Against better judgement,

I've signed up for a 5k. I know, I was surprised too. I haven't run since high school, and I did so sullenly even back then. But I found an awesome podcast training regimen online that trains you up gradually over several weeks, so I have hope.

I'm still not sure what I've gotten myself into. I know it's just over 3 miles, but still. I think it's something they put into the water here in Chicago. This is the most runningest city I've ever seen. Every spring, right about early March, the signs go up all over for 5k's, 10k's, and half and full marathons. And here I am, being part of the problem.

I'm told there's beer at the end, so there's that.

Bad Copy of the Day Award: Verbal Edition

I generally hate "businessisms" such as "I'll ping you later on that" or "at the end of the day." I hate them a lot. Just use normal words, and stop talking like an asshat. Usually, the same tired phrases are recycled for years, mostly because salespeople have very little imagination. So my ears always perk up when I hear a new one. In this situation, a business deal had stagnated, and my coworker was discussing the need to allay her client's anxiety regarding lack of progress:

"We just want to show him some movement in the water."

Why "in the water"? Why do you need that metaphor at all? If she had been talking directly to me, which she wasn't, I would have been terribly distracted by imagining all the things that might create movement in water -- a boat wake? The Loch Ness Monster? Underwater volcano? Corpse floating downstream?

I'm just not cut out for Corporate America, I guess.

Just use smaller words, m'kay?

There is a person, in just about every large office in America, whose sole purpose in life is to make Funundrum's eyes bleed. I haven't met them all yet, and I hope never to get close to doing so, but I know they're there nonetheless. The person I'm talking about is generally female and either doesn't have a college degree or went to one of those progressive schools that encourages you to discuss your feelings, perform an interpretive dance, or go on a peyote-influenced vision quest rather than sit a written math final. Yo, I got news for you -- your glowing coyote spirit guide is not going to help you solve for x.

I'm going to step back a moment here and tell a little story about the Best Teacher Ever, my high school English teacher, Mr. Kopacki. When it came time to teach us how to use "who" vs. "whom," he made us all swear that we would abide by the very simple First Rule of "whom," which is as follows:

If you're not absolutely sure you can use it correctly, don't.

American English has developed in a very democratic, somewhat sloppy, but mostly useful fashion. It's the Snap-On Tools of the linguistic world. It's evolved to not really need the word "whom," to the point that its usage is generally an indication that someone's using it to look smart... which they then fail to do.

Which brings me back to the peyote-using underachievers. At my last job, it was my boss. At this job, it's the head of operations. It may be someone different where you work. But their modus operandi is always the same: they have to send out emails to the whole office, which freaks them out and challenges their self-worth, so they do everything possible to underscore the gravity of their authority on the subject at hand. You will know them by the way they mark every email "urgent." You will know them by their use of animated GIFs in the body text. Most of all, you will know them by the gratuitous and patently incorrect infestation of "whoms."

I've written all this and I don't even have a good example of the ridiculous things this woman sends out. I suppose I'll have to edit in the next couple of days to put something in here. But I thought I'd like to share with you, my two readers, the nearly unshoulderable burden it is being me.

For reals.

I lie awake nights wracked with guilt over not writing on this blog. So, there's that.