Gripes and Grumbles

Aug202007

Fall Must Be Coming…

How do I know that the season is changing?

Well, for one thing, the temperature when I left the house this morning was delightfully cool, somewhere in the upper 60s, the first time it’s been that low in several months and a welcome change for this curmudgeonly blogger, who has found this year’s record-setting string of 100-plus days to be just about unbearable.

But the real tip-off was the legion of cute young co-eds commuting up to the U of U this morning for their first day of classes… which, of course, goes hand-in-hand with the Utah Transit Authority’s asinine annual ritual of shortening their light-rail trains just when a reasonable person would expect that they’d need more capacity. All summer long, the trains have been running with four cars and were mostly empty. Now, this morning, with all these new faces waiting on the platform, there were just two cars, and we ended up wedged in like cattle.

Morons.

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Jul182007

Something That Bugs Me: “Loose” vs. “Lose”

Here’s another of those trivial things that no one else seems to mind, but which drive me certifiably bats: people writing the word “loose” when they really mean “lose.”

I don’t know if this is just a Utah thing, or if people from other parts of the country do it, too, but it certainly seems to be endemic in these parts. I see it all over the place: in comments on the Salt Lake Tribune‘s web site (which is actually what inspired this post today), in e-mails from friends (no offense, kids), and in letters and diaries written years ago by dead relatives. I could understand it if folks were simply spelling the word the way it sounded when spoken, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Utahns pronounce “lose” with the proper “z” sound (i.e., “looz” ) in conversation, but when they write it down, they frequently use “loose” (i.e., “looce”), and I gotta tell you, as somebody who spends all day correcting written mistakes for a living, it’s maddening.

So, let’s have a little remedial lesson, shall we? “Lose” is a verb, as in “to lose,” as in “I hope the Utah Jazz don’t lose the big game.” (Don’t worry, they probably will.) “Loose,” on the other hand, is an adjective, a descriptor of something else, as in “That screw is loose,” or “She’s a loose woman.” Now, what’s so tough about that?

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Jun202007

Something That Bugs Me: Things That Started “It” All

So, I’m sitting here watching the AFI 100 Greatest Movies of All Time (10th Anniversary Edition) special, and I just saw a commercial for Blade Runner: The Final Cut, coming soon on DVD and (according to this commercial) to theaters this fall. Leaving aside my conviction that acknowledged classics shouldn’t be revised or messed with (and also that Ridley Scott is horribly misguided in his efforts to convince us that Deckard is a replicant), it was pretty exciting to see this film being advertised again. However, something about the ad really grated on me: the obligatory slogan, “The One That Started It All.”
I say “obligatory” because it seems these days that every single film that has inspired sequels or imitators uses it; for example, it popped up again recently when the original Shrek was aired on TV a few weeks back. I hate this slogan. It’s hackneyed and virtually meaningless. What the hell is “it” anyway? “It” is never defined, and there are apparently lots of different “its” out there, since Shrek‘s “it” most likely is not Blade Runner‘s “it” (although it’d be interesting if it was — imagine a dystopian future-noir fairy tale…). Really what “it” is, is lazy marketing. It’s a simple, cliche’d fix for a copywriter who’s staring down a deadline and doesn’t have the slightest original thought in his head about the movie in question. As with all the other stuff that bugs me, this slogan will be forbidden when I become the Unquestioned Ruler of the Universe.
That is all. Back to the AFI list now…

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Jun112007

Ha-Ha

Any further comment would be redundant…

Ha-Ha!

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Jun112007

Justice Stumbles, But Recovers

Hey, kids, hope you haven’t missed me too badly during my brief absence from the blogosphere. I’ve just returned from three days of visiting friends in Sin City. Report to follow, but in the meantime, I offer this visual commentary on the news I missed while I was driving across the Jundland Wastes, er, Nevada:

Continue Reading…

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May222007

My Kingdom for a Two-Cent Stamp!

About two weeks ago, the Postal Service implemented its annual and much-ballyhooed rate increase, kicking the price of a 39-cent stamp to 41 cents. Anticipating that a significant number of consumers (like yours truly) would still have a bunch of 39-cent stamps in their possession, the brilliant, benevolent, and very handsome people who work for the USPS have of course taken steps to ensure that two-cent stamps are readily available for those who need them. The automated vending kiosks will be overstocked with the needed “fill-in” stamps for the next month or so as a favor to valued customers whose schedules prevent them from visiting human postal workers during regular business hours. Thus, bills continue to get mailed on time, inconvenience is minimized, customer loyalty is maintained, everyone is happy, and spontaneous renditions of “Kumbaya” can be heard echoing through post offices across the land.

Well, that’s probably how it would work on the Bizarro World. Here on Earth, my local post master, in all his or her infinite wisdom, has devoted only a single slot of the vending machine to two-cent stamps, and that slot has, of course, been sold out for two weeks.

Idiots.

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May152007

Something That Bugs Me

FYI to anyone reading this: the film’s title is Blade Runner, not Bladerunner. I see this mistake made all over the place (most recently here) and it grates on my nerves like stainless-steel fingernails on a chalkboard.

Two words, people. Two.

That is all.

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May132007

The Little Guys Let Me Down

I prefer to deal with locally owned, mom-and-pop establishments whenever I can. It’s a matter of principle for me (the principle being that I think large national corporations are, by nature, more interested in serving their shareholders than their customers). I buy books at Sam Weller’s, groceries at Harmons, and I get my morning caffeine fix from either The Coffee Garden or the Salt Lake Roasting Company. And when I finally decided several years ago to get myself some home Internet access, well, naturally, I went with a hometown service provider, a little outfit called ArosNet.

For five years, I had absolutely no complaint with Aros. My access was generally reliable, the folks in the accounting office were pleasant to deal with when I made my payments, and the one time I had to contact tech support, they bent over backwards to resolve my problem. I felt good writing out my checks, knowing that my money was going into the pockets of my neighbors instead of to some corporate overlord five states away. I imagined that I’d probably be writing checks to Aros for a very long time to come.

Continue Reading…

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Apr242007

Don’t Mess With My Chocolate!

One of the many, many items on the List of Things That Are Turning Me Into a Grumpy Old Man™ is the fact that an entire generation of kids has grown up not knowing what Coca-Cola is supposed to taste like. That’s because, back around 1985 or so, the evil penny-pinching, bean-counting corporate stooges in Atlanta decided — without bothering to consult the consumers who would be buying and drinking the stuff, mind you — to replace the yummy, yummy sugar in Coke with this new-fangled, better-living-through-modern-chemistry (and, not coincidentally, cheaper) dreck called high-fructose corn syrup. The value of this change was entirely one-sided: the company saved money on the production side by using the cheaper sweetener, which of course boosted the stockholders’ portfolio. Coke drinkers, on the other hand, got shafted. They lost the flavor they’d enjoyed for a hundred years and were forced to either adapt to the new, less-pleasant (and possibly downright harmful, if you believe the bad press on corn syrup) Coke formula, or find some other beverage fix.

(For the record, I don’t generally buy into conspiracy theories, but I find it entirely plausible that the marketing disaster that was New Coke really was an insidious ploy to wean consumers off sugar-based Coke so we’d be more accepting of the corn-syrup formula when Classic Coke “returned.” I’m not saying I definitely believe that, only that I find it believable.)
The really frustrating thing about the Coke situation was that the battle was lost before anyone knew it was being fought. And the same damn thing is about to happen again with another beloved luxury food: chocolate.

Continue Reading…

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