Sunday, December 31, 2006
Portents
On the last day of the year 2006, in a small insulated little Florida town, there was a party in progress at the home of the eldest K---- sister. A collection of revelers related by family ties, celebrating the passing of a so-so year and the onset of a hopefully better one. There was music, dance, and drink...there was laughter, conversation, and song. There was also a waxing gibbous moon, bright and casting a harsh luminescence. It was also surrounded by a halo. A perfect circle formed by the trailing edge of a feathery cloud bank, and by the reflection of moisture in the atmosphere. I was there, and I was enraptured by the sight. What a strange phenonomenon, and at such a time as this. What could it possibly mean? Being an intelligent and reasonable man, I could only reach one conclusion...Armageddon! It was the coming of the Messiah, and I was staring at the portal where the Beast would emerge. Sure enough, the moon was soon tinged with scarlet, and the heavens boiled. Death emerged astride a pale poodle, breathing fire and dropping ferocious fleas that swarmed and feasted upon the blood of the flock. Then followed the Four Horsemen; John, Paul, George and Ringo. They were pissed, having found out that Michael Jackson still owned the rights to their song library. Then followed seven strumpets; they were absolutely HOT. Then the seven vials were broken, creating a mess upon the Earth. There were no broomsmen to clean it up. It all made for a very poor party indeed, what with the End Days and all. I went home, and didn't even sick up my dinner.
Tuesday, December 26, 2006
Time Capsule
Happy Holidays, everybody! One of the Christmas presents I received this year was a framed poem that I had submitted to the Dade County Youth Fair in my 4th grade year. This was the first poem that I remember writing. I didn't win a prize because it did not conform to the specifed format for poems (hmm...maybe they just said that to make me feel better...). Anyway, it is an interesting read and insight into the 10 year-old boy that I was.
The Land of No Trouble
(March 1977)
The Land of No Trouble,
That's where everyone wants to go,
Where you're free to do anything,
Where trouble exists no more.
The day is sunny,
The grass is green,
No trouble at all,
None to be seen.
People smiling, happy and gay,
Smilng at this glorious, beautiful day.
The ruler of the land, plump and jolly,
Was covered with flowers, roses and holly.
He loved to dance,
He loved to sing,
He loved to do everything,
Even wear rings! But very far away,
as far as you can think,
There lived a bad queen,
A real rotten fink!
She had a bushel of slaves, both black and white,
She made them work hard, both day and night.
She hated the Land of No Trouble,
Despised it she did,
That whenever she bellowed,
Her slaves ran and hid.
So as time passed on,
She got disgusted too much,
She set a curse upon the land,
and they were scared such!
The sky was black,
Thunder would roar!
They pulled down the shades,
And locked all the doors.
The Land of No Trouble,
Was now filled with gloom,
The Land of No Trouble,
Was now for its doom.
Friday, December 15, 2006
A Satire
I work for a man that sends unintelligible dreck via e-mail and expects his employees to understand them. This satire was written in his honor...
LEA - A critical look at the new lingua franca of business
By Mitchell Emeric, Professor of Linguistics, Howyadoin University
Today’s businessman faces extraordinary challenges in effectively communicating critical information to an often geographically dispersed and multi-cultural body of employees. Business at the speed-of-light requires the business owner to quickly convey his thoughts and directives as fast as the synaptic potential occurs in the brain’s axodendritic structures. In the past, many business owners have struggled with this problem, especially when the medium involved is electronic mail (henceforth referred to as “e-mail”). This particular form of communication has been the bane of the businessman concerned with efficiency and time-management. Studies have found that the average medium-sized business owner spends 16.7330209 minutes a day composing and reading e-mail. In real dollars, this represents a sizeable annual loss of $579...clearly, this is unacceptable. Studies conducted at the University of Bora-Bora have shown that it takes (on average) .00936 seconds for the finger to depress a computer key after the initial firing of the axon. Taking this information to its logical conclusion, it should be apparent that this represents a huge potential for time wasted, especially when e-mailing information that may contain hundreds of alpha-numeric characters (all of which are members of an equally inefficient 26-letter alphabet). This tragic scenario is all too real for many business-owners.
But do not despair. One man has taken the initiative to ameliorate this situation, and has become the messiah of efficient communication through his clever implementation of a grammar based on expediency. I am speaking of Grassy Lea of course, and his brain-child “LEA”. This form of communication has taken the world of commerce by storm, and has become the de-facto standard of electronic communication. Elegantly simple, yet possessing the intricate qualities of semantics, syntax, grammar and morphology like that of it’s more bloated brethren, this language is truly a wonder to behold. Rather than approach this subject in dry, analytical fashion, I have decided to jump right in and let the beauty of the language speak for itself...or,
I dcd toilet spkself
Stunning, isn’t it? One can sense the almost ethereal, unearthly quality that pervades this wonderfully pared-down grammatical gem. It is inconceivable that the business world suffered for so long without this tool. Jorgensen Gundersen Smith, President and CEO of Pretty Prophylactics, Inc., was faced with a sticky situation. He needed to address the problem of petty employee theft that was costing him thousands annually. The corporate attorneys had drafted a sixteen-page report of the problem, and Jorgensen needed to convey his concerns and implement an actionable policy of prevention and penalty; however, he needed to do this in such a way as to not offend the sensibilities of his more honest employees, and also couch it in neutral terms that would not land him in a legal wrangle should a disgruntled employee decide to take him to task for false accusations of theft. Rather than resort to the antiquated Old World methods of using plain English, Jorgensen decided to use LEA. He succeeded in conveying all the nuances without all the detritus of wasted words inherent in English. The full text of his message follows:
STO PPITNoW
Even now, tears run freely down my face whenever I read Jorgensen’s wonderful missive.
The world has been waiting for millennia for a man like Grassy Lea and his business solution. Will YOU be one of the successful millions to implement this solution for your business, and save yourself time and money? It’s a no-brainer.
By Mitchell Emeric, Professor of Linguistics, Howyadoin University
Today’s businessman faces extraordinary challenges in effectively communicating critical information to an often geographically dispersed and multi-cultural body of employees. Business at the speed-of-light requires the business owner to quickly convey his thoughts and directives as fast as the synaptic potential occurs in the brain’s axodendritic structures. In the past, many business owners have struggled with this problem, especially when the medium involved is electronic mail (henceforth referred to as “e-mail”). This particular form of communication has been the bane of the businessman concerned with efficiency and time-management. Studies have found that the average medium-sized business owner spends 16.7330209 minutes a day composing and reading e-mail. In real dollars, this represents a sizeable annual loss of $579...clearly, this is unacceptable. Studies conducted at the University of Bora-Bora have shown that it takes (on average) .00936 seconds for the finger to depress a computer key after the initial firing of the axon. Taking this information to its logical conclusion, it should be apparent that this represents a huge potential for time wasted, especially when e-mailing information that may contain hundreds of alpha-numeric characters (all of which are members of an equally inefficient 26-letter alphabet). This tragic scenario is all too real for many business-owners.
But do not despair. One man has taken the initiative to ameliorate this situation, and has become the messiah of efficient communication through his clever implementation of a grammar based on expediency. I am speaking of Grassy Lea of course, and his brain-child “LEA”. This form of communication has taken the world of commerce by storm, and has become the de-facto standard of electronic communication. Elegantly simple, yet possessing the intricate qualities of semantics, syntax, grammar and morphology like that of it’s more bloated brethren, this language is truly a wonder to behold. Rather than approach this subject in dry, analytical fashion, I have decided to jump right in and let the beauty of the language speak for itself...or,
I dcd toilet spkself
Stunning, isn’t it? One can sense the almost ethereal, unearthly quality that pervades this wonderfully pared-down grammatical gem. It is inconceivable that the business world suffered for so long without this tool. Jorgensen Gundersen Smith, President and CEO of Pretty Prophylactics, Inc., was faced with a sticky situation. He needed to address the problem of petty employee theft that was costing him thousands annually. The corporate attorneys had drafted a sixteen-page report of the problem, and Jorgensen needed to convey his concerns and implement an actionable policy of prevention and penalty; however, he needed to do this in such a way as to not offend the sensibilities of his more honest employees, and also couch it in neutral terms that would not land him in a legal wrangle should a disgruntled employee decide to take him to task for false accusations of theft. Rather than resort to the antiquated Old World methods of using plain English, Jorgensen decided to use LEA. He succeeded in conveying all the nuances without all the detritus of wasted words inherent in English. The full text of his message follows:
STO PPITNoW
Even now, tears run freely down my face whenever I read Jorgensen’s wonderful missive.
The world has been waiting for millennia for a man like Grassy Lea and his business solution. Will YOU be one of the successful millions to implement this solution for your business, and save yourself time and money? It’s a no-brainer.
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