Dyspepsia

Here on Slate is a review of a new edition of Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451" as a graphic novel. You will probably find it interesting of itself, but I also thought it tied in to some of the things I said yesterday about reading versus watching.

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Here on Slate is a review of a new Pepsi advertising campaign. And here at the bottom of the page is the photo credit, which I have included as a graphic image because I suspect if I simply told you, you would not believe me:

In an article which contains the word "Pepsi" three times and sits below a picture of Pepsi bottles in a case labelled PEPSI-COLA, the photo credit spells the name of the product "Pepsie".

SOMEBODY TELL ME HOW THIS HAPPENED because I DO NOT UNDERSTAND. AT ALL.

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Here on Slate is a reprint of a most interesting article about jellyfish, which contains the following sentence:

Planning is not their forte.

Regarding yesterday's posting, an anonymous commenter had this to say:

I actually quite liked the movie- I built all 9 reels of it for our theatre, and screened it into the wee hours. Much better than I would've guessed, seeing as I don't really like much of Tarantino's repertoire.

I don't believe I've ever heard "Mores" as anything but monosyllabic, but I'll continue treating it like I do "forte": the wrong way, because I'll continue to be understood by all but the most pretentious of folks. Saying either the correct way will require explanations occasionally.

The movie could be good. I don't think Tarantino is a talentless hack, though I do think he has been seriously overrated pretty much from the beginning of his career, since he hasn't yet made a great movie. (I liked parts of "Kill Bill" and the first half of "Pulp Fiction", but "Death Proof" is simply terrible and "Reservoir Dogs" is just not as good as people think it is.)

"Mores", meaning "customs and conventions", is pronounced exactly as if it were the eels: "more-ays". I think that, unless the people around you use it a lot and always incorrectly, you probably ought to pronounce it in the correct manner, because it's still correct, and, I hope, still generally understood in that form.

"Forte", on the other hand, is correctly pronounced as a single syllable, just like "fort", but the battle for that word is lost, because it is, in my experience and to the best of my knowledge, invariably pronounced with two syllables, just as if it had an accent mark over the second vowel. It is probably time to admit that there is no turning back the clock on "forte", so you might as well say it as everyone else does so that you will be properly understood. My usual tactic is to simply avoid using the word altogether. I can do without it.