To: Mr. George DiPaolo
Director, Studio I.T.
Walt Disney Pictures & Television
Burbank, CA
From: Tom Naughton
Franklin, TN
Dear George –
I regret to inform you that after some serious soul-searching, I no longer feel it would be ethical for me to continue writing software for Walt Disney Pictures & Television, or for any other company. I know I recently reported being about 75% finished with the updated version of the DVD Trailer Management System, which was true (actually, it’s closer to 85% as of today), but for the good of the company, you should delete all my code files from the SourceSafe database and hire a real programmer to begin the project from scratch. You should also get rid of all the other systems I’ve programmed for Disney over the years, as it’s highly unlikely any of them actually work.
Bear in mind, I’m not quitting in reaction to anything you’ve done. You’re a fine project manager. The soul-searching began after several people posted notes on my Fat Head blog and YouTube channel, pointing out that I’m “just a comedian” without a degree in nutrition or any other health science, and therefore I have no business critiquing studies or challenging conventional health and dietary guidelines — especially any nutrition advice handed down by doctors, who spend several years learning to prescribe drugs.
Obviously, these critics are correct. For several decades now, I’ve made the mistake of thinking that since my college education consisted of reading books and academic papers and listening to lectures, I could become educated in other fields by reading books and academic papers and listening to lectures. So once I started doing research for Fat Head and became fascinated with nutrition science, I began reading like crazy. I ordered dozens of books and downloaded more articles and research papers than I can count. I listened to online lectures by MDs and PhDs, and sometimes even attended in person.
But it was all for nothing. As one of my critics informed me, reading books and research papers on my own doesn’t count as an education since I wasn’t supervised by professors who could correct the errors in my thinking. I must admit I see the point, even though I had a few professors in college whose errors in thinking were so profound, some of us wondered how they’d made it through graduate school. But they did, and that’s what really matters.
Which brings me back to the programming work: honestly, George, what the hell were you thinking when you hired me as a software contractor? Programming large, complicated database systems with dozens of end-users (or hundreds, in the case of the DVD Trailer sytem) requires an awful lot of high-level skill and knowledge. And yet you gave me those assignments in spite of the fact that I made it perfectly clear I never took a single programming class. If you’ll recall our first interview, you asked me specifically about my education in computer science, and I replied that I’d bought some books and taught myself how to write software programs.
So while I apologize for my role in all of this, you’re the one who works for Disney, and you’re the one who kept calling me every other year or so with another big assignment. You’re the one who let me program two of those systems in languages I’d never seen before, telling me to just order some books and get up to speed. (God only knows how messed up those programs are.) And you’re the one who offered to set me up with a remote computer at the studio so I could continue taking on assignments after moving to Tenneessee. So now that we know my programming work is illegitimate, you have to accept your share of the blame.
If it’s any consolation, you’re by no means the only one paying the price for my lack of formal training. I need to notify at least 25 law firms that they must immediately cease using my trademark and patent tracking software. Worse, several pharmaceutical companies must now replace the hugely expensive clinical-trial management system sold to them by a company that hired me to build it. Man, were they fooled … they told me I was the fourth programmer they hired, but the only one they kept. One of the owners even said, “I don’t get it. The last guy had a degree in computer science and every Microsoft certification you can name, but he didn’t have a @#$%ing clue how to build a decent system.” I have no choice now except to urge that company to dump my work, re-hire the guy with the degree, and rebuild the whole thing.
The really frustrating part of all this for me is that I’m not even “just a comedian” now. I never took a class in standup comedy either, so I can’t even go back to working the clubs and cruise ships. Since my degree is in journalism, I’m stuck with hoping a newspaper or magazine somewhere is interested in hiring a 51-year-old rookie reporter.
Anyway, I’m sorry for the inconvenience. I was really looking forward to showing you the new features I added to the DVD Trailer Management System.
Best,
Tom
p.s. – If there are any electric light bulbs in your office, I suggest getting rid of them before they explode and start a fire. Thomas Edison only attended school for four months, and his instructor described him as “addled.”
About an hour ago, I was sitting in the TV room, scanning through the on-screen guide, when my six-year-old came in to chat. After a moment, she looked up toward the top of a window and said, “Daddy, what kind of bug is that walking around on the glass?”
I followed her eyes, then answered, “Well, Sara, that looks a … HOLY @#$%!!”
I try not to teach her four-letter words, but the shock overcame my inhibitions. I hustled her out of the room and exchanged my shorts and tee-shirt for what is apparently becoming my official wasp-hunting gear: jeans, a shirt, a sweatshirt with a hood, a windbreaker with a hood, and winter gloves.
I went to the laundry room, picked up the can of Raid, and was dismayed to find it felt nearly empty. I gave it one little test squirt … okay, it wasn’t empty, but I hate going into battle with a flying demon short on chemical ammunition.
The window goes all the way to the ceiling, so of course that’s where the wasp was when I returned: right up by the ceiling, still prancing around on the glass. I climbed up on the sofa near the window and balanced one foot on an arm, another on the back. I extended my weapon slooowwwly until I was sure I close enough to guarantee a direct hit.
PFFFFFFFFFFFT!!
The wasp fell, and I was sure for a moment it would wind up behind the sofa, leaving me with no option but to get back there and look for it … thus assuring myself of an ambush by one very pissed-off wasp. Fortunately, the wasp landed on a window sill, rolled onto its back, and kicked its legs for awhile, calling me a mother@#$%*! the whole time.
It’s in the garbage can outside now. I would’ve written about this earlier, but my hands just stopped shaking a minute ago.
When I was a wee lad in Iowa, schoolkids trafficked in Black Cat firecrackers the way some sell drugs today. It wasn’t legal for kids to have firecrackers, of course, but everyone knew a supplier. (The suppliers, now that I think about it, were usually tough kids who didn’t do well in school. )
Weeks before the Fourth of July rolled around, we’d stop wasting our allowances on marbles, candies and other worthless junk, and start saving up for a personal supply of explosives. If you saved enough, you could even stroll up to a supplier and proudly announce, “I need a brick.”
A “brick” was the real deal: an entire package, all wrapped up in waxy paper, complete with a logo of a snarling black cat. When we tore open a brick, there they’d be … dozens and dozens of firecrackers, with the fuses twisted together. We learned right away to un-twist the fuses delicately, or they’d snap off.
But of course, we weren’t about to let the fuse-less firecrackers go to waste. We’d tape those to the firecrackers we could actually ignite and explode them together. That was also the preferred method for making use of a dud. By the end of the day, the fields near our house would smell like gunpowder and be full of little bits of firecracker confetti.
The paper that wrapped each brick included clear instructions on how to enjoy the firecrackers. PLACE FIRECRACKER ON THE GROUND. LIGHT THE FUSE AND MOVE TO A SAFE DISTANCE.
Yeah, right. In all my childhood years, I never saw anyone set a firecracker on the ground and move a safe distance away. In fact, we considered it a test of our manhood to hold a lit firecracker until the last possible second, then could toss it in the air just before the explosion. Our timing was generally pretty good … but unfortunately, quality control at the Black Cat factory wasn’t perfect, and some fuses burned more quickly than others. I went home after one firecracker expedition with my right hand in my pocket, hoping my parents wouldn’t notice I had two black fingernails.
But there was no hiding the splatter of ink on my shirt. No longer content to merely toss Black Cats in the air, my friends and I had started experimenting with more creative explosions. We blew up anthills, dirt clods, and empty soda cans. (The cans didn’t exactly explode, but they jumped a bit, and there was a satisfying WHOMP when the Black Cat went off inside.)
Then one of my friends had the bright idea of attaching a firecracker to a Bic pen with a rubber band. I had the bright idea of volunteering to hold the pen-bomb while he lit the fuse. The fuse had the bright idea of burning all the way down in a couple of milliseconds. I realized what was happening just soon enough to say a bad word and make a panicky attempt to toss the firecracker, then POP! - black fingers and a forerunner to the tie-dye shirt.
Mom wasn’t happy, especially since she made many of our shirts back then, including the ink-stained one I wore home. After confronting me with some rather damning evidence (the burnt gunpowder smell, in particular, was hard to explain) and eliciting a confession that I’d been playing with firecrackers, Mom stuck my fingers in glass of ice water, then gave me a lecture about a boy who blew off three of his fingers with a cherry bomb.
In comparing notes with different kids in different towns over the years, I eventually concluded that every mom in America knew a boy who had blown off three of his fingers with a cherry bomb. Strangely, none of us kids had ever actually met a boy with three missing fingers. None of us even knew anyone who knew anyone with three missing fingers. I could only guess that the missing-finger kid spent his life moving from town to town and introducing himself to all the local mothers.
I don’t play with firecrackers anymore, but my girls spent part of today delighting themselves by tossing little exploding caps against the sidewalk. Tomorrow evening, we’ll head to downtown Franklin for a free concert on the town square, followed by fireworks. I have fond childhood memories of the Fourth of July, and I hope they will too. I also want them to understand what the Fourth of July means. I’ve already told them about the Declaration of Independence, the Revolutionary War, and how the fireworks represent the battles that freed us from British rule.
And when they’re older, I’ll make sure my wife tells them about a kid who blew off three of his fingers with a cherry bomb.
I’m up to my ears in a big ol’ data conversion for a prospective software client, but I’m taking a quick break here to post some odds and ends:
Wasp stories
Okay, y’all succeeded … after reading your own wasp stories in the comments, I’m even more afraid of the little demons than before. I will never again take a bite of a baseball-stadium hot dog without giving it a careful look first. When I take the empty bottles and cans to the garage, I open the door slowly and look for wasps and hornets before descending the stairs. Same thing when I walk out the front door. But the most important precaution of all: I give the toilet careful scrutiny, including the underside of the seat, before reading the sports section. Some wasp stings could kill you … if not from the toxin, then from the shock.
Back on the cell phone
Some weeks ago I wrote about giving up my cell phone and returning to the dark ages of the 1990s. Honestly, I haven’t missed it a bit. I like being unreachable when I leave the house, and I feel no urge to call people 15 minutes before I arrive for a visit to tell them I’m almost there. I figure when I arrive, they can probably deduce that 15 minutes earlier, I was about 15 minutes away. And I still haven’t seen any statistics to convince me that thousands of people used to die on the nation’s highways for lack of a portable phone.
But alas, I’ll be out of town for a week (heading to Chicago to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary, thus returning to the scene of the crime), and since I’m running a growing software business now, I can’t be unreachable. So it’s back to being a cell-phone owner.
Somebody suggested in a comment that I try Virgin Mobile. Good idea, thanks. For $25 per month, I get 300 minutes with no roaming charges. That’s more minutes than I’ll need, and the web surfing, texting and emailing are all free … although after trying those services, I doubt I’ll use them. I can’t stand browsing on that little screen, and I don’t have the patience to peck away on the tiny keyboard.
The only hitch was getting my phone activated. The first phone I took home apparently wanted to be in a different line of work and refused to activate. I called Virgin Mobile’s tech support somewhere in India five times, and each time a technician walked me through the steps, then assured me the phone would activate within three hours. Never happened.
Unlike many Americans, I don’t resent people in India acquiring jobs — I want people all over the world to become prosperous, which, by the way, often turns them into customers for American-made products. For example, I’ll soon be selling my software to a firm in India for a nice sum, if testing goes well. (And it has so far.) Poor people don’t buy my software.
But I have to admit, the language barrier was a bit annoying at times. I had conversations like this:
“Okay, sir, you must now need to enter the following code: Enm, too, tree–”
“Sorry, did you say N or M for that first part?”
“Enm. As in Nmiddy.”
“Niddy?”
“No, sir. Nmiddy.”
“Niddy? With an N? Like my last name?”
“No, sir, it says here your last name is Nog-ton, with an Emn. You need to type an Enm, as in Nmiddy. Like the name.”
“Uh … sorry … ”
“Nmiddy. Like Nmiddy, Nmiddy, quite contriddy.”
“Oh, you mean M as in Mary!”
“Yes, sir. Nmiddy.”
Despite their best attempts, every time I tried to use the phone, a friendly voice informed me it wasn’t activated. After two days, I gave up and exchanged it for a duplicate. Bingo … activated on the first try. No help from Nmiddy required.
My Favorite Fat Head Review
I receive Google alerts when new references to my documentary Fat Head appear on the web. The good news is that there are lots of references. The bad news is that many of them are on illegal download sites in foreign countries. If only my international distributor could achieve that kind of market penetration.
Some of the illegal download sites even include reviews cribbed from legitimate retail sites … the better to entice people to steal my work. Other sites list the movie — legally, as far as I can tell — simply to get their tiny commission if the reader clicks through to Amazon or Netflix. Those sites also crib reviews.
I saw one of those borrowed reviews today. I recognized it from Amazon, but it has apparently been translated into some foreign language and then back into English again. It’s now my favorite review:
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“Rotund Head” is simultaneously a send-up of Morgan Spurlock’s “Supersize Me” and an expose’ on the place of nutrition “science”. Using humor and Pythonesque cartoons, Tom Naughton does a generous job of tipping many sacred cows on the topic of nutrition, showing how the government, media, and special interests combined to yield the modern situation: people are eating what’s supposedly “healthy”, yet are developing metabolic diseases like diabetes at an alarming and increasing rate.
(Buy, Download or Stream Fat Head! Click here!)
The core premise of the movie is to revisit “Supersize Me”, where Spurlock supposedly showed the evils of speedily food by eating nothing but McDonald’s for a month. Spurlock gained 25 pounds, was issued a variety of dire health warnings by his doctor, etc. Naughton turns this concept on it’s head: he also ate only rapidly food for a month, but ragged his “functioning brain”. Rather than impartial blindly eating whatever was available, he avoided those foods which science has shown contribute to metabolic problems like obesity, including sodas, french fries, too worthy bread, etc. The result? Eating nothing but double Expansive Macs and the like, he lost over 12 pounds in 28 days and his cholesterol went down. The expression on his doctor’s face alone is worth the label of the DVD.
“Pudgy Head” is very comical and discusses the science of paunchy collect and loss in an manner which is easily understood. My kids (8 and 4) watched it with me, and they “got it”. Regain a copy and fragment it with your friends and family.
This movie is humorous and piquant and amazingly informative. It has so many pieces of useful advice that it’s hard to secure them all. Furthermore, it passes along this information in a map that got my wife’s attention in a device that I hadn’t been able to.
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Hey, if I can help a guy finally get his wife’s attention in a device — after many failed efforts, apparently – I’m a happy man. And for the record, I don’t miss the too-worthy bread one bit.
Time to rag my functioning brain back into some data conversion …
A few weeks ago, I walked upstairs to our mid-level family room, which is partly a playroom for the girls and partly my wife’s office. My wife was busy typing an email, and when I started to ask her a question, she said, “Just a second, let me finish this. Oh, and you might not want to be in here right now. There’s a wasp flying around.”
She said this with the same degree of alarm you’d adopt while informing your spouse that there’s a cricket somewhere in the garage.
“Excuse me, did you say … wasp?”
“Yeah. I saw it flying around up there by the ceiling fan.” Then she went back to typing her email.
I had three immediate thoughts:
If there’s a wasp in the house, it’s going to sting me.
I must kill the wasp before it stings me, although I’ll probably be stung during the attempt.
When I do get stung, it will be my children’s fault.
I blamed my girls because as soon as school was out for the summer, they decided to occupy their days with an activity parents refer to as “running in and out.” They love to be outdoors, but apparently never for more than five minutes at a time. So, like any middle-aged dad, I’ve taken up the habit of bellowing “Close the door!” every time they run in or out. I don’t even bother to look. If they’ve just run in or out, I know the door is wide open.
My six-year-old believes every parental command must be accompanied by a detailed justification, so she’d already demanded to know why she has to take time out of her busy day to stop and close the door every time she runs in or out — especially since she’ll just be running back in or back out a few minutes later. So I told her: “There are wasps outside. I don’t them coming into my house. If you leave the door open, one of them will get in here.” Obviously, she wasn’t convinced. And now there was a wasp in the house. The enablers were, of course, nowhere to be seen.
Just walking away and hoping the wasp would eventually leave wasn’t a possibility, because I have a history with wasps, and it isn’t pretty. Wasps aren’t like bees. Bees are cute. Sure, they can sting you, but it doesn’t hurt much and you have to give them a reason — like stepping on them. (Or, in my brother’s case, believing a rumor that if you cup your hands around them, you can carry them around and they won’t mind.)
Wasps, on the other hand, are little flying sociopaths. If they’re having a bad day and you happen to be nearby, they’ll go after you. And a wasp sting hurts like hell.
I found that out for the first time when I was 12. I was watching TV when I started hearing thumps on the outside of the house. I went outside and found some neighborhood idiots throwing rocks at what looked like a dirt pancake with holes in it, stuck to the underside of our roof.
“Uh … what are you guys doing?”
“That’s a wasp nest,” one of them explained. I was just staring to reply when some wasps dropped from the mud pancake and then swooped into a V formation, with the point of the V aimed in our direction. The rock-throwing idiots ran. I was also turning to run when WHAM! — I took a direct hit in the shoulder.
If you’d asked me before this experience what a wasp sting would probably feel like, I would’ve guessed something like being pierced with a needle. Not even close. It feels more like a baseball player studded his Louisville Slugger with a nail and then swung for the fences, with your body having the bad luck to be in the way. That’s because wasps drive their stingers deep — sometimes piercing the flesh — and inject a toxin at the same time. And unlike honeybees, wasps don’t commit suicide by stinging you. They can pull out and sting you again if they’re in the mood.
An entomologist once created a pain scale for various insect bites and stings. A bee sting rates a 2.0 on his scale. A wasp sting — which he described as “blinding, fierce, shockingly electric” — rates a 4.0. Naturally, none of the neighborhood idiots who were throwing rocks at my parents’ house were afforded an opportunity to agree or disagree with the entomologist’s description. Only I was, and I agree.
At least those wasps had a reason to attack. A year later, I was stung again during a class picnic in a park. We were walking through a covered structure that was, as I found out, home to at least one wasp. Nobody was throwing rocks, and nobody was close to the wasp, which attacked from a high, beamed ceiling. Apparently it just didn’t like seeing all those happy schoolchildren missing math class and, after looking us over, said to itself, “I bet the fat kid can’t run very fast.” I was also a victim of Seventies fashion sense: that is, I was wearing hip-huggers that left the top of my ass exposed.
WHAM! Nail-studded Louisville Slugger, delivered straight to the part of the hip not being hugged. In addition to the pain, this led to the embarrassment of being surrounded by curious classmates while my seventh-grade teacher — clearly no entomologist, in retrospect — spent several minutes on her knees, searching the top of my ass for a non-existent stinger.
Those were the actual stings that made me hate wasps. I’ve also had some close calls.
After my freshman year in college, my dad gave me an extra summer job: painting the exterior of the house, which was paneled with thick, vertical planks. I could use a roller on those, but needed a brush to paint between them.
So one hot day in July, I was standing on a ladder leaned against the back of the house, holding a small bucket of paint in my left hand and a brush in my right, applying paint between the planks. I pushed the brush into a gap where the planks met the roof, and as I pulled the brush away, I couldn’t help but notice a wasp was following it. In the next half-second, I tossed the brush and the bucket, jumped off the ladder, sprinted the few yards to our backyard pool and dove in. My feet only touched the ground twice.
When I couldn’t hold my breath any longer, I came up for air. Then I decided I should probably go under again, mostly because the wasp took my emergence as an opportunity to fly straight at my head. This time I swam underwater to the opposite end of the pool, then came up slowly. The wasp was still buzzing around the other end of the pool, looking for me. Occasionally it would land on the water and float there for awhile, then conduct another reconnaissance mission.
I kept thinking it would give up soon and go away. It didn’t. And that’s why, when my older brother Jerry stepped out onto the back deck some time later and saw me more or less hiding under the diving board, he asked, “What are you doing in the pool with your clothes on?”
So I explained that a wasp had driven me off the ladder and into the pool, that I’d been there for a good part of the day, keeping everything below my chin submerged, that I was planning to stay there as long as necessary, despite being fully clothed and water-logged, because the wasp was still flying around the pool and occasionally floating on top of the water, which in fact was exactly what it was doing now, and whether flying or floating, it was clearly intent on stinging me, which was also why I didn’t want to talk about it any more, since the sound of my voice could give away my location.
I explained all this by pointing and croaking, “Wasp.”
Jerry peered towards the pool, then retreated into the house without another word. He emerged a few minutes later wearing swim trunks and a battle face. He was also armed with a large plastic canoe paddle. He crept to the edge of the pool near the wasp, raised the paddle slowly over his head, bent his knees, then sprang over the water with a cry of “YAAAAAAAAAAHH!!”
It wasn’t Olympic form, but as Jerry entered the water in a horizontal position, he managed to land a direct paddle-smack on the wasp. Then, over the next 15 seconds or so, he landed 347 more.
The end result was one slightly injured and seriously pissed-off wasp, buzzing atop the water in a furious circle. Jerry splashed to the side of the pool, grabbed the net-on-a-pole we used for scooping leaves, and netted the wasp. He dragged the net to the bottom of the pool and left it there.
When I was convinced the wasp didn’t have a Houdini routine its in repertoire, I finally hoisted myself out of the pool and went inside to put on dry clothes. A half-hour later, after we’d spent the intervening time relaxing on the back deck, Jerry retrieved the net and dumped the drowned wasp on the patio near the pool. A half-hour after that, the drowned wasp buzzed angrily a few a times, then flew away. We didn’t stick around to see if he planned on returning.
That’s how tough wasps are. People who say cockroaches would be only survivors of an all-out nuclear war are at least one species short in their estimate.
Now that I think about it, my near-misses with wasps always seem to involve water, because the next one occurred in a shower. My wife and I were living in Los Angeles at the time, renting an apartment where the bathroom window was on a wall inside the shower stall. I opened the window about a half-inch one morning before showering, and as I was shampooing my hair, I noticed something squeeze under the window sill, pause for a second, then fly towards me. Wasp. The only reason I wasn’t stung immediately is that a stream of water from the shower knocked the little bastard off course.
This led to what was eventually known as the Scream Like A Girl Incident, which featured me scampering naked and wet to the opposite end of the apartment, arms flailing, eyes stinging from the shampoo sliding into them and — as the incident’s title suggests — screaming like a girl. (I recall something more like a manly yell, but my wife named the incident, and her memory of it is probably more accurate, since my brain was occupied with whatever hormones are produced during moments of primal terror.)
There was something of a repeat a year later, after we bought our first house in Burbank. Despite living together for two years, I didn’t yet realize that when my wife loses strands of hair while shampooing, she rolls them up and sticks them to the wall of the shower. (I didn’t realize this because she usually removes them on her way out.) I also didn’t realize that the steam from a hot shower can cause a hairball to un-stick itself from the wall and float in the air.
So I stepped into the shower one morning just after she’d finished — without my glasses, of course — and, after rinsing my face, opened my eyes just in time to see an out-of-focus black fuzzy thing emerge from the fog and float towards my chin.
This led to what was eventually known as the Scream Like A Girl Incident Sequel, which ended with my wife inquiring as to why I was beating a hairball to death with my shower brush and — as the incident’s title suggests — screaming like a girl. At least it wasn’t a real wasp. I never found the wasp that came at me in the original Scream Like A Girl Incident, and I spent days worrying that it was still somewhere in the apartment.
So, given my experiences with wasps, I wasn’t about to just hope the one flying around our ceiling fan would go away. In fact, it soon landed on the fan and seemed be to considering whether the metal housing, with those nice air slots, might make a good home. I could already imagine it flying out of there someday, heading towards one of the girls.
I considered going after it with a flyswatter, but then thought of a line from The Usual Suspects: “How do you shoot at the devil? What if you miss?” And missing was a definite possibility, given my batting average with the flyswatter.
The only other option was to spray it with insecticide — the shotgun approach. So I retrieved a can of Raid Ant and Roach Killer (Country Glade scented!) from the laundry room and started up the stairs … then realized this operation could end with the wasp driving a Raid-soaked stinger into my body. I needed armor. I needed to wear more layers than a wasp’s stinger can penetrate.
By the time I returned to the family room, I was wearing jeans, a tee shirt, a long-sleeved shirt, a sweatshirt with a hood, a windbreaker with a hood, a scarf, and thick winter gloves. Both hoods were pulled tight, leaving only the area around my eyeglasses exposed. I would have to stand on a chair to get up near the ceiling fan, and my biggest concern was that if the Raid didn’t kill the wasp immediately and I had to run, I could fall down and find myself unable to get up … sort of like Ralphie’s little brother in A Christmas Story.
In that case, the wasp might not even sting me right away. It might strut around me for awhile, baggy pants hanging halfway down its little wasp ass, calling me a biatch. Then it would drive its stinger into my hamstring through my jeans.
I slowly pulled a chair to the area below the ceiling fan, climbed aboard, and stood up even more slowly. Son of a @#$%! I couldn’t see the wasp. Not high enough. I asked my wife to go to the top of the other stairway, which leads to the second-story bedrooms. She did.
“Can you see it?”
“Yes. It’s walking around on the top of the motor.”
I raised my chemical weapon slowly. “Okay … am I pointing the can of Raid at the wasp?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
PHHSSHHHHHHHHT!! I sprayed for at least 10 seconds, eyes locked on the housing of the fan, waiting for the wasp to swoop down at me. Then I jumped off the chair and ran up the stairs.
“Did I get it?”
“I don’t know. I lost it in the spray, and now I can’t see it anymore.”
“Damn.”
“Good lord, that stuff smells awful.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. Right now I’m more concerned with knowing whether the wasp is dead or just really pissed off.”
“I’ll go see.”
My wife went down the stairs and, to get a properly elevated view, climbed on top of the table she and the girls use for art projects. It occurred to me that if the wasp flew out of the fan and stung her, I’d feel like a moron … even though it would give me a chance, for the first time in the 13 years we’ve known each other, to hear her scream like a girl.
“It’s dead. I’ll get it.”
She grabbed a paper towel, stood on the chair I’d abandoned, and swiped at the top of the fan’s housing. The wasp fell to the floor. She crumpled it inside the paper towel and headed downstairs.
“Use the garbage can outside. I’ve seen those things come back to life.”
“Okay.”
And that was The Great Wasp Hunt of 2010. Meanwhile, another one has taken up residence in an area beneath the roof, just outside our kitchen door. I don’t use that door much anymore.
However, last week my wife and I started catching up (via Netflix) on the excellent Showtime series “The Tudors,” about the reign of King Henry VIII. Yes, that King Henry … the guy who split from the Catholic Church when the pope wouldn’t grant him a divorce. The guy who started the Church of England. The guy who showed his displeasure with wives that didn’t bear him sons by having them made about a foot shorter.
And you thought John Edwards was a lousy excuse for a husband.
Anyway, it’s fun to watch historical characters brought to life, and seeing all the rivalries and political backstabbing that went on. If not for the fancy clothes, you could almost believe it was a drama about modern Washington. Henry apparently got around as much as Bill Clinton. There was even an episode in which a lawyer threatened to produce some stained sheets, although he was directing his accusations at the queen, not Henry.
Curious as to how historically accurate the series is, I looked up some information about Henry’s life online. This paragraph from the Wikipedia entry gave me a chuckle:
Financially, the reign of Henry was a near-disaster. After inheriting a prosperous economy (augmented by seizures of church lands) heavy spending and high taxes damaged the economy.
What the heck is wrong with those Wikipedia writers?! Haven’t they been paying attention to the media stories about how President Obama and Congress fixed our economy with all that heavy spending? Don’t they know high taxes are the key to prosperity?
So apparently Henry VII not only started a new church, he was the first head of state who understood the benefits of a good stimulus package. I suspect if I do some more digging, I’ll learn the British economy was never better than after Henry primed the pump with all that heavy spending.
Life as an independent contractor: in one month, you wonder when (or if) the next job will come along; the next month, you wonder how you’ll get all the work done and still find time for leisure activities such as eating and sleeping.
I was up most of the night and probably will be tonight as well … partly to do the work, and partly because when there’s work to be done, my brain has a bad habit of refusing to stop thinking about it even when I try to sleep. I guess that’s good in a way. I’ve solved some tricky problems while staring at my bedroom ceiling. (I’ve also seen cartoon characters up there offering me their own suggestions, but that’s a different story.)
So I’m not feeling especially gabby tonight, but I did gather some additional grammar-grump annoyances submitted by readers:
Affect vs. Effect
Affect is the verb: High taxes affect business decisions. Effect is the noun: High taxes have a negative effect on investment.
Okay, effect is usually a noun. It can also be a verb meaning “bring about.” He used a disguise to effect his escape. But pretty please … the disguise would never have a negative affect on his appearance.
And while we’re on affect, I’d like to point out that it’s an effective verb, so there was no reason whatsoever to take a perfectly good noun like impact and make a verb out of it. How does that impact the bottom line? Yeeeeuck. Even worse is impactful. Every time I hear that bastard of a word, I think it sounds stupidful.
Back in the 1970s, around the same time that someone thought disco was a good idea, someone else thought it would be cool to start making verbs out of nouns. So now people talk about how to parent a child. I prefer to just raise my girls. If I start parenting them, I’ll probably just screw them up. And I find it suspicious that parent became a verb at roughly the same time the divorce rate began skyrocketing and a lot parents decided it wasn’t personally fulfilling to parent full time.
A friend of mine (also a grammar grump) once spent several minutes expressing his outrage after attending a meeting in which his boss emphasized that the current project was for a major client so “we really need to effort this one.” I hate it when people in positions of power stupid the language.
Then vs. Than
Than is for comparison: He’s taller than I am. Then is for time or logical sequences: If it happened back then, then it’s history.
Loose vs. Lose
You can loosen your belt, but you don’t loose weight. You lose weight … well, if you ignore the standard advice about the impactfulness of low-fat diets and jogging, that is.
Infer vs. Imply
If you’re speaking in a roundabout way, you might imply something. But if I think I’ve picked up on the meaning, I infer it. I once heard congressional tax-writer (and tax cheat) Charlie Rangel, after being buttonholed by a reporter, get all huffy and puffy about people making statements inferring he didn’t pay his taxes on purpose. No Charlie, they implied you’re a tax cheat. Shame on them … they should’ve just come out and said it.
This is hilarious … as a condition for bailing out Greece, the IMF has told the government to look into privatizing more of its economy including (drum roll, please) the state health care system.
Greece was told that if it wanted a bailout, it needed to consider privatizing its government health care system. So tell us again why the U.S. is following Europe’s welfare state model.
The requirement, part of a deal arranged by the IMF, the European Union and the European Central bank, is a tacit admission that national health care programs are unsustainable. Along with transportation and energy, the bailout group, according to the New York Times, wants the Greek government to remove “the state from the marketplace in crucial sectors.”
This is not some cranky or politically motivated demand. It is a condition based on the ugly reality of government medicine. The Times reports that economists — not right-wingers opposed to health care who want to blow up Times Square — say liberalizing “the health care industry would help bring down prices in these areas, which are among the highest in Europe.”
Of course most of the media have been largely silent about the health care privatization measure for Greece, as it conflicts with their universal, single-payer health care narrative.
Man, imagine how our freedoms will be enhanced when we end up begging the IMF for a bailout 15 or 20 years from now. “Yes, America, we will be happy to give you 20 trillion dollars … but there are a few conditions, including adopting a new world-wide currency …”
I was never a big fan of Weird Al Yankovic’s videos, but I love this one:
YES!! Go, Weird Al! We may not have much in common, but we obviously share a fundamental trait: we’re both grammar grumps. Every time I see 15 Items or Less at the grocery store, I’m nearly as annoyed by the sign as I am by that person in front of me stacking 187 items on the conveyor. I’m triply annoyed if one of those items is a box of food with a label advertising 1/3 Less Calories!
In case you didn’t already know, less and fewer have different meanings. So do number and amount, although a surprising number (not amount) of intelligent people use them interchangeably. It drives me nuts when I hear newscasters talk about “a large amount of people” showing up at some public event. I’ve been known to yell grammar lessons at the TV during such moments.
For the record, if you’re talking about something you can count, the proper words are number and fewer: A large number of people attended, but fewer than last year. If you’re talking about something you would measure — or can’t count – the proper words are amount and less: A large amount of manure passing for debate comes out of Washington, and I don’t expect any less of it this year.
Not sure if you’d count or measure? Well, here’s the convenient way to think of it: if the word is plural, you’re counting. Fewer calories. Fewer people. If it’s not plural, you’re probably not counting. Less fat … but fewer grams of fat.
Perhaps in the scheme of things, the difference between less and fewer seems trivial. I don’t care; it’s not trivial to me. Language matters. Precision matters. Clarity matters, and clarity isn’t possible without precision. Sloppy language honks me off.
Yes, I admit it: I’m the guy who emails newspaper editors to complain when reporters can’t distinguish between it’s and its. Again, for the record: it’s means it is or it has.Its is the possessive form of it … his, hers, its. So the dog most definitely does not wag it’s tail.
I see its and it’s mixed up all the time in emails, blog posts, tweets, Facebook updates, etc. I cringe a bit, but hey, we’re talking about individuals who probably didn’t major in English or journalism and aren’t working with an editor.
Newspapers are another story. Now we’re talking about people who are supposed to be language professionals, and whose work isn’t published until it’s been reviewed by at least two or three other language professionals. Maybe it’s because media organizations are now staffed by people who grew up watching TV instead of reading books, but I’m stunned by the number (not the amount) of errors I see in newspapers, magazines, advertisements, online news sites, and even in title graphics that appear on network news and sports programs. It’s a tough old world out there for a grammar grump like me.
I’m not sure why I grew up to be a grammar grump. My mom taught high-school English, but not until I was nearly finished with high school myself. In fact, she recalls sending my dad love-letters while she was in high school and he was away at college … and then receiving them back in the mail with the misspellings and grammar errors circled in red ink. (Amazingly, she married him anyway.)
So perhaps I inherited grammar grumpiness from my dad. He majored in business administration and ran his own company after a career in sales, but he had a professional writer’s way with words. He would occasionally ask me to proof a business letter for him, and I was always impressed with his clear sentences, the logical flow of his paragraphs, and the fact that I never — and I mean never — found a misspelled or misused word.
If I did inherit grammar grumpiness, it was honed when I wrote for the campus newspaper in college — thanks mostly to Harry, our faculty adviser. A retired newspaperman from the era when journalists drank at their desks, Harry read each day’s edition cover to cover, marking all the errors in red ink. Then he dropped the “Harry edition” on our editor’s desk.
We usually crept over to pick up the “Harry edition” as if it were a live bomb, each of us hoping our own articles would be red-ink free. That was rarely the case. Occasionally, Harry would even scribble a helpful note in the margin:
Tom - you stated that this technology will likely be adopted in “a couple of generations.” A generation is approximately 25 years. Do you really expect it will take 50 years to be adopted? Aren’t we looking at something more like 20 years?
Perhaps the most embarrassed editor ever to work at our college paper was the one who put this headline over a story: English Department Opens Grammer Hotline For Students. Harry’s note in the margin: They’ll be delighted to know they’re needed.
What a pleasure it was to discover that Weird Al has some Harry in him. I’m not ambitious enough to go the video route, but in Weird Al’s honor, I’m going to put on my official grammar-grump hat and list some of the all-too-common errors that would probably drive Harry to drink … or least stock up on red pens.
Don’t be jealous, but please be possessive … or plural … just make up your mind.
I understand the confusion with its and it’s. We’re used to adding apostrophe-s to make a word possessive. The dog’s tail was wagging. But I don’t understand when I go to a store and see that onion’s and apple’s are on sale. Or that there’s a managers special. (A special on managers? How many per customer?) And if I see one more mailbox telling me The Robinson’s live there … well, I won’t be outraged if some teenagers decide to play mailbox baseball. I’ll just assume they’re grammar grumps in a convertible.
They’re grammar needs work
They’re over there, and their car needs a spare. Okay? It’s not they’re car, or there car. It’s their car. And it’s over there. They’re sitting in it, planning a game of mailbox baseball. The Robinson’s better beware.
Your an Idiot
There’s nothing quite so satisfying as being called an idiot by an idiot. A couple of years ago, I made the mistake of participating in an online political debate with someone who believed insults trump logic and facts. We had an exchange that went something like this:
Thats not true! Your an idiot!
Yes, it is true. You can look it up. And it’s “You’re an idiot,” genius.
I am not. Your an idiot!
You’re. Not Your. You are an idiot. Not “belongs to you” an idiot.
No, YOUR THE IDIOT!
You’re missing the point. It’s a grammar issue. You’re, not your.
@#$% you, theres nothing wrong with my grammar! Your an idiot!
In a comedy club in Minneapolis some years back, I noticed an ad on the men’s room wall: A hot-model babe wearing sunglasses (and not much else), along with the logo for the brand of sunglasses, plus the words: When Your Ready For The Look!
I couldn’t help myself … I wrote down the name of the ad agency. I called them the next day and, after managing to convince a couple of gatekeepers I wasn’t a complete nut, got the account manager on the phone.
“I’m sorry, what exactly are you calling about?”
“Your ad, the one for the sunglasses. When your ready for the look. Y-O-U-R.”
“Yes? I don’t understand, is there something wrong with it?”
“Y-O-U-R! That’s like your dog or your car. It doesn’t mean you are. See the difference? You’ve got a huge mistake there in a big display ad that’s probably all over the place.”
“Oh, my … holy @#$%!! Thanks, man!” (click)
This was an expensive, poster-sized advertisement, you understand. That means at least a half-dozen people approved it … writer, art director, account manager, typesetter, printer, and of course the clients. Nobody caught the error. Amazing … and sad.
The last time I saw this particular error, a radar-activated highway sign in Illinois told me Your speeding! Yeah, I’m speeding … and your an idiot.
Don’t feel badly about it.
I feel great. I feel awful. I feel healthy. I feel sick. I feel strong. I feel tired. I feel optimistic. But I never feel badly, because my fingers are in working order. If they go numb, then I’ll feel badly. In the meantime, if I’ve insulted anyone, I might feel bad about it.
Sort of unique, really unique, pretty unique.
You can’t be sort of dead, and you can’t be sort of unique … or even really unique. The word means one of a kind. It’s an absolute condition — no modifiers need apply. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve heard newscasters talk about “a relatively unique situation.” No, if there’s relativity involved, it would be unusual or perhaps even rare. But it’s not unique.
Between you and I, if it’s up to you and I, it’s really up to you and me.
Okay, so as kids, we’d run home and say, “Mom! Me and Billy went to the creek and –” and before we could explain that Billy was last seen slipping under some seriously muddy water and frantically waving for help, Mom would immediately interrupt to say, “Billy and I! Billy and I!”
So now whenever there’s another person sharing any part of a sentence with us, it’s I, I, I … even when it’s wrong. It seemed to my wife and I that … between you and I … if it’s up to you and I, we should … Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Billy and I went to the creek. Yes, that’s correct, because you and Billy together are the subjects of the sentence. But you and Billy can also be considered objects together, even if you never move to California and visit the sex clubs.
Subject, object … let’s not get into diagramming sentences. Here’s the shortcut: remove Billy from the equation for a moment. It’s up to I? I’m pretty sure even people who slept through grammar classes wouldn’t say that. It’s up to me. Ahh, that sounds better. Now put Billy back where he belongs: It’s up to Billy and me.
As for between, remove Billy once again and substitute under for between. It’s under I? I don’t think so. It’s under me. And it’s between Billy and me, too.
Ain’t got a brain between them
Years ago a comedian I worked with had a funny bit about being arrested for drunk driving and then becoming belligerent with the cops when they took him in. (Don’t try this at home.) I’m paraphrasing, but part of the bit went something like this:
So I’m all stupid and drunk, and I turn to the cops and yell, “@#$% you, you damned cops! Yeah, you got the badges and guns, but you ain’t got a brain between you!” They all look at each other, and then the biggest, toughest-looking cop comes over, gets right in my face and says, “Look, punk. There are three cops standing here, see? So if you’re real smart, you’ll change that to Ain’t got a brain AMONG you.”
Between is a bicycle built for two. ‘Nuff said.
I realize that by picking this topic, I’ve pretty much invited everyone to point out every typo, every missing word, and every (egads!) misused word in any post I’ve ever written. Go for it. I can take it. I learned long ago that while I’m good at proofreading other people’s work, my brain sees what it expects to see when it’s my own text.
And if you’re a fellow grammar grump, chime in with examples of your own grumpiness. Maybe I’ll post another list.
With Earth Day coming up tomorrow, millions of American schoolchildren have no doubt been commanded to write an essay on global warming to prove they’ve been properly indoctrina– I mean, educated on the topic. And, kids being kids, I’m sure many of them procrastinated and are now scrambling to find enough information to put together the required thousand words or so.
Fear not, kids. I’m here to help with a Global Warming Q & A. Feel free to plagiarize at will.
What does “global warming” mean?
It means the planet is slowly getting warmer. According to some scientists, it’s happening because of something called The Greenhouse Effect. Here’s how it works: human beings are emitting a lot of carbon dioxide, so it’s building up in the atmosphere and trapping heat. It’s a bit like when your car sits in the sun with the windows up.
So carbon dioxide must be at record levels.
Absolutely. The current concentration is 385 parts per million, which, as Al Gore pointed out in An Inconvenient Truth, is the highest it’s ever been … except for when it was a lot higher.
A lot higher?! What are you talking about?
I’m talking about the periods in earth’s history that Al Gore doesn’t talk about. Actually, that would be most of the earth’s history, at least if we’re talking about the last 600 million years.
CO2 was higher than 385 parts per million for most of earth’s history?
Heck, yes. We’re talking about crazy-high concentrations: 4500 parts per million in one era, 3000 parts per million in another, etc.
Wow! It must’ve been hotter than blazes!
Nope, not always. Sometimes it was hotter than today, and sometimes it was colder. Sometimes the earth’s temperature plummeted even while carbon dioxide was going way up.
But how can that be? You just said carbon dioxide produces heat.
No, I said some scientists say that. But as for an explanation, apparently the laws of chemistry and physics changed over time.
That doesn’t seem possible.
Well, let’s try this, then: Carbon dioxide and the earth’s temperature dated for a long time, often breaking up and going their separate ways. But they decided to get married several thousand years ago and now travel together.
Okay, so at least in relatively recent times, when carbon dioxide goes up, it caues the temperature to go up.
Actually, the temperature goes up first, then carbon dioxide goes up. Carbon dioxide is so powerful, its heat-producing effects can go backwards in time.
But … uh … so is higher CO2 causing warmer weather in modern times or not?
That’s what some scientists say. However — and it’s very important you grasp this — it’s also causing record-cold temperatures like the ones we’ve had for the past few winters. So if you sit in your car on a sunny day with the windows rolled up, the interior of the car will become very hot, but also very cold now and then. And you’ll get more snow.
In the car?
No, on the earth. You see, according to Al Gore, the record snowfalls we saw all over the northern hemisphere this winter were caused by global warming.
I don’t understand.
Not to worry; Al explained it to everyone in an editorial a few weeks back. Global warming is increasing the rate of evaporation from the oceans, you see, so there’s more moisture in the atmosphere, which means we’re getting more rain and more snow.
But I thought global warming was going to create more deserts.
That’s correct … more rain and snow, but also more deserts. You see, if you mix higher temperatures with more moisture, you get a desert, just like in a greenhouse.
I thought the purpose of a greenhouse is to grow more plants, like in a jungle.
No, no, no. The earth is a special kind of greenhouse. According to the IPCC, global warming is making the dry areas on earth drier, but also making the wet areas wetter … except in really wet areas like the Amazon rainforest, where global warming is causing the jungle to dry out.
Wait, let me get this straight: the dry areas are getting less rain because of global warming, and the wet areas are getting more rain because of global warming, except for the wet areas that aren’t getting enough rain because of global warming?
You’re catching on.
But at least we know it’s getting warmer, right?
That’s right. The temperature has been rising steadily, except for when it hasn’t. But those are just decadal variations.
What’s a decadal variation?
It’s what global-warming scientists call a long period of time when there’s no rise in temperature.
Decadal … so that would mean 10 years?
Yes. Except there was a decadal variation from 1945 to 1975, and the current decadal variation has lasted for 15 years now. See, if the temperature rises for 21 years, that’s a long-term trend. But if the temperature holds steady and then starts dropping over a period of 15 years, that’s a decadal variation.
But what if the temperature goes down again for, say, 20 or even 30 years? Wouldn’t that be a long-term trend?
Of course not. That would be two or three decadal variations strung together. Totally different thing.
This is getting kind of confusing.
No, it’s simple. Let me summarize: carbon dioxide is higher now than it’s ever been except for it when it was several times higher, and that’s bad because carbon dioxide traps heat and makes the planet warmer, except for when the temperature goes down anyway. Meanwhile, the rising temperatures are making wet areas wetter and dry areas drier, except for the wet areas that are becoming drier. Is it all clear now?
No. That doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.
Well, I’m afraid you might have a logical mind. It’s mostly a good thing, but it’s not going to help your academic career. Good luck with that paper.
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