This story from the Onion News Network:

The New York Times has an article about men wearing shorts to work.

Shorts at work!   Clearly as sign of the apocalypse if there ever was one.  What’s next?  Why don’t we all just agree to wear bathing suits to work and fill our offices with three feet of water to make things more cool, comfy and casual?  Oh, and don’t forget to wear your Speedo low so you can show some butt cleavage — after all, you don’t want to seem old fashioned.

Is it too much to ask that the New York Times come out more strongly against the notion of shorts at work? They should be proposing an amendment to the Constitution!  Where is the Gray Lady’s spine?  It’s like they’ve given up hope that they can save civilization.

• deliverable - n., the tangible result of work performed.

When someone agrees to do something (i.e., they “take on an action item“), there may be a corresponding expectation that they will deliver a tangible result to a manager or a team.  What they deliver is called a “deliverable.”

Deliverables can be big or small.  For Boeing, a 747 is a deliverable.  If you promised your boss you’d get your TPS report to her by Wednesday, then the TPS report is a deliverable.    If your action item was to bring coffee to the next meeting, then coffee is a deliverable.

This piece of corporate jargon is even used in legal agreements, as in: “Company agrees to deliver it’s deliverables on or before the deliverable delivery date.”

Video of the Moon orbiting Earth as seen from distance of 31 million miles:

Source: NASA’s Deep Impact spacecraft.

Surveillance video showing destruction of a bank drive through in Center, Texas (July 2, 2008).  According to the local paper, the Shelby County Today, no one was injured.

As you may recall from an earlier post, the phrase “drinking the Kool-Aid,” is a piece of corporate jargon used to indicate company loyalty.

Sometimes it’s not enough to just say you drink the Kool-Aid.  If you really want to show devotion to a company, you have to go farther.  Not as far as Jonestown, thankfully.   For example, take a look at the photo below, sent to me by a good friend (let’s call her “Ruby”).

Pictured here with two cube-farm co-workers, Ruby is the one metaphorically drinking the metaphorical Kool-Aid:

*

*photo posted with permission of those pictured

• action item - n., a specific task that needs to be accomplished; usually used in the context of a corporate meeting.

When someone takes “ownership” of an action item, this indicates responsibility to accomplish the specified task.  Here’s a usage example: “At the last meeting, we decided that someone from the legal department needed to review our proposal.  Who owned the action item to reach out to them?”

This piece of corporate jargon provides a more passive (and polite?) way of pointing the finger at someone and saying: “you must do this.”  For example:  “Can you take on that action item to complete the TPS Report?  Does Tuesday give you enough time?  Great.”

Popular corporate jargon usually offers something a little something more than what is offered by standard English.  Often, that “little something more” is vulgarity (see, e.g.,  “bio break” and “drink the kool-aid“).  Today’s corporate jargon entry offer’s another good example.

• one throat to choke - when a customer has one company to blame when things go wrong.

To understand the meaning, imagine this call to a customer support line:

COMPANY A: “We’re a software company.  What you have is a hardware problem.  You need to get help from Company B.”

And inevitably, this is what happens when you call Company B:

COMPANY B: “I don’t know why those dolts over at Company A told you to call us.  Your problem has nothing to do with our hardware.  You need to call back Company A and get help from them.”

The customer gets bounced back and forth between these two companies without ever getting the  problem resolved.  At some point, the customer may develop an urge to strangle someone, but the trouble is that they don’t know whom to strangle.

What every customer needs is “one throat to choke.”

With one company to blame, the customer also has only one company to praise when things go right.  So while the phrases “one back to pat,” “one hand to shake,” or even “one cheek to kiss” convey exactly the same point, I’ve never heard them used.  “One throat to choke,” with its vulgar mental image of assault or attempted murder, rules the day.

In the interest of providing equal time to different viewpoints, here’s a Republican promotional video, courtesy of ImVotingRepublican.com:

H/T: Matt R.

In February, Bush asked a reporter:

“Wait a minute.  What did you just say?  You’re predicting four dollar a gallon gasoline?  I hadn’t heard that.”

Look at him.  He’s incredulous.  He looks like he’s about the accuse the reporter of fear mongering.  Gas prices were close to $4 at the time of this press conference, and today it’s well over $4.50 (at least where I live).

Later on in the press conference when asked a completely different question, Bush dodged it, saying he couldn’t answer because he’s been too focused on other things, like high gas prices.  The same ones he learned about for the first time in that same press conference.

“Cookie” is one of those words that an adult cannot utter without sounding childish.  I don’t care if you’re 98 years old and wearing both a monocle and a top hat.  If you say the word cookie, you don’t sound like an adult.

It’s hard to maintain your dignity as an adult and admit you want to eat a cookie.  At a deli counter recently, I was asked “do you want chips or a cookie with that sandwich?”  Instinctively, I felt the need to lower my voice when I uttered: “I want a cookie.”

Maybe this is one of the things that makes the idea of a “cookie diet” so appealing.  The concept is: “eat cookies, lose weight” as this 6-second clip explains:

I can lose weight by eating cookies? Fun!  It’s like being a child again!  Maybe I can start an exercise regimen using only swing sets and seesaws.  Forget about stairmaster, take a look at my new home gym:

The lawyer in me wants to point out that sure, you can lose weight by eating nothing but cookies, but doesn’t it depend on what your definition of a cookie is?  Can you take a salad, mash it down into a little round circle and call it a cookie?

I think the true test of whether or not something is a cookie is if children want to eat them.  If a cookie diet cookie and a double-stuffed Oreo elicit the same smile on a 7-year-old, then it’s a cookie.  If not, then it’s probably not really a cookie, it’s a smallish, round, food-substitute.

“Eat smallish, round, food-substitutes and lose weight!  It’s that simple!”

Here’s an excerpt of Clinton’s speech, delivered today:

Back in 2006, I had a little political argument with a group of friends over dinner.

I argued that the Democratic Party nominee would pick Barack Obama as the VP candidate in 2008.  My dinner companions were unanimous in declaring how naive I was.  “Obama as the VP nominee?”  They laughed.  “Impossible.”  We actually made an informal bet, agreeing that the loser would give money to charity of the winner’s choice (5:1 odds against).

It’s now official: I lost the bet.

Not long after that, I wrote this less-than-accurate post explaining why I thought Obama would end up as the VP nominee.  Among my other statements, I said “he won’t run for president, so he won’t get bloodied in the primary.”

Genius.

This was a little less than two years ago, long before Obama had declared his candidacy for presidency.  Even a year ago, how many of us just assumed, as a matter of accepted truth, that we would never see an African American at the top of a major party ticket in our lifetimes?  We just assumed we hadn’t yet made it that far as a country.

It turns out Obama had more confidence in us than we had in him. 

Go Barack!

Does anyone else think that these two kids should get married?

I tried Lunesta the other night after having trouble sleeping. I slept well, but when I woke up, it tasted as if I’d fallen asleep with my mouth full of old pennies. The taste lasted all day.

It turns out I’m not the only one who had a problem like this (see here or here and see the fine print at the bottom of the official website where it mentions the “unpleasant taste”).

I don’t want to complain too much. After all, “pennies in the mouth” is a better side effect, then say, a damaged kidney or liver. Or heart failure.

TV commercials for Lunesta typically show a glowing butterfly gently floating near a person apparently in deep, peaceful slumber. My idea is that they change the commercial to show the butterfly floating around the sleeper’s mouth, and when the sleeper breathes in deeply, she accidentally swallows the butterfly. In the morning, there should be the remnants of a brown, dead butterfly in the person’s mouth.

“CAUTION: Avoid sudden deep intakes of breath in close proximity to Lunesta’s butterfly mascot”

Earlier today I walked by my manager’s desk at work and grabbed a couple of pieces of candy out of her bowl. Picked up a red one and a green one, both in wrappers with Korean writing. I put the green one in my mouth … and only then looked at the label. which read:

“Pine Needles Taste Candy”

In case you were wondering, yes, it did taste exactly like pine needles.

I explained to my manager that I preferred to eat fresh pine needles, thank you very much. Who needs the extra sugar?!

4/14/2008 UPDATE - Photograph of wrapper:

closeup of text:

If you’re a political junkie, you might find this parody of “The Office” is pretty funny. You can ignore the first 35 seconds:

He’s a populist and a Democrat:

Message to my millions (?) of readers: sorry for taking so long between posts recently… I just started a new job and am a bit distracted.

San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders had promised to veto a City Council resolution supporting gay marriage. At the eleventh hour, with the resolution on his desk, he changed his mind. In an emotional speech, Mayor Sanders explains why he reversed his position.

With his wife by his side and holding back tears, Mayor Sanders reveals that his daughter Lisa is a lesbian. Speaking of her, and of the gay and lesbian members of his staff, he says:

“In the end, I could not look any of them in the face and tell them that their relationships — their very lives — were any less meaningful than the marriage that I share with my wife, Rana.”

I remember when I was a child, we drove by a restaurant with the name “The Pink Pear.” My father chuckled, mentioning something about there being a double meaning to the restaurant name. An upscale Hooters, essentially. Try as I might, I didn’t see the double meaning — perhaps this was an early sign of gayness.

And perhaps a more recent sign of gayness is that I should enjoy a cocktail with these ingredients:

THE PINK PEAR:

• Grey Goose pear flavored vodka (”Grey Goose La Poire“)

• Soda water

• Splash of cranberry juice

As you might imagine, I intend no chest-related double meaning here. Instead, the only double meaning is perhaps a suggestion that you order two at once.

Also, I recommend that you not substitute the Grey Goose pear vodka with the more common Absolut pear vodka. Both vodkas taste of pear, but in my opinion Absolut Pear has hints of an underripe pear laced with DDT.

[There might already a drink called the Pink Pear, but since I don't know about it, I'm crediting myself with inventing the name. Add another second to my 15 minutes of fame! Justin gets a h/t for introducing me to Grey Goose Pear vodka. Mmmm.]

During the Miss Teen USA 2007 competition, contestant Caitlin Upton (Ms. South Carolina) was asked the following question:

“Recent polls have shown a fifth of Americans can’t locate the U.S. on a world map. Why do you think this is?”

Her answer was spectacular:

If you think about it for a minute, Caitlin Upton’s answer does provide valuable insight into some of the root causes of the problem.

For your enjoyment, here’s an attempted transcript:

“I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so, because some people out there in our nation don’t have maps and I believe that our education like such as South Africa and The Iraq and everywhere like, such as, and I believe that they should — our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S. — er — should help South Africa, and should help The Iraq and the Asian countries, so we will be able to build up our future for our ch–.”

“U.S. Americans?” “The Iraq?”

This weekend I went to see a reprint of Metropolis, the famous 1927 Fritz Lang silent film.

The film is so iconic that many scenes looked familiar, and yet there were some scenes that surprised me. I’ve seen the cityscapes before, and of course the well-known the “Machine-Man” robot (an obvious inspiration for Star Wars’ C3PO fifty years later), but I’d never seen the interior design shots before, and some of them were stunning. So were the fabulous art deco futuristic ticker tape machines and the giant underground machines powering the city. I couldn’t find any online pictures that came close to capturing the power of those scenes.

I’ve decided that when I finally have my billions, I’m going to have my office designed to be an exact replica of the one belonging to Joh Fredersen, the ruler (owner? creator? overlord?) of Metropolis. My replica will come complete with vacuum tube powered computing machine on my desk, a staff of identically clad accountants, a “Thin Man” to spy on my workers in their gloomy underground city, and giant analog wall clock keeping metric time.

Even by 2007 standards some of the visuals and special effects are actually pretty impressive. One surprise was that, in contrast to the bold and pathbreaking visuals, the plot was at times, well, a bit cheesy. Overall a great experience.

Here’s a sample of some of the well known Metropolis iconography.

Shift change for the workers of the underground city:

A clock keeping metric time:

On April 15th, 1994, a sane Dick Cheney confidently explains how trying to take over Iraq would lead to a “quagmire,” that wouldn’t be worth the American casualties:

Remember the 1970s, where our greatest fears were gasoline shortages and and swarms of killer bees? What ever happened to killer bees, anyway?

Enjoy this clip from “The Swarm” (1978). It doesn’t get any more campy than this.