Take Your Leave Bank and Shove It!

In a staff meeting today one of the administrative assistants was talking about a program she thought we should promote.  It's a leave bank, in which you (and everyone else) can deposit hours of leave and then draw them out at a later date.  You can draw out more than you put in if people agree to give you their leave, which is good for sudden family emergencies that you don't have enough leave to deal with, accidents, and so on.  The assistant explained it this way:

"A leave bank...you know, a suppository, where you can bank your leave and then withdraw it again later."

Were not this woman  fearsome and the one who controls access to my boss I might have cracked a grin at this, but when faced with terrible consequences I remain as emotionless as possible (so did everyone else - though I wish I knew who else caught it).  I wrote it down, though, and now you all know, so you can take your leave bank and shove it.  "And then withdraw it again later."  (Aaaagh!)

Ending the Cold War

The audience for this blog has been gradually expanding in some surprising directions (shout-out to my reader(s) in the Republika Slovenija!), but this particular view tickled me:

(Click to enlarge if you're having trouble reading the text in the picture.)

In the past 24 hours, Tales from Federal City has had more views from Russia than the United States!  This is the first time views from anywhere else have surpassed views from the US, but it's even funnier that it's the homeland of our former Cold War enemies - I guess the Cold War is over for good.

(By the way, keep checking out beneath this post - more posts are coming soon!)

Sign Wreck: Somebody Needs Therapy

I have a rule about work, which is that I only mention it in passing and refrain from posting any identifying information about it or any material that might be considered sensitive or otherwise unfit for public consumption.  This has also meant no photos, but I saw this sign wreck and just couldn't pass it up.

If you can tell where I work from this photo, I guess I'd better take it down...

This was on the wall of our break room, where it is my habit to eat lunch, since I spend more than enough time at my desk.  It's posted on the wall above an empty table; presumably there had been food there at one point that the sign's author wanted to get rid of, but read it another way with me and you'll see why I saw fit break my no-documentation-of-work rule.

1 - All those periods
That's more than the standard three for trailing off (...), which is all I think you ever need.  Since there are more than the three I usually use for a pause, they make me think of a significantly long pause.  Possibly a pregnant pause, even.  Because the word before the periods is "please," I therefore get the image of pleading, followed by a very awkward silence.

2 - "Yourself"
Yes, this should be "yourselves," since the audience is the whole office, not a single person, but because the sign says "yourself," it becomes a personal address to the reader.

3 - All those exclamation points
Four exclamations point in this context is four too many, in my humble (ha!) opinion, but if you have to exclaim, one exclamation point is generally sufficient.  Because there are four - and the words are all in uppercase - what should have been a statement now expresses the complex emotion of SCREAMING!!!!  IN FACT, SCREAMING SO LOUDLY THAT YOU GIVE YOURSELF CONVULSIONS AND FALL DOWN ON THE FLOOR IN A FROTHING HEAP!!!!

So, pull these elements together with me: a pleading almost plaintive sort of begging in the beginning, a personal address to the reader, and shrieking.  The combined statement, for me at least, is that someone is desperately pleading with each individual member of the office to please help themsel(f/ves).  For the love of God, go get yourself some help!  Counseling, therapy, anything!! PLEASE!!!!

Mash-ups

One of the communications staff at work sits across from our IT point person, and periodically the two of them converse.  Since they're just a few desks away, I can't help but hear what they say, and yesterday I overheard a rather funny mash-up.

They were discussing a disused mental hospital that the communications guy had toured with a mutual acquaintance, and he (communications) related that the mutual acquaintance, upon seeing one of the dark, abandoned basements, remarked that he would like to bring his wife there - and leave her.  "Just like," the communications guy chortled, "a cask of Monte Cristo!"

Give it a minute.

It didn't take me too long to figure out that he was shooting for "Just like a cask of Amontillado," from the Edgar Allan Poe story.  How "Monte Cristo", as in the count of (Dumas) got into the matter, I don't know.

I chuckled to myself over this amusing slip of the tongue and concluded that the communications guy had simply mixed his stories.  Isolated incident, surely.

But this afternoon the two of them were talking again, this time on the topic of religion.  I missed the beginning of the discussion because I was at lunch, but when I came back Communications was expounding on saints.  I actually had work to do but overheard a mention of St. Ignatius of Padua, patron saint of lost causes.  Ai!

I suppose for one who isn't Catholic (and I suspect Communications Dude isn't), the saints are a bit mystifying, in which case I would recommend that you refrain from pronouncing authoritatively about their various characteristics.  But to clarify for the record, there are three different saints in this mash-up:

1. St. Ignatius of Loyola, a Spanish (Basque) knight and founder of the Jesuits, patron saint of soldiers

2. St. Anthony of Padua, a Portuguese Franciscan who spent most of his life in Padua, Italy, and is patron saint of lost things (not causes)

3.  St. Jude the Apostle, one of the original Twelve, who is the patron saint of lost and desperate causes

Now, I suppose one could confuse Ignatius and Anthony, since they're both Iberian and monks, and Anthony with Jude, for being patrons of lost stuff, but mixing all three together is bewildering to me.  I can't help but wonder if CD has a proclivity for these sorts of mash-ups, and I'm a wee bit ashamed to admit that I may start listening for them in the future...

Note to Self

Note to Self: 

"Hint of Salt" Wheat Thins are not flavored with, as one would suspect, a hint of sea salt.  Rather, "hint of salt" refers to the fact that they have less salt than standard-issue Wheat Thins; in fact, the entire vat was most likely seasoned with about half a teaspoon.  Stated differently, they're #@&%ing boring.

Don't buy again.

Sign Wrecks

(Backdated from Friday evening.)

I spent a healthy part of today on the train home from Williamsburg and then cleaning, so not much to talk about on that front, but yesterday I promised you some awful signs, and I intend to deliver.

For a couple of years now I've been a fan of Cake Wrecks, a blog devoted to searching out and gently ridiculing fouled-up professionally decorated cakes.  The idea of collecting odd permutations of the everyday appeals to me, but I've never come across a cake wreck (the few professional cakes in my life have been blessedly flawless), so I can't contribute to that particular theme.  However, my sojourn at the Williamsburg Pottery showed me the kind of wrecks I can collect - wrecked language!  There's quite an abundance of that, as we'll soon see, and as a literate person, I feel obligated to point out mistakes, even if it's out of my power to correct them (somewhere, Lynne Truss is smiling).  I wouldn't call any of these egregious, but these sorts of things entertain me, so without further ado, on to Sign Wrecks!

1.  The perfectly understandable

"Rennovation"

What, pray, is that?  It's "renovation," of course, and can you blame whoever was making this sign?  It sounds like it ought to have two n's, but it doesn't.  And if you were just sounding it out because you'd forgotten how it's supposed to be spelled, wouldn't you put in the extra n?   And since it's just a temporary sign in a remote corner of the linens building, I suppose it's not really that important. 





2.  The unpronounceable

"Straigt"

It's obvious what happened here - some one forgot the silent "h" in "straight."  But we can't give whoever wrote up this sign the passes we gave #1 (temporary sign and obscure location) - this is a permanent sign on the central aisle of the main building, and furthermore, sounding out "straight" does not get you "straigt."  It gets "strait" which, conveniently, is a extant word that has nothing to do with "straight."

But supposing that "straigt" were a word, what would it be?  First off, how would you pronounce it?  "Streygt" is the best I can come up, and as far as a definition, I'm stuck with a combination of stripping and death by hanging.  Erotic asphyxiation?  Perhaps we shouldn't go there.

3.  The Nitpicky

Take a moment to look at this one.  If you just casually glance, there doesn't appear to be anything wrong with it - no misspellings, egregious or otherwise, and the phrase makes sense.  But if you're picky like I am, this (it's an apron, by the way) is bothersome for two reasons:

a) Look carefully at this and you'll notice a sentence fragment there at the bottom.  "Don't You Understand" can't stand on its own as a sentence, but it's being forced to by those exclamation points after "yet."  Never mind that using more than one exclamation point at a time is obnoxious - those big, bad upside-down i's have orphaned that poor little clause!  "Don't You Understand" is all by itself at the bottom of the apron, trying and failing to stand on its own two feet!!  This is a travesty!!! Someone needs to do something!!!!  Like take away my ability to type exclamation points!!!!!

b) Ahem.  Sorry about that - on to problem #2, which is a bit picky.  But here it is: I always thought that "It's Not Ready Yet" was the phrase we use, so shouldn't all four of those words be the same color?  (Also that "of" shouldn't be capitalized.)  In other words, a corrected version - re-aligned, punctuated, and parsed - of this apron should read:

What Part of

IT'S NOT

READY YET

Don't You Understand?

There - isn't that better?  Good thing I didn't have a red marker with me. 

4.  The just plain weird

"LiNEN N PLUS"

This is the outside of the linens building (which, interestingly, is where three of these four sign wrecks came from), and apparently, it's called "LiNEN N PLUS."  Er, wut?

 

I think I know what happened here.  They decided to open a building where they could sell linens, kitchen things (aprons, placemats), bath rugs, and so on, and they were trying to come up with a name: 

"Well, gentlemen, we've got some linens, and we've got some other things, so why not call it "Linens and Things"?"

"Actually, sir, we can't do that - that name is already taken."

"It is?  Well $#!+.  What about shortening the "and" to "Linens 'N' Things"?"

"Probable lawsuit, sir."

"Well $#!+.  "Linens 'N'" something...well, we're adding a new building, so how about "plus"?  "Linens 'N' Plus" - it sounds good to me."

The decision-makers confer and agree that it sounds good to them too.

"All right, sir, let's royally screw up the capitalization to be edgy and capture the youth demographic, drop the apostrophes because they cost extra, and make the N a different color to be arty - I think we've got a winner!"

And thus was born LiNEN N PLUS.  May the grammar god help us all.

-     -      -     -     -     -     -

So you see, there's quite a bit of fun to be had looking for grammatical mistakes in the world all around you.  Alas, it's the same sort of fun that an elementary school friend of mine derived from raking his nails across the blackboard and watching everyone else cringe as he did so - even thinking back on it, I involuntarily wince.  And looking at the these signs again I not only wince, but I wish for a large, red marker...

The Williamsburg Pottery

(Backdated from Friday evening.)

One of the family traditions when we visit our relatives in Williamsburg, Virginia, is to venture out to Williamsburg Pottery, which bills itself as "The World's Largest Bizarre Bazaar."  I have photographic evidence:

The Pottery was founded in the thirties by a entrepreneur with a roadside stand selling Williamsburg's distinctive salt-glaze pottery.  The business was successful, and he turned Williamsburg Pottery into a large-scale outlet retail operation dedicated to cutting out the middle man and passing the savings onto the customer.  Eventually he married a Chinese woman who worked in the fake flower section; she took over the business upon his death and has since injected lots of East Asian goods into the mix.  Needless to say, "bizarre bazaar" is a perfectly accurate statement, and although I can't confirm the veracity of its claim the be the largest such bizarre - err, bazaar...sorry - it's pretty large nonetheless.

How large?  Well, does this give you any idea?  This is a shot down an aisle in the Solar Building, the largest of the several enormous warehouses that make up the complex (of which you can see an aerial picture here).  I took this in the fake flower section, which goes on for what seems like miles.  It's even odder for someone like me, who wouldn't buy fake flowers in a million years, to go roaming through aisle upon aisle of things I have no desire to even consider purchasing.  This, it turns out, is the best way to approach a retail operation of this size - with clearly designated preferences.  Skip what you aren't interested in and go find whatever it is you came for (in my case, things for me apartment, which I promise to introduce to you all soon).

Of course, periodically you'll stumble across something which you would never contemplate buying, but which is so odd, unique, bizarre, or fascinating that you can't help but stop for a moment and examine it.  It is this sort of thing that I dedicate this post to - I'll have another for some of the odd signs I saw around the Pottery tomorrow.

First off, something one might potentially have use for: a fake Christmas tree.  As an apartment-dweller who enjoys the decorative trappings of the Christmas season, I imagine I'll needs to invest in a fake tree eventually.  Just not this one:

That's right - it's purple.  In fact, it's approximately the same color as the purple accent wall in my living room.  I intend to paint that wall over the weekend, so obviously I don't want this particular tree.

Now, I was never one of the hip kids who toyed with the Eastern religions in college, so I'm not quite certain which religion this next curiosity pertains to:

Whatever religion it belongs to, I imagine that this would go well in the makeshift temple in your backyard, don't you think?  (Incidentally, this is one of a pair.  I don't know if it's buy-one-get-one though.)

Speaking of the backyard, I understand that it occasionally comes to pass that you just want a drink.  A very large one, just for you.  Understandably, you feel guilty pouring yourself glass after glass of wine - you look like a drunkard in one of those badly-acted anti-alcoholism videos they showed us in health class in high school during freshman year (remember?  And then the sympathetic character always ended up dying in an alcohol-related car crash).  But thanks to Williamsburg Pottery, there's a tactful solution to your needs.  You want a drink but don't want to pour glass after glass?  Then limit yourself a single glass of wine:

Did I say pour yourself a single glass?  I did?  My bad - I meant bottle.

Now I've saved the best for last, and this item is unique, because it is one of the very few pieces at the Pottery which isn't for sale.  Nevertheless it is exquisite, so I'll blow up the picture:

I'm not certain what the material is - I'd like to think it's ivory from an aesthetic point of view, but my inner conservationist cringes at the idea of how many tusks it would take to carve something this large (it's as long as I am tall - nearly six feet, and by the way, there's some of the Williamsburg salt glaze pottery in the background).  But whatever it's made of, I found it fascinating.  The details are impeccable:

This is a close-up of the center-piece of this sculpture (click to see it full size).  The ribbing on the roof, the pagoda in the background, each individual figure carved to perfection, and that gateway is actually supported by the four pillar you can see - no cheating that I could detect.  It's not something you would expect to see in the world's largest bargain basement (except above-ground).  Of course, this is the world's largest "bizarre bazaar," so I guess we should expect things like this.  Still, I could go for a lot more of this and a lot less of the fake flowers.

And how about this shot below, of the cave?  Whatever artist or artists were responsible for this oeuvre actually carved things inside the cave too - that beautiful ornamental screen in the background, servants off to the sides, dancing girls in front, and an ornate

balustrade separating the entertainers from their audience on the dais...I imagine it's probably chintzy more than anything else (which is generally my reaction to cheap East Asian trinkets), but every time we've been to the Pottery we find this sculpture and stop for a moment to admire it.  A lot changes between our visits, but this is always in the same place, and we always stop to marvel.

Although this sculpture never changes, other things at the Pottery do. Perhaps it's because I had a camera with me, or because I was kind of looking for blog-worthy things while roaming around, but one of the changes I noticed the most was the signs.  Specifically, the bad signs.  This post is quite long enough, but tomorrow I'll put together my pictures of odd and awful signs for you to peruse and giggle over.  Think of it as Cake Wrecks for signage...

Cross-Country Drive, Part II: Seen in Ohio

This evening I'm in Hagerstown, Maryland, a bit more than a hour north of the District of Columbia - tomorrow we drive down and I move in.  A pretty uneventful - if uncomfortable - drive, and alas, I don't have anything quite as funny as yesterday to share in the way of signs.  I did, however, see an advertisement for Schlepp's Family Restaurant, and I sincerely hope that they have an ad which advises potential patrons to "Schlepp on over the Schlepp's" ("schlepp," of course, being the Yiddish for hauling oneself somewhere, usually unwillingly).  Since this was in Ohio, I don't know how well that would fly, but I think it would be hilarious.

It may be early, but I'm off to bed.  We need to get up early to make it into DC with sufficient time to move.  If I manage to get my internet to work (UPS says my modem has been delivered, but I'm only vaguely hopeful that I'll be able to get my internet to actually function) I'll post something tomorrow.  Wish me more luck - it's been working so far!

Cross-Country Drive, Part I: Seen in Indiana

I'm writing from a hotel in Richmond, Indiana, just west of the Ohio border on the highway to Columbus.  It was not a comfortable drive; our van is packed like it's never been packed before.  I spent the second half of the afternoon sitting essentially sideways, since the space where my feet are supposed to be is full of stuff.  Needless to say, we're all suffering in one way or another, but it's that or throw things out, and I've pared down my possessions about as much as I can.  Fortunately, we've only got one full day (tomorrow) and about a third of a day on Friday, and all the paperwork at my apartment complex (which is actually a co-op) has finally been ironed out, so we shouldn't have any nasty surprises once we get to DC.

Although we had a pretty uneventful drive, there's one thing I have to show you that puts me in a curious state of delight and horror.

Here it is:

See that there?  See the guy's name?  You do?  OK, now breathe.  I wouldn't want you to hyperventilate.

Well, this particular businessman has quite a few billboards in this part of Indiana, and apparently does a roaring business in RV's and other related ventures (like homes - just Google his name).  If you'd like another serving of Schadenfreude, here's his website.  My particular favorite - besides this picture - is a billboard which proclaimed "Welcome to Tom Raper Country!" or something like that.  I nearly died laughing, and maybe you will too.  I imagine that the poor man pronounces his name "rah-per" or something like that, but I don't envy him.  Of course, he appears to be a very successful businessman, so maybe he doesn't care.  But there will always be irreverent people like me who snicker at things like this.  I'm rather glad I saw it - it gave me something to think about besides what (who) I'm leaving behind in Chicago and my aching knees.

Our plan tomorrow is to get to Maryland, so we'll be within striking distance of the District.  Hopefully I'll be able to write something there - maybe I'll even have another funny sign to share!