Author: Simone

Rogue Apostrophe Speaks Volumes

I just got an email from someone whose title is “Communications’ Manager”.
Not “Communication Manager” or “Communications Manager”. That apostrophe stands out bigger than an exclamation point.
It gives me cold shivers.
What’s the rationale? Is she the manager of all the individual communications produced by her organization, and therefore sees “Communications” as a plural, and therefore “Communications'” as a plural possessive?
Is the word “Communications” as an academic or professional discipline not recognized as a formal word? Did she kowtow to a spellchecker, or does she have a stronger pedigree for this bit of pedantry?
Whatever its origins, innocent or not, that apostrophe makes me desperate to avoid ever having to deal with this person or her communications department (or presumably “Communications’ Department”).

Mmmmmmarmite!

I was shopping this evening for my insolent minion (“the Boy”) who has requested a German chocolate cake with almonds instead of pecans for his 15th birthday. While searching in vain for Dutch-processed cocoa[1], I was stunned to find jars of Marmite in the baking aisle.
(You don’t bake with Marmite, except as a flavoring. It is not live yeast. It won’t make bread rise. It doesn’t belong anywhere near baking yeast. Urgh.)
But I bought some anyway, and then got to thinking about what the Marmite-eating public does with Marmite (other than eating it straight from the jar, which is my usual Marmite-eating mode). I’ve been giggling/gagging over this dubious collection of Marmite recipes for a good 20 minutes. What’s great about it (to me) is how none of these recipes even pretend to be “How to introduce people to Marmite without scarring them for life” or “How to get your children to eat Marmite because it’s so good for them even though it tastes like toxic saline axle grease“.
These people love it, and they aren’t afraid to try new things, and even recommend those things to strangers. It’s the antithesis of the monoculture mentality, and that’s a joy.

[1] There was no Dutch processed cocoa at the Arlington Road Giant, so I’ll be making an extra trip to Whole Foods tomorrow. This may seem like a lot of work, but not everyone gets a minion and he’s a good ‘un, so I’m happy to oblige. His birthday cake last year took two grocery store trips as well.

Honest Marketing and Cheerful Tangents

“His websites, Keaggy.com and Grocerylists.org, have been described as genius, useless, inspiring, stupid, beautiful, profound and a complete waste of time.”

Now, there’s an artist/social commentator/waster of bandwidth I can get behind.

This whole thought-stream resulted from me going through my spam folder, which despite repeated training attempts has yet to learn that I really do want to receive Liquid Treat. A recent issue featured this intriguing book about graphic interpretations of single words (which I think we’ve looked at before; that comes from this fabulous design blog; I really like this series about “Primal” but can’t imagine why none of them feature horseshoe crabs), which Amazon (for some reason) connects to this book about grocery lists, which is a print work drawn from the website above. This tangent cheerfully leads me to think of James Lileks, whose web-work has turned into books, and who has on more than one occasion made me laugh so hard I thought I might actually die.

I think there might have been some caffeine in that coffee I had this morning. I love the Internet.

Building a World We Don’t Want to Live In

Somebody over on the geek listserve just posted this:

I’ve had three Palm Treos [i.e., Treos running the Palm operating system] and they were much more reliable then the Win OS version I currently have. But Palm is probably not going to be around forever and to stay in tune with the times I switched, but can’t say I’m happy about it.

I find myself mildly (and increasingly) outraged that someone would do this. It’s like switching from Beta to VHS before the studios stopped releasing Beta tapes. (We hung on until the bitter end. I wouldn’t be surprised if my mom still has a working Beta machine to watch all the classic movies she taped off cable.)

I suppose some people call this kind of behavior “flexible and forward-thinking,” or “seeing which way the wind is blowing.” I call it defeatist, anti-idealist, and toadying to the forces of mediocrity, conformity, and assimilation. (Not that I have a dog in this fight, being as I still use a paper Filofax, but still.)

The Opposite of Mediocrity

According to today’s news:

A man about to be executed decided to make one final gesture of goodwill before his imminent arrival at St. Peter’s Gate or some alternative place of judgment. Instead of keeping his last meal for himself, he asked that his meal (a veggie pizza) be given to the first homeless person found outside the prison.

The prison officials (seemingly less worried about their respective judgment days, or consigned to the fact that their fates are already sealed) would not meet the man’s request, citing the prison’s policy of not donating to charities. What a fantastic policy!

Thankfully, not all people are so callous. Nearby homeless shelters were flooded with donated pizzas from kind-hearted people throughout the area, including one woman who with a group of friends delivered 150 pizzas to one local shelter.