Smoking Pun Chosen as Foreword Finalist

San Antonio, TX, February 27, 2007 --(PR.com)--  The Smoking Pun Crimes against the Language has been named a ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year award finalist in the Humor category. The author, Thaddeus Taylor, expressed appreciation to the “smart, funny intelladiesandgentsia*” at ForeWord. This is precisely the kind of double and sometimes triply cryptic talk that has made Taylor the target of groups like Save Our Language. The Chairwoman Emeritus of SOL, Mary M. Webster, immediately registered her disapproval with “those linguistic freethinkers at ForeWord” and continued by remarking that the Caution note Taylor included on the back of the book “must be some kind of a joke.”

* Intelladiesandgentsia: a homemade word meaning “mixed-gender smart people.”

Readers Encouraged to Participate
The Smoking Pun Crimes against the Language features a combination of more or less useful new words, plus etymological notes and entertaining digressions. It also leads the reader to bonus online content at www.smokingpun.com, and provides the opportunity for would-be neologists to submit their own words for future volumes, which at this time are contingent on Taylor staying out of the Big House. The seemingly innocuous book has caused controversy because of the irreverent nature of some of the material, but Taylor points with evident relief to the fact that there are no pictures of the Prophet in Crimes, and that “none are currently contemplated for future volumes.”

No Time to Stop Evolving
Cerebral Market, established in 2005, takes its mission from a line in Leonard Bernstein’s This I Believe essay: “We must encourage thought, free and creative.” But Fratello Astuto, founding brother of the company, puts it another way:

“When it comes to the human brain, now is no time to stop evolving. It’s vital that we help find new ways to keep the FUN in cerebral functioning.”

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