Coming soon to a theater near you: Sara's War

I am happy to say that I won my personal war against at&t. It's a long and painful story which involves talking to 10+ at&t representatives including 2 supervisors in 4 or 5 different departments, including the Retention department (what is Retention? Think about it. It's customer retention. Last resort central. They could not help either, by the way). Maybe I'll tell it someday. Suffice it to say, I GOT WHAT I WANTED.

Lesson? Keep bothering them. Argue. Threaten to cancel. You will eventually come out on top.

Ha ha

Global warming: The newest religion

Do you ever feel squashed by post-modernism?

MLK, Jr. quote via The Irresistible Revolution

"To our most bitter opponents we say: Throw us in jail and we will still love you. Bomb our houses and threaten our children and we will still love you. Beat us and leave us half dead and we will still love you. But be ye assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer. One day we shall so appeal to your heart and conscience that we shall win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory."

That is a beautiful example of radical grace.That is the kind of grace that Jesus preached and continues to preach to this day.

By the way, the Simple Way recently experienced a huge fire in their neighborhood. Go to their website to see what happened, what they are doing about it, and what you can do to help.

www.thesimpleway.org

Funny word

"Separatrix"

What do you think it is?

Also known as: virgule, solidus, slash, diagonal, or stroke.

Who knew that something so seemingly simple could have so many names?

If you aren't reading this website every week, you should be.

I thought I was the only one who couldn't get no. 5 out of my head

This is really funny. I saw this on digg. It's the top 10 songs that people get stuck in their heads. I have had experience with 5, 2, 9 and, of course 1.


1. Other. Everyone has his or her own worst earworm.
2. Chili's "Baby Back Ribs" jingle.
3. "Who Let the Dogs Out"
4. "We Will Rock You"
5. Kit-Kat candy-bar jingle ("Gimme a Break ...")
6. "Mission Impossible" theme
7. "YMCA"
8. "Whoomp, There It Is"
9. "The Lion Sleeps Tonight"
10. "It's a Small World After All"

The other day I had "Low Rider" by WAR stuck in my head for some reason, and also that song from the flea medicine commercial with the cute puppy singing, "I ain't got bugs on me, I ain't got bugs on me...!" That puppy is so cute, isn't it? I like it at the end of the commercial when he starts walking kind of sideways.

This bugs me

A pet peeve of mine since I got back to Texas is that people call the pronunciation of Spanish by Spaniards a "lisp." You may or may not know this, but is Spain the correct pronunciation of the letter "z" and the soft "c" is a voiceless "th" sound like in "theater." Because Americans are used to hearing South American Spanish, which pronounces the "z," the soft "c," with the "s" sound, when they hear a Spaniard (or someone like me, who speaks Spanish with the Spaniard accent) it sounds to them as if they were lisping, and they call it so accordingly.

Then, you get this story about how one Spanish king had a lisp. So to make him feel better, all of the people around him began to speak as he did. And there you have it=why Spaniards lisp. This is all complete crapola.

Okay people. A lisp is a speech defect. It means that the person speaking with a lisp is not pronouncing words correctly. Like they are defective in some way.

This is the real story. The "th" sound was evident in Spain even before the Spanish travelled to the New World. The sound developed from the sounds associated with the cedilla (ç) and the "z." So the original pronunciation of the "z" and the soft "c" is as a voiceless "th."

However, in some areas of Andalucia they started pronouncing them as an "s." One of the articles that I read says that this might have been because of the strong the Mozarabic influence in the south. People from Seville and other places in Andalucia still speak like this today (some also still use "ustedes" instead of "vosotros" which is another difference in the use of the language).

Well, I bet most of you didn't know this, but many of the famous explorers and "conquistadores" from Spain were from Andalucia. As were many of the subsequent Spaniards that immigrated to the New World. They were the original "mispronouncers" of the the "z" and the soft "c." They removed themselves from their original population and the "sss" stuck.

So if we are to say that someone is mispronouncing, who would it be? I, for one, would have to say that no one is mispronouncing. I believe that language is alive and it evolves as cultures evolve. I also speak American English, which is different than British English. If I say that the British have a speech impediment because when they pronounce the "r" they open their mouths more, that would be stupid.

So please, stop saying that Spaniards have a lisp. It's insulting.