Upon hearing on CBC radio that Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper was meeting with the Dalai Lama this week, one of the little typists replied in earnest: “Mummy, why is Harper meeting a dying llama?”
Archive for October, 2007
It’s time we chucked the chunky two thousand and seven syntax for the year 2007 and adopted twenty-o-seven.
That was the syntax in the last century. It wasn’t one thousand nine hundred and ninety nine. It was nineteen ninety nine. And in the first decade, it was nineteen-0-seven or nineteen seven.
In the year 2000 we called it two thousand. I can see that. It was such a novelty back then, and of course we had the spectre of the Y2K computer problem, Y2K being Year Two Thousand.
I’d think its time we stopped wasting all those syllables and shortened it up to twenty-0-seven, or better yet, twenty seven. We all know what it means and it sounds better to my ear.
Does anyone know the Canadian Press broadcast rule, or the CBC’s?
You are not funny. Your host is not funny. Your debaters are lame. Your live audiences are sycophantic and undemanding.
This program has graduated from the Stuart McLean school of CBC comedy. It is in love with itself and its own little tropes. It fancies itself cute. It is founded on the premise that the louder you shout, the funnier you are. It attempts to be edgy but comes across as dull and trying too hard.
This week’s debate produced two wet “comedians” debating the pros and cons of Halloween. One of the debaters - not sure if he was arguing for or against - came up with this charming attempt at dark humour: “Juvenile diabetes? Last time I checked it’s still better than cancer. That’s science.”
There was no finesse in the delivery and the attempt at comedic subversion failed and failed miserably. It was lazy and lame like most of the humour on The Debaters program.
Make it stop, CBC. You give Canadian humour a bad name.
If you stumbled uponGT Sunday afternoon and evening, you probably saw some strange pages displaying.
That was my Sundayus Horriblis. GT suffered a major shutdown. It happened during an attempt to upgrade the Wordpress platform.
Directions were followed to the word. Files were downloaded, uploaded, moved around and deleted. And then Boom! It was gone.
Not being a programmer and with little experience with back-end databases, I was a little over my head. That is when my most excellent host Zipium came to the rescue. They responded to my SOS email and worked late into the night to restore my site.
Zipium has helped this typist out before both with GT and other professional sites. We thank them for their excellent customer service.
Give Zipium your business. Give them your firstborn. Thank you Zipium.
We’ve had some labour unrest in our house these past few weeks.
One of the unions is threatening to walk off the job. The issue is toilet paper. The union claims that it is not being replaced when it runs out. It has filed a grievance saying that management and the other unions are not shouldering their share of the responsibility.
We reached a tentative agreement, but things are still iffy. The other unions have to vote on it. If they refuse, the first union will walk. And then all hell will break loose because that union handles all the cooking. He also turns off the smoke detector when it goes off.
If he walks, management (this typist) will take over the cooking. And when management cooks the smoke detector goes off. A lot. And management is too short to reach the smoke detector. Things could get ugly.
Not to be a picky pedant, but why do people sign emails with “Best?”
Do they mean best regards? Best wishes? Best in show?
Best what?
I know that best means well. They could sign the email Worst, which wouldn’t be good at all. Best is definitely better than worst.
But “best” all by itself seems incomplete to me, like the signer forgot the rest. And I’m seeing it more these days, especially in email business correspondence.
Anyone know?
Best regards,
GT
You know that TV commercial that shows the people screaming in horror as they spot the first fallen leaf at the end of summer. This happened to me this week, only it was much worse than a fallen leaf.
It was ….. oh dear God no, not…. CHRISTMAS! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
I’m afraid it’s true. The flickering Christmas trees, cheerful mechanical elves and chirpy Christmas jingles have invaded. Fasten your seatbelts, folks, it’s going to be long, plastic, insincere Christmas season.
All I wanted to do was get some Halloween gear for the little typists. I thought I’d get it over with early. Ha! Most of the Halloween stuff was gone or severely marked down. That’s because Halloween is so August. October is the new Christmas season.
It was 22 degrees outside and inside was Christmas!
By mid-November I’ll be wanting to take an axe to those flickering Christmas trees and in December I’ll be having homicidal feelings towards the cheerful mechanical elves.
I used to enjoy Christmas when it started in December. But when it’s shoved down your throat from October on, it gets tiresome.
I think I’ll boycott Christmas this year until, say, December. Radical innit?
This typist is calling for a boycott of bookstores and publishers that are ripping off the Canadian book-buying public by failing to adjust prices to reflect current exchange rates.
On the weekend, I slammed down a computer book and walked out of a Chapters bookstore to protest the differential. With the Canadian dollar worth $1.02 US dollars, Chapters was charging $31.99 CDN. The US price was $24.99.
When asked why the book was not “stickered” with a lower price, the dyspeptic and disinterested youth working the section replied “you have to pay the old prices on old books.”
Oh no you don’t. That is a scam cooked up by the industry. You can’t back-charge to make up for currency fluctuations. That’s why currency speculators win sometimes and lose other times.
Canadian book-buyers should be paying less than the US price, not more.
The local independent bookstore I frequent has been stickering books for weeks with prices that accurately reflect the exchange. If they can do it, why can’t the big guys?
It’s time to take action. Don’t be a patsy. Boycott bookstores and books with prices that do not reflect the true exchange.
The other day a little box popped up on my computer and gave me this message:
The licensing subsystem has failed catastrophically. You must reinstall or call customer support.
But here’s the thing that really got me. The only response the little box offered was OK.
Excuse me? OK? You just told me I’ve had a catastrophic failure. And now you want me to say that is OK?
I’m sorry but that is not OK. That is bad, very bad. No, that is a disaster, but it is not OK. OK?
I didn’t until I walked into Starbucks one day and made the mistake of ordering a “small” cappuccino.
The roll of the eyes on the waiter – oops, barista – said it all: “Don’t ‘cha you know?” he seemed to be saying. “Tall is the new small.”
Of course. Silly me. This is Starbucks. Why settle for small when you can have tall?
Who wants a mundane “medium” when a “grande” awaits? And come on people, it’s no longer cool to order large, it’s venti, darlings, venti.
Welcome to Starbucks, the coffee shop where English is passé. Starbucklish is spoken here. Didn’t you know? It’s the new global language.
Remember that saving “size matters?” Not in Starbucks. In Starbucks it’s what you call the size that matters. Tall, grande, venti. That’s what matters.
So you can throw out those old Merriam-Websters and Oxford English dictionaries because they’re still telling you that “tall” is an adjective you but before the words “basketball player.”
Ha! Will someone please tell them tall is Starbucklish for small?
And while they’re at it, will they ask what the correct adjective is for a basketball player in Starbucks?
On Saturday night, an oyster feed was had at my house. Oysters are not for everyone. But for me, a feed of fresh raw Nova Scotian oysters is as good as it gets. With a squeeze of lemon, a squirt of tobasco and a slurp of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, you realize that life does not get better
[flickr 7156526@N06 72157602454170682,].
A walk with family and friends along the white rocks of the Atlantic coast produced these reflections of silly dancing. They were taken in a small pool of water that formed earlier in the day when high-tide waves were crashing over the rocks. The waves were not crashing here when the photos were taken but you could hear plenty of wave-crashing below. The High Head walk is every bit as beautiful but not as famous as Peggy’s Cove which is just down the coast.
[flickr 7156526@N06 72157602424968103].
My cat Cheddar (see sidebar) has a personal hygiene problem.
She also has a weight problem.
So when clumps of undetermined substance accumulated in the fur in her rump area, she needed the cat equivalent of a Brazillian.
By the look of this blog, you could be forgiven for thinking this typist is one of those crazy cat people.
There have been Flickr slide shows, flickr badges in the sidebar, weekly columns - all about the cat.
While it is true that the cat in question (see sidebar) plays a big role in the life and times of this typist, I am not one of those people. Not yet.
But when I’m 83 and living in a one-bedroom apartment above the corner store, wearing my World War I pilot’s goggles while I tootle around on my World-War-II vintage bicycle, I will probably have 43 cats living with me.
I will talk to them constantly. My apartment will smell of vaguely cat wee and litter. I will bake cookies and nice little squares for the local cat-shelter fund-raising sale in the mall. All my friends will be cat-fanciers, and I will spend more time at the vet’s than anywhere else. And I will have an impressive complement of rogue whiskers on my chin.
My blog motto will be: All cats; all the time. I will live for the cats. I will call them my kids.
But despite appearances on this blog, I’m not quite there. Not yet anyway.
This typist is happy, efficient and motivated when it comes to typing.
But when it comes to admin tasks, the opposite is true. Admin induces a despondencythat borders on coma.
Filing HST returns, as I am doing today, induces deep depression.
Because of this, I avoid admin activities as long as possible. I save it all up until the last minute and do it all at once.
And it hurts. It hurts a lot. The reason? Typists type. They are not hard-wired to do admin.
Part of the problem is my rule-following nature. I would never want to get in trouble with the government and so I am compelled to do my HST returns in a timely and orderly manner.
But the pain. Oh, the pain.
Help. Me. Someone.
Now.