Ode to the Umlaut

I just recently returned from a visit to Non-Scarlett GF's residence in Germany. Everything was nice (except for the weather) and the old socialist-democratic system of governance is sputtering along. So, yay for them.

The visit did remind me how much I wish the English language had embraced the umlaut (Ä, Ö, and Ü) back in its formative days. As of now, the only real examples of umlaut usage in our collective mother tongue are "Motörhead" and "Crüe." This is a damn shame. Let us all embrace the double-dotted wonder that is the umlaut.

I must emphasize, however, that I am not advocating that we go apeshit with umlauts like the Finns. The Finns, bless their pseudo-nordic souls, don't know when to stop. Take this example from the Mäntsälä-lehti newspaper:

Näin totesivat luennoitsijat limnologi Juha Keto ja ympäristösihteeri Katariina Serenius Sälinkään kylätoimintaryhmän järjestämässä teemaillassa viime tiistaina.

Jesus H. Christ. Multiple flags on the play: excessive umlaut usage; absurdly long verbage with improper consonant-to-vowel ratio. Fifteen yard penalty, still second down.

Two Examples Of Why Warren Ellis Gets Paid To Write Things And I Do Not

Warren Ellis, formerly of diepunyhumans, is a funny, funny man. I cite two examples:

Example 1:

The story begins:

So I’m reading this argument against GM crops over here in Little Britain ...

And continues on:

So this thing says, "Don’t we want our food to have stories?"

First off, someone who examines their own turds for anything has no place talking to me about food. Let’s make that clear. People who make things out of wicker and weave their own underwear out of dog fur dyed with cabbage juice do not have a vote here.

He goes on to describe a number of the possible stories food might have and concludes:

I’ve got a food with a story for you. Soylent fucking Green. It’s got a story, a soundtrack and Charlton fucking Heston. Soylent Green is made out of people, and thank Christ for that because I bastard hate lentils. All the books say that people taste like pork.

Yeah, that’s the story I want to hear. Organically-reared hippie, humanely slaughtered while making wicker basket. Presented to you freshly washed of all weak-minded bullshit intended to annoy the living fuck out of fragile writers first thing on a Thursday morning.




The peoples of Great Britain and the United States, united in the Anglo-Saxonic tradition of hippie-hatred. Truly heartwarming.

Example 2:

A somewhat interesting essay about the unremarkable change of millenia and the similarities between modern-day America and Weimar Germany. Here is the special awesomeness from this particular piece:

And certainly we’re in a time where anger in art has largely gone away. This isn’t the cool detachment of post-modernism, so much as just a turning inward. The kind of stuttery lurching rise of emo over the last couple of years is a case in point: a total defanging of pretty much any working definition of punk in service of whining about how you’ve got no fucking girlfriend. “Emotional punk” = Crying Ugly Kid Music.

Mr. Ellis is also cool because he posts things like this



Rock Ayuss.


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