Darren Barefoot has revived the Hall of Technical Documentation Weirdness as a Pinterest site:
November 21, 2012
The Hall of Technical Documentation Weirdness returns
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November 20, 2012
A basic tenet of (male) human psychology seems to be misunderstood here…
Emily Esfahani Smith on “hook-up culture”:
The good news is that Sex Week is only around every two years. In 2008, the Harvard Crimson quipped: “Sex at Harvard is a year-round activity. At Yale, it lasts a week.” It’s a funny line, but not exactly true, which brings up the bad news: There is another part of the social-sexual landscape of Yale and other schools that is more lasting and endemic: the hook-up culture. In the hook-up culture, which is primarily driven by women, college students prefer to have sex with “no strings attached” — that is, they seek to have meaningless, casual sex outside of the context of a relationship. Some women consider this “empowering,” as Harden finds out by eavesdropping on a conversation between two female students, one of whom has this to say about her hook-up conquests, who are football players on campus: “If you go up to them at a party and just get them drinking, and start dancing with them, and kissing them, they will totally end up sleeping with you. They don’t even know they’re being played. They have no clue.”
Cue reality: “Could it be possible,” Harden writes, “That these girls don’t understand a fundamental fact about the human male? You normally don’t have to trick a man into having sex.” Young women today, influenced by Sex Week-style programming, have lost track of how the sexual marketplace really works.
November 18, 2012
The Two Scotts psycho-analyze the New York Jets
Scott Reid and Scott Feschuk try to explain the New York Jets:
New York Jets (plus 3) at St. Louis
Scott Feschuk: The New York Jets have done the impossible: they’ve made me feel sorry for Tim Tebow. Here we have a team that’s 3-6 — a team that over the past two weeks has been blown out by Seattle and Miami… a team that stops the run about as well as Kevin James stops at eating just a couple of your fries… a team that insists on starting a quarterback who plays like a kid dressed up for Halloween as an NFL quarterback — and all week this team devoted its energy to debating whether its backup QB, who hardly ever plays, is or is not “terrible?” Here’s the hard truth: the Jets have tuned out Rex Ryan. They need to make a change. You know who should coach this team? That Jill Kelley lady from the David Petraeus sex scandal.
She seems to be able to make grown men do anything. Within minutes of meeting her, FBI agents are ripping off their shirts and army generals are sending off lewd email messages about their four-star boners. Surely, if anyone could get Mark Sanchez to throw the ball in the general direction of someone — anyone — in green, it’d be her. Pick: St. Louis.
Scott Reid: Pro-tip for you buddy — it’s not all that difficult to get army generals talking about their boners. In fact, military men can be included in a rather exclusive list of male-dominated professions that can be easily coaxed into talking online about their wood. This group includes, but is not necessarily limited to: doctors, lawyers, door-to-door salesmen, pastry chefs, magazine editors, cabinet ministers, air conditioner repairmen, director Kevin Smith, certified management accountants, video game designers (especially video game designers!), piano instructors, hot air balloonists, dairy farmers, astronauts, union leaders, clergymen, tutorial assistants, pipe fitters (no surprise there), air traffic controllers, official team mascots, building inspectors, glass blowers, financial regulators and whatever the hell it is that you call what we two do for a living. The real trick, in fact, is to get us men NOT to talk about our boners. How? Actually that was a ruse. There is no way to get us not to talk about our boners. But the wise among us do know better than to do it via email with chicks who suffer from “f-ing crazy big-eyes syndrome.”
Of course, none of these human failings afflict Tim “Mr. Vanilla” Tebow. You know, maybe a little dirty-talk over the interweb would help Tim straighten out his skinny post (and yes, I’m speaking metaphorically). Pick: St. Louis.
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Having (in)famous ancestors
John Scalzi is having mixed reactions to all the Twitter updates about Lincoln and theatres:
Man, if I see another joke about Lincoln and theaters, I might just have to shoot someone.
— John Scalzi (@scalzi) November 18, 2012
Fun fact: John Wilkes Booth is my great-great-great(etc) uncle. It’s true. Also: He has the same birthday as me.
— John Scalzi (@scalzi) November 18, 2012
And he wrote about his infamous relative a few years ago:
Every family should have an interesting skeleton in the family closet. In my family, it’s John Wilkes Booth, assassin of Abraham Lincoln, who, of course, was the President of the United States during the American Civil War. Booth assassinated Lincoln not long after the cessation of hostilities between the Union and the Confederacy, by sneaking into the President’s box at Ford’s Theater (the show: Our American Cousin) and shooting him in the back of the head with a pistol. Booth then leaped from the box to the stage, shouting “Sic semper tyrannis” (“Thus it is with tyrants”) and “The South is avenged.” He broke his leg but managed to escape nevertheless. However, eleven days later, he was discovered in a barn, burned out, and then shot (by himself or by a soldier, it’s unclear). He died shortly thereafter. Some maintain that Booth’s body was never positively identified, so it’s possible he actually escaped. Either way, he’s dead now.
For the record, I’m not a direct descendant — my line goes through one of his nine other siblings, making him something along the lines of a great-great-great-great-great-grand-uncle. Whenever I mention my relationship to him, though, people’s eyes get wide, their jaws go momentarily slack, and some people actually back up a step, as if a long dormant assassination gene might suddenly fire up, and they’d be the unlucky recipient. I get a kick out of that. Then I go for the extra point my mentioning that John Wilkes and I have the same birthday: May 10, 131 years apart. By the time I mention I get edgy handling pennies and five dollar bills, people begin to wend their way to the nearest door.
November 16, 2012
Windsor’s new city slogan, courtesy of Stephen Colbert
American comedian Stephen Colbert just can’t seem to get off the back of Windsor, Ontario, and now he has dragged Winnipeg and the CBC into his attack routine.
If you could reply to Colbert’s comment, what would you say? Leave a comment below or on our Facebook Page (facebook.com/cbcmanitoba), and our Trending Now team will select the best comments to send back to Colbert!
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November 15, 2012
Fisking the Williams-Sonoma catalog
Drew Magary made a critical mistake once, paying for an overpriced Williams-Sonoma cheese grater with a credit card, thus ending up with yet another glossy catalog landing in the mailbox every year. “Every holiday season, my mail slot gets bukkake’d with monstrous catalogs packed with shit I would never, ever buy, and the W-S catalog stands out among them.”
Inspired by the offerings of the Williams Sonoma catalog, Drew responds to some of the juiciest items:
Item #02-4381232 Acorn Twine Holder
Williams-Sonoma says: “Polished alderwood with 76 yards of linen twine. Made in Italy.”
Price: $26
Notes from Drew: Oh, thank God! Thanksgiving was mere weeks away and I was like OH FUCK, WE’RE OUT OF TWINE. AND WE HAVE NO PLACE TO DISPENSE SAID TWINE. Sure, any asshole can go to the store and buy a roll of cooking string for half a penny and keep that twine in a drawer for the one time per year someone in the house has to tie up a raw turkey only to fail miserably and get salmonella deep inside his palms for years and years. But I want CLASSY twine, you know? I want my twine to say something about ME.
[. . .]
Item #02-741009 Callie’s Charleston Biscuits
Williams-Sonoma says: “Flaky, buttery, and made by hand by celebrated caterer Callie White.”
Price: $72 (set of 24)
Notes from Drew: That’s $72 dollars for biscuits. At Popeye’s, the biscuit comes free with your order. At Williams-Sonoma, it costs you the rough equivalent of your phone bill. How good could these biscuits possibly be? There’s a threshold past which biscuits cannot improve. Even the best goddamn biscuit in the world isn’t $72 better than a Popeye’s biscuit. Unless that biscuit can make you teleport.
And what kills me is that there are clearly people out there who have shitloads of money and NO cooking skills who order this shit. Who are these people? How are there so many of them that Williams-Sonoma can sustain its business model? Are we all just racking up massive biscuit debts that will soon break the economy? I imagine that 60 percent of Williams-Sonoma’s business come from a group of six Persian oil barons, who buy everything in every catalog five times over every year for no good reason at all. Seventy-two-dollar biscuits. WHAT THE FUCK.
[. . .]
Item #02-410423 Assumption Abbey Fruitcake
Williams-Sonoma says: “Baked by trappist monks at a monastery in the Missouri Ozarks. Order early. Supply is limited.”
Price: $39.95
Notes from Drew: Everything about that sales copy just blew my skull. There are trappist monks in the Ozarks? Do they brew artisanal meth? I don’t trust fruitcake to begin with. I sure as shit am not trusting fruitcake that comes from a redneck friar. They’ll swap out uppers for candied fruit. And yet, supply is limited. Apparently, the market for $40 Ozark fruitcake is ENORMOUS. White women from Bridgehampton ALL THE WAY to Westhampton rely on the monks to deliver their holiday fruitcake every year. Ina Garten’s ADORABLE HUSBAND JEFFREY WHO MAKES A LOT OF MONEY loves the sight of a fine white-trash-monk fruitcake any time he comes home. TIE IT UP WITH THE TWINE!
H/T to John Kovalic for the link.
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November 14, 2012
OED plumps for “omnishambles” over “mummy-porn”
Anna Leach explains just how exciting life can be when you’re working on the Oxford University Press staff:
The UK’s new word of 2012 is “omnishambles”, according to the Oxford English Dictionary’s compilers.
Selected from a list of several new words added to the gold-standard dictionary this year, omnishambles was chosen by lexicographers at Oxford University Press because it best reflects the mood of the past 12 months. It was first used by the character Malcolm Tucker in series three of the BBC satire The Thick of It and subsequently repeated by the Coalition government’s political opponents.
[. . .]
The OED now defines it as:
A situation that has been comprehensively mismanaged, characterised by a string of blunders and miscalculations.
Other contenders were “mummy porn” (a description of the genre inspired by smack’n’tickle ebook bonkbuster 50 Shades of Grey), “green-on-blue” (to describe attacks by Afghan police or troops on NATO servicemen), the verb “medal” (from the Olympics), “eurogeddon” (from Eurozone crisis) and the acronym “YOLO” (contraction of the trite phrase “You Only Live Once”, mostly used as a justification after someone does something stupid on the internet).
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November 10, 2012
The Two Scotts’ NFL picks (beat up on Buffalo edition)
It’s not nice to pick on poor, defenceless Buffalo … but that won’t stop either Scott:
Buffalo (plus 11) at New England
Scott Feschuk: As a Bills fan, I’ve so far refrained from criticizing QB Ryan Fitzpatrick, largely because he represents a genuine upgrade over guys like Trent Edwards and J.P. Losman. Remember Losman? You couldn’t find a more incompetent quarterback if you took Ryan Leaf’s brain, stuffed it inside Matt Leinart’s skull and handed the skull to JaMarcus Russell to throw 12 feet over the head of a wide-open receiver. But enough is enough. Fitzpatrick just isn’t getting it done and the fact that he graduated from Harvard and probably knows how to use a protractor does not make up for the fact HE NO CAN THROWY MR. OBLONG. Right now, the only thing that will save 2012 for Buffalo fans is if it turns out that the Bills’ season syncs up perfectly with Dark Side of the Moon. Fingers crossed. Pick: Buffalo.
Scott Reid: Breaking News — the Buffalo Bills, whose defence has allowed an NFL all-time high forty squinjillion points, has fired its entire defensive team and replaced them with the Muppets and Wall-E.
Head coach Chan Gailey explained that, while unconventional, the technically lifeless Muppets would still represent a substantial upgrade to most positions. “Gonzo played a little Division II ball before he got into show biz and Kermit has great instincts around the ball — as long as we can keep that pig away.” New free safety Animal had this to add in an interview with WNY Sports, “Lurrghh.” In other news, the Bills denied that they’ve been negotiating with Tennessee for the rights to field goal kicker Stuart Little. Pick: New England.
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November 8, 2012
Bless their hearts
I used to work for a company that had offices in Tallahassee, Florida. Over several years, both on the phone and during on-site visits, I think I heard at least half of these phrases used in earnest.
H/T to Radley Balko for the link.
November 6, 2012
US election news
https://twitter.com/Popehat/status/265935840763604993
https://twitter.com/Popehat/status/265935968345944064
https://twitter.com/Popehat/status/265936054031351809
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November 3, 2012
Context matters
Queen’s University may eventually have to consider apologizing for their ham-fisted treatment of Professor Michael Mason:
“If I were to continue teaching I would feel that there was somebody up on the stage with me making shorthand notes — a phantom censor,” he said. After the complaint was filed, the university said he could only continue teaching if the department chair sat in on lectures from time to time. He wouldn’t comply. Classes were cancelled and Mr. Mason was “banned,” as he puts it. He was never formally let go or asked to leave — health problems eventually had him sidelined.
Mr. Mason never disputed what was said, but the complaint didn’t divulge the context, he said.
The words “f—ing rag head,” “towel head,” “japs” and “little yellow sons of bitches,” did indeed cross his lips, he said, but he was quoting from books and articles on racism in that era.
[. . .]
Mr. Mason says he feels anything but supported by the school, which did not acknowledge the context of his statements nor let him explain himself, he said.
“I didn’t do it, I’m not guilty of it, they screwed up. The administration screwed up, mishandled it. They should have done it much more openly and honestly and fairly and they didn’t. And now they’re just saying ‘go away, we’re not going to deal with it.’”
He maintains that only one teaching assistant from the faculty of gender studies made the complaint, but the university and the Public Service Alliance of Canada, Local 901, which represents the TAs, say there were complaints from TAs and students.
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November 1, 2012
The art of (bad) customer service
James Lileks had to do the leg work himself to track down a part to fix his stove. After finally getting it, he wanted to express his frustration to the company that sold the stove (but didn’t carry the replacement part he needed):
So. I called Centerpoint, asked to speak to a manager, and had a nice friendly conversation about the fact that I found the part with elementary googling, and I had to pay for it and wait to be reimbursed.
Manager: we have supply channels and have to set up payment contracts and we can’t find anything, and what’s more blah, blah, blah.
To which I said I understood, but the fact of that matter was: I found the part in seconds, which means someone entered the part number into your system, it came up null, and that was it. They’d done their job. They’d checked the box. Move on to the next. So what I get as a customer of your service is that you don’t really look for the part. You search one closet and call it quits. Apparently there’s no leeway for your people to look elsewhere.
She understood my dissatisfaction, of course, but
AAHOOHGA
NEVER “BUT” YOUR UNDERSTANDING OF MY DISSATISFACTION.
Lie to me. Lie to me over and over: I understand your dissatisfaction AND I will be adding this company to our database. I understand your dissatisfaction AND I will be sending my boss a letter about expanding our searches and allowing for more individual initiative on the part of the part-procuring people. I understand your dissatisfaction AND apologize you’ll have to carry a $476 charge on your card while we process your request. I don’t care if none of that’s true. Just say it.
I still think they’re going to try to wiggle out of this somehow. I think my wife was right: they don’t want to fix it. They don’t want to pay for it.
All it took for me to be that cynical was a manager invested too deeply in company policy. I would have trusted them more if they’d lied.
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October 29, 2012
Who actually benefits from the expansion of “self-service” retail?
In the Wall Street Journal, Joe Queenan meets the modern grocery store checkout:
At the end of my visit to my town’s brand-new supermarket the other day, the cashier said she would be more than happy to help me self-check-out my purchases.
I said, “No, thank you, I would prefer that you do that.” She said, “Actually, we prefer that the customers get into the habit of checking out their groceries.” I said, “Actually, I would prefer to never get into that habit. I would prefer that you handle the entire operation. You are the cashier. You are the vicar of groceries. You, not I, work here. So earn your money and ring up my purchases. And then bag them. Please.”
Are we entering a dark, deeply un-American era when we literally have to do everything for ourselves?
Retailers love the idea of self-checkout and other forms of selling goods to customers with fewer staff members and more volunteer labour donated by the customers themselves. Some customers even prefer this, as it makes them feel more empowered about their retail experience. Bring your own bags (so we don’t need to provide you with bags we have to buy)! Pack your own bags (so we don’t have to hire as many checkout clerks)! But don’t fool yourself that the store is doing it “for the environment” or any other such catchy excuse: they’re on board with ideas like this because it’s more profitable for them.
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October 28, 2012
The Two Scotts pick this week’s NFL matchups
Scott Reid and Scott Feschuk get serious about something … but not football, of course:
New York Giants (plus 2) at Dallas
Scott Reid: I have no way of knowing but I like to imagine that deep down, Tony Romo and Eli Manning loathe one another.
Romo’s hatred would be all bound up in his feelings of insecurity and gross inadequacy (not unlike your own feelings toward me, Mr. Feschuk). Manning probably just hates the dimples. My fondest hope is that deep in the fourth quarter of this week’s matchup – after the Giants gain a 10-point lead – Romo breaks down on television and begins to sob uncontrollably, confronted with the awful truth that he’ll never best his rival. Manning, meanwhile, will make Jessica Simpson jokes and snicker about the hands-off approach of John Mara. Eventually Romo cracks completely and beats Manning savagely with a Gatorade bottle – leaving Eli dead and himself condemned to a life behind bars. In no way would this scenario make Mike Vick the best starting quarterback in the NFC East. Pick: New York.
Scott Feschuk: That’s all very interesting but I have a more important question: What man would ever agree to date Taylor Swift? You’d have to know right from the get-go that everything that happens is basically fodder for her next three albums, right? Wouldn’t it get awkward pretty quick?
You and Taylor Swift are in bed.
You: That was amazing. Let’s do it again.
[Swift opens her journal and starts writing.]
You: What are you doing?
Taylor: Oh, nothing. What rhymes with horndog?
You: Are you writing a song about me and our relationship?
Taylor: What? No. No, of course not!
You: Then who are these guys? [Points to drummer, guitarist and fiddler in bed with them.]
Taylor: Take five, fellas. I need to work on the bridge anyways.
Pick: New York.
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