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I’ve passed my pre-surgery screening, so I’ll be having rotator cuff surgery on Thursday. And no, I won’t be pitching in the majors next season. I don’t have a screwball; I am one.
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Steven Slater: Admit it, if your job had an inflatable emergency exit slide, you’d probably have used it with a lot less provocation than he allegedly had. The problems I have with Mr. Slater are: he could have had the offending passenger arrested, instead of having himself fired and arrested; and it’s looking more and more as if the story he told wasn’t true.
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I’m not an Obama supporter, but I don’t care where the first family vacations. I don’t even care whether they pay any part of the cost of the trip themselves, since their part is so much less than the actual cost because of who they are. It’s impossible for any member of the first family to travel anywhere without extreme security. They can’t fly commercially. Mrs. Obama’s first-class tickets to Spain would probably have cost between $5,000 and $10,000. The plane they used costs more than that to operate per hour. If they pay what the trip would cost a private citizen, that’s still a small portion of the cost. And the President and his family aren’t elitist, no matter what they do. They are the president of the United States and his family; they are elite.
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Which leads me to the Boy Scouts at their National Jamboree who booed a video message the President provided to be played as they gathered. They booed because past presidents have showed up in person. And they were wrong to do it. A Scout is courteous and Obama is the President. On the other hand, before the criticism of the Scouts gets too severe, let’s remember that none of them were as old as 18.
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Christine Romer leaving Washington as head of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors gives me a chance to rant about something I hate. I have no objection to gender-neutral titles such as “Chairperson,” but to me, a “Chair” will always be a piece of furniture. We already have way more ambiguity in the English language than anyone needs. I particularly object to that example because I can’t think of a terrible pun that makes it worth keeping.
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If I had to rely on the smell of the plant’s leaves to decide whether to eat a plant’s fruit, I would never eat a tomato.
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It wouldn’t occur to me to eat microwave popcorn either based on the way it smells while it’s cooking.
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If stupidity had more consequences, we’d have less stupidity, or at least it would manifest itself less often.
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And speaking of that, the person who was appointed in my place to one of the jobs I was qualified for and did do, called me recently to ask me a question about something he should know. I answered his question. In trying to drum up a conversation with me (something I was not all that interested in having), he asked me if I’m bored. I’ve known about sensitivity training for some time; now I know there must also be insensitivity training.
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It also seems to me that people who’ve had insensitivity training include those who want to build a mosque in a building that was hit by debris when those two planes were crashed into the World Trade Center in 2001. I know they have the right, and that unpopular actions are the only ones that need defending, but they could easily build someplace a little farther away from ground zero.
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Here’s another phrase that belongs in popular use: Dust Rabbits. A commenter who styles him or herself as “S” on the website consumerist.com, says Dust Rabbits are more feral and less cute than dust bunnies. The phrase does fill a need.
