i could dance in a musical, i swear

I took Metro to work this morning (for the first time since my interview, which I believe was December 6, 2006), and omfg y'all, I am so happy. It's a little eerie. I knew conceptually that coming in on the train would be better than driving, just because someone else would be in charge and I could knit/read/zone out and not have to pay attention to the road; but I was unprepared for how much happier it would make me. (And in the couple of weeks I've been at the new place, the drive hasn't even been that frustrating.) I'm walking on air. (I'm probably the only person in town thinking Oh, WMATA, how I've missed you!, but there you go.)

memo

to: Al Trautwig
from: Fox (and thinking people everywhere, come to that)
re: orthography

Dear Al:

I'm going to give you a break because I'm sure you didn't write your own copy.  But listen:  We have only twenty-six characters in English with which to make ourselves understood.  The Chinese communicate with more than fifty thousand, though only a few thousand are in everyday use.  This is technically true, except that our characters are called letters, and the Chinese ones are called words*, and we have tens of thousands of those as well.

Get back to us when you've counted how many kinds of brushstroke there are.  I bet you it's not more than a few dozen.

signed,
no, I don't read Chinese, but come on


*characters and radicals, I know, it's not just one character = one word, but the voice-over was still wrong.  i'm just sayin.