A Prairie Home Companion: February 10, 2007

English Majors script
Saturday, February 10, 2007
Listen

Garrison Keillor: ...after this message from the Professional Organization of English Majors.

The number of English Majors is in decline in this country. You may have sensed that already. Right now there is only one English major for every 75 people, and by 2015 we face a shortage of sensibility that makes it unlikely that America can keep up its high production of memoirs.

Let's not waste our English major resources on technical writing. English is not a good language for technical writing. Urdu is much better. (

TR: URDU) Your chances of comprehension are much greater with Urdu.

And let's not waste English majors on copy editing. The best copy editors are graduates of criminal justice programs, retired bounty hunters

Tim Russell: Look at this. Pathetic. Do you even know what a gerund is? Do you?

GK: So what's a good job for an English major? (SIZZLING) (TABLEWARE)

TR: You want fries with that?

GK: A career in the food services industry gives you time to think. It gets you away from your computer, and best of all it doesn't require you to write so you save your literary fire for your novel or play.

TR: (DRAMATIC, TYPING) Her smile was like the moon-bright, but melancholy. If you looked closely at it, you could see a man's face.

GK: Let somebody else copy edit this stuff. As an English Major, this is not your job. Your job is to flip burgers, until your book deal comes through. And that's ok.

TR (BUSH): As President I have come to regret my decision not to major in English which would have been more useful to me than the type of education that in fact I did get at the time. And I regret my decision to get a job as The Decider. Sometimes, when I drop by the White House kitchen and see someone fixing up a grilled cheese and an order of fries, I think to myself: I coulda been good at that. And I woulda had more time to work on my stories and make em more believable than they are at the present time.

...a message from the Professional Organization of English Majors.