I’m sharing these merely because I found them amusing:

• The Great Pop vs. Soda Controversy — What do you call carbonated beverages? Soda? Pop? Coke? If you live in Peoria County, odds are you call it “soda,” even though most of northern Illinois calls it “pop.” How do I know? Because someone has taken the time to put together a map of Generic Soft Drink Names by County. It’s just part of a website created by Alan McConchie devoted to the topic.

  When I was in grade school, our family called everything “coke.” It was like calling all tissues “Kleenex” or all copiers “Xerox machines.” We didn’t mean the brand, but the type of product. “Do you want a coke?” “Sure.” “What kind?” “7-Up.” According to the map, that’s a southern thing.

  And then there are the variations. A former co-worker of mine used to call it “sodee.” She was the assistant team leader of our work group, and a couple of us in the group teased her about her pronunciation. “How do you get ‘sodee’ out of a word spelled s-o-d-a?” we’d ask. Irritated with us, she said, “Everyone I know pronounces it that way,” and then, to prove her point, turned to another team member and asked, “How do you pronounce soda? Sodee?”

• Pride and Prejudice and Zombies — Yes, that’s the real title of a real book that is due to be released later this year, written by Seth Grahame-Smith and co-author Jane Austen. According to the publisher, Quirk Books, it’s “The Classic Regency Romance—Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem!”
  

  “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.” So begins Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, an expanded edition of the beloved Jane Austen novel featuring all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie mayhem. As our story opens, a mysterious plague has fallen upon the quiet English village of Meryton—and the dead are returning to life! Feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet is determined to wipe out the zombie menace, but she’s soon distracted by the arrival of the haughty and arrogant Mr. Darcy. What ensues is a delightful comedy of manners with plenty of civilized sparring between the two young lovers—and even more violent sparring on the blood-soaked battlefield as Elizabeth wages war against hordes of flesh-eating undead. Can she vanquish the spawn of Satan? And overcome the social prejudices of the class-conscious landed gentry? Complete with romance, heartbreak, swordfights, cannibalism, and thousands of rotting corpses, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies transforms a masterpiece of world literature into something you’d actually want to read.

  That’s one way to get teenage boys to read Austen. I can’t wait for the movie.