Spell Check

Hello World,

Happy Hanukkah! Or should I say, Chappy Chanukah, Xappy Xanuka, or Qappy Chanuqa? It seems that our friends at www.joemaller.com did an Internet search and turned up 16 different spellings for The Festival of Lights, which you couldn't help but think would be some sort of record. I realize that it's one of those movable feasts based on some arcane formula so that the date changes every year, but I wasn't aware that it's also such a slippery character in the name department that it's almost impossible to pin down, or even narrow down to under a dozen. This is what I would call the poster child of holidays with an identity crisis, if ever there was one, and somehow it seems to be getting worse rather than better, even after 5,771 years and counting. This fact was brought home in powerful fashion last week in the Life & Style section of our local newspaper -

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Pop-up shop offers
all things Hanukkah

Chanukah Wonderland, an all-things-
Hanukkah pop-up shop, is open now
through December 8.
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Say what?! By golly, the dinosaurs and I can remember a time when there were literary standards in the press, and editors would tear off their right arm before they would let anyone spell the same word two different ways in the same paragraph, much less the same sentence, for heaven's sake. Times have certainly changed, and not for the better, I can tell you that. They didn't fare any better in the Best Bets from last Monday, with this capsule review of Hawaii Five-O:

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When a member of the security detail for an
upcoming Aid Summit is murdered before he
can reveal the details of an assassination plot
of a ruthless dictator.
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Well, that certainly leaves you hanging on the edge of your seat and waiting for the other shoe to drop, as it were, and then just falls off the table and keeps everyone dangling. This is what I consider a textbook example of people not bothering to go back and read what they've written, because all they needed to do in this case is remove the first word "when" and the description would have been perfectly fine. As it is, it leaves you perched on the edge of a narrative abyss, and no subordinate clause in sight to leap to the rescue. It got even worse on Saturday, with this synopsis, and I assure you that I use that word in the loosest possible interpretation of the term:

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"A Star is Born" (1954, Drama)
A movie star with a stalled career meets and falls
in love with a simple showgirl after accidentally
ruining her act, but their relationship takes a halt.
=========================

Now, it must be said that "A Star is Born" is an iconic story, for many generations, which has been presented countless times in numerous formats, from print to stage to radio to cinema to television and back again, and beloved anew at every turn. Probably everyone has seen at least one version of it at some point along the line, and I would hazard a guess that even people who have never actually seen it, still understand what the story is all about. Which is more than I can say about that supposed "review" of it in the TV listings, which not only makes no sense grammatically, but halfway through, takes such a bizarre detour that it becomes completely incomprehensible, as well as being unrecognizable as the movie that they're trying to describe. I'm not sure that all the editors in the world would have been able to salvage that fiasco, except by sending the whole thing back to the drawing board and starting all over again.

Also not saying what they mean (one hopes) this next story turned into one of my favorites in a long time, beginning with a screaming headline on Thursday -

SEWAGE RELEASE UNREPORTED

Here again, the dinosaurs and I can remember a time when something that was unreported would not have made the front page of the newspaper, by the very fact that it was, as they said, unreported. Apparently the unreported release must have been reported (de-unreported?) at some later point in time, because the reporter goes on to report -

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Westchester County dumped 4.4
million gallons of treated sewage
into the Hudson River, the largest
release in recent memory - and
didn't bother to tell the public.
=========================

There's the usual parade of environmental groups, community leaders, scientists and outraged citizens all bemoaning what they consider the county's egregious and underhanded tactics, while the county's response was to pooh-pooh the over-reaction of excitable and suggestible rubes. After all, they rationalized, it was winter after the beaches were closed, recreational boating had ended, and the discharge was chlorinated. This is my favorite part:

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County Health Department spokeswoman
Caren Halbfinger said, "We've taken steps
to ensure that similar notifications will
occur throughout the year."
==========================

By that, we can assume that she means NO notifications, just like this time? That's the only thing I can think of that would be similar to this, which was that there was no notification, which I guess is what we can expect to continue throughout the year, and we'll be sure to recognize it, because there won't be any. That should be easy to spot, it would be the deafening stillness where the official notification should have been, but wasn't, because of a total disregard for the public welfare. Not resting on their laurels, the following Wednesday brought another screaming headline to our doorsteps -

2ND SEWAGE SPILL UNREPORTED

For anyone who missed the first story, this headline would seem to be an incongruous curiosity, along the lines of MONA LISA UNSTOLEN or BROOKLYN BRIDGE STILL STANDING, that would be considered a non-story which begs more questions than it answers. For something that didn't happen, this story has certainly been getting a lot of attention, whereas if they had gone ahead and reported it in the first place, no doubt if would have been relegated to the bowels of the newspaper's dark and cavernous labyrinths, and nobody would have even noticed it to begin with. Say, is that the Mona Lisa blowing up the Brooklyn Bridge? Remember you saw it here first, folks.

Meanwhile at work, I picked up a phone call from a peppy young man who greeted me breezily and then charged right ahead and asked me what video conferencing equipment we use here. Anyone can tell you that I'm not normally at a loss for words, but I had to tell him that I had no idea, which made him pause, and then he asked me suspiciously, "What department have I reached?" When I told him that this was the Purchasing department, he muttered that he had asked to be connected to the Sales department, and was obviously displeased at what he considered the inept handling of his call. Now it was my turn to talk to him like the village idiot, so I said very slowly and distinctly: "This is a hospital. We don't have a Sales department." He might still be laughing for all I know, but I can't tell you, because he hung up at that point. I know at least one of us was still laughing anyway. And it wasn't the Mona Lisa with the Brooklyn Bridge, because I just found out that their relationship has taken a halt

Elle