Well, I've been having all sorts of fun tonight trying to upgrade the black box that produces this journal. After a series of errors and botched efforts, I think the new Movable Type 3.33 is finally running smoothly. The latest installment has fancy new features like tags and widgets, but I haven't had much time to sit and fiddle with them. So, if anything breaks in the next few days, you'll know why.
On an unrelated note, Sunday was National Punctuation Day. I would've never known if the Language Log hadn't mentioned it.
When I first heard about it, three people immediately came to mind...- Lynne Truss. She wrote Eats, Shoots & Leaves, a book that champions proper punctuation.
- Victor Borge and his phonetic punctuation. He would assign unique sounds to common punctuation marks and then read a brief passage from a story to show the audience how his system worked. The excerpt, no matter how serious, always turned out sounding comical. It's a lot funnier if you see it for yourself (it's a subdued version, but still illustrative). When I saw him perform it live at the Flint Center in Cupertino many years ago, I thought it was one of the funniest (and most memorable) parts of the show. His inflationary language sketch was also hilarious.
- Allan Sherman. I remember listening to my grandfather's old comedy albums. On one of them, Sherman (the Weird Al of the 1960s) sang "Night and Day (with Punctuation Marks)", a parody of the Cole Porter classic. It wasn't as funny as "Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah (A Letter from Camp)", but it was mildly amusing.
