Why is the English spelling system so weird and inconsistent? plus a few other things

If you have ever wondered why the English spelling system is so weird and inconsistent, I would like to recommend for your reading pleasure and mental edification the following article entitled, strangely enough, "Why Is The English Spelling System So Weird And Inconsistent?" (3,400 words).

Next, if your unquenchable thirst for reading has not been assuaged (and it plainly wouldn't be, would it, if it were unquenchable?), you might like this one, "10 Words The Simpsons Made Famous" .

If you don't care to click on the link because you don't like to get bogged down in details and backstories but you are still curious about the ten words themselves, here they are listed alphabetically:

Chocotastic
Craptacular
Cromulent
D'Oh!
Embiggen
Jebus
Kwyjibo
Meh
Unpossible
Yoink

We aim to please.

I don't think I have ever watched an entire episode of The Simpsons because (a) I prefer real people to animation and (b) the supposed humor (British, humour) is pretty much lost on me. Nevertheless, today's bit of trivia/show-biz minutiae is the fact that Julie Kavner, the actress who provides not only the voice for the Marge Simpson character, wife of Homer and mother to his children, but also the voices of Marge's mother, Jacqueline Bouvier (I kid you not), and both of her older twin sisters, Patty and Selma Bouvier -- that Julie Kavner -- is the same actress who played Brenda Morgenstern, the younger sister of Valerie Harper's Rhoda Morganstern on the television series Rhoda, which was the first spin-off from The Mary Tyler Moore Show back in the 1970s.

I realize (British, realise) that the last sentence was very long, but it simply could not be helped. While writing it I naturally thought of Natalie Wood in the film Marjorie Morningstar because Marjorie Morningstar was the name Natalie's character, Marjorie Morganstern, adopted as a stage name when she decided to become an actress.

I'm doing all of this from memory and I hope you appreciate that.

Perhaps I should have called this post "Rabbit Trails" (which reminds me of the film Rabbit Test which starred Billy Crystal and was written (at least partially) and directed by Joan Rivers, whose real name was Joan Molinsky Rosenberg).

Perhaps I should have called this post "Unforeseen Connections (British, Connexions)" and looked for an article called "Why Is The American Spelling System So Weird And Inconsistent?" instead.

And finally, perhaps if I could get all this fluff out of my head, I might have done something really important with my life.