A Nip In The Air

Hello World,

Here we are, coming up to the third Sunday in Advent already, and the ho-ho-ho-ing is underway in earnest now, with not a moment to spare. In fact, we just came back from the diner, where there were two Christmas trees on cars in the parking lot, so that tells you something right there. Speaking of Christmas trees, this will not be one of those years with colorful tales of the continuing misadventures of our wandering Christmas tree at work, where it rambles from the hallway, to my office, to a spare office down the corridor, all fully decorated on its rolling cabinet with the holiday tablecloth. Yes, Virginia, there is no Santa Claus. We not only have a plague of consultants in all our spare offices at the moment, but they re-arranged all of our furniture and storage, so there isn't any spot to set a tree up in the first place, much less an assortment of wandering venues for it to sojourn after Epiphany before getting packed away in the closet. What I did instead was put up a cute 40-inch tree that hangs on the wall, and comes complete with lights, ornaments and other festive decorations - so it's not only out of everyone's way, but also whittled my tree-trimming chores down to nothing. When it's time to un-decorate, I can just take it off the wall, roll it up, and stash it back in its bag for another year. I don't know what people will have to talk about in January and February, without the wandering Christmas tree to kick around anymore.

Speaking of wandering off the beaten path, at least in a linguistic sense, we recently received the 2012 "Not So Great Moments in Healthcare" calendar from our friends at Health Care Logistics, and the cover features a cartoon of an archeologist and his white lab-coated colleague confronting a wall full of mysterious hieroglyphics, with this unfortunate caption:

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"Don't worry, I'm a Pharmacist. I'm use to deciphering this kind of thing."

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Ouch! That Pharmacist needed a bottle of grammar pills to come up with "used to" in the place of "use to," because the spell-checker obviously wasn't going to be any help. And while I realize there are no editors anymore, heaven knows (and they do send us this calendar for nothing) I was still surprised that it went out with that goof right on the cover. Also having problems with the right word in the wrong context, this headline in the local newspaper about film-maker Tyler Perry really got my attention:

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Perry reaches out

to abuse victim

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The trouble with "abuse" is that it can function as a verb, adjective or noun, and it looks the same in all situations. I can tell you that this story takes on a completely different complexion, if like me, you read the headline with "to abuse" as a verb, rather than what they probably intended, with "abuse" as an adjective. I think I would have sent that right back to the drawing board, and come up with a whole different way of expressing that, and not as easily misconstrued. Also not saying what they mean (one hopes!) this tidbit about a local benefit made the front page of the newspaper, and I'm not blaming them this time, since they were just repeating the information that was provided to them about the event:

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Ride For A Cause

Putnam's Seventh Annual Motorcycle Run on Sunday

includes a 70-mile police-escorted ride through Putnam

and Dutchess counties, plus a barbecue lunch and

raffles. Proceeds go to Housing Outreach Prevention

Education.

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I'm sorry, I'm not even in the ballpark with this one, and I'm sure the poor spell-checker not only gave it up as a lost cause, but also fled in horror. What the heck could "housing outreach prevention education" even mean - and by that, I'm thinking, here on this planet in English, and not just some made-up alien language in some other solar system? I can go as far as "housing outreach" in the sense of helping people find affordable living quarters, but the "prevention" and "education" part of this just has me totally stumped. And here they're having a fund-raiser for it, with police escorts, and meanwhile, they've let the horoscope computer run amok and come up with a name that makes no sense to anybody. Talk about sending something back to the proverbial drawing board, this would be the poster child of it, in spades. Of course, things can always be worse, and probably the second time around, the darned horoscope computer would have come up with something even worse, like Prevention Housing Outreach Of Educating Youth, or PHOOEY. (Let's see them get a police escort for THAT!) It wasn't any better at the hospital, where I can't even blame the horoscope computer for this order from one of our nursing units:

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Extra Heavy Duty Steel Drawer Safe with Lock

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Inasmuch as the entire order cost a whopping $28.99, I can't help but wonder exactly how "extra heavy duty" this steel drawer safe might be, lock or not. In fact, I'm thinking that just about anybody with a screwdriver and a hammer could bust their way right into this thing without too much trouble, so I'm hoping that they're not planning to keep a tremendous stash of valuables in there - except maybe some grammar pills, that would keep anything under $30 from being described as "extra heavy duty." And once again coming up with the right word in the wrong context, or vice versa, we have our friends at MEDCOM TRAINEX who sent us an invoice for this curious product:

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Item No. 78566-DVD-9

Preview: Rapid Physical Asses

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Normally, I would say this was pretty funny, and think no more of it, but this particular item set us back $250, so it was obviously nobody's idea of a joke. Luckily they bought two of the same type of thing, and the second one was described as "Rapid Physical Assessment," so at least we could find out what the first one was all about, in spite of its apparent abbreviation problems. In a perfect world, you would think somebody would have noticed this happen on previous invoices, and shortened the description in some way to eliminate the offending remnant. Of course, this would be at the expense of the comedy component, which might be a poor exchange, and we'd be left with only the third item to wonder at, with its tantalizing description of "Stack: Antipsy Mood Stabilizing," which at a staggering $560 is no joke, but certainly sounds like one. My personal favorite from work was an order we placed with a shredding company, with the following services to be provided on a monthly basis:

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REMOVAL OF NIPPA DOCUMENTS

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Now, I will be the first to admit that the federal HIPAA regulations are confusing and arcane, and the average person couldn't begin to understand them. Even in healthcare organizations like ours, it's a continual uphill battle to get the staff to remember that it's called HIPAA and not HIPPA (of which songwriter Chan Romero famously did not observe: "For goodness sake, it's the HIPPA HIPPA shake!") not only because they've long since forgotten what it stands for (Health Information Portability and Accountability Act) but also because HIPAA looks stupid - or at least, somewhat more stupid than HIPPA anyway. But even taking all that into account, I still wouldn't expect two departments at the hospital to combine their (meager) talents and invent a whole new category of protected health information called NIPPA instead, by golly. Of course, everybody knows that I am nothing if not jiggy with HIPAA, but even I would have to concede that NIPPA sounds like a lot more fun, especially if it involves having a few swigs at the Hospitality Tent beforehand, and the heck with the grammar pills. In fact, I would invite the Rapid Physical Asses and police escorts to join in, but I'm afraid the horoscope computer would just turn it all into Stabilizing Housing Antipsy Rapid Prevention Asses Stack Mood Outreach Physical Education Youth or "SHARP AS MOPEY," and I'm afraid that even Tyler Perry wouldn't be able to help us at that point, much less Chan Romero, who also famously did not observe: "Get out your harp, it's the MOPEY MOPEY SHARP!"

Elle