Quick Tip: “Breath” vs. “Breathe”

Just a note from your curmudgeonly neighborhood proofreader: the words “breathe” and “breath” are not interchangeable, and the one is not an archaic or European spelling of the other. They both have their purpose.

“Breathe” is a verb. You breathe deeply. You breathe more clearly after taking a decongestant.

“Breath” is a noun. You take a breath when you breathe. We say something is a breath of fresh air. You curse pedantic, pain-in-the-butt proofreaders under your breath.

Got it? Good.

I’m glad we had this little chat. Carry on, now.

Jul082010

An Observation About My Office, Observed at 8:23 PM

Yes, I am still at the office at 8:23 PM. For the third time this week. With more yet to come. Grrrrr.

Anyhow, the big air-conditioning unit that’s mounted above my cubicle just shut down for the night. While the silence is a blessed change from the constant white noise, there’s also something deeply sad about it. The suddenly unmoving air seems to somehow absorb the sensation of life and activity that usually permeates the old cube farm, and it starts to feel like we’re nearing the inevitable end. Like when the Titanic‘s lights went out just before everything really went to hell.

Or maybe it’s just sad that I’m here late enough to witness the energy-saving protocols going into effect. As I said earlier, grrrr.

Jul022010

Friday Evening Videos: “Synchronicity II”

Yeah, I know, another damn music video. I haven’t had the time for anything more substantive, I’m afraid. Lots of late nights at the office this week, and the way things are going, I’ll be lucky if I don’t have to work over the holiday weekend, too, and possibly the following weekend as well, and all thanks to some overzealous middle-management dumbass who made an impossible promise that I and my fellow bottom-of-the-ladder production people — the people who do the actual work around this place — now have to try and fulfill. My Loyal Readers can probably guess how I feel about that. Call me lazy if that’s how you see it, but I personally think the American-style protestant work ethic (i.e., the “thank you, sir, may I have another” mindset) is bullshit, and I resent the hell out of every additional second The Man shaves off the already too-small “life” portion of my work/life balance.

So, in that vein, here’s one for every middle-aged, white-collar cubicle monkey out there who spends his days wondering which of the reasonable, responsible choices he made in his youth led him to this bleak plateau where he feels like a coyote that’s thinking about gnawing off his own leg in order to escape the merciless steel jaws. It’s a little primal-scream therapy from Sting and The Police, and while the Road Warrior-inspired, post-apocalypse trappings of this video are as 1980s as it gets, the meaning of the lyrics and the bubbling rage at the grinding inhumanity of modern life remain as applicable — sadly — as ever.

And on that note, I hope that everyone reading this does, in fact, get to enjoy their holiday weekends. Think of me while you’re barbecuing and looking for a good spot to watch the parade…

Jul012010

Putting Some Perspective On Things

If you’re fortunate enough to live in an area where the glow of urban lighting hasn’t completely washed out the nighttime sky, you may have spotted the International Space Station zooming overhead. I’ve seen it several times myself, a golden spark flashing across the Salt Lake Valley at breakneck speed. On one memorable occasion, it had a companion spark, one of the space shuttles running alongside just after undocking to come home. (I don’t remember which shuttle it was… I really should make notes about that sort of thing). Anyhow, you may have wondered just exactly how big the station is to be visible to the naked eye like that. And if you’re like me, the usual description — that it’s the size of a football field, the largest object we’ve ever put into space — doesn’t really help much. (I can’t help it if I’m not sports-minded!)

Earlier this evening, my friend Jeff Farr posted the following chart on Facebook:

And now I have no trouble visualizing it at all. Why didn’t somebody just say it was nearly as wide as the Enterprise‘s saucer section… sheesh!

The origin page for this nifty graphic has some more information about the station, its systems, and how long it’s going to be up there, if you’re interested…

Jun292010

This Makes Me Happy…

…and brother, could I use a little boost these days.

It’s not the greatest rendition of the song, but everyone involved looks to be having fun:

You know, I’ve never been much of a Poison fan beyond their three or four biggest hits, and I’ve never had an opinion about Bret Michaels one way or the other, but for some reason, I find that I was really rooting for him during his recent health crisis, and I’m very pleased he pulled through. Possibly because Bret himself seems to be so damn grateful to be alive. His grin and his good cheer are infectious.

Having a highly public near-death experience certainly seems to have given his career a shot in the arm… he’s turning up everywhere, from American Idol to a duet with Mylie Cyrus on Good Morning, America to a Jimmy Buffett concert. A hair-metal vocalist and Mr. Margaritaville? Or Hannah Montana? Who would’ve ever predicted that?! He’s even scheduled to do a double-bill with my main man, Rick Springfield, on July 31st in Pala, California. Again, that’s not a pairing I ever would’ve imagined, but who knows, maybe it’s one of those “so crazy it just might work” things. Certainly the ladies in attendance will enjoy the male eye candy, or so The Girlfriend informs me. (She likes Bret’s eyes and Rick’s… well, pretty much everything.)

What was it Fitzgerald said about Americans not getting second acts? Wonder what he would’ve made of this one?

Jun232010

How Do You Know You’ve Done Too Much Proofreading?

You know you’ve been doing too much proofreading when you’re on your own time, outside the office, enjoying a fun little escapist novel about vampires, werewolves, fairies, and beautiful Southern girls who can read minds, and you come across the following sentence:

Since I was very nervous with Sam’s Blackberry, he entered the totals while I counted…

And you find yourself thinking that “Blackberry” should have an intercap B and a registered trademark, like so: BlackBerry®.
I couldn’t have had adamantium claws or the ability to fly or something cool; no, my superpower has to be “attention to detail.” Sigh…

Jun192010

Friday Evening Videos: “After Midnight — the Michelob Version”

I’ve really dropped the ball with these video entries, and for that I apologize. But just lately I seem to be dropping all kinds of balls, so why should this feature be any different?

Anyhow, what I’m posting this week isn’t a video exactly; it’s a TV spot for Michelob beer that aired in the late ’80s, but it looks like a music video, and it features the guitar god Eric Clapton and a (then) updated version of his classic “After Midnight.” Michelob had a number of similar ads around this same time featuring popular music and an MTV visual style. I have the impression (but no actual knowledge) that it was a successful campaign for them. Certainly, I liked these ads, all of them that as I can recall seeing, anyway, but this was my favorite… it sounded and looked cool, and I just knew that the atmospheric mood of the clip was a prediction of what weekend nights were going to be like when I came of age. Yet another adolescent fantasy that didn’t quite work out, considering I’m currently sitting at home by myself on a Friday night/Saturday morning writing about a 20-year-old beer ad instead of out listening to blues music in a smokey dive somewhere. Sigh… anyway, here’s the ad. Enjoy:

For the record, I know there was also a one-minute version of this ad, but it’s the 30-second spot that I remember seeing the most. There were also Michelob ads featuring Genesis, Phil Collins, and Steve Winwood (I wasn’t able to find a link to that one).

And now, considering that it’s well after midnight, I think I’m going to call it a week…

Jun182010

Damn Californicators!

Several of the blogs I follow have been commenting on an interactive map doohickey that lets you chart the people moving into and out of any part of the US you may be interested in. Naturally, I selected my home county, and this was the result I got:

As usual, click the image to enlarge it. If it’s not clear what you’re looking at, black lines indicate people moving into the area, while the red lines are folks who got the hell out of Dodge the same year. The heavier-weighted lines represent the number of people moving between any two destinations. One caveat: the statistics used are all two years old.
Notice where most of those black lines — the inbound lines — seem to originate. That’s right, the newcomers to the Salt Lake Valley are coming in the largest numbers from Southern California, thus appearing to validate one of the most enduring memes of Utah folk wisdom over the past couple of decades: the “Californicator.”

Jun112010

Mad Men Indeed

You gotta love the summer season around the old ad agency.

You see, my Corporate Overlords provide us downtrodden minions with a generous boon called “summer Fridays,” i.e., four Fridays off with pay, which you can take at your own discretion, anytime between Memorial Day and Labor Day, workflow allowing. These days don’t count against your vacation time, either; they’re essentially bonus holidays. This particular perk is, no surprise, a very popular institution, but it tends to generate some strange side-effects for those of us who are left at work while everyone else is off, um, summer Fridaying.

For one thing, the office is eerily quiet, because roughly one-third to one-half of the 400-some-odd staffers are out. The building gets pretty chilly, too, without the extra bodies and running computers to warm the place up, and as the day wears on and the daylight outside begins to soften with the onset of evening, the basement cube-farm of this century-old brick pile starts to feel like a set piece from the latest zombie-apocalypse movie.

Then there are toddlers and pets who occasionally make appearances because their folks have to work and are unable to make other arrangements. This can happen anytime, of course, but it seems to happen more in the summer, and especially on summer Fridays, I guess because there are fewer management types around to care. These special guest stars aren’t really a problem, but they have a tendency to wander off on their own, lured by the irresistible mysteries of a post-zombie-apocalypse cube farm. Which means that while I’m sitting here typing this, I can see a tiny Boston terrier/pug mix named after a Cimmerian deity wandering around at the edges of my peripheral vision.

And then of course there are the mental effects caused by the oppressive isolation and loneliness of this depopulated environment. Basically, summer Fridays make those poor devils who are left behind quite insane. A harsh accusation I know, but let me provide my evidence: You occasionally hear maniacal laughter echoing from the other side of the basement. You see random notes in the break room offering free cupcakes, but there is no evidence that a cupcake has even passed within sensor-range of that room for weeks. Assistant creative directors (the actual creative directors are always out of the office on Fridays, both summer and otherwise) putt golf balls down the aisles between the cubicles. And some account supervisors think that a 15,000-word document delivered to proofreading at 4 PM can be finished by 6, or “quitting time,” as we like to call it. Fifteen thousand words, for you lay-people who don’t deal in such things for a living is about 50 pages. Fifty brand-new, error-ridden pages that have never been seen by an editorial eye, and they want it in only two hours…

I just heard another peal of maniacal laughter.

Oh, wait… that was me.

And I just scared the dog away. Sorry, little guy…

Jun102010

Staggering Insecurity

Simon & Schuster, the publisher of Rick Springfield’s upcoming memoir, has posted one of its “Author Revealed” interviews with my main man. It’s pretty meme-ish and inconsequential, but Rick’s answers to three particular questions are indeed revealing:

Q. What’s your greatest flaw?
A. Staggering insecurity
Q. What’s your best quality?
A. Wow, I don’t know if I have one (see above)
Q. If you could be any person or thing, who or what would it be?
A. A better version of me

Not exactly what you’d expect from a rock star who looks as good for his age as he does and who still has women throwing themselves at his feet every night. But that, quite honestly, is part of the reason why I like the guy so much. When I was a kid and “Jessie’s Girl” was on the radio every five minutes, I liked him because I thought he was cool and he recorded music I liked and he was on TV and the girls all thought he was cute. Years later, after I’d rediscovered him and learned where he’d been throughout the ’90s, I liked him because — surprise! — he was a human being with some major frailties, and he wasn’t afraid to talk about them or work them into his music. Moreover, he shared many of the same frailties as yours truly; that “staggering insecurity” thing strikes very close to home for me.

In a weird kind of way, learning that my boyhood idol struggles with his ego and with depression, the same way I do, has been kind of like what happens as you grow up and come to understand your parents as real people instead of omnipotent lords of the household. There is a certain sense that something has been diminished, and that sense is tinged with sadness (at least for me), but your relationship with them is ultimately richer for the discovery of their flaws. You identify more with them because they have been diminished, if that makes sense.

Wow. Did I just say that Rick Springfield is a father figure for me? I don’t think I did, but it certainly sounds that way, doesn’t it?

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