damned paperclip away. It is not going to be recycled!"

My office mate will almost always question, "Why? But I try to recycle everything..."

And I always have to retort, "But you're 'Merican now! And # won ain't # too!"

There are other key 'Merican phrases I am trying to teach her. These consist of the short proto-troglodytic yokelisms of Yup, Git r done, and Jus' move it a pecker hair. Fortunately, she has already mastered the "Well No Shit..." which is both a great interrogative and exclamatory statement.

This linguistic experiment will probably continue for many months. We have to work on accent issues, and the semantics of humor. Since I already believe that irony died along with God, Nietzsche, and Alanis Morisette's portrayal of divinity in Dogma, I know that I cannot instill any of that into her to even fathom what I am trying to create.

I just believe that Shaw, Quine, and Chomski would be proud...in some sick, sick way.

A favorite Comic Story: Crisis One Million

Every once in a while I shall post a favorite piece of ephemera...in this instance, it shall be a comic few pages from one of my all time favorite comic book stories written by Grant Morrison. 

The following pages are taken from DC One Million 80-Page Giant #1,000,000, which was an anthology book as part of a cross-over event where the major heroes of the DC universe were transported into the future to the 853rd Century, when the 1,000,000th issue of many titles would be published (kind of genius if you think about the timing). 

Anyway, the story is kind of odd, complicated, and filled with lots and lots of super heroics, villainy, time paradoxes, double-crosses, and redemption tales. Kind of like the bible...but with more colors than Joseph's technicolor dream-coat and less singing. 

So with respect to the writers, artists, and publishers, these images are property of DC Comics: 

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The Editors of this publication will be at the Portland Zine Symposium which is a wonderful chance to see what is happening in the small press world. And the sub-small-press world.