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Weathermen, Pi, and the Letter "Hey"
by Jason Roth
More Problems with TV Weathermen
I have a lot of problems with TV weathermen. That they're completely useless, they're idiots, they try to be quirky and amusing and fail miserably, and they're a waste of everyone's fucking time is only part of the problem.
These assholes also have such power and influence within the network news departments that they've convinced program managers it's a good thing to cut into my previously scheduled TV viewing. Even when there's an entire channel devoted to weather, multiple news channels that will tell you about it, and ten thousand websites about it, they still insist on giving me unwanted weather reports.
If there's an earthquake warning, fine, you can take thirty seconds to tell me to get underneath a doorway. (Frankly, I'd prefer you ran a message at the bottom of the screen.) But when there's a blizzard outside my window and snow has been falling for the last sixteen hours, you don't need to break in to tell me it's cold and snowy and to stay inside. I'm already inside, assholes. I'm watching the fucking television, and I can see the goddamn snowflakes. If I've been so engrossed with your shitty network television programming that my eyeballs never travelled the 30 degrees towards my window, guess what? I'll feel the snow on my bare feet when I open the door. It's not like you weathermen have tapped into some sixth sense. We human beings have the evolved innate ability to determine whether that cold, white shit falling down on our heads is snow or just nuclear fallout from the annihilation of the next major city.
And do me a favor. If it is nuclear fallout, can you wait until I hear the ruling on People's Court before you tell about it? If the world's about to end, I'd at least like to know whether the asshole with the pit bull had to pay the old lady for the varicose vein reconstruction surgery. Do you really want my last thought to be, as I'm starving, dying of radiation poisoning, and fighting off various looters for my last can of SpaghettiOs: "Those fucking weathermen. Is there any justice in the world?"
The King and Pi
My girlfriend has bet me and a friend one full night out drinking (for my friend and I) or one dinner at a nice restaurant (for her) that she can memorize pi to the 500th digit. I am expecting to collect. My only doubt comes from the fact that I've already observed her recite it to the 100th digit. (I lost that bet a few years ago.) She has two weeks to do the memorization, but we will be taking a trip to Bangkok before those two weeks begin. I will keep you posted.
The Letter "Hey"
The letter H is badly named. To be precise, it's badly pronounced. Where's the "h" sound? Ok, so it has a resemblance to the "h" part of the word "weigh". But you'd be an imbecile to spell H with the letters "eigh". And even if you did, you'd have to spell it "eighch". I think we can all agree that this would be blatantly retarded. The preferred phonetic spelling is "aitch". (Interestingly, "Authorities disagree about the history of the letter's pronunciation.") Thus, the travesty I am calling to your attention: there's no "h" in "H"! This is ridiculous.
I propose that kids would learn the letter "h" much more quickly if it were pronounced "Hey". And isn't the greatest benefit of letter pronunciation gained by kids who are learning them?
The letter U is a much better named letter than H. If the idiot who decided H's pronunciation had been in charge of U, we'd be calling the goddamn thing Ooch. Letters like J, T, and V are also good as is because it's easier to get the sharp consonant sounds with vowels after them. Other consonants which are especially well named, though for a different reason, include: F, L, M, N, R, and S. Putting the consonant sound at the end so it would be exaggerated was smart. How come F guy couldn't handle H? Come on, F guy, get your shit together.
Other letters that could make learning easier with new pronunciations:
- G - should be pronounced "gee" but with a hard G, like in "gaff"
- Q - should be pronounced "qua" so it sounds like it does in the 99.9% of the actual cases in which it's used
- U - Yes, "ooch" would have been bad, too, but "yoo" is also stupid since this pronunciation requires E. What's wrong with "uh"? Short and simple, and no consonants to get in the way.
- W - this cutesy "double u" shit is just plain stupid. Ok, genius, we get visual the similarity (which only works for the lowercase version, by the way), but is this childish identification of visual similarities really helpful to a kid learning what the fuck the letter actually stands for? "Wee" would have been better.
- Y - Why pick "why" when the pronunciation as in "yak" and "stupidly" are much more common? The letter "why" should be changed to "yee". Yes, it might be a bit tricky at first, but it has the virtue of containing two sounds which this letter can possess. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that if Y was pronounced "yee", it would be the single best pronounced letter in the alphabet.
The letter A is borderline. I'll let it pass since it's pronounced like it would be on its own in a sentence. But "ah" as in "fad" probably would have been an improvement. Same goes with I, that can pass, too.
I will gladly take care of rephoneticizing the Alphabet Song if anybody needs me to. But here are the good parts:
Hey Ay Jay Kay, El-Em-En-Oh Pee...
Uh, Vee, Wee, Ex, Yee, and Zee.
(Upon further consideration, the author feels that the alternative H pronunciation "haitch" would be preferable over "hey", so as to distinguish it from the letter A. The remainder of the essay may also be retracted at any time.)
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