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HAVE A FEW, YOU WON'T NOTICE

A SUMMARY OF VIEWS, COMMENTARY AND SOMETIMES COMEDY

By Daniel Altman

This Dartboard is devoted to the continuing preservation of the English language, as spoken and written correctly.

In the annals of beer history, so close to the hearts of numerous Harvadarians no brand has presented such danger to the language as Coors' Artic Ice. Yes, back in grade school our teachers righteously prodded us--in those interminable "map skills" classes--to put the "c" in "Arctic." But here, a nationally distributed consumer product dares to perpetuate the idea that "Artic" means something cold, frigid and perhaps highly alcoholic.

The implications for modern English are staggering. Must we soon endure a deluge of "I told you so's" from self-righteous pronouncers of such linguistic afterbirths as "Artic" and its sibiling "anticlimatic," which heretofore appeared to indicate an opposition to weather? Will this plague stop with the letter "c", or will it extend to other notorious instances of mis-speech such as "important" (often uttered with an aspirated "a")?

We at Dartboard hope never to see the day when a bunch of bloated yet somehow enlightened people sit around a bar, drinking Coors' Artic Ice and spouting about Shakespeare: "Yes, that scene with Henry in the camp was certainly important, but I found the battle of Avignon a bit anticlimatic afterwards."

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