33 responses to
“They talk funny.”

1. Sue said on May 20th, 2008 at 2:12 pm

   The engi­neer­ing techs where I work look busy in their meet­ings by jot­ting slash marks for every time the head engi­neer says either “as such” or “ok?”. Then, being engi­neer­ing guys, they keep a run­ning tab on how many of each per minute. If any of them had lap­tops in there, I’m pretty sure there would be some kind of chart involved too.

2. Danny said on May 20th, 2008 at 2:38 pm

   Corporate-speak is one of the deep­est Orwellian wells of humor in mod­ern times. Hence, Dilbert.

   A few years ago, I was sit­ting through a time-wasting, all-hands cor­po­rate pep rally. About 30 feet in front of me, one of our VP’s was pre­sent­ing. First he showed a two or three minute mar­ket­ing video where scenes of our prod­ucts, groups of our peo­ple (all pleas­antly mixed in a multi-ethnic sense) and large, pos­i­tive words like GROWTH, PEOPLE, FOCUS, COMMUNITY and VISION. all zoomed alter­nately into and out of the fore­ground. All told, it was a benign (due mostly of it’s brevity), empty and mean­ing­less pile of crappola.

   Then the VP gets up, sin­cerely smiles and shakes his head and says: “I have to tell you every time I see that, I get more and more excited and fired-up about our future. And all I have to say is if THAT does not excite you, well then your wood is wet.”

   And at the very moment that I heard that oddly humor­ous phrase “your wood is wet,” the most evil and awful vision (from a job secu­rity per­spec­tive) came to my mind: That of our VP trans­formed into Chris Farley’s char­ac­ter of Matt Foley, moti­va­tional speaker. Man I was about to lose it in a very large but quiet room. I tried bit­ing my lips in between my teeth to the point of pain and cov­er­ing my mouth with my thumb and fore­fin­ger to feign that I was pon­der­ing the wis­dom of the state­ment he had just uttered. But I could still feel the uproar­i­ous, career-ending laugh­ter that wanted to escape. I ulti­mately had to resort to think­ing sad thoughts of get­ting fired and liv­ing on the street and such.

   It was rough, but I main­tained my silence and averted dis­as­ter. Whew that was close!

   We all had a LOT of fun with that phrase the next morn­ing in our cof­fee click. Our wood was very dry and hard as we were excited, of course… about our company’s future…

3. Danny said on May 20th, 2008 at 2:40 pm

   Sue, we used to played Bingo with cor­po­rate buzz-words. We had sheets and charts and every­thing. We are very bad engi­neers. Very, very naughty boys and girls.

4. Dexter said on May 20th, 2008 at 2:45 pm

   We sort have been promised $200 a bbl. oil by Labor Day, 2008. I fig­ure that is about $5.60 per gal­lon of gaso­line. We should crest ten dol­lars per gal­lon when oil goes to $370 a bbl.
   How did our local GM deal­er­ship react to the news? Yes­ter­day they placed large, col­or­ful signs on the Sil­ver­a­dos and Tahoes and Uplan­ders, the used ones. Typ­i­cal sign: “REDUCED !!!! WAS $12,900 —  — -NOW! $12,300 !!!!!! “
   To which I say, B.F.D., and flash the one-legged peace sign their way.

5. Sue said on May 20th, 2008 at 2:46 pm

   My brother-in-law used to work for Lucent. Remem­ber their logo, “the inno­va­tion ring”? The engi­neers referred to it as “the flam­ing sphinc­ter”. Love those engineers.

6. nancy said on May 20th, 2008 at 3:04 pm

   “Your wood is wet” — that’s a keeper.

   Don’t mis­un­der­stand me. I do like this job. The jar­gon is just the native tongue, and I’m always inter­ested in jar­gon. I’m fas­ci­nated that no one seems to say, “today we use ‘loop’ as a verb, as a sub­sti­tute for ‘inform,’” but one day, every­one does it. I should have majored in semi­otics, like Ira Glass.

7. Dexter said on May 20th, 2008 at 3:16 pm

   I’ve been out the work­force for five years, so I vis­ited this site to catch up. Lots of new ones here since I sat through my long meet­ings where the Japanese-way was imposed upon us in the late 1980’s-1990’s.

8. Connie said on May 20th, 2008 at 3:45 pm

   Oh Danny, good thing you didn’t let that laugh out, or you would have been liv­ing in VAN DOWN BY THE RIVER!!!!

9. Jolene said on May 20th, 2008 at 4:47 pm

   Fol­low­ing the news re Sen. Kennedy? i just looked up the prog­no­sis for glioblas­toma. Median survu­val time is .7 years. Ugh.

10. Danny said on May 20th, 2008 at 5:03 pm

    Yeah, Jolene, I have been. Not good. I hope they deter­mine that it is oper­a­ble and are able to get him back on his feet.

11. LAMary said on May 20th, 2008 at 5:11 pm

    One of the peo­ple in this very room uses loop as a verb many many times a day. Every­one else in the room is tired of it. Danny, I used to have those bingo sheets too. Great way to stay awake dur­ing deadly meetings.

12. nancy said on May 20th, 2008 at 5:15 pm

    I once read that there are two kinds of brain tumors. The good kind is like a mar­ble in a bowl of Jell-o, easy to excise and con­tain. The bad kind is like an ounce of liq­uid, poured into a bowl of Jell-o, dif­fi­cult to excise, nearly impos­si­ble to con­tain. Sounds like Kennedy’s got the sec­ond kind.

    The man is 76, but you don’t wish this on anyone.

13. Jolene said on May 20th, 2008 at 5:25 pm

    Thats right, Nancy. Rapidly pro­lif­er­at­ing cells that can­not read­ily be carved out. He’ll likely have radi­aion and chemotherapy.

    I’m reminded once again of how the def­i­n­i­tion of old keeps mov­ing. Seventy-six doesn’t sound young to me, but it doesn’t sound as old as it used to either.

14. Gena said on May 20th, 2008 at 7:07 pm

    Nancy, I came to copy­writ­ing late in life and had no idea cre­ative is a noun or how much lever­ag­ing and posi­tion­ing was involved. Not to men­tion strate­gic brand­ing and dri­ving the tar­get audi­ence to the web. And speak­ing of the web, it seems like yes­ter­day that the Lin­coln Finan­cial Group site was on the cut­ting edge of age-based nav­i­ga­tion and per­mis­sion mar­ket­ing. And now, if you’re in a meet­ing and don’t know what to say, just mum­ble some­thing about met­rics and you’ll be fine.

15. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on May 20th, 2008 at 7:14 pm

    … and another state chooses not to vote “fer that col­ored fella.”

    The long-promised “national con­ver­sa­tion about race” is gonna hap­pen, in the 200th year since the birth of Abra­ham Lin­coln in the state of … Kentucky!

    I think there’s been more race in the vot­ing around Obama, who is win­ning nation­ally, than there’s been sex­ism around Clin­ton. Not to say there’s been none, just that Bill gives plenty of rea­sons to vote “no” on a Clin­ton ticket, just as his pres­ence helped to get her there.

    As home­work for that con­ver­sa­tion, check out the NYT Book Review, and the fac­ing reviews of books on the Col­fax LA riots/massacre and Ida Wells. Makes the case (my words fol­low­ing, not the authors or review­ers) that the sac­ri­fice of the Civil War may well have been the needed repa­ra­tion for slav­ery, but that the debt owed today is for 1877 to 1964 (add in, espe­cially for Mid­west­ern­ers, James Loewen’s “Sun­down Towns,” which helps present the north­ern case for the unique new birth of seg­re­ga­tion­ism in post 1880 – 90 America).

16. Danny said on May 20th, 2008 at 7:17 pm

    Gena, and all of you vexed copy edi­tors out; be of good cheer. Some of these stu­pid terms do pass out of usage. I can’t remem­ber the last time I heard “Infor­ma­tion Superhighway.”

17. kayak woman said on May 20th, 2008 at 7:24 pm

    I am all too famil­iar with “build out” and “loop”. They make sense in cer­tain com­mu­ni­ties. And my Mac­Book picks up the most inter­est­ing waaaar­rr­less net­works. Just try to get to YouTube on an A2 Pub­lic Schools wifi. I am also mar­ried to the Bill of “Bob and Bill”. They are iden­ti­cal twins, dontcha know?:-)

18. joodyb said on May 20th, 2008 at 8:10 pm

    Danny, that’s because it took too long to say!

    Jeff, i just cir­cled back to the review. thanks for sug­gest­ing Loewen’s ground­break­ing work. i came up in such ter­ri­tory. it didn’t take me long to fig­ure out what the writer meant when he said you can’t go home again.

19. whitebeard said on May 20th, 2008 at 8:34 pm

    From Jeff “I think there’s been more race in the vot­ing around Obama, who is win­ning nation­ally, than there’s been sex­ism around Clin­ton.” To mix pol­i­tics and food­stuffs in the same thought, does any­one think that Hillary is past her sell-by-date in this cam­paign what with Obama still gain­ing on del­e­gates, racism notwithstanding.

20. Dorothy said on May 20th, 2008 at 9:19 pm

    My Aunt Ruthie had that same kind of can­cer and she was gone in less than 4 months after diagnosis.

21. Charlie said on May 21st, 2008 at 2:07 am

    If you want to take a trip down online mem­ory lane, a lit­tle while ago AOL put the orig­i­nal Mosaic Com­mu­ni­ca­tions web­page (circa 1994) back up. Have a look:

    http://​home​.mcom​.com/

22. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on May 21st, 2008 at 8:25 am

    OK, i finally got around to read­ing the sec­ond page of the “purity ball” story and look­ing at the slide show. For the record, “ewwwww.”

    Hav­ing typed that, i gotta type this — have y’all been to any Mid­west­ern cer­e­mo­nial of any of the fol­low­ing: Job’s Daugh­ters, Rain­bow Girls, DeMo­lay, Key Club, East­ern Star, Knights of Pythias, Civil Air Patrol (yes, espe­cially their youth dept.), Grange youth aux­il­iary, or DAR? I’ve ended up sit­ting through all these and more doing the open­ing prayer or singing a solo at the request of the new offi­cer instal­la­tion or some­thing. They’re all off-kilter rehearsals for wed­dings and even, in a dim sort of way, funer­als, and they share ele­ments of the kitschy and creepy all wound up in Enlight­en­ment sym­bol­ism and patri­otic fer­vor and a vague kind of prac­ti­cal mys­ti­cism that may use the name “Jesus” with some empha­sis but isn’t wor­ried about being Chris­t­ian at all.

    What i find most fas­ci­nat­ing (as opposed to appalling) about this is how it’s another expres­sion of the “Bowl­ing Alone” phe­nom­e­non in Amer­i­can soci­ety — these are events that replace what used to be spread through a whole nine-month, Sept./May pro­gram­matic year of youth orga­ni­za­tions that you joined and worked through the offices for … 12 offi­cers for a group that had maybe 20 mem­bers at most meetings.

    Those ongo­ing orga­ni­za­tions are fad­ing fast, and “events” are get­ting cob­bled together to replace them, like … the Purity Ball. Con­cen­trated kitsch and intense focus on a rela­tion­ship that needs to play out over time, not find an arti­fi­cial focus on one evening.

    I still laugh at the horror-stricken look on my wife’s face when i pointed out to her, decades after, the Freudian aspect of the major ser­vice clubs in her high school for boys and girls — I kid you not, Key Club and Lock­ets. No points for guess­ing which was which!

23. MichaelG said on May 21st, 2008 at 8:51 am

    Out here in Cal­i­for­nia we have the Quinceañera, a sort of elab­o­rate Mex­i­can sweet 15.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quincea%C3%B1era

    I’ve had friends spend for­tunes on them.

24. john c said on May 21st, 2008 at 8:57 am

    Wait a sec. I was in the Key Club … at an all boys high school. Hmmm.

    Like Nancy, I’m sort of fas­ci­nated by jar­gon as well. I see a lot of it as the spouse of a busi­ness hon­cho. The wife often has to approve press releases, announce­ments and such. And she’ll fre­quently ask me to run it through my type­writer. What gets me is that some of it is ridicu­lously bad, while some of it is extremely good.

    To me the most heinous offenses are in mis­sion state­ments. The whole idea of them is to con­cisely express the pur­pose of the orga­ni­za­tion. Yet they are mostly filled with the crap that every com­mit­tee charged with writ­ing some­thing comes up with.

    Years a go a com­pany I know well came up with a long and wind­ing mis­sion state­ment that reflected the chang­ing mar­ket­ing envi­ron­ment and the vari­ety of skill sets that need to be acti­vated, blah, blah, blah. The mis­sion state­ment it replaced, writ­ten back when the com­pany was run by one man: “To make the best adver­tis­ing in the world, bar none.”

25. brian stouder said on May 21st, 2008 at 9:08 am

    Well, a corol­lary to Woody Allen’s ‘90% of life is just show­ing up’ might be ‘90% of par­ent­ing is being present’, or ‘90% of parental influ­ence exists at the din­ner table’.

    I can­not claim to be father-of-the-year mate­r­ial, but I think I’ve learned that major ‘par­ent­ing inputs’ (other than, say, den­tal care) can­not be accom­plished in sched­uled 90 minute events. What these bizarre events really look like is a make-good for par­ents who real­ize (along with the rest of us) they’re not ‘parents-of-the-year’ mate­r­ial, but who wanna be!

    It seems as if the real ‘purity’ that is being sought, is the clean­li­ness of the par­ents’ hands

26. Jen said on May 21st, 2008 at 9:13 am

    I just read up on some of the clubs that Jeff men­tioned. Very…interesting. There are a num­ber of those clubs around here, but I’ve never been privy to any of their ceremonies.

    At our county fair, the local chap­ter of the Order of the East­ern Star makes the BEST dough­nuts in the entire uni­verse. I am not exag­ger­at­ing — peo­ple don’t blink an eye at lin­ing up three or four blocks to buy them. My out-of-town friends (who have never heard of the East­ern Star) agreed that they are incred­i­ble, but they now refer to them as “cult doughnuts.”

27. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on May 21st, 2008 at 9:57 am

    OES teaches fear­less­ness in the face of but­ter, lard, and refined sugar, along with some sym­bolic ges­tures towards the Divine.

    Hence, they cook like angels. Angels who are not approved by the Amer­i­can Heart Association …

    Brian — i plan to steal that line about the purity of par­ents’ hands at my ear­li­est oppor­tu­nity. Don’t tell Nancy.

28. Danny said on May 21st, 2008 at 10:01 am

    Jeff, if you write it with­out attri­bu­tion … well, let’s just say that Nancy has been known to find these sort of things out.

29. Jolene said on May 21st, 2008 at 10:31 am

    I grew up in a fam­ily that prob­a­bly didn’t talk about sex­u­al­ity as much as it should have, but, still, it seems like a “purity ball” would nec­es­sar­ily involve a more explicit and intense focus on sex than any con­ver­sa­tion I’d have wanted to have with my dad. And I had a pretty cool if not ter­rif­i­cally com­mu­nica­tive dad.

30. brian stouder said on May 21st, 2008 at 10:43 am

    i plan to steal that line

    It’s all yers! I’ve stolen…errr…internalized any num­ber of nn.c’isms over the years (talk­ing points about news­pa­pers and movies and Detroit and ‘sen­si­ble shoes’; and New Orleans and breasts and hur­ri­canes; and juve­niles and threat assess­ments and admin­is­tra­tors*, and uni­ver­si­ties and med­ical bureau­cracy, and.…)

    *devel­op­ing

31. Jolene said on May 21st, 2008 at 10:44 am

    Jar­gon crops up in pol­i­tics even faster than in busi­ness, I think, per­haps because the mass media play a big­ger role in dis­sem­i­nat­ing it. Am lis­ten­ing to pun­dits on NPR talk about yesterday’s elec­tions as I write and, at the same time groan­ing about hear­ing again all the phrases I’ve been hear­ing the past few months.

    Guess that, if I want to stay sane, I need to fol­low Nancy’s advice to focus on the mid­dle dis­tance and let the small stuff pass.

32. Kirk said on May 21st, 2008 at 11:13 am

    That’s what dri­ves me nuts about so many of my media col­leagues. The job is to gather the news and then to report it in Eng­lish; far too many gather it and then just regur­gi­tate the jar­gon, which most peo­ple don’t under­stand and so sub­se­quently ignore.

33. LAMary said on May 21st, 2008 at 11:22 am

    Rain­bow Girls, wow. I was one of those.