In 2003 I debaptized myself.*
This is the letter I received from the archdiocese of Milan:

That’s right, you’ve seen right: Comic Sans!
They offered to arrange a meeting to explain the dire consequences of the annullment of my baptism (including a latae sententiae excommunication).

Being excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church is one of the pleasurable goals I’ve attained in my life, along with being able to perform a Tom Waits song on the piano, learning more than two foreign languages, becoming a vegetarian and a few others.

In conclusion, my fellow designers, I advise you all to abandon your crusade against Comic Sans: if the Church uses it there is no stopping it! Holy Comic Sans!

* It is possible to cancel one’s membership from the Roman Catholic Church through the so called Actus formalis defectionis ab Ecclesia catholica (formal act of defection from the Catholic Church). The baptism remains a fact but it stops being valid, effectively ending one’s status as official member of the church.

CAT scans of my brain. It’s weird to see my insides.

• How do I unzip my digital file(s)?

If you’re on a Mac, double-click the file. You’re done.

If you’re on a PC, right-click the file and choose “Extract All…” Don’t see an “Extract All…” option? Try renaming the file to something simple, like “file.zip”. The important thing is to make sure the name ends with “.zip”. Then right-click it again. You should now see “Extract All…” in the menu. If you still do not see an “Extract All…” option, double-click the file. This will open a window listing the files inside. Press Ctrl+A to select all the files, then drag them into a folder or onto your desktop. If that does not work either, then you may not have unzipping software built in to your PC. In this case, please download unzipping software here, and repeat the steps above.

(from the ISO50 Shop FAQ)

Note: I’m still on a PC. Not for long I hope.

1. Voglio mangiare subito sessanta cetrioli.
2. Chcę zjeść sześćdziesiąt ogórków od razu.
3. Ich will sofort sechzig Gurken essen.
4. Hatvan uborkát akarok enni rögtön.
5. Желим да одмах поједем шездесет краставаца.
6. …

This is the first sentence I learn when I teach myself a new language.
Its merits are numerous:

1. It’s funny therefore easy to rememeber.
2. It always cracks people up. Useful for making acquaintances.
3. It contains the pronoun “I”, arguably the first word one should learn.
4. It contains the verb “want” which, given human nature, is probably the second word one should learn.
5. It contains the verb “eat” which, if one wants to survive, is probably the third word one should learn.
6. It combines the modal verb “want” with a second verb. Some languages, like Finnish, use a special conjugation for this type of construction.
7. It contains a two-digit number that gives hints to both a single-digit number (6) and 10 which is typically reused to build 20, 30, 40 etc.
8. It contains a food item following a number.
   Hungarian (4th sentence above), for example, leaves nouns in the singular case after numbers. Finnish uses the partitive case. Slavic languages (Polish, 2nd sentence) use the plural genitive. Other languages, like Arabic, have a different form for food items taken as a group.
9. It contains the adverb “right away”, useful for impatient tourists and indicative of word placement of secondary elements within a sentence.

This groovy sentence alone communicates all the information listed above. It’s easy to extend the rules learned from it to other sentences later on.

Tim Ferris uses a similar method to quickly grasp the building blocks of a new language. Mine is more fun, though :-)

Now what would the design counterpart of this sentence be?