Here’s a good one culled from the day’s proofreading work: in a document discussing the “personal journal” feature of a wireless handheld, a copywriter for my agency spelled “journal” as “jernal.” Incidentally, the copywriters are all supposed to be college-educated, and they’re probably making more money than I am. Oy.
It doesn’t exactly qualify as “Egregious Corporate Speak” but it’s pretty egregious on its own terms…
Character actor Paul Gleason, who died over the weekend at the age of 67, spent much of his career playing obnoxious, arrogant jerks who are destined for a come-uppance in the final reel. There was, for example, his character in Die Hard, Deputy Police Chief Dwayne T. Robinson, who swaggers onto the scene and promptly makes a bad situation much, much worse. But, as every obituary on the ‘net is noting, Gleason will be remembered for playing one specific jerk, Principal Richard Vernon in the exemplary Brat-Pack flick The Breakfast Club.
It’s been a while since I took one of those ridiculous online quizzes that seek to grant insight into your character by comparing you to inaminate objects or abstract concepts, and I’m not much into work on this first day after the long weekend, so:
You Are Midnight |
 You are more than a little eccentric, and you’re apt to keep very unusual habits. Whether you’re a nightowl, living in a commune, or taking a vow of silence – you like to experiment with your lifestyle. Expressing your individuality is important to you, and you often lie awake in bed thinking about the world and your place in it. You enjoy staying home, but that doesn’t mean you’re a hermit. You also appreciate quality time with family and close friends. |
I’m looking at a couple of interesting tidbits as I while away the last few minutes of work before the holiday weekend.
The first is news that the Voyager II space probe, launched way back in 1977, seems to be approaching the “edge” of our solar system, which is defined by a phenomenon called the “termination shock.” This is where particles blown outward by our sun start to turn back inward because of a flow of incoming particles from outside the system. The interesting thing is that the termination shock seems to occur sooner in the “southern” region of our system, where Voyager II is, than in the northern region. (Voyager I crossed the northern termination shock about a year ago, but it was farther away when the event occurred than its sister ship is now.)
The other item is further evidence in support of one of my pet theories, which is that the world is becoming more and more like Star Trek all the time: scientists believe we might be able to build an actual cloaking device before too many more years using “metamaterials” that bend electromagnetic energy around them. A more detailed article on this research can be found here. Very cool news. I really wouldn’t mind living in a Star Trek world. As long as we don’t all end up wearing velour or spandex jumpsuits, or suits with feet in them like jammies…
I’ve been thinking of how best to present this next find, but words are failing me. Some things simply have to be seen to be believed. And sometimes the words of others just have to stand on their own without further comment:
We at BringBackBritney.com hold firm that a hosed-down, scantily clad Britney Spears is vital to the livelihood of millions of Americans. We will not sit silently as she sullies her persona in the public eye; that of a Kabbalah chasing, non seatbelt wearing, ovary farm for any two-bit backup dancer to take advantage of. This is not the Britney we hold in high regard.
[ADDENDUM: The really interesting thing is that this site seems to be tied in with Madame Tussaud’s wax museum in New York, which, not coincidentally, just debuted a stripper-pole-straddling likeness of Brit — complete with heaving breasts that actually, er, heave. You know, I feel sorry for the girl, I truly do…]
It’s a mellow Friday morning here at my day job as we head into a three-day weekend. Seems like the perfect time for an amusing video, wouldn’t you say?
I’ve noticed kind of a mini-trend on the InterWebs recently, fake movie trailers that are edited and scored to make well-known films seem like something completely different: The Shining reinterpreted as a heartwarming family drama, for instance, or Stand By Me with gentle Gordie recast as some kind of psycho killer. But I think I’ve got one that has those beat: how about The Ten Commandments as a teen high-school comedy?
I was about ten years old when I first saw the PBS series Cosmos, hosted by the late astronomer Carl Sagan. I was a pretty bright kid, if I do say so myself, and I think I probably knew more about science and history at that age than a lot of grown-ups do now. Still, I was only a kid, which meant that a lot of the series’ content went over my head until I saw it again years later. Even so, I remember being utterly captivated by the big ideas behind Cosmos: that history, both of our puny little species and of the entire universe, is like an epic journey; that life, even intelligent life, may be ubiquitous in the universe but is nevertheless incredibly fragile and therefore precious; that knowledge and the quest to understand is at the core of our species; and that human beings are simultaneously — and paradoxically — insignificant in our scale to creation, but infinite in our spirits, destined for great things if we can only avoid destroying ourselves. I was equally fascinated by the show’s host, Dr. Sagan, who seemed to my ten-year-old self like such a gentle, kind-hearted man, but also, in some way I couldn’t quite put my finger on, a very sad man. I imagined that his sometimes grim demeanor must’ve come from his knowing everything there was to know, and that he suffered because of that awful, burdensome knowledge. (Yes, I really was a brooding Romantic even at the age of ten.)
Carl Sagan had a son, Nick Sagan, who grew up to become a science-fiction novelist. On his blog the other day, I found the following video clip from Cosmos, in which his father sums up so much of what that series was about. Curiously — or perhaps frighteningly — his words from almost 30 years ago still seem relevant today:
So, I may not have done much of my promised blogging about books last week, but I was at least thinking about the subject. Cranky Robert and I exchanged a flurry of e-mails which resulted in mutually recommended reading for both of us, as well as my discovery of the Titanic Book Site, a wonderful resource for anyone interested in the world’s most famous sunken ocean liner. And I also walked up the street from my office one day to Sam Weller’s and bought a couple of books. That may not sound terribly noteworthy, but it sort of is, at least to me. You see, I don’t buy many books these days. And that’s quite a change from The Way Things Used to Be.
Hmm. This is interesting. It seems there’s a bit of a kerfuffle brewing among the on-line writing community (i.e., folks involved in or aspiring to professional writing and the publishing industry, and who also have blogs) because a shady literary agent named Barbara Bauer — who is number three on SFWA’s list of the 20 worst agencies — threw a tantrum and got a Website called Absolute Write shut down. Teresa Nielsen Hayden has the details.