join the cause

I set for myself the task of taking a picture of a shrug and trying to make it slightly interesting. The challenges included using a model whose face diminished the aesthetics of the picture, and the fact that the model wore a hoody, so that a wide shot made it look more like a picture of someone performing the Eucharist. So I'm left with a picture needing an explanation, and the hope that most people viewing like orange.

But the task was in support of a much more urgent action. Lately I've noticed people putting the gesture above into a printed utterance: meh. At first I thought it was idiosyncratic of a friend, then another friend. But now I see it is ubiquitous, the canonical spelling of a sound people make as shorthand for "whatever" or "I will now stop thinking about this particular problem that only marginally concerns me" or "it is out of my hands and I surrender to greater powers." Or whatever.

Since the first time I saw the word in print I was convinced that it represented no sound that people actually make. If it does, then it is the sound Jack Lemon made in The Odd Couple when he had to clear his sinus passages. Hilarious, by the way. But not a sound someone would make casually, which means it shouldn't be associated with a shrug.

Therefore, I call upon all phonetically responsible people to join me in rejecting this growing threat, and heretofore adopt as standard and correct a new spelling, accurate, clear, and universal:

Ehnngh.

Whatever. I will now google the newest word in the language.