Monday, December 19, 2011

WELCOME TO THE SEVEN REALMS EARTHSIDE COMMUNICATIONS CENTER


Greetings Traveler, and welcome to the Seven Realms Earthside Communications Center (SRECC). Whether you've just arrived Earthside, or have been stranded here for a while, the SRECC will provide you with valuable information during your stay.

Access to the Golden Way is available in most metropolitan areas, and at several burned out rest stops along old US Route 66.

For the sake of uniformity, the SRECC uses Earthside English as its principal language. Plans are under consideration for mirror sites in Qpiad and High Sidhe, subject to funding availability and limitless temporal resources.

The SRECC will be updated continuously, beginning with the next update, and continuing thereafter whenever an update is available. All updates are retrospective in nature and may be considered concurrently, sequentially, or out of natural order.

The SRECC is not responsible for any temporal anomalies resulting from fluctuations in the Veil.

The next meeting of the Board of Directors will be open to the public at Djinnie's Bar and Grill on 9th St., starting promptly at 12:00 (that's half past anvil on your Godmother Clock) on the last vernal equinox.

Any questions may be directed to the Oracle at Delphi, or sent directly to Charlie Kenmore, Administrator at this Blog or charliekenmore@gmail.com

Thursday, December 15, 2011

FINISHING UNFINISHED BUSINESS BEFORE THE WORLD ENDS IN 2012

I don’t make New Year’s Resolutions. When I was a kid, I resolved never to make another resolution, and I’ve never broken it. That does not mean, however, that I do not appreciate the need to identify and act upon necessary changes in my life. With the world as we know it scheduled for demise in the coming year, there is one pressing matter that I would be remiss if I left it unaddressed. That matter, of course, is the re-popularization of the interrobang.

Say what!?

Precisely! As a child of the sixties, I can attest that there was more than duck and cover drills, sonic booms, the American Tribal Love-Rock Musical Hair, a moon landing and one of the greatest collapses in major league baseball history. The sixties marked the rise of the interrobang. Like a phoenix rising from its ashes, it is categorically time for the interrobang to rise once again.

For the benefit of those two or three of you who aren’t familiar with the interrobang (despite the redoubtable legacy of No Child Left Behind), prepare to be awestruck. In these endtimes, it may become harder and harder to discern when and whether to use an interjection, an interrogatory, or both when texting, blogging, emailing, or otherwise reducing thoughts to written form. The solution to this quandry, as you’ve undoubtedly surmised, is the interrobang.

The interrobang, by far the most exciting advance in punctuation since the cedilla (setting aside the gnaborretni or inverted interrobang for use in Spanish), is an ingenious combination of the exclamation point and the question mark. At once, one can express both wonder and incredulity. The value of this time and labor saving device will prove immeasurable as time grows short. Just imagine, your BFF in Los Angeles sends you a text message, “WTF!?! Big One just hi....” If BFF had used an interrobang, then there would have been enough time to finish the message:  WTF

Big One just hit!”

By now, I'm certain you understand the implications of failing to act quickly to resurrect this paragon of punctuation. As the final moments approach, hundreds of millions of messages will fly through the aether and aethernet. Socially responsible use of the interrobang will remove literally millions of bytes of data from this torrent of messages, thereby forestalling the inevitable crash of the net and all telecommunications networks for incalculable, but invaluable microseconds. Remember—the missive you save may be your own!