What's in a Slogan?
Jun. 11th, 2020 01:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
blogcutterRemember the "technically beautiful" slogan that was adopted to describe Ottawa? Never really caught on, did it? And frankly I can understand why. If they wanted to describe the sprawling high-tech campuses and fast food outlets along that uninspiring stretch of road from Bells Corners to Stittsville, about the most positive term I can think of is the one that entered popular parlance in those days, "Silicon Valley North". And even before the demise of NorTel and the bursting of the dot.com bubble, that wasn't really a very positive image, evoking as it did the image of Ottawa (and Nepean and Kanata) as colonial outposts of their California counterparts. But I digress.
Yesterday I heard the latest slogan in pandemic pushback, "Be COVID-WISE". What the WISE apparently stands for is Wear a mask, Isolate if sick, Stay 2 metres away from others and Exercise good hand hygiene. Perhaps it's all good advice but it doesn't exactly trip lightly off the tongue, does it? As well, I'm rather leery of how at times we seem to be Covid-wise but everything-else-foolish. Seems they almost have to beg people to come to the Emergency department with non-covid conditions! The other thing about it is that it doesn't readily translate into French (nor, for that matter does any acronym beginning with a "W").
So what I'll probably be doing is grumpily following all the rules while Wistfully Imagining Something Else. I'll have to work on the French translation, though.
Yesterday I heard the latest slogan in pandemic pushback, "Be COVID-WISE". What the WISE apparently stands for is Wear a mask, Isolate if sick, Stay 2 metres away from others and Exercise good hand hygiene. Perhaps it's all good advice but it doesn't exactly trip lightly off the tongue, does it? As well, I'm rather leery of how at times we seem to be Covid-wise but everything-else-foolish. Seems they almost have to beg people to come to the Emergency department with non-covid conditions! The other thing about it is that it doesn't readily translate into French (nor, for that matter does any acronym beginning with a "W").
So what I'll probably be doing is grumpily following all the rules while Wistfully Imagining Something Else. I'll have to work on the French translation, though.
