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New York Governor Eliot Spitzer announced his resignation from office today, stating that he was stepping down so that he could spend more time “with the women in his life.” Spitzer had delayed his resignation as he was trying to finish up some last minute legislation, apparently involving legalizing prostitution.

Upon his return to the private sector, Governor Spitzer will become the new spokesman for Trojan condoms. The new commercial will feature him saying “My call girls always demand I use Trojan brand condoms, because I really want the sex. Shouldn’t yours?”

I’ve got a number of friends for whom English is not their first language. I found this little gem of a poem, and being a lazy sod, instead of emailing it to them, I’ll just post it here.

Hints on pronunciation for foreigners
By T.S.W. (slightly updated)I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough
Others may stumble but not you,
On hiccough, thorough, laugh and through.
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps?

Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird.
And dead: it’s said like bed, not bead -
For goodness’ sake don’t call it “deed”!
Watch out for meat and great and threat
(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt.)

A moth is not a moth in mother
Nor both in bother, broth in brother,
And here is not a match for there
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear,
And then there’s dose and rose and lose -
Just look them up - and goose and choose,
And cork and work and card and ward,
And font and front and word and sword,
And do and go and thwart and cart
Come, come, I’ve barely made a start!
A dreadful language? Man alive!
I’d mastered it when I was five!

While it’s good fun to mock pronunciation, let’s not forget the challenge of spelling too. I dedicate this one to my lovely proofreader and patient copy editor Conny , who never fails to catch what the spell checker thinks is just dandy.

Eye halve a spelling checker
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques for my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it to say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.

As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
It’s rare lea ever wrong.

Eye have run this poem threw it
Eye am shore your pleased two no
It’s letter perfect awl the weigh
My checker tolled me sew.

by Margo Roark.

There’s a lot more to be found at this amusing page at the Spelling Society.

(I found the Spelling Society page indirectly, thanks to Kottke pointing me to Treppenwitz.)

Just one more reason I’m sticking to soda and beer:

A vast array of pharmaceuticals — including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones — have been found in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans, an Associated Press investigation shows(…) “We recognize it is a growing concern and we’re taking it very seriously,” said Benjamin H. Grumbles, assistant administrator for water at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

This doesn’t really concern me that much, since I already know that water is polluted in a variety of subtle ways. What I admire is a man with a name of “Benjamin H. Grumbles” knew that his calling was to be in a Federal regulatory agency.

When Mr. Grumbles calls, you know there’s going to be problems. He’s never happy.

The good news is I hear the EPA is going to pass this on to the FDA, and it’s going to be reclassified as a free national health benefit. Feeling depressed, got a headache, or a nagging infection? No need to bother with a doctor’s visit or a trip to the pharmacy. Just head on over to the tap for a tall glass of pre-medicated water.

I figure for as long as I run into consistent issues with web services on the Sidekick, I might as well complain about it to T-Mobile consistently. But I am not going to waste time on the phone. I’ll just send them an email every day outlining the problem.

The T-Mobile website has a handy facility for submitting support issues via email on their web site. Here’s what happens when I click on the “Send us an e-mail” link on their “Contact Us” page.

Either T-Mobile was anticipating what I was going to do, or so many other people are doing it that it broke their server.

In either case, that error message above pretty much sums up the level of service I’m getting: Whoops, something broke, sorry about that, come back later. This error has been up for 12 hours now.

When Apple opens up that iPhone and there’s a native and decent AIM client, I am going to stop coming back later to T-Mobile.

Update as of Februrary 28th, 5:30pm

Still not working. Apparently if I log out of the site, it works. So if you are a registered T-Mobile customer (or perhaps maybe just me), and log in, you can’t send them email.

By logging out, I was able to notify them of the issue. Let’s see how long it takes them to get it fixed.

What my fortune cookie probably said:

“Wise man does not eat fortune cookie while distracted.”

Sadly, I’ll never know now.