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.

Welcome to the inside of my head.

How come, in Star Trek, Data never just plugged into the ship directly so he could do his job way more efficiently? I could see him wanting to do the human thing as much as possible, but for as often as the Enterprise was 3.6 seconds away from losing life support/getting sucked into another dimension/exploding, seems like it would be a prudent course of action.

It just seemed to work so well for R2-D2. Just saying.

Too bad "Jesus" doesn't have an umlaut in it

I was kicking around a free font site for beer logo ideas, and ran into a bunch of fonts by the same woman. They all have that slightly dorky, cheerleader/preschool teacher/cupcake shop look, and have names like "Complete in Him" and "Loved by the King." It's clear that the woman is 1) a Christian and 2) terrible at naming fonts. One of the fonts had 46 comments on it. Now, there's no way that a mediocre font like "Complete in Him" could foster that much constructive font-related discussion, so I had to check it out.

The comments tended to fall into two categories: "I love Jesus and you love Jesus and we rock," and "I have a preschool/cheerleading poster/cupcake shop, can I use your font?" There was only one comment that bridged the two categories, both shamelessly and seamlessly. As always, I've fixed the spelling and punctuation so your eyes don't bleed. You're welcome.

"Hi to my sister in our Lord Jesus Christ! Your fonts are truly a blessing to me. I can see it is made from inspiration from the Heavenly Throne Room of our Father God! May I have the privilege of seeing you one day at the feet of our Lord Jesus... Then you can teach me all your fonts... Blessings, Ulanda"

I just can't get over "Then you can teach me all your fonts." Praise the Lord and pass the italics.

Can't talk, I'm using the backhoe

In addition to the awesome letter from P&G (see below), I also received some pills for my dog from an online pet medication website. According to the warning label, this medicine may impair my dog's ability to drive or operate machinery. She is supposed to refrain from doing so until she knows how it affects her.

Bad Copy of the Day Award: Mail Call Edition!

You're lucky I've got some editing experience. It means you won't have to read the really boring post I just wrote, then deleted. The short, and much better, version is that I got a refund check in the mail after complaining to Procter & Gamble about their tendency to package deodorant in canisters with faulty mechanics. Here's part of the message that accompanied the check:

"We have shared your experience with the appropriate people here in our company for future learnings."

Bad Copy of the Day Award

And just think, whoever wrote this is getting paid a salary to work at one of the country's larger insurance brokerages.

Just get a raincoat with a good hood on it.

I've never been a big fan of umbrellas. An umbrella uses up one of my two usable hands, I must hold it for the duration of desired protection from rain, and it does nothing to keep the lower 80% of my body dry. Here in the Windy City (tm), there's the added problem of the winds that whip through the steel canyons of downtown, especially in the vicinity of Sears Tower, which pretty much manufactures its own weather patterns. Umbrellas don't do well in such a harsh environment. This picture was taken at the corner of Jackson and Wacker, right next to the Sears Tower. I took the picture and then proceeded smugly, protected from both wind and rain by my Marmot rain jacket. I am less smug now that I see how blurry the photo came out. Stupid CrapCam.

I think it's safe to post this now.

I very much hate ZOMG SUPER PINK CANCER OCTOBER PINK BOOBIES PINK MONTH (tm) for more reasons than I care to go into right now, mostly because it's late and I have to work in the morning. So I had to hang on to this picture until the rage subsided a bit. I saw this on my way into work one morning and was just... astonished. It's a street sweeping truck. It sweeps the streets. It is also very aware of breast cancer and would like you to be the same. Just... no. Come ON. It's a street sweeping truck! Where will the madness end?

Man, you know what I love?

I love that every day when I leave work, I turn east towards the lake and take a 10-minute walking tour of Chicago. I cross a crumbling iron and concrete bridge over the mighty Chicago River, then pass the Sears Tower and smile at the tourists taking their picture in front of the Skydeck sign. Sometimes, when the moment is right, I offer to take it for them, so they can all be in the photo.

Further down Jackson street, while waiting for the light to change, I look to my left and see the Rookery -- a beautiful building in its own right, but also the place where Daniel "Make No Little Plans" Burnham dreamed up the parks, harbors, and avenues that saved Chicago from itself. To the right is the Chicago Board of Trade, which has one of the finest art deco interiors (and hell, exteriors) I've ever seen. After passing the Federal Reserve building, I cut across Federal Plaza and between the impossibly airy monolithic Mies van der Rohe-designed federal buildings. Then it's an approving nod up to Calder's Flamingo sculpture before I head down into the belly of the subway for the ride home to my neighborhood.

This is the greatest city in the world, and you won't convince me otherwise. Unless you're willing to front me a plane ticket to your city of choice for analysis purposes.

Man, you know what I hate?

I hate that when I sign into this blog, it tells me -- nay, admonishes me -- when my last post was. I live in a big, important city now. I'm busy doing big, important things. Nothing strange or anything of note ever happens here.

Nothing at all, including the following posts I've been saving up.

Funniest typo I've made all day

Applican't

"The die is cast."

After ranting out that last little post, one of my friends brought it to my attention that the saying "the dye is cast" could be useful if one interpreted it as "the cloth is colored -- there's no going back now." She also mentioned that it could have been a quote by Julius Caesar (purveyor of fine blended orange drinks and salad dressing).

So I looked it up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alea_iacta_est

Turns out, the quote "The die is cast" is attributed to Caesar after all. The "die" refers to one of a set of dice, as in "the game has begun/the move is made." I like this meaning -- it pleases me. A Google search reveals that an awful lot of people use "the dye is cast" to mean the same thing. I guess I'm not completely against it, as the metaphor has some sense. And I am aware that similar bastardizations of sayings are what make this language great (and damn difficult to learn as a second language).

But... still. I cling to my outmoded belief and shake my tiny fist nonetheless.

Bad copy of the day award

Unfortunately, I've been seeing more and more "professionally edited" items online with terrible mistakes. I'm not sure if it's because of staffing cutbacks, increased usage of Web 2.0 user-generated foolishness, or a global conspiracy to cause me, personally, to go insane, but I've seen ridiculous crap popping up on AP and Reuters-type stories more and more. I don't always put it up as a BCD award, mostly because it would just be depressing. On to today's un-ignorable example*:


What does that even mean? What is the symbolism of throwing pigment? Has nobody ever heard of a, say, die-cast toy car, wherein metal is formed into a final, unchangeable shape? Aside from the questionable use of the metaphor, you can't just use different words that sound the same! Your phrase is meaningless! WHY AREN'T THERE MORE EDITORS LOOKING OUT FOR US? WHY, GOD? *breaks down into untintelligible sobbing noises*


Thank you for your time.

*Yeah, I was reading about Paula Abdul leaving American Idol. I never said I had much pride.

I never thought it possible, but a crime has been committed in my office even more heinous and un-neighborly than the Quarter-Donut-Leaver.

Today, I entered the kitchen to discover a decapitated muffin stump. That's right. Instead of cutting the muffin in half, as is marginally acceptable, some faceless person in my office took a knife and carefully sliced off the crusty, sugar-sparkled, perfectly browned top of a blueberry muffin, leaving only the tiny, textureless stump behind. Come ON. Nobody wants the stumps, including the homeless. Exhibit A: Seinfeld episode 155, "The Muffin Tops":

Rebecca: Excuse me, I'm Rebecca Demore from the homeless shelter.
Elaine: Oh, hi.
Rebecca: Are you the ones leaveing the muffin pieces behind our shelter?
Elaine: You been enjoying them?
Rebecca: They're just stumps.
Elaine: Well they're perfectly edible.
Rebecca: Oh, so you just assume that the homeless will eat them, they'll eat anything?
Mr. Lippman: No no, we just thought...
Rebecca: I know what you thought. They don't have homes, they don't have jobs, what do they need the top of a muffin for? They're lucky to get the stumps.
Elaine: If the homeless don't like them the homeless don't have to eat them.
Rebecca: The homeless don't like them.
Elaine: Fine.
Rebecca: We've never gotten so many complaints. Every two minutes, "Where is the top of this muffin? Who ate the rest of this?"
Elaine: We were just trying to help.
Rebecca: Why don't you just drop off some chicken skins and lobster shells.

I hope the Muffin Top Bandit regrets his or choice, be it through regret of their gluttony or some manner of exceedingly embarrassing digestive process.

Things I've knitted recently

I just finished this here squid for my brand-new cousin, Dylan. His birth coincided with my bizarre urge to knit a squid, so there you go. It's one of a kind, and can never be replicated because 1) I knit it without a pattern (if I wrote a pattern, it would say, "Step 1: knit a squid-shaped thing."), and 2) this stupid boucle yarn is hard to work with and impossible to see individual stitches in, so I can't go back and map it out. Anyway, I'm really happy with the way it came out and I look forward to knitting more marine creatures. No, I don't know why I tend to work in themes. Every other artist does it too, if you think about it. I guess my mind just gets wrapped around one idea and I want to see where I can take it.

I finished these a while ago, but felt like putting them up for the good of the Google search (so other people can see what they look like when finished). These are based on the Broad Street Mittens, but with a BUNCH of alterations that I decided on as I knit the first pair for my mom. Thanks for being a guinea pig, mom. I hope they are still okay.

Disappointment comes in every language.

As seen while trying (unsuccessfully) to download an R2-D2 paper model:

As seen in the city

I was walking down the street in my neighborhood and passed two police cruisers. One was parked on the side of the road, and he had his window down to talk to the guy in the other car, who was basically blocking traffic just so he could hang out with his buddy. This alone would have been a pretty effective snapshot of Chicago's finest at work, but wait -- there's more.

As I passed the curbmost car, I was treated to the sight of a box of Dunkin Donuts sitting on the dashboard. A big ol' box of a dozen donuts. Just sitting there, doing the dual duties of 1) being a box of donuts and 2) bringing a stereotype to vivid, Technicolor life.