E-mail I got last week.

excerpt from an actual e-mail I got last week:

please forward this part back to ____ and email me tracking information and I will cc Jim so he is aware that part is coming back to him. Terrie processed this with an incorrect PO number and that is where the confusion came in I am sorry for the incontinence this may caused.

I was having a terrible day, and this really cheered me up. I didn't even notice it the first time I read it -- I had to look, and do a double take (wha...incontinence). I'm actually amazed she spelled that word right. Maybe she looked it up in the dictionary.

The people at work who rule over me by and large have ridiculously horrible writing and grammar skills. It doesn't really matter in situations like the above, because I can discern its basic meaning and she's not telling me anything important anyway. But when it gets thorny and silly is when the big bosses send out their weekly reports. Every week, the big boss would write about show much money we stand to loose if this happens or we don't do that properly. I can't take this. Lose and loose have to completely different meanings. It's not like lay and lie, which both have the basic meaning of making something horizontal. And then they start to conjugate the word, and apparently they think that lost can be spelled loosed, which is so arcane it's barely even still a word. In fact, isn't loose just an adjective, with loosen being its verb form(i.e.: loosen up, Republicans)? Ok, dictionary.com says loose is also a verb, but still...

Why doesn't anyone correct him? I guess I should address this to myself as well -- why don't I send him an e-mail explaining that what he means to say is lose, and anyone could make that mistake, and I'm his only friend in the company and that's why I'm telling him this.

The thing is, after a year in loose hell he did correct his weekly e-mail. But in his random rant e-mails, he still uses it incorrectly. It's enough to make you loose your mind.

Convention Robots

I hate canned speeches. Therefore, I hate the National Conventions. There's nothing more painful than watching Ah-nold teleprompt his way through a speech that works in the names of all of his movies, or watching the Bush twins try to humanize their father by making references to how liberal Yale is.

Why do they televise these things? They're like really poorly made but star-studded infomericals. Ok, so admittedly I still don't know who I'm going to vote for in this election, but there's no way I'm going to let the Gropenator or some guy from Maryland influence me. I may not even watch the debates this year, with the 2 candidates anxiously racing to say the thing that sounds most centrist. They would say or do anything to get elected.

I'm out. I need an alternative way to pick a candidate, one that doesn't involve politics.

Everybody Likes Community Quick Hits

All-Inclusive Dictionary 2020 entries:
Teen Acrospeak, n., a language that makes heavy use of acronyms for common and not-so-common phrases, used originally for text messaging on computers.

Butt, adj., very. ex) It's butt cold out here.

Ok, that's done. I've been meaning to get the post count up on this blog. After this entry, we will be at 29. Not good enough. Of course, I could just break my long posts into 2 or 3 littler ones, but you all would see right through that. I should be able to post a bunch today and tomorrow. I have a brand new Netflix diary to make, as well as 3 movies coming in the mail today. I'll finally get to see if 8 1/2 is all that.

All that, adj., the bee's knees.

I am constantly amazed at how hyped my morning dew (Mountain Dew, that is) makes me. I am able to work and work without stopping until the sugar/caffeine rush goes away. And I work really fast, too, like I'm on a DVD and somebody just pressed the "2x" button. The downside of this is I'm clearly addicted in some way to the stuff, although not in the conventional "drug zombie gotta have it" kind of way. I even gave all soda up for Lent last year, successfully I might add. I ended up drinking a lot of grapefruit juice, of all things. That was my stand-in. I didn't feel jittery during Lent, I didn't really miss it. But as soon as Jesus rose, I was back to the daily Dew. What does this mean? Am I in denial? Am I just stupid and weak?

What's evident is the fact that if it's available to me, I will drink it. I need to move to a place where there is no Dew. The problem is the Dew rule, which says:

If a place has no Mountain Dew, it is a craphole. I mean, dust everywhere, disease, a 90% destitute population, starvation, dog-eating, etc.

So, I'm stuck. Not really, but I think I am, so therefore I am. Isn't that what Descartes said? And you thought he was just being silly.

Sports Ignorant -- U.S. Men's Basketball Team Rethought

Hey, I'm going to invent a new category of post, "Sports Ignorant", to cover sports. I realize not everyone is into sports, especially the foxy la-la-ladies in the audience, so the title will have to serve as a warning: This post will heavily involve discussion of sports, so if you don't like sports, go read some other, more girly blogs like "world of knitting" or "cleaning supplies discussion". Just kidding.

Made up of NBA "stars", The U.S.A. Men's basketball team just won the bronze at Athens -- a total failure in the eyes of many Americans. There are a whole bunch of reasons for this failure, but I'm here to say that lack of effort on the part of the US team was not one of them. They had effort, all right. It was like watching a bunch of Don Quixotes out there on the court, trying their hardest to prove that basketball is not a team sport, despite the obvious fact that it is. It's like they just didn't know how to play the game. And that's a sad commentary on American basketball, with all the hyping of stars who don't know the fundamentals, like, let's see: passing, shooting, running plays, defense. You know, the little things.

If anything, we should be shocked and relieved that they got any medal. It's a testament to their tremendous athletic ability and mental toughness that they didn't just give up after the opening loss to Puerto Rico, or the semifinal loss to Argentina. And hey, if the refs would have been fair, they may have even won that game and gotten to the gold medal game -- All without ever figuring out how to attack a zone defense or how to stop the other team's shooters from getting open looks. When you think about it, these guys overcame odds, man. They overcame their own lack of training and almost pulled it out with sheer dumb effort. Now that's American.

But there are indeed people to blame for this fiasco, and make no mistake about it: the US not winning the gold in basketball -- a sport where they have probably 180 of the top 200 players in the world -- is a fiasco of Enron proportions. Let's run these people down, from most-blameworthy to slightly-blameworthy. No, I don't mean like with a truck, I mean like in a list. Sheesh.

1. The wussies, scum, and lazy greedy players that decided not to play in the game. Team sport or not, a team with Shaq, Kobe, McGrady, Garnett, Ray Allen, and Jason Kidd added to Duncan and Iverson doesn't lose a game. Doesn't even come close. I understand its a time committment, and the owners don't want you to go, but come on. The good part of this is the convenient built-in excuse when we lose -- our best players weren't involved. Of course, you don't see players from other countries do this (with the notable exception of Serbia, who didn't have Peja and consequently lost to fricking China, otherwise known as Yao Ming and the Midgets, and were kept out of the final 8) because they have national pride, rather than the pride of NBA greatness and wealth. Why serve your country when you can nurse that injury back to health for the next NBA season, where you will proceed to play at half-speed until the playoffs, especially on defense, and then lose there because the NBA and the refs want an LA-Phily series? Is being on the Miami Heat or New Orleans Hornets more important than being on the US team? In a time when the US needs good publicity, and a source of national pride again? But what do you care -- you don't see any profits from it, so why go? Grr, that's why.
2. The insane madmen who put this team together for NBA marketing purposes, rather than international basketball success. There were no point guards. None. How do you put a team together without point guards? They had exactly one shooter, a raw 20-year old who spent all of his time watching from the bench (more on this later) and presumably playing playstation in the swank hotel, and whose range was just a bit less than the international 3-point distance. They had no centers, except the guy with no NBA experience and no chance of getting on the court because of the coach and the politics of the team. Yes, you heard me. Emeka Okafor should have played more. I may be the only one who thinks so, but it's an opinion that I was forced to come to after seeing him dominate the zone-infested world of college basketball for the last 2 years. The guys who did get to play were nearly exclusively NBA-style one-on-one athletes, who needed man-to-man defenses, clearouts, and a 24-second shot clock to succeed and who hadn't been called for travelling since high school. Of course, that was only a couple of years ago for some of them, which was another problem. I mean, come on -- Marbury(a total hongo if there ever was one), Marion(excels against one guy but sucks against a zone), Jefferson (nothing without Jason Kidd), Amare Stoudamire (too young and totally lost), Wade (can't shoot, not a point guard), Boozer (no D, lack of character), LeBron (too young, can't shoot) -- this is what we go to war with? Against teams that play zone until you make them stop playing it? The sad thing is, we could have come up with a team that wins every game by 20 even without Shaq and Garnett and the rest. But we needed to be smarter. We needed to pick point guards and shooters and big guys who clog the middle and can pass well. The only player on the team that I would have kept is Duncan. Maybe Lamar Odom, but he would be down far, far on my list. The rest can spend the summer nursing injuries, and if the Olympics was any indication, they could make some extra money as bricklayers.
3. Larry Brown, who had the monumental task of molding these ill-fitting players into a winning team against all odds. But wait, the team makers threw him a bone -- the one shooter he has on the team -- Carmelo Anthony. The dude has proven he can hit the 18-foot jumper, but he doesn't get off the bench. 'Melo then gets frustrated, and mouths off to the press, which gets him on Brown's bad side, and ensures his continued presence on the bench. The whole thing boggles the mind. And another thing: do you realize career overshooter Stephon Marbury was second on the team in terms of minutes per game? You give every single one of his minutes to LeBron, and they probably win the gold. Not saying LeBron is that great an international force at this stage, but he's not going to shoot his team out of a game like Marbury did. He also gives you better defense simply because he's taller and he's not Marbury. That dude sucks. Larry Brown can't see this? And where was Okafor during the Olympics? You have no centers except the dominant one sitting on the bench and you don't play him because he's too young? At some point you have to ask, "Did Lar-Bear put his own personal coaching philosopies and prejudices (namely, he hates young players) over winning the gold?" LeBron, 'Melo, Emeka, and enquiring minds want to know. Scratch that, we already know. At least he has his NBA title to keep him warm.
   
4. The other teams in the tournament, who figured out how to play the US the second the team was announced and it had no Michael Redd on it. Oh, by the way, if they pick him for the team, the US wins the gold, too, unless Brown keeps him on the bench. Anyway, the other teams played the zone, and on offense did foreign and exotic things like passing and shooting and picking and moving without the ball and running plays. It was sick, wasn't it -- watching Manu Ginobili, a guy from a country without an actual economy, schooling US supahstars on the finer points of the game, as if James Spaulding was really named Jaime Spauldini, a goat farmer who thought up a game where you throw a goat's head into a goat basket, and called it Goat Ball, later revised to basketball when they removed all goat traces from it? Yes, it was.
   
5. The refs, an NBA gangsta culture that rewards bad behavior, and the AAU are just 3 of the other things that share a bit of blame. But it really is all of American basketball culture. We need to change things pronto or the we may not make the next Olympics at all, and then basketball will fulfill its destiny and become baseball, and the NY Knicks will win every year, and nobody but Spike Lee and his ilk(Knicks fans) will watch the NBA, and the Olympic qualifying team that loses will have underacheiving dudes like Tim Thomas and Steve Francis on it. To sarcastically paraphrase that one band from back then, what a wonderful world this will be.
   

The Gestapo Got Me

Well, it was bound to happen -- I got caught without my cartopper lit at Papa John's. The Area Manager was out overmanaging and saw me right after the plug became dislodged. Oh, no! What will become of me?

If you're wondering, no, I wasn't fired -- my manager stood up for me, and that whole "you will be fired no questions asked" thing only applies to the bad employees after all. Still, it's ridiculous to be 32 years old and have a surrogate mommy spying on me to make sure I'm following all the rules. Doesn't this dude have any work to do? They pay him an actual salary to do this? Why isn't he fired for this? At times like this we need the Bobs to come in and ask this Lumbergh about how much time he would say he spends on these TPS reports, so to speak. I don't need this constant harassment on a job delivering fricking pizzas. I am a disaffected man. Where's that Howard Dean guy -- I now want to vote for him, and scream along with him.