Pandemonium Medicine Show

Cocktail sauce, lemon, Tabasco, Tapatio, mignonette... all are commonly offered as accompaniments to raw oysters. I say phooey to them all. A good raw oyster is perfect just by itself. Well almost... a fine Sazerac cocktail and oysters are a great combination.

Tom Waits has always refused to have his music used in commercials. He has successfully sued those who have used his music without his authorization and also successfully sued companies who used sound-alike songs or singers. Reading about these lawsuits on Wikipedia a couple of years ago I felt that he was certainly within his rights to control how his music is used but he was perhaps a bit too hardline about restricting their use. Look what "Bombastic" did for Shaggy, etc. Having enjoyed Tom's music for more than 25 years I wish more people knew his music. Commercials seemed to me to be a fine way introduce people.

A couple of weeks ago I heard Tom Waits' distinctive voice over a commercial on Hulu and immediately drew my attention because it was entirely unexpected. The commercial is a PSA for Feeding America. I now understand why Tom has chosen not to dilute the effect he gives the commercial by also shilling for Pepsi and Chrysler.

In the deep dark past there was this one commercial for Purina though. I find his intonation hilarious.

You want to know how to frustrate a web accessibility architect? Suggest you are adding alt tags to your images for the SEO benefits rather than for accessibility. It's true that image alt tags do increase page search rankings and the resulting tags are useful for those using non-visual browsers, but wasn't making your pages accessible reason enough?

If that doesn't work you can suggest that you'll continue to use tables for formatting even after you convert to CSS or include multiple invisible iframes on every page.

A few months ago I was updating my Wikipedia user page after seeing a user box on someone else's user page that I wanted on my own user page. I opted to browse a bit and see if there were other boxes that I might also want to add. One category of user box I wished to add to my page was to indicate my language preferences. Though I live and work in the United States I've remained a devout Canadian speller and used other idioms of Canadian writing (garbage not trash, holiday not vacation, etc.). Confronted with the options for spelling preferences I found that there was no existing user box for "I use Canadian spellings". I didn't wish to use the "I prefer United Kingdom spelling" user box because I don't use UK spellings for many words. I could have originated a new "Canadian spellings" user box but another of the existing choices intrigued me:

This polyorthographic user box doesn't accurately describe how I try to write. I do prefer to write using Canadian spellings and idioms, but it does reflect how I read. I'm comfortable reading almost all modern styles of written English. I opted to add this user box to my Wikipedia user page rather than creating a new Canadian English user box. I didn't feel that it was entirely accurate but felt the distinction wasn't worth fussing over.

Since adding the user box I've actually continued to think about it and how I use language, strange as that may sound. I discovered that my feelings about using Canadian style orthography were more complicated that I had thought. For example, last year while working on the JXSE Programmers Guide 2.5 I made the conscious decision to use American spelling and grammar to be consistent with the previous edition and the other chapters written by other people. Reasonable enough. Also, after reading about International English, Basic English, E-Prime and the Simplified Spelling Society (all courtesy of the zany link boffins at reddit.com) I decided to follow some of the rules that these simplified grammars advocate for my email and forum communications whenever I suspected that the reader might not be a native English speaker. I believe that using English that is less idiomatic has possibly made my writing easier to understand. Since I can never remember all of the English grammar rules anyway I'm also choosing to write only in the narrower style of the rules that I do know.

I'm finding myself becoming increasingly comfortable with being a polyorthographic English writer and now believe that the user box will eventually accurately reflect my writing. I'm also taking more of an interest in other ways I can continue to improve my written English.

The Consumerist is linking today to the innovative and pleasantly refreshing Aviary Terms of Service page. Wow! Why can't they all be like that?

I still convinced that the terms could be even shorter and less legally dense. (legal density--good or bad--discuss amongst yourselves).