In The Bag
Hello World,
Well, there's practically not enough of April left now to shake a stick at, not that it would do any good if you did, and I ought to know, because next Friday will be May first already, believe that or not. Anyone can tell that they're throwing darts at the climate board in the Kremlin again, because the weather is not only all over the map, sometimes the conditions are unrecognizable as weather in this entire solar system. One day it will be 70 degrees and sunny, and the next it will be 35 degrees with fog as thick as concrete. Then it rains non-stop for two days, followed by gale force winds that blow loose branches everywhere and empty trash cans right after them. You don't dare go anywhere without a change of clothes, because if it's hot, it will turn cold, or vice versa, and whatever you're wearing will be the exact opposite of what you will need. The meteorologists have washed their hands of the whole mess, because anything they predict more than 10 minutes in the future is nothing more than pure speculation, woefully off the mark more often than not, and the five-day forecast has become the laughingstock of the local news. So far, my favorite weather-related moment was when a colleague of Bill's, bemoaning the unspeakable conditions in the Midwest, quipped: "Don't blame me for the weather, I voted for the other guy!"
Speaking of weather, it started out drizzling on Wednesday, but I wasn't worried, and had every confidence that it was going to clear up. Of course, it was Secretary's Day (what they now refer to as Administrative Professionals Day) and it's been my experience in going to the Chamber of Commerce luncheons to celebrate the day, that it never rains on the secretaries. No matter how it looks in the morning, from threatening to ugly to extreme and all the way up to Biblical plagues of frogs and locusts, by the time the luncheon rolls around, it has usually turned out sunny and pleasant, often to the surprise of everyone, except the secretaries, of course. Last year was the first time since I've been working at the hospital that they did not participate in the luncheon, which must have thrown a monkey wrench in the works for the Chamber of Commerce, because as the largest employer in the city, the hospital attendees always took up the most tables. So I wasn't surprised this time around when there was no mention of a luncheon, or even an ice cream social in the cafeteria, or God forbid, just a memo circulated to thank the clerical workers for their contributions to helping the hospital run more smoothly. I took a cue from The Unsinkable Molly Brown who once famously observed: "I mean much more to me, than I mean to anyone else I ever met," and if the hospital wasn't going to provide me with lunch, by golly, I was going to take matters into my own hands or know the reason why. So I took myself out to lunch, and followed that up with dessert at Carvel, and then did some shopping and other errands, and I had a nice day out before finally wrapping it all up and heading for home. Of course, it was not the beloved (or is that beleaguered) Secretary's Day luncheons of yore, and more's the pity I'm sure, with its notoriously bad speeches, nondescript food, balky service, quirky raffle prizes, even quirkier goodie bags, and somehow every year, the world's worst sound system. (I finally figured out that they must move it every year from one country club to the next, wherever the luncheon is going to be held, because it would be impossible for all of the clubs to each have their own world's worst sound system especially in this day and age of technological advancements.) I admit that I miss poking fun at the foibles and follies of the luncheon, which over the years has been a welcome diversion and favored tradition, and while my own festivities for the day could not compete with the Chamber of Commerce, it was still better than being at work all afternoon.
In other local news, April finally brought with it the return of yard waste pickups by the sanitation department, after being discontinued since October. I find winter is a good time to clean up piles of leaves and twigs out of the flower beds, but since the city won't pick them up, I have to collect them in bags and then hold onto the bags until they implement the pickup schedule again in April. Luckily, they've now invented handy bags for this purpose, which are made of heavy-duty Kraft paper, and they're large capacity and square on the bottom, so they stand up by themselves, like a trash can. Over the winter, I've been stuffing bags full of leaves and twigs and assorted whatnot from all over the yard, and then I leave them in the garage or the porch until spring. At this juncture, I should point out that I am well known as a person who tends to take things at face value (which is why I am usually at a loss when confronted with satire, and even sarcasm is often lost on me) and people may call me naive (they'd better not!) but I will never master the shrewd cynicism of world-weary skeptics, even if I wanted to. I admit that I thought this was a pretty fool-proof system, but unfortunately, it turned out that the joke was on me, because there's always some fool that's proof against any system. For no reason that I can ascertain, our juvenile delinquent squirrels and/or incorrigible raccoons and/or nefarious possums and/or diabolical skunks have all singly or collectively decided that the thing to do is to chew holes in the bottoms of the bags, and see what interesting items spill out. What the attraction is in this objective is a mystery to me, since these were the very same leaves and twigs that were already in the yard to start with, and presumably haven't become any more appealing since being put in bags, yet they can't seem to keep their busy little claws away from them. The result is that when I want to put the bags out for trash pickup, I first have to tape them closed with packing tape, so they don't come completely apart and leave behind piles of leaves and twigs that I was trying to get rid of in the first place, thanks so very much not.
Of course, everyone knows that satire is lost on me, so it's possible that no one else will find this funny. We have our friends at Workman Publishing to thank for their venerable Word-a-Day calendar, which it seems that I have been enjoying for decades by now, and they do a heck of a job coming up with interesting words with their definitions and etymology. Being in the publishing business, you would expect the calendar to be a grammatical jewel, with nary a misspelling, mixed metaphor, dangling modifier or mismatched case to mar its pristine pages, and over the years, I'd say that you'd be right. That's why I was pulled up short earlier in the week, when the word for the day was "cursory," which they defined as "rapidly and often superficially performed or produced: hasty." Meanwhile on the back, they launched their explanation of the term with this opening salvo: "Descended comes from the Latin verb 'currere,' meaning 'to run,' 'cursory' always implies speed but also stresses a lack of attention to detail." It would be cynical to wonder if it was just a bizarre coincidence that the one calendar page with an egregious error in the first sentence happens to be the one about a lack of attention to detail, or whether it was planned that way as a prank. No one has ever accused the editors at Workman of having a sense of humor, that I know of, and April 20 seems an odd time for an April Fool's Day joke, but the alternative certainly doesn't have much to recommend it either.
Having their own typographical problems this week, the Wheels section of our local newspaper featured a front-page story about the 2009 Nissan 370Z by Malcolm Gunn for Wheelbase Communications, that looked like this:
========================
Pof a sports car's validity is some-
times seen when its successor
is highly refined as opposed to
heavily made over.
For 2009, new the 370Z shows
that the outgoing 350Z was on the mark
right from the beginning .....
========================
Personally, I don't blame the hapless Malcolm for the "P of a sports car" goof, since that was obviously the typesetter's fault, who fell so in love with the giant initial cap that the accuracy of the sentence went right out the window. I also doubt that the writer meant to come up with "new the 370Z," and everyone knows that the spell-checker isn't going to help you with that, since the two words aren't misspelled, just in the wrong order. Frankly, it's enough to make a person wonder about technological advances altogether, when the most expensive country clubs have the world's worst sound systems, and the most powerful word processing software can't prevent the most glaring mistakes that in the old days, a one-eyed editor could catch in his sleep. Ah, for those halcyon days of yore, which may have been low tech, but made up for that with high standards instead. At this point, I would leave you with some satirical jibe to enjoy the rest of the weekend with, but everyone knows that satire is what closes on Saturday night.
Elle
Well, there's practically not enough of April left now to shake a stick at, not that it would do any good if you did, and I ought to know, because next Friday will be May first already, believe that or not. Anyone can tell that they're throwing darts at the climate board in the Kremlin again, because the weather is not only all over the map, sometimes the conditions are unrecognizable as weather in this entire solar system. One day it will be 70 degrees and sunny, and the next it will be 35 degrees with fog as thick as concrete. Then it rains non-stop for two days, followed by gale force winds that blow loose branches everywhere and empty trash cans right after them. You don't dare go anywhere without a change of clothes, because if it's hot, it will turn cold, or vice versa, and whatever you're wearing will be the exact opposite of what you will need. The meteorologists have washed their hands of the whole mess, because anything they predict more than 10 minutes in the future is nothing more than pure speculation, woefully off the mark more often than not, and the five-day forecast has become the laughingstock of the local news. So far, my favorite weather-related moment was when a colleague of Bill's, bemoaning the unspeakable conditions in the Midwest, quipped: "Don't blame me for the weather, I voted for the other guy!"
Speaking of weather, it started out drizzling on Wednesday, but I wasn't worried, and had every confidence that it was going to clear up. Of course, it was Secretary's Day (what they now refer to as Administrative Professionals Day) and it's been my experience in going to the Chamber of Commerce luncheons to celebrate the day, that it never rains on the secretaries. No matter how it looks in the morning, from threatening to ugly to extreme and all the way up to Biblical plagues of frogs and locusts, by the time the luncheon rolls around, it has usually turned out sunny and pleasant, often to the surprise of everyone, except the secretaries, of course. Last year was the first time since I've been working at the hospital that they did not participate in the luncheon, which must have thrown a monkey wrench in the works for the Chamber of Commerce, because as the largest employer in the city, the hospital attendees always took up the most tables. So I wasn't surprised this time around when there was no mention of a luncheon, or even an ice cream social in the cafeteria, or God forbid, just a memo circulated to thank the clerical workers for their contributions to helping the hospital run more smoothly. I took a cue from The Unsinkable Molly Brown who once famously observed: "I mean much more to me, than I mean to anyone else I ever met," and if the hospital wasn't going to provide me with lunch, by golly, I was going to take matters into my own hands or know the reason why. So I took myself out to lunch, and followed that up with dessert at Carvel, and then did some shopping and other errands, and I had a nice day out before finally wrapping it all up and heading for home. Of course, it was not the beloved (or is that beleaguered) Secretary's Day luncheons of yore, and more's the pity I'm sure, with its notoriously bad speeches, nondescript food, balky service, quirky raffle prizes, even quirkier goodie bags, and somehow every year, the world's worst sound system. (I finally figured out that they must move it every year from one country club to the next, wherever the luncheon is going to be held, because it would be impossible for all of the clubs to each have their own world's worst sound system especially in this day and age of technological advancements.) I admit that I miss poking fun at the foibles and follies of the luncheon, which over the years has been a welcome diversion and favored tradition, and while my own festivities for the day could not compete with the Chamber of Commerce, it was still better than being at work all afternoon.
In other local news, April finally brought with it the return of yard waste pickups by the sanitation department, after being discontinued since October. I find winter is a good time to clean up piles of leaves and twigs out of the flower beds, but since the city won't pick them up, I have to collect them in bags and then hold onto the bags until they implement the pickup schedule again in April. Luckily, they've now invented handy bags for this purpose, which are made of heavy-duty Kraft paper, and they're large capacity and square on the bottom, so they stand up by themselves, like a trash can. Over the winter, I've been stuffing bags full of leaves and twigs and assorted whatnot from all over the yard, and then I leave them in the garage or the porch until spring. At this juncture, I should point out that I am well known as a person who tends to take things at face value (which is why I am usually at a loss when confronted with satire, and even sarcasm is often lost on me) and people may call me naive (they'd better not!) but I will never master the shrewd cynicism of world-weary skeptics, even if I wanted to. I admit that I thought this was a pretty fool-proof system, but unfortunately, it turned out that the joke was on me, because there's always some fool that's proof against any system. For no reason that I can ascertain, our juvenile delinquent squirrels and/or incorrigible raccoons and/or nefarious possums and/or diabolical skunks have all singly or collectively decided that the thing to do is to chew holes in the bottoms of the bags, and see what interesting items spill out. What the attraction is in this objective is a mystery to me, since these were the very same leaves and twigs that were already in the yard to start with, and presumably haven't become any more appealing since being put in bags, yet they can't seem to keep their busy little claws away from them. The result is that when I want to put the bags out for trash pickup, I first have to tape them closed with packing tape, so they don't come completely apart and leave behind piles of leaves and twigs that I was trying to get rid of in the first place, thanks so very much not.
Of course, everyone knows that satire is lost on me, so it's possible that no one else will find this funny. We have our friends at Workman Publishing to thank for their venerable Word-a-Day calendar, which it seems that I have been enjoying for decades by now, and they do a heck of a job coming up with interesting words with their definitions and etymology. Being in the publishing business, you would expect the calendar to be a grammatical jewel, with nary a misspelling, mixed metaphor, dangling modifier or mismatched case to mar its pristine pages, and over the years, I'd say that you'd be right. That's why I was pulled up short earlier in the week, when the word for the day was "cursory," which they defined as "rapidly and often superficially performed or produced: hasty." Meanwhile on the back, they launched their explanation of the term with this opening salvo: "Descended comes from the Latin verb 'currere,' meaning 'to run,' 'cursory' always implies speed but also stresses a lack of attention to detail." It would be cynical to wonder if it was just a bizarre coincidence that the one calendar page with an egregious error in the first sentence happens to be the one about a lack of attention to detail, or whether it was planned that way as a prank. No one has ever accused the editors at Workman of having a sense of humor, that I know of, and April 20 seems an odd time for an April Fool's Day joke, but the alternative certainly doesn't have much to recommend it either.
Having their own typographical problems this week, the Wheels section of our local newspaper featured a front-page story about the 2009 Nissan 370Z by Malcolm Gunn for Wheelbase Communications, that looked like this:
========================
Pof a sports car's validity is some-
times seen when its successor
is highly refined as opposed to
heavily made over.
For 2009, new the 370Z shows
that the outgoing 350Z was on the mark
right from the beginning .....
========================
Personally, I don't blame the hapless Malcolm for the "P of a sports car" goof, since that was obviously the typesetter's fault, who fell so in love with the giant initial cap that the accuracy of the sentence went right out the window. I also doubt that the writer meant to come up with "new the 370Z," and everyone knows that the spell-checker isn't going to help you with that, since the two words aren't misspelled, just in the wrong order. Frankly, it's enough to make a person wonder about technological advances altogether, when the most expensive country clubs have the world's worst sound systems, and the most powerful word processing software can't prevent the most glaring mistakes that in the old days, a one-eyed editor could catch in his sleep. Ah, for those halcyon days of yore, which may have been low tech, but made up for that with high standards instead. At this point, I would leave you with some satirical jibe to enjoy the rest of the weekend with, but everyone knows that satire is what closes on Saturday night.
Elle
posted by El Tango Fandango @ 8:59 PM
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