(3)   Many thanks to all who responded to my little fund-raising pitch a while back. Your donations make this page possible. I am especially indebted to the reader who sent in a chunk of money designated to cover a few of those thousands of readers who regularly read these pages but have not themselves, for whatever reason, been able to contribute. If this is all starting to sound like one of those tedious public radio pledge drives, I feel your pain. But thinking about that painful parallel the other night gave me an idea: why not do as NPR does, and establish varying levels of TWD support? Since I happened to be alone in the room at the moment, the motion passed overwhelmingly, and thus our new, improved, and (with any luck) even more enticing subscription plan:

Standard One-Year Subscription - $15 - All the benefits described at this page. Four subs (make lovely gifts for your friends and family) for $50.

Lifetime Subscription - $50 - My life, not yours. Same as a one-year sub, but good for the life of my web page. Obviously, one never knows what the future holds (unless one is Faith Popcorn, of course, yeah right, if I had that racket...), but I have, after all, been doing this web thing for five years already (which is since from almost before there was a web), so it's not like I'm gonna stop tomorrow.

Lifetime Subscription with Cheese - $100 - Perpetual (more or less) subscription, plus an autographed first edition copy of The Word Detective collection, a genuine dead-tree hardback book to be published in Fall 2000 by Algonquin Publishers. Anyone who does not want the book (I'll understand) can have a nice cat instead.

Eternal Gratitude Subscription - $5000 - All the above, plus I dedicate my next book to you. Provisionally entitled "A Cow Too Far," it details the harrowing dangers awaiting the innocent city dweller who makes the terrible mistake of moving to the country. For the reader who already lives in the country, I offer helpful hints on getting the heck out. Many amusing insect anecdotes. Not suitable for children or the easily depressed.

More details on all these plans are available here.

(4)    For years I have been frustrated by my inability to take credit cards from folks wishing to subscribe to the e-mail version of TWD. Let's face it -- writing a check, finding an envelope, stealing a stamp from your roommate or spouse, actually addressing the envelope, remembering to go to the P.O, remembering where the P.O. is, all that folderol is a major drag. But now, thanks to a brilliant suggestion from a reader, I have signed up with the free PayPal online payment service, which will allow readers to send in their subscription funds via a secure online transfer system. PayPal is widely used on eBay and other auction sites, and is backed by Deutsche Bank and Nokia. Here's an article from The Wall Street Journal that explains how it works.

You also get $5 just for signing up, and I automatically get $5 if you sign up through my web site. Click on the banner below for more details.

(5)   People keep asking me what the motto "Semper Ubi Sub Ubi" (found under my picture on the main TWD page) means. It's an old Latin student's pun: Semper (Always) Ubi (Where) Sub (Under) Ubi (Where).

Say it aloud.