It’s like a metaphor come to life, on 6th Avenue. You come out of your Jenny Craig consultation. Do you turn left…
…or do you turn right?
I like to think that the Jenny Craig was already there when some brilliant McDonald’s franchisee strolled past a storefront for rent and thought, “Jackpot.”
Posted in Shoot the Messenger, Write and Wrong
Tagged gnc, jenny craig, mcdonald's, yogurt
I’d like to draw your attention today to Breakup Letter, Dramatic Reading, which features, as you may have guessed, a dramatic reading of a breakup letter (below), originally posted on Craigslist. It may be familiar to many of you. If you haven’t been to the site you must go. If you have, it’s time to go back.
Brought to us by the gents behind You’re the Man Now, Dog (ytmnd.com), this gem in the crown of Internet forwards is more than a hilarious three-minute diversion. It’s an allegory of a world without grammar lessons. A cold, dark place where there’s never time to pause for breath and everyone sounds like a foreigner on uppers.
The link takes you straight to the audio of the reading, so if you’re at work, pop in them headphones:
http://youmakemetouchyourhandsforstupidreasons.ytmnd.com/
Please, if you ever have a moment when you’re wondering why it matters where that comma goes, just think of this letter… and of the children.
Even after taking this photo at the Port Authority I didn’t recognize the full extent of its error. We all remember that email that went around a few years ago about how you can read words whose letters are jumbled around as long as the first and last letters are in their proper places. That was what I thought of: Well, you can still read it, and if it gets the job done it gets the job done. But then I looked again, a little more carefully. A-t-v-i-e? Remarkable. Oh, and you can’t see it, but some sidewalk editor drew a small c between with A and the T. Probably walked off feeling pretty smart, too.
(apologies for the soft focus)
We’ve all witnessed the quaint misuse of quotation marks for emphasis. As reader Mike suggested previously, “Like when you go to a restaurant that promises ‘excellent service’ and they put it in quotes.” What I really love about this sign at the DMV on 34th street is not just that it employs CAPS and quotes to stress the word “your,” but that it stresses the word “your” at all. Who else’s application would I be completing and/or signing?
Seriously. I get that they want people to take care of the paperwork before (Before) getting to the front of the line — I’ve seen how this system functions. What I don’t get is why the authors of this notice were compelled to place such import on “your.”
“Well, I think the main thing is that people need to get this shit done before they get to the front of the line.”
“Dude, forget front of the line, they need to get that shit done before they even come over here.”
“Plus, they need to be taking care of their own shit. No more of this coming over here with some other guy’s half-finished application. That really gets my goat.”
“OK, so we’ll underline ‘your’ and ‘before.'”
“We can underline ‘before,’ but we gotta do more with ‘your.’ This is too important. I say make it all uppercase.”
“Yeah! And put it on its own line!”
“For sure! And put quotation marks around it!”
“This sign rules!”
Yeah, that’s probably how it happened. Also, I dig that they maintained initial capitalization throughout. Here’s to consistency in the face of utter nonsense.
If you’ ve wondered where on the (un)social scale you lay, I hope this Venn diagram will help you sort out your approximate geek/nerd/dork/dweeb quotient.
Oh, and for those inclined to comment and debate the categorization (which I fully encourage, of course), I created this easy reference:
[From GreatWhiteSnark via my mom!]
Posted in Information Stupor Highway, Write and Wrong
Tagged dork, dweeb, geek, nerd, venn diagram
F the message and heed the awesome power of word order. Syntax rules.
[via Primordial Ooze]
This truck delivers… a message.
You’re driving on the highway. You’ve been driving on the highway for hours. And hours. And hours. Maybe you’re on your way from New York to Austin, Texas for SXSW. The Mid-Atlantic states long ago began to bleed into one another — Pennsawestvirginhioky — and all you want is for one of them to have something to show for itself — roadside attraction, lake, brush fire. That, and a cup of coffee. God, you need a cup of coffee.
You realize you’re under the speed limit when an oil truck appears from within the gaping blind spot of this rental van and merges into your lane. It’s a Pilot truck, splattered with an advertisement for the gas and mega-mini-mart chain that’s duke if not king in these parts. The behemoth slides itself to fill your frame of view and teases you with the sublime and impossible suggestion that you’re gaining ground on a tanker truck full to capacity with the caffeinated black gold you lust for.
You imagine the possibilities of pulling alongside and filling up. An interstate iteration of mid-air refueling. Your head bobs to the gentle sloshing of salvation. Blearily you snap out of it and sputter a mangled “Oh, you assholes” as you pull off at the next exit, restore energy and regain dignity with a defiant Dixie cup of joe from the Shell station.
Posted in Shoot the Messenger, Write and Wrong
Tagged advertising, coffee, pilot, sxsw
Another billboard story coming from Los Angeles. In a year-long campaign Glendale, Cali. funeral parlor Forest Lawn has put up 80 billboards across the county. Says the LA Business Journal:
The campaign features three separate characters–a Latino man, an elderly woman and an old hippie-juxtaposed against inappropriate epitaphs. For example, the bearded hippie is misidentiffed as having “Served under Reagan.” Then comes the punch line: “Don’t have someone else’s funeral.”
William Martin, spokesman for Forest Lawn Memorial Parks & Mortuaries, said the non-profit is trying to get people to think creatively about their funeral.
“A hippie’s funeral should be different than one for the thtee-piece-suit [sic.] Reagan guy,” Martin said.
When my friend in LA sent me a photo of the above billboard that she passes on her commute to work I initially figured it was political commentary. Commentary on what, I wasn’t so sure. Then I noticed the Forest Lawn name in the upper right corner — and I was hardly less baffled. I’d love to see the others. What’s the opposite of a Latino? And an elderly woman? What’s the ironic/inappropriate epitaph for her — “Taken too soon”? I’m totally for shaking it up and introducing a little levity to a heavy and taboo subject, but I can’t imagine how Forest Lawn pulled it off.
If any of you out there in the LA area have seen the other two ads, the Unhappy Mediator would love to hear what they say. You’ve got til August to find ’em.
[Thanks – again – Hilla]
Posted in Shoot the Messenger, Write and Wrong
Tagged billboards, death, forest lawn mortuary
This is on Tufts' undergrad admissions page. Who's jerking whom around here? Becoming a Jumbo is one giant Elephant Walk.
When I was in high school, the Brown University application included an essay that you had to write by hand. I thought it was stupid, but I also thought the college might accept me, so I went along with it. Later I heard about a girl who wrote her essay in a spiral that filled the page from the center out. I never would have thought of that. I realized that, no, I guess I wasn’t Brown material.
But I was Tufts material, which, I found out when I got there, didn’t really mean… anything. The school was liberal, but not lock-yourself-in-the-campus-center liberal. There was a conservative journal, too, though any association therewith was vilifying. It had artsy students, but they had their own house (I mean, “haus”), and enginerds and even a couple frats and sororities (shudder to think). And it boasted a degree of diversity, enrolling students from both the North and South shores of Long Island. It certainly never felt particularly progressive. (I heard Brown doesn’t even give grades!)
But according to the New York Times, Tufts is a beacon of collegiate innovation:
It is reading season at the Tufts University admissions office, time to plow through thousands of essays and transcripts and recommendations — and this year, for the first time, short YouTube videos that students could post to supplement their application.
About 1,000 of the 15,000 applicants submitted videos. Some have gotten thousands of hits on YouTube.
Tufts, which, like the University of Chicago, is known for its quirky applications, invited the YouTube videos. Along with the required essays, Tufts has for years offered applicants an array of optional essays — “Are we alone?” is one of this year’s topics — or a chance to “create something” out of a sheet of paper. So it was not too far a stretch, this year, to add the option of posting a one-minute video that “says something about you.”
Known for its quirky applications? I missed that one. I only applied to Tufts because it was on the common app. Digital video? I think not. Photocopy? Yes, ma’am.
You can scroll through some of the videos here. I’m fairly impressed by the stop motion stuff, but the rest of it makes me feel uncomfortable. There’s little more unsettling than teenage earnestness. If these YouTube applications are an indication of what to expect for the future of Tufts, I think it can be summed up in four words: Hebrew hip hop raves.
[Thanks, Jess]
Posted in Information Stupor Highway, Unhappy Media, Write and Wrong
Tagged applications, college, jews, jumbos, tufts, videos, youtube
No Happy Medium 