Subway Ad Semi-Colon Rocks News Media

Funny article in the New York Times yesterday and today (updated with an entertaining correction). My favorite parts (separated in the original by a couple of paragraphs):

Americans, in particular, prefer shorter sentences without, as style books advise, that distinct division between statements that are closely related but require a separation more prolonged than a conjunction and more emphatic than a comma.
...
One of the school system’s most notorious graduates, David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam serial killer who taunted police and the press with rambling handwritten notes, was, as the columnist Jimmy Breslin wrote, the only murderer he ever encountered who could wield a semicolon just as well as a revolver. (Mr. Berkowitz, by the way, is now serving an even longer sentence.)

An even longer sentence. Heh. The Times writer had fun writing that, I bet.

"Pogo" Speaks

Thanks to Walt Kelly, a goodie from days gone by which is almost painfully relevant now:

Now is the time for all good men to come to.

I almost want to get this tattooed on my forehead.

Deep Thought

Jack Handey was an occasional commentator on "Saturday Night Live" throughout the '90s -- if "commentator" isn't too solemn a word for what he did there. His routine has been enshrined any number of places (books, greeting cards, various famous-quotations Web sites) as "Deep Thoughts." A quote-a-day feed that I subscribe to just served up this gem, from the broadcast of December 6, 1997:

When he was a little boy, he had always wanted to be an acrobat. It looked like so much fun, spinning through the air, flipping, landing on other people's shoulders. Little did he know that when he finally did become an acrobat, it would seem so boring. Years later, after he finally quit, he found out he hadn't been working as an acrobat after all. He had just been a street weirdo.

I don't know why I find that so funny. Maybe because there's a lesson there for wannabes of all kinds -- including wannabe writers. (Ouch.)