SarcMark ?

This past weekend a friend told me there is a new symbol designed to indicate sarcasm, so I looked it up.  I found an article in the Telegraph, a UK-based online article, called "Sarcasm punctuation mark aims to put an end to email confusion". As an occasional user of sarcasm myself, I found it interesting.

The Brits practically invented sarcasm and understand it like no one else! Their movies and TV shows are riddled with it - and are wonderfully hilarious most of the time. AbFab anyone?

These American's from Michigan who invented the SarcMark are making their trademarked punctuation mark available for download by you and I for a mere $1.99. Really. As Matthew Moore points out in his blog "Sarcasm punctuation mark? Who needs it ;-)", there are other ways that we have been indicating sarcasm quite successfully up till now. 

What was more fun to read were the reader comments to the the blog and the invention, such as:

Sarcasm and irony work best when the reader is left guessing.

A sarcasm punctuation mark would remove the sting from sarcasm and be self defeating.

We all knew the Yanks didn't understand sarcasm and the SarcMark just proves it – ironically (oh s** I dont have a mark for that)

Well, I for one am *dying* to download the new SarcMark for $1.99 ... NOT ... lol ... ;-)
What do you think?

Friends reunion weekend

Friends from London, Ontario came to visit us last weekend.  Friends we hadn't seen or talked to for 16 years!  We don't know why we didn't contact each other during all those years, especially when just prior to that we had met several times with London and Toronto visits and always had a great time.  

Then I guess kids came along for both of us, we moved - twice - and we just lost touch. Back in January of this year Arnie saw the obituary for Don's mom in the paper and decided to attend her funeral.  We were so touched that he came and so happy to be back in touch.  

We had fun making up for lost time this weekend!  In many ways it felt like it was just yesterday that we were all childless and camping at Turkey Point on Lake Erie, Don and Arnie had hair, and Mary Lou and I wore bikinis.  How times change.  :)

Canadian, Please

Cute video!  I found this in my alumni eNewsletter:

Andrew Gunadie, BA'08 (MIT)
Producer, Editor, Composer
Andrew Gunadie is a graduate from Western's collaborative MIT program with Fanshawe College.
He is a new media and web 2.0 enthusiast who contributed to Western's best student experience through CAISA Fashion Show and as a student ambassador with the Faculty of Information and Media Studies. In addition to his role as an independent producer on YouTube, Andrew has experience with a number of different production agencies and Rogers Cable Television. Andrew is known for his co-producer role of "Canadian, Please" garnering over one million hits on YouTube.

Check it out:  "Canadian, Please"