This internet thing, Karl

Attachments, that is-- attachments to emails, are so chic. Attachments are like lace envelopes. Heaven forbid one would just throw an image or some writing into the body of an email, how awfully common - lumping it on in there.

There is nothing like a physical letter (some day I would like to get a letter in a lace envelope). I love how tactile they are, how you can see the person slaving for hours over every letter. It’s like blood, ink. Letters are love labourers.

Emails lack this tactility. You just whizz one off and one whizzes back. It makes the world one big spiderweb. And if there is one thing that this spiderweb has spawned, it’s an awful use of language. Where have these youths put all their vowels? How can they not love their vowels? Have they not had enough alphabet soup? The whole business makes them sound so awkward and haphazard, which I suppose is rather fitting -- considering.

Dear Readers,

I think the letter O should be used more. E is highly overrated. O is the most beautiful letter in the entirety of the English language. All that space in the centre means you can put so much into it – O, Diana! In a greek tragedy, or a champagne accident. O. Disappointment. O. Revelation. O. Loss. O. Lust. We could all speak only in O’s, swimming around like gold fish.

I have never learnt Finnish but despite the apparent similarities in the lack of vowel use, I strongly suspect that the Fins just hide their vowels. Like dragons. All their vowels will be hidden in mountains across the country. Clever, the Fins.

The French are clever, too. And they like their vowels. They like them well enough to give them couture to wear when they sound different. Everyone sounds different with a couture hat on. Perhaps I will talk to Treacy about making hats Acute, Grave and Circumflex. Acute will be rose pink (the Canadians will buy them up, aye?). Grave will be grey and Circumflex – well, I will talk to Phillip.

The Brits have always had this class-related love of the French language. I say love, but it has probably just been bore into them since boarding school. It’s a status thing. I am of the impression that the Brits – the British, “Brits” sounds like smut – have this secretly widespread belief that by learning the French language they are somehow Conquering it, like it is a Colony. Like its vowels will be somehow Enslaved to the British – which I guess they are, most of the time, with the accents that are produced.

Secretly, though, the French are pleased to have tricked the British into speaking their language. They are clever, see, and this is all they ever really wanted in the first place.

I do so admire the French.

My word my thoughts are all over the place today.