Apparently, France is trying to send the semicolon the way of the dodo. This Guardian article offers both sides of the ancient punctuation debate. Read the whole article; it’s totally worth it.

Jeanette Winterson: PRO-semicolon

“I like them - they are a three-quarter beat to the half and full beats of commas and full stops. Prose has its own musicality, and the more notation the better. I like dashes, double-dashes, comashes and double comashes just as much. The colon is an umlaut waiting to jump; the colon dash is teasingly precipitous.”

Richard Hugo: ANTI-semicolon

“If you really want to hurt your parents, and you don’t have the nerve to be a homosexual, the least you can do is go into the arts. But do not use semicolons.”

Gertrude Stein: Could care less

“I use it. I’ve no feelings about it - it’s just there. People actually get worked up about that kind of shite, do they? I don’t fucking believe it. They should get a fucking life or a proper job. They’ve got too much time on their hands, to think about nonsense.”

*cough*

My question for France: Ok, so you don’t like it in sentences… whatever. But how do you expect The Internet to express itself properly with out ; ) ?

a minimalist environmental animation using only typographic characters. You don’t need sound to watch, in fact the soundtrack is misery-inducing, in fact in fact, you should listen to focus - hocus pocus instead.

Typographic Illustration animates typography with music… my favorite is the Baskerville Old Face animation (featuring Biggie Smalls):

I have, for reasons beyond my clearly limited understanding of the world*, happened upon a veritable cornucopia of meat-themed funninesses in the past month.

Happy Meat - local and natural AND it is THRILLED to be part of your meal. Credit goes to the lovely lauren for the link.

Meat Cuddlers: It is preferable, for those concerned with sanitation, to hug these, than to hug the ‘real’ thing.

Meat Typeface: every ounce of my being has been spent to try to prevent myself from typing the following: Learn your A, Beef, C’s…

the end.

* Some theories 1) the great Someone is letting me know S/He is AOK with humans-eating-meat and in fact, meat should be not only a source of physical sustenance but also a good source for humor.. 2) I am anemic and subconsciously drawn to internet-meat… 3) the meat-industry, under financial risk from rising vegetarianism and mad-cow/bird-flu/mercurial-fishes - fear, are funding funny-meat-endeavors to lessen meat’s threatening-ness.