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.”

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

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.

“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!”

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:

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?”

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.

h/t to Larry M.

Funny stuff. Max Blumenthal visits a College Republican convention, and after hearing the expected GOP pro-war talking points (”what people don’t understand is if it’s not faught in iraq and we don’t win over there, it’s gonna happen here.”), Blumenthal asks:

“If you support the war, why aren’t you serving in the military?”

The results are hilarious.

Blumenthal doesn’t just cover the war in his visit with the Chickenhawk College Republicans. When he interviews some Republicans about their feelings about gays, at first there’s some old fashioned GOP anti-gay garbage. But it gets really interesting when a member of the College Republicans lets us know that he’s been dealing with some suppressed feelings:

Republican Guy: “Everybody at one time in their life has had the inclination towards the other — uh — towards the same sex. . . . But just because you have the inclination does not mean you’re gay because if you have the inclination because you’re curious and stuff like that. . . . But if you accept it, and then suppress your feelings and you pray about it to god, and know that you’re not — are are so much stronger than some other people.”

Max Blumenthal: “Have you accepted it?”

Republican Guy: “Yes, I have accepted it, I have prayed about it to God, and I know for a fact that I am not gay.”

Not quite convincing… but funny to watch.

Anyway, here’s the video:

No, it’s not what you’re thinking. They didn’t ban gay people. They banned “The Gays.” That is, people with the last name “Gay.”

The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting that the Australian version of Facebook (the social networking website) rejects membership for anyone with the last name “Gay.” The paper reports that any attempt to register a Facebook membership under the last name “Gay” results in the following error message:

“Please enter a legitimate name.”

Ouch! As if the inevitable playground taunts weren’t bad enough for children with that last name, now this.

Clearly, Facebook isn’t trying to discriminate against The Gays. The problem is no doubt the result of some oversensitive software filters. I’m sure Rudolf Lipschitz would have faced a similar challenge had he survived long enough to create a Facebook profile.

On the other hand, why is “gay” on the list of terms that are filtered out? I’ve made the point before, but the word “gay” is not a profane term. It doesn’t need filtering.

You would have thought that the software filter gurus would have learned this lesson after the “Enola Homosexual” incident. This incident occurred on September 5, 1994, when the Northwest Herald (a paper in suburban Chicago) ran a story with the following headline:

“ATOMIC BOMBERS CRITICIZE ENOLA HOMOSEXUAL EXHIBIT”

This nonsensical headline resulted when the word “gay” was mistakenly replaced with “homosexual.” The Northwest Herald’s story was actually about a planned exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution, where part of the fuselage of the famous plane the Enola Gay was to be placed on display. For younger readers, the Enola Gay — not the Enola Homosexual — is famous for being the B-29 bomber that dropped the first atomic bomb ever used in warfare, over Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945.

FREE BONUS MATERIAL!
Training material for newspaper editors and Facebook IT employees:
How to tell when “gay” means “homosexual”

Example 1: “Gay” doesn’t mean “homosexual”

Example 2: “Gay” means “homosexual”

There’s something a bit “off” about Mitt Romney. He looks and sounds like a normal person, but you might say there’s a certain something missing. He seems hollow somehow.

Thanks to YouTube we’ve seen that Mitt Romney can movingly (and with the appearance of the deepest sincerity) express the exact opposite opinion from one he movingly expressed a few months before.

One could argue that this flip-floppery doesn’t set Romney apart from other politicians. But to me, Romney does seems different. His hollowness goes deeper, it’s more complete.

For example, what kind of a person puts a pet dog into a carrier, straps the carrier to the roof of the car, and then drives for 12 hours?

Yeah, according to the Boston Globe, that’s exactly what Romney did back in 1983. As if that wasn’t strange enough, the Boston Globe adds this disgusting but revealing detail:

As the oldest son, Tagg Romney commandeered the way-back of the wagon, keeping his eyes fixed out the rear window, where he glimpsed the first sign of trouble. ”Dad!” he yelled. ”Gross!” A brown liquid was dripping down the back window, payback from an Irish setter who’d been riding on the roof in the wind for hours.

As the rest of the boys joined in the howls of disgust, Romney coolly pulled off the highway and into a service station. There, he borrowed a hose, washed down Seamus and the car, then hopped back onto the highway.

I mean, I’m sure the station wagon was crowded, but who treats the family dog like a suitcase?

There’s a type of bad advertising where a company tries to put a positive spin on something terrible. Sort of like putting a label on your food saying “now, with 99.9% less rat poison!” It may be true, and it may be a good thing, but you’re better off just not mentioning it.

For example, back in the 1980s, I remember when McDonalds sold a product called “chocolatey” chip cookies. Not chocolate. Chocolatey. With a “y” at the end.

When you bit into one, you understood why they had the extra letter. Savoring the artificial flavor, you could close your eyes and imagine the McDonaldland lawyers coming up with the idea:

“Okay, so we can’t legally call them “chocolate” chips. Apparently, you need to have actual chocolate to do that. How about chocolatish chip cookies? No, no, you’re right — too ethnic. How about choco-like chip? Wait! I’ve got it! Chocolatey!”

They would have been better off just calling them “cookies.” The extra “y” just drew attention to the fact that there was something fundamentally wrong with the whole restaurant.

Right now, the best example of this type of bad advertising has to be the Cingular (AT&T) advertising campaign where they draw attention to their horrible reception by claiming that they have the “fewest dropped calls.”

Fewest dropped calls? What about being able to make or receive calls? I just assume that they can’t brag about those things for legal reasons. It makes you think: “Well, course they have fewer dropped calls — Cingular users know they have to stand perfectly still while talking on the phone, and avoid any sudden movements, or else the call will disconnect. Not to mention the fact that if you can’t even make a call from the middle of the city, then there are fewer calls to drop.”

The joke’s on us, unfortunately.

George W. Bush and Paris Hilton have this much in common: They were both born into a world of privilege and power unimaginable to most Americans. They come from elite, wealthy families, yet they are famously disdainful of sophisticated thought. Good fortune has made neither humble — instead, they both act with confidence and swagger, emboldening them to do what few others would dare. Neither seem particularly concerned with helping those who are not equally fortunate. And finally, both seem to believe that they are above the law.

Chiffon margarine ran a series of popular TV commercials in the 1970s, where Mother Nature is fooled into believing that Chiffon Margarine is actually “sweet, creamy” butter.

No doubt fed up with other attacks on nature that were taking place in the 1970s (e.g., polyester), Mother Nature always loses her temper after she mistakes Chiffon for real butter, stirring up wind and lightning and uttering her famous line: “it’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.”

In the version posted below, the scene opens as Mother Nature (apparently taking a break from controlling the seasons and the crop cycle) reads “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” to seemingly random mix of animals.

Modern audiences are not impressed by a little wind and flash of lightning. If the commercial were re-made today, CGI graphics would show lightning bolts shooting out of her hands, perhaps even striking and killing the TV announcer to punish him for his trickery.

Paper cuts only seem to happen during a stressful or tense moment at work. Pure excitement while shuffling paper isn’t enough.

For instance, I can’t recall ever getting a paper cut from opening a present or turning a page in a particularly riveting book.

Work-related tension is the necessary ingredient. Otherwise, a lowly sheet of paper — which always loses to scissors in Rock, Paper, Scissors — cannot cut so deeply.

Hurray for happy, proud elephants and firemen!

Boo for sad, nerdy donkeys with glasses!

Do you like balloons? All good Americans like balloons! So let’s vote for the smiling man with extreme comb-over hairdo!

That’s essentially the message of this 1952 TV advertisement for Dwight Eisenhower:

If you thought American political discourse was on the decline, this video provides some evidence that it’s been bad for a long while. And judging from the color of the faces in this cartoon, another thing that apparently hasn’t changed much is the target racial demographic of the GOP.

By the way, in watching this video, was anyone else reminded of a certain Scandinavian retailer? At least if you’re looking in black and white:

No? Anyone? Maybe it’s just me.

• to think outside the box - v., to attempt to solve a difficult or persistent problem with a creative or non-obvious solution.

The implication of this corporate jargon is that preconceived expectations, tradition, and past practice have muddied our ability to think creatively about a problem. When you encourage someone to “think outside the box,” you’re stressing the need to escape the trap of looking at the issue in these traditional ways.

As with other pieces of corporate jargon, the phrase “to think outside the box” is sometimes misused. At best, it’s a useful phrase encouraging creativity. At worst, it has become into a destructive “inside the box” tradition all of its own. To deal with these different uses, I’ve divided this post into the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

The Good:

The optimistic message is that if we can escape these constraints (thinking “inside the box”), we can approach the problem in a fresh way and through innovation, creativity, and intelligence, we can solve a problem that has not yet been solved. Nice image, no? After all, who wants to be in a box? Or a cubicle for that matter?

The Bad:

The point of thinking outside the box isn’t to ignore past constraints, but to try to think around them. There’s a difference. In the hands of the mentally lazy, this corporate jargon becomes shorthand for “ignore what happened before,” or “don’t think about the potential consequences.”

Sometimes there’s a very good reason why something hasn’t been done before (e.g., adding aerosolized asbestos to a can of hairspray to reduce flammability).  Sure, fresh and innovative thinking often comes from those who are ignorant of the past and therefore not seduced by it.  Out of the mouths of babes. However, when making the ultimate decision, ignorance of the past is rarely a valuable trait.  It’s why you don’t see many 7-year-olds in senior management positions, Tom Hanks in “Big” notwithstanding.

The Ugly:

Even worse than when it’s used to cheerlead a team into ignorance, is when this piece of corporate jargon becomes a mantle for corporate bullies who rely on it’s rhetorical power to shut down any criticism of their proposals. The corporate bully throws it as an accusation at his or her critics. “Disagree with me? You’re thinking inside the box!”