Can You See What I am Saying?

My family isn't really big on traditions, but there is one thing in my family that has been carried on from generation to generation, with great pride and deference. That thing is heartburn. My grandfather suffered from it, my father has suffered from it, and I have spent the better part of my adult life with it too.

Last week, I posted about people who spell words the way they sound. But as I battled my heartburn this weekend, I thought about another type of grammatical misfit: people who interpret words spacially. I realize that's a bit of a stretch, but stick with me; this will hopefully make sense in a minute.

For the last fifteen years, I have been dealing with a dairy allergy. More specifically, an allergy to cow's milk. I can already guess what you are thinking, and the answer is: no, I cannot take pills for it. The pills you are thinking of are for people who are lactose intolerant! I am not lactose intolerant, I am simply allergic to milk products.

Luckily for me, my allergy is of the mild variety, and I do not have to carry an epi-pen with me. If I eat dairy, it just gives me migraines and (you guessed it) heartburn. It is probably a good thing I don't carry an epi-pen, because if I did, I'm pretty sure I would spend a lot of time reenacting the sarin gas scene from the movie The Rock. I can already see myself walking down a busy street, then running up to a large picture window of a fancy restaurant, pulling out the epi-pen, waving it at the startled diners inside, and shouting, "Look how big this is. You want me to stick this in my heart? Are you fucking nuts?!"

It's a good thing I don't carry epi-pens around with me.

Nonetheless, imagining such a prank does give me some satisfaction, since some of my most frustrating miscommunications happen in restaurants. For those of you that have ever eaten with me at a restaurant, you'll recognize that I'm talking about "the speech."

"The speech" is my name for the awkward exchange that I always seem to have to engage in with a server, when ordering food in a restaurant. It is also the reason why I usually try to be last person in the group to order. It usually goes something like this:


Lee (to server): Can you please let the chef know that I have a dairy allergy, and ask him if he can prepare my food without any milk products?

Server: Sure, I'll be happy to check.

Lee: Thank you.

Server: Just to be clear, you said it is a dairy allergy?

Lee: Yes. I'm allergic to anything with milk products; butter, cheese, cream, that sort of thing.

Server: What about eggs?

Lee: Eggs are fine.

Server: I thought you said you have a dairy allergy?

Lee: Yes, but I'm allergic to cow's milk. Do you have any cow's eggs on the menu?

Server: Of course not! Cow's don't lay eggs, chickens do!

Lee: Then why are you asking me if I'm allergic to them?

Server: Oh.

Lee: Didn't I meet you at Starbucks once? ...Never mind.


I've gotten used to giving the speech, and have even learned to give it in four languages! Still, I always get that same stupid question about the damned eggs!

No Eggs Here!

Do you know why servers always ask me if I'm allergic to eggs? I think I have it figured out. It is because the servers are not thinking logically, they are thinking spacially!

If I say the word "dairy," the odds are pretty good that you'll conjure up a mental image of the dairy section of your local supermarket. You may imagine refrigerator cases filled with milk and shelves full of cheese, and you'll probably imagine lots of boxes of eggs, too! It makes sense, since these products all need to be kept cold. To most people, the word dairy connotes this space, and as a result, they tend to interpret the word spacially.

Unfortunately, if you were to look up the definition of the word, you would find that this interpretation is not wholly accurate. As an example, here is the definition of the word "dairy" from Merriam-Webster:

Dairy (noun)
1 : a room, building, or establishment where milk is kept and butter or cheese is made
2 a : the department of farming or of a farm that is concerned with the production of milk, butter, and cheese b : a farm devoted to such production
3 : an establishment for the sale or distribution chiefly of milk and milk products

Did you see any mention of eggs? I sure didn't! Yet, this unfortunate misinterpretation of this word hounds me almost everytime I eat at a restaurant. (you could even say that it gives me "heartburn," metaphorically speaking). I've tried saying "milk products" instead of "dairy" but it did not help the situation. I seemed to be doomed to a life of epicurian miscommunication!

Given my state of desperation, I've decided that my only recourse is to use this situation for my own amusement (and yours too, since you are reading this blog). I'm going to start telling the waitstaff that I'm allergic to cow's eggs, and ask them to please ask the chef if they cook with any. I invite tou to do the same. Maybe we can all record viral videos of it and post them to YouTube (and by "we all" I mean all of you, since I'm too lazy for the whole YouTube thing)!

My hope is that if enough chefs inform their servers that cows don't lay eggs, maybe they'll stop thinking in a supermarket frame of mind when I ask them for help with my allergy! I know it isn't likely to help the situation, but I can always dream, can't I?


On a different note, I'm sorry for the long delay in posting this entry. I was on vacation last week, and thought that announcing on the Internet that my house would be empty might damage my InfoSec street cred! The good news is that I'll have an International edition of BG up soon, so you can read about what I saw in the Bahamas last week!

Have a good week, and be sure to eat some cow's eggs; they are a good source of protein!
-Lee

What Do Commas and Football Coaches Have in Common?

I love the oxford comma. It grounds me and gives me focus. I love the oxford comma because it adds structure to my world. I love it because it is reliable. But mostly, I love the oxford comma because I had a kick-ass football coach in high school who taught me how to use it.

You know about the oxford comma right? It's the comma that precedes the conjunction before the final item in a list of three or more items. It's also the subject of much debate in grammar circles, some of which has been funnier than others. I've used it for years, and don't planning on giving up this habit any time soon.

I'm sure some of you may wonder why a football coach would choose to teach his team how to use the oxford comma. The truth is that he didn't. I never played football in high school. In fact, I didn't play any sports in high school at all. I was a band geek in high school; a really big one. Nonetheless, I had Coach White as a teacher. Besides coaching the JV football team, Coach White used to also teach English Composition. This impressed me, since I had never met a football coach before that taught anything other than Physical Education and Driver's Education!

Coach White was really passionate about comma rules. On the first day of the comma unit, he asked the class, "When do you use a comma?"

One of my unsuspecting classmates raised his hand to answer. "You use a comma when there's a pause in the sentence" he answered.


Pause in Sentence = Comma, right?

Coach White, or "Whitey" as everyone called him (yes, I realize how bad of a nickname that was, but alas, it was a different time) went to the board and wrote down the student's answer. He turned to face the class, and asked us if that was correct. We all nodded our heads in agreement.

Whitey immediately started jumping up and down, shouting, "NO! NO! NO! You do NOT put a comma where there's a pause in the sentence!"

Whitey explained to us that there were many rules that governed when a comma is supposed to be used, and that we were going to learn them all. He handed each of us a sheet that contained a list of comma rules. Actually, he handed each of us three copies. He told us to leave one in our binders, leave one at home, and put the third one somewhere we would look at it often; in our lockers, on the fridge, even laminated and taped to the wall of our showers. Whitey made it abundantly clear: we were going to learn these comma rules whether we like it or not.

Coach White must have done something write, because sixteen years later, I still remember why you should use a comma after an introductory adverbial clause, or to set off a parenthetical phrase (I do sometimes have problems remembering whether or not to use a comma before certain coordinating conjunctions, but the rules vary, and nobody is perfect).

....which brings me to my beloved oxford comma.

I suppose that I enjoy using the oxford comma, because it acts like a breadcrumb trail for the reader. When you see that last comma in a serial list, you know that you are supposed to pause here, here, and here! It also smacks of rebellion against Coach White's sacrosanct comma rules, because when applied to prose, the oxford comma actually does go where there's a pause in the sentence (in a justifiable way, of course)! This defiant use of the oxford comma gives me a degree of personal satisfaction, but it could also set me down a the path toward one of my pet peeves: writing down words as they sound (or to put it another way, spelling words aurally. But not orally -- that's Freudian).

I used to get emails from a co-worker who frequently used the contraction "should've" in his everyday speech. Naturally, he wrote his emails the way he talked, but since he was a notorious aural speller, he would always write out "should of." As in, "I already sent you that report. You should of gotten it yesterday."

Granted, "should of" does actually sounds remarkably close to its second-cousin of a contraction, "should've," but that doesn't excuse him from the shame of encouraging this kind of miscommunication. Had my colleague decided to spell out the words that are used in this phrase, he would have written out "should have" in the past participle verb tense. I learned to live with this peculiar email habit of his, because I couldn't figure out how to point it out to him without calling him an idiot to his face (after all, he "should have" known better, right?).

After I switched jobs, I rarely thought about my old colleague's past participle deficiency. However, last month, I saw it again. The dreaded "should of" popped up in an email! A completely different co-worker at a different company also had this grammatical affliction. I came to the conclusion that this situation is a tinderbox waiting to blow. Something has to be done!

Life is too short for this kind of stress, so in the interest of my health and longevity, I've decided to issue this blanket plea: if you have no idea how to use irregular verbs in the past participle tense, please learn. For my sake. It will have an enormous effect on my health and longevity.

That is, until some schmuck says "for all intensive purposes" to me again (but that's a topic for another post).

I hope you have enjoyed this post (ßSee? Past participle! Yahtzee!)

Have a good weekend everyone!
-Lee

This is probably WAY too soon.

I have to admit that I had some reservations about this post. Poking fun at my own pain usually seems like a no-brainer, but I was a little worried that today's post might come off as a tad bit sadistic. Still, when presented with low-hanging fruit like this, I feel somewhat obligated to share it with others, in hopes that laughing at a situation like this may be cathartic. For the record, I'm not making fun of the people who survived the Costa Concordia cruise ship disaster, nor am I making light of the pain experienced by the families who lost loved ones in the disaster.

Nope, today I'm simply ridiculing American Express for having horrible timing and making unfortunate word choices. You see, when I got home yesterday and checked my mailbox, I was greeted by this brochure from Amex, inviting me to book a trip on Costa Cruises!

In case you have not been watching the news, this is the same cruise line that suffered the loss of a ship in Italy about two weeks ago. Granted, the ship in the photo is not the same one that ran aground on some rocks off the coast of the Tuscan island of Giglio on Jan. 13, but it goes without saying that most of the people who received this mailing will find the picture of the ship with its yellow smokestack familiar looking.

When I opened the brochure, the awkwardness continued, as I was offered a low price of $749 per person for a 7-night cruise aboard the Costa Concordia. They even offered a $50 onboard credit!

Obviously, this marketing campaign was planned a long time ago. This mailing was probably designed a while ago too, and it was probably even mailed via bulk mail before the disaster occurred. I can make this assumption freely, because anyone can tell you that $749 per person is probably too high a price to spend 7 nights on this stricken ship anytime in the future...


The Costa Concordia: before and after January 13th.


The timing of this mailing is pretty bad, since the salvage activities for this ship are still underway, and the news outlets are still covering the trial of the ship's captain. This ship, the cruise line, and the disaster are still pretty fresh in everybody's minds, and this is the reason why this brochure is a miscommunication waiting to happen.

While I'm sure most people will read through this brochure (or more likely, just throw it away) and realize that this offer is completely unrelated to the Concordia disaster, I'm willing to take a guess that a small fraction of people who see this brochure in their mailbox will assume that this sale is a direct response to the disaster. It's not entirely outside the realm of possibility that people will infer that American Express and Costa Cruises have teamed up to offer this discount deal, in order to stem the flow (sorry, bad pun) of money from canceled bookings and lost reservations, as people question the safety practices of this Italian cruise line.

Even though the number of people who are likely to be confused by this offer is small, this brochure is bound to offend someone. Whether it is the poor guy who tries to call the number and book a cruise, only to be embarrassed by the travel agent who has to find a tactful way to tell him that he or she cannot make this reservation because the ship in question has sank, or the social activist who reads this brochure and takes to Twitter with another angry volley of populist rants against corporate greed, it is likely that those people who are angry will be angry at American Express, not Costa Cruises.

As for me, I'm not particularly bothered by this whole situation. After spending time working in the tourism industry, I understand the ebb and flow of high seasons and the swings in revenue that tourism providers have to face throughout the year. I'm also used to getting these sorts of offers from American Express travel, and usually, they end up in the trash bin with nary a thought.

In fact, the only reason I opened this mailing at all was because I recognized the picture of the ship and Costa Cruises logo on the front cover, remembered what I had seen on the news recently, and realized that there might be something intriguing inside. Little did I realize that my curiosity would be rewarded in a painfully awkward way!

They say that you never get a second chance to make a first impression, and the marketing gurus who put this brochure together are probably learning this lesson the hard way. Specifically, the people who chose the words at the top of this brochure are probably kicking themselves right now:

If there is one thing I have learned from this situation, it is that if you are trying to sell someone a trip on a cruise line that just had a ship sink in a highly publicized way, you probably don't want to start your advertisement with a phrase like IMMERSE YOURSELF.

Really American Express? Really? Even I couldn't make this stuff up! In fact, one local news outlet in Florida has already picked up the story. Pack your bags Amex, we're going on a guilt trip!

I hope you all had a Truly European Bitter Experience reading this post!

See you Friday!
-Lee

I love drinking coffee, I just hate ordering it!

If you have talked to me since the holidays, you probably know that I gave up coffee three weeks ago. This was not a New Year's Resolution, but rather part of a new diet that my doctor suggested. I actually had to give up a lot of foods right around Christmas, including most grains, but the coffee was especially hard. To be more specific, it was giving up the caffeine that was difficult, and for the first several days I experienced some withdrawal symptoms. And by symptoms, I mean skull-splitting headaches that make you want to claw your eyeballs out of your head!

The funny part is that I later realized that these symptoms might not have been just because of the caffeine. As mentioned in my post last week, I gave up my beloved java during the same week as Washington D.C. experienced an odd heat wave. I am pretty sure that the change in pressure was responsible for much of my ailments, because once I got home and took some Sudafed, most of my symptoms went away. At least I was able to milk the headaches for sympathy in my office!

Since I've given up coffee, I've switched to drinking hot herbal tea in the morning. I tend to stick with the spicy varieties, and I've accumulated a pretty good stash of Celestial Seasonings varieties in my pantry. I've slowly gotten used to this new routine, and to be honest, I don't really miss the caffeine. Nonetheless, I did enjoy my coffee when I was still drinking it regularly. The one thing I didn't enjoy was ordering it. Specifically, I hated ordering coffee from Starbucks. In fact, even without my new caffeine-free diet, I would still rather strip naked in the middle of Farragut Square in the middle of winter, and have a dog fart in my face, than order coffee from Starbucks.

Of course, there is a reason for my disdain of this ubiquitous brand...

I have always found ordering from Starbucks to be excruciatingly painful for two reasons. The first reason is that I am allergic to cow's milk. The second reason is that I am a relatively smart person. When combined, these two unfortunate factors made purchasing coffee from Starbucks unbearable.

 

...tastes like burning!

 I have spent a pretty good amount of time learning about mostly-useful things. I like to travel and read. I graduated from high school. I even managed to hold down a full-time job while cramming a four year college degree into seven years. Yet, when I walk into a Starbucks, all of this intelligence and intellect must drain out of my brain and settle listlessly in my toes, because every person that works at Starbucks feels obligated to inform me that I don't have a gosh-darned clue about how to order a stinking cup of overpriced, over-roasted, over-marketed Starbucks coffee.

This seems counterintuitive, because I can walk into any Denny's, grab a menu, stare blankly at my server and point to the lovely illustration of a cup of coffee, and be rewarded for my rudeness with a hot cup of bland Joe for a buck and change. You would think that paying for a premium product would involve receiving premium service, but apparently that sort of logic doesn't apply to baristas. Instead, I'm treated to a lecture that is chock full of the signature brand of Starbucks passive-aggressiveness every time I order. That being said, I don't order from Starbucks very often at all. I prefer a coffee with a light city roast, and I usually drink Dunkin' Donuts coffee (brewed at home). The reason why I have sworn off of Starbucks can be summed up in one word: miscommunication.

I have had a dairy allergy for the last fourteen years. Not being able to drink cow's milk can make purchasing coffee from a place like Starbucks quite challenging. Starbucks does offer soymilk as an add-on, and for many years, I was content to order coffee drinks made with the vanilla flavored Silk soymilk that they used to use. However, at some point, Starbucks decided to switch to a different soymilk brand that literally tastes like pencil shavings. Since the "new" soymilk makes the coffee drinks taste like feet, I decided that paying five dollars for an espresso drink with this nasty milk substitute was a waste of my money. I decided to switch to regular coffee, and that's where my problems began.
 

You would think that ordering a cup of coffee with a splash or two of soymilk would be fairly straight forward, but not at Starbucks, where a cup of coffee has to be a damned experience. It's bad enough that they use Italian words for everything, but the way they repeat everything back to you the way they want it said is just infruriating! I one actually saw an official pamphlet on "how to order from Starbucks." I'll be honest; this pissed me off! The "how to order" booklet pushed my buttons almost as badly as Quentin Tarantino going on late night television to explain the symbolism in Pulp Fiction. If your ideas are so deep or complex that you have to print a pamphlet to explain them, you're probably overthinking something!

 

 

As an example, here's an excerpt of my typical ordering experience at Starbucks:

Cashier: Good morning! Can I take your order?
 
Lee: I'd like a medium coffee, please.
 
Cashier: One Grande Drip Coffee?
 
Lee: Yes, with soymilk please.
 
Cashier: Would you like that with steamed soymilk? We call it a Cafe Misto.
 
Lee: No, I just want some soymilk in my coffee. I'm allergic to milk, and you don't put soymilk out on the counter with the other milks.
 
Cashier: Ok, one Grande Drip Coffee with soy. (to the barista) Can I call?
 
Barista 1: Call!
 
Cashier: One Grande Drip with soy!


Barista 1: Do you mean one Grande Cafe Misto?
 
Cashier: No, I mean one Grande Drip with cold soymilk.
 
Barista 1: Cold soymilk? He doesn't want it steamed?
 
Cashier: No. he just wants a cup of coffee with cold soy.

The barista pours coffee into a cup and sets it next to the third barista who is standing next to the frothing wand.

Barista 1 (to Barista 2) I need soy for this grande drip.

Barista 2: Steamed soy?

Barista 1: No, just cold soy.

Barista 2: We can steam the soy.

Barista 1: He doesn't want it steamed.

Barista 2: Did you ask him?

Barista 1: No, they called cold soy.

Barista 2: (to me) Sir, do you want steamed soymilk in your coffee? We call it a misto.

Lee: I know what it's called. I just want some soymilk in my coffee. I have a milk allergy and can't use the milk that you guys set out on the counter.

Barista 2: Oh! (the barista sets the carton of nasty soymilk on the counter) Help yourself!

Lee: Why don't you guys just put soymilk out on the counter with the milk and cream?

Barista 2: It's an add-on. We charge extra for it.

Lee: Then why do I have to pour it myself. If I'm paying extra, shouldn't you put it in the cup for me?

Barista 2: I can if you like. Would you like it steamed?

Lee: Never mind (walks away)

I may have embellished this process a little for drama's sake, but the truth is that I have to go through at least one of these silly exchanges every single time I try to order a stinking cup of coffee at Starbucks. For a little while, I gave up and just ordered a Cafe Misto, but I got frustrated waiting the ten minutes it took for it to cool down to enough to drink. Eventually, I just stopped ordering the soymilk altogether, but then I realized that without the foul-tasting soymilk, there's nothing to cover up the burned flavor of the coffee!

While these experiences have been frustrating for me, it highlighted how much people rely on their perspectives when they receive a message. Whether it's the Starbucks barista who thinks that everything is better when it has been steamed and frothed, or the child who asks "why?" at every instruction, or the colleague who thinks that every question is a challenge to his authority, our perspectives color how we interpret the messages that we receive.

If the perspectives of the message sender and the message recipient align, we often describe these exchanges as "clear," or "effective." This alignment of perspective can sometimes allow the recipient to anticipate the message, which we describe as being "in sync," "proactive," or even "service oriented," depending on the setting. However, when the perspectives don't align, the result can be wasted time, wasted energy, or wasted relationships.

Changing perspectives, shifting paradigms, erasing sterotypes, or whatever you want to call it can be difficult. Sometimes, the fight is worth it, and sometimes, it just eats away at your soul. In this case, I didn't really expect Starbucks to change their perspective, so I changed mine. For a while, I brewed my Dunkin Donuts coffee at home, and I replaced the soymilk with almond milk, which doesn't taste at all like feet. I thought I had come out on top, and I was happy to enjoy my tasty, affordable coffee for a long time. ...until my doctor decided to change her perspective on my caffeine consumption.

Win some, lose some.

I hope YOUR week is starting out with a good perspective!
-Lee

Help the Homeless?

I was driving downtown earlier this week, and as I exited off of the Memorial Bridge onto Ohio Drive, I saw a man standing on the grass next to the exit ramp holding a sign. The sign read:

Merry Christmas.

Please donate money to the homeless.

I pointed out this sign to my wife, who was riding with me, and told her that signs like that were the reason that I started this blog!

But first, some background:

Having lived in Boulder, Colorado for many years, I've seen my fair share of panhandlers. Spare changing is raised almost to the level of an art form on the Downtown Boulder Mall on Pearl St. (actually, for some people it is an art form, but they are called Buskers, and this post is not about them). I've seen all kinds of solicitors there, from people who make a career of panhandling and stand on the same corner year after year, to the seasonal activists who take the mall by storm with their clipboards and matching t-shirts, to the unbathed transient who once offered to stand on the sidewalk brick of my choice (any brick!) for the low price of one dollar.

The panhandlers in Boulder often confused me. In fact, I spent a lot of time wondering what actually smells worse, hippie body odor, or the patchouli that they use to cover it up? Yet, the panhandler I saw downtown this week confused me even more. I've seen many people panhandling in this spot, and their choice of location always perplexed me. To put it simply: why the heck would you choose to panhandle next to a highway off-ramp? Do these people actually expect someone to stop, roll down there window, and give them some spare change?

Maybe I lack some perspective, but panhandling on the side of road where cars often travel at high speeds does not seem like a lucrative way to spend your time. This also makes me wonder why you don’t see more panhandlers hanging around the coin baskets at toll booths, but that is not really important. What is important is the strange sign that the homeless person was holding.

I thought this sign was pretty funny, although I realize that homelessness is not something to laugh at. It was funny because I feel like it belonged in a Marketing 101 class. Big brands like Nike don’t take out ads that say, “Buy Running Shoes Today!” They place ads that say (and I’m paraphrasing), “Buy NIKE Running Shoes Today!” By that logic, the homeless man should not have written “Please Donate Money to the Homeless” on his sign.

He should have written “Please Donate Money to ME” instead!

If I followed this poor unfortunate soul’s advice, I might have gone down to the local soup kitchen or homeless shelter and plopped down a fat donation, all because of his call to action. The problem with this situation, and the reason for my resulting laughter, is that the homeless man had the right idea, but his message wasn’t specific enough.

This is actually a pretty common gripe for me, especially when I’m completing a task for someone else. Many times, I’ve gotten into arguments with people because what I did was not what they thought they asked me to. The end result is that I have found myself getting into the habit of asking people for clarification all the time. I’ve actually had managers call me out for being too anal when it comes to following processes. While I would probably argue that point, I do have to admit that I have a fondness for procedure. This isn’t because I have a penchant for bureaucracy, but rather because I usually prefer to have too much information and direction than too little.

The problem with this perspective, is that volume is not always an indicator of specificity when it comes to communication. Or, to put it more simply, quantity does not guarantee quality. Anyone who has tried to collaborate with a person who “thinks out loud” has probably experienced the hair-pulling frustration that results from someone who talks forever, yet says nothing. Since my job usually involves spending many hours sitting in meetings with people who are in love with the sound of their own voice, I’ve learned the hard way that a verbose message is not always a guarantee of a clear message.

This conundrum reminds me of a very important lesson that I learned when I was working down in Florida. When you work at Walt Disney World, people always ask you questions that appear stupid. I learned to grow a thick skin when people would walk up to me and ask “Do you work here?” As if the yellow striped shirt, yellow pants, and Mickey Mouse name tag that I was wearing was some sort of clever disguise! Yet, I resisted the urge to shout “Of course I work here, you idiot! Who the heck dresses like this except people who work here?” and accepted the fact that oftentimes, people are smarter than the questions that they ask.

A corollary to that notion is that people are probably smarter than the things that they say, but I have a really hard time taking the idea that far, after all, isn’t the ability to express yourself part of your intelligence? Granted, some people use media other than words to express themselves. There are plenty of musical, mathematical, and artistic geniuses out there who aren’t good with words. Therefore, I’m willing to make a compromise to my earlier statement. How’s this for a theory: Really smart people may be smarter than the things they say, but idiots will usually make their stupidity known with their words!

It’s not the kindest thing I’ve ever come up with, but I think it works for me. If I correct you for not saying something properly, you may even consider being grateful. After all, the point of sending a message, whether verbal or written, is to communicate a thought or idea. If I’ve interpreted the wrong thought or idea from your message, we have both successfully colluded to waste each other’s time. So consider my criticism a gift. A gift of time, that is. Hopefully, the pain you feel from my arrogance is less than the mutual pain that often results from your miscommunication. Or, as Robert J. McCloskey, the former U.S. State Department spokesman is often credited with saying:

“I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.”

Have a good weekend everyone, and I CLEARLY hope you come back Monday for another BG post!
-Lee

How long is your attention....................span?

How long is your attention span? Is it something that you can measure? I once worked for a guy who had an attention span that lasted half of a conversation. It didn't matter how long your conversation actually was; he was finished halfway through.

It was not a matter of duration; however, it was a matter of intelligence. More specifically, this man thought that he was a lot smarter than he really was. I found speaking with him extraordinarily difficult, because he had a bad habit of tuning out halfway into the conversation, then interrupting you to sum up what you were trying to say. He did this because he was absolutely confident that he had managed to figure out the point that you were trying to make, based on only half of the information. It was quite frustrating, and his conclusions about what I was trying to say were usually completely wrong.

It is easy to criticize my former colleague's bad habits retrospectively; yet, as I have become more accustomed to tweeting my thoughts, or inferring news from sensationalized headlines, it made me wonder: am I also guilty of this habit?

Have I unintentionally made my attention span shorter?

The idea of withering attention spans gives me pause, because it goes straight to the heart of communication. How can you communicate clearly and express yourself effectively, if your audience cannot pay attention to you? While brevity and succinctness can be beautiful things, I worry about the potential for miscommunication when someone's full message is not absorbed. In fact, a story from my road-warrior days comes to mind, which helps make this point crystal clear.

When I was still working for a defense contractor, I spent a lot of time traveling to different U.S. Air Force bases. Most of the trips were tedious and boring, but occasionally, I would get the chance to visit a place where I had friends nearby. I really looked forward to these trips, because (as many road warriors will tell you) the worst part about business travel isn't the cramped airline seats, or the security lines at the airport, or even the hotel room comforters covered with other guests' mystery stains. The worst part of business travel is the solitude.

Naturally, I was thrilled when I found out that one of my trips would take me to Colorado Springs. Since I spent ten years living in the Denver metropolitan area, I knew that I would be able to see my old college friends during my free time. My solitude problem was solved! I arrived in Colorado Springs, and quickly made plans to see some friends who lived up near Greeley later in the week.

I guess the farmer couldn't afford
space on a commercial billboard...

A couple of days later, I was leaving Colorado Springs and driving north on I-25. After I had passed through downtown Denver, the subdivisions that lie north of the city slowly gave way to industrial areas, and the stores and houses were replaced by warehouses and parking lots. I kept driving north, and the warehouses were eventually replaced by fields and barns. I was pretty far outside of Denver by this time, and the landscape looked less like the Rocky Mountains, and more like the plains of Kansas. On one side of the highway, nestled in between the fields of green corn stalks, was a homemade billboard. The billboard caught my eye as I was driving north at 70 MPH, because the owner had the foresight to paint the sign yellow with big black letters.

The sign was an obvious declaration of the farmer’s views on reproductive rights, and even though I was zooming by at highway speeds, I could clearly make out the words:

ABORTION STOPS A BEATING ♥

Apparently, the farmer had run out of space to write the word "heart" at the bottom of the sign, so he substituted a red heart shape in the lower right corner of the sign. It seemed like a pretty simple solution, since it managed to get the same point across.

Theoretically, this is...

Even though the farmer had the foresight to paint his sign yellow and use large block letters for his message, he didn’t have the foresight to trim the weeds around the base of the sign. One unfortunate weed was particularly vigorous, and had grown tall enough to obscure the bottom right-hand corner of the billboard, including the carefully painted heart symbol. The resulting message that greeted folks driving north on I-25 was a bit harsher in tone. The partially obscured sign read: ABORTION STOPS A BEATING

I found it rather incredible that the omission of one small word (or symbol, even!) could drastically change the meaning of this statement. Needless to say, I laughed all the way to my friend’s house and told him all about this act of botanical censorship. Yet, the story illustrates how dangerous it can be to draw conclusions. Too often I find myself trying to draw conclusions from something I am reading or hearing. I'm not sure why people like me act this way, but since I have been on both sides of this kind of situation, I've come to the conclusion that it all boils down to patience.

We all live in an age when time is viewed as currency, and our culture has become obsessed with the idea of "wasting time." As our culture becomes more and more accustomed to getting our information on-demand from the Internet, we slowly reinforce the idea that we should not have to wait for information. If you take this notion one step further, you can argue that waiting for information (i.e., being patient while someone expresses themselves, whether verbally or in writing) is a waste of time. As this folkway becomes more ingrained, the result is an overabundance of brevity (e.g., tweets, text messages, and bullet points that replace prose and literature), and a shortage of patience.

Over the years, I've tried to be more patient and wait for people to communicate their entire message (maybe it's because I like surprises), but there are others out there who still struggle with it. I am reminded of it every time I'm confronted at work with sentence-finishers (those lucky people who are so damn smart that they feel obligated to finish your sentences), and they always remind me of my former colleague who just had to make your point for you!

I’m not sure if my former colleague would have inferred the same meaning from that homemade billboard, but the moral shouldn’t be hard to see. Firstly, make sure you leave enough room for all the words on your homemade billboards! And secondly, if someone is communicating with you, it is worthwhile to pay attention to the entire message. It could save a life, or at least prevent a whoopin’.

Thanks for reading this ENTIRE post!
-Lee

Mother Nature is a Hustler!

This week, Mother Nature decided to pull a fast one on me. If you believe the Hallmark Cards and National Geographic Magazine, you might assume that Mother Nature is a kind-hearted old lady. If you think that, you are wrong! Mother Nature is a hustler, and this week she conned me like a pro.
 
If you live in the area, you might have noticed that the weather in Washington D.C. was unseasonably warm last week. I took this as a blessing, since the alternative would have involved me spending lots of time either a) manually shoveling snow since I am too cheap to buy a snow blower for my tiny driveway, or b) sitting in the waiting room of my chiropractor's office with other cheapskates, because I threw my back out shoveling snow! I realize that winter only officially began a few weeks ago, but I have been quite content to leave my scarf and gloves at home and enjoy the warm New Year weather.
 
I just wish my sinuses agreed with me.
 
Some people have "trick knees" that act up when the weather changes. I happen to have a "trick head" instead (lucky me!). It seems like every time a major front moves into the area, my sinuses decide that they have a fiduciary responsibility to let me know about it. I appreciate my sinuses’ courtesy, just like I appreciate it every morning, when my cat loudly informs me that my alarm is going to go off in an hour or two. Sometimes three (cats don't understand daylight savings). These acts of courtesy are very annoying, but at least my cat is cute and fuzzy, so she can get away with it.

See? Being cute and fuzzy justifies annoying behavior.

My sinuses, on the other hand, do not seem to understand that I can live a very fulfilling life without a built-in weatherman sitting behind my eyebrows. Apparently, my sinuses do not read this blog.

Earlier this week, I arrived home from work with a pounding headache (which I mistook for caffeine withdrawal, but that’s a story for another post), so I popped some Sudafed, and hoped for the best. The next day at work, the siege against my poor sinuses continued. All afternoon, my head throbbed and I strained to avoid the bright, sterile, energy-efficient lighting in my office. I thought some hot herbal tea may help with the congestion, but mostly I sat around massaging my temples and rubbing my eyes.

Yes, rubbing my eyes.

In the middle of cold and flu season, too!

It was an idiotic thing to do; almost as stupid as ordering mussels in a hotel restaurant (which is also a story for another post). When I woke up the next morning, my right eye was so irritated and full of shmutz that I could not even open it. I had pink eye, and I am pretty darned sure I gave it to myself! At least the last time that I had pink eye, it was someone else's fault. Tigger's fault, specifically. Yes, that Tigger.

When I was in college, I spent a semester working at Walt Disney World in Florida. One of my roommates named Curtis worked in the Entertainment department, and he was "close personal friends" with Tigger. I'm not sure if he got pink eye from a guest at one of the theme parks, or if he picked it up from a coworker, or if the bacteria was just lurking around on the inside of the costumes he had to wear on his head, but he got a really bad case of pink eye. So bad, in fact, that he had to call in sick from work (which is a big deal when you only make $6.25 per hour). He spent the whole day in our apartment, watching television, rubbing his infected eyes, and touching everything in the apartment that he could get his hands on! As one would expect, I was soon infected with a bad case of baterical conjunctivitis as well, and had to go to the doctor for medication (which is also a big deal when you only make $6.25 per hour). The only saving grace was that, to this day, I can still tell people that I got pink eye from Tigger.

But back to my original story...

I'm pretty good about washing my hands. I always wash my hands before eating or after using the restroom, but did I make sure to wash my hands before rubbing my germ-infested paws all around my mucous membrane-surrounded peepers? No sir.

I know that there are germs all around my office (especially during cold and flu season, when my office just happens to be full of people with the cold and flu), but have I forgotten about all of the signs that sprouted up in 2009, which implored the masses to wash their hands and stop the spread of swine flu? You betcha.

You know why I gave myself pink eye? Because nobody said to me "Hey Lee, don't rub your eyes, dude! Your hands are covered with office germs, and it is cold season, and you'll just give yourself pink eye." It just goes to show that it doesn't matter how well someone communicates, if the audience is not listening. Or if the audience is an idiot. With pink eye.

Who knows, maybe because of me, they'll be a warning somewhere. Not sure where they would put it, though. Maybe on a Hallmark card.

Speaking of cards, Happy MLK Day everyone!
-Lee

I want to make a point, so...

I'm not sure when exactly it happened, but it seems like everyone around me is scared of ending their sentences. Perhaps it is the inevitable culmination of the trend toward politically-correctness. If you never actually make a point, how can anyone find it offensive?

This strange phenomenon actually reminds me of Victor Borge, a Danish comedian that used to use a piano in most of his routines. My parents used to love Victor Borge. Admittedly, his rise in popularity was before my time, so most of his routines that I saw were re-broadcasts on television. Still, I can clearly remember one of his more popular gimmicks, where he would read a story and say the punctuation out loud. Mind you, he did not just say the name of the punctuation mark. Borge would make a different noise and gesture for each of the punctuation marks in what he was reading. I still laugh at these routines today:

If you were to listen to Borge's phonetic punctuation routine and then listen to a modern-day beat boxer, you could make a pretty convincing argument that this gray-haired, old, white dude was one of the pioneers of a hip-hop art form! Maybe that argument wouldn't really hold up, but it is still fun to imagine Victor Borge, clad his Marc Ecko gear, flanked by fly girls on a rap video set! Actually, you do not have to imagine it, since Ed McMahon already did that shtick...

I watched one of these old Victor Borge routines and started to wonder: what noise would Victor Borge make for the word "so" when it is placed at the end of a sentence? I am sure you are all thinking, "Waitasec, Lee! The word "so" is a word! It is not a punctuation mark.

Or is it?

I have lost track of how many times someone around me has communicated something in a perfectly understandable and succinct way, only to end their sentence with a transition to nothing ("I think we should go out for dinner, so..."). When did the word "so" officially replace the period? What ever happened to the full stop in conversations? Perhaps it is off hiding with its buddy, the email period; I haven't seen that guy around in ages (Hey! I have an idea! Let's end every sentence in an email with an exclamation point!). I hope they are having fun together. Maybe they will drop me a postcard from where ever they are vacationing -- I just hope they do not put any emoticons in it.

The idea of saying what you mean goes hand in hand with this epidemic of superfluous transitions. You cannot say what you mean if you do not know when to stop saying it. If you put enough time and thought into what you say, you should be proud of your point of view. Being able to eloquently and confidently express your thoughts, emotions, and aspirations to the world around you is kind of a big deal. The notion that our culture is content to let smiley faces and acronyms express our thoughts on our behalf is just a symptom of a larger problem: many people do not realize what they give up when they stop trying to express ourselves.

On many occasions, I have called out people who end their sentences with "so." Most people think I am just trying to be an ass (they are probably right, but I can assure them that it is not intentional). I will often ask them "so... what?" and I think it is a valid question! If you were to plop down any other coordinating conjunctions at the end of your clause, I am going to want to know where you are going with your thoughts. Would you be as eager to end your sentences with other coordinating conjunctions? I doubt it would have the same effect:

"Dude, I meant to call you back last night, but things got crazy, yet..."

"This isn't working out for me. I think I need some more space, nor..."

"Wendy's is good, but I think the fries are better at Chick-fil-A, for..."

Kind of creepy, isn't it?

If you drop a "so" at the end of your sentence, I think that you are about to make a point based on your prior thoughts. Now you have piqued my interest, at least grammatically. If you cast the line, you had better reel it in. If you really meant to "so" your clauses together, bravo! Make your point and be proud of it. Otherwise, just end your sentence and move on with your life.

So, (yes I am being ironic here) I've got a challenge for you: start your day with ten dimes in your right pocket. Each time you end a sentence with "so," move one of those dimes to your left pocket. If you manage to end the day with any dimes in your right pocket, you win! If you end the day with an empty right pocket, don't despair. You can go ahead and send me that dollar, and you won't have to go through that humiliation again, unless...

Just kidding.

I hope you all have a fantastic weekend. Period.
-Lee

What do you REALLY mean?

I was once speaking with a wise old man, who was explaining to me that people see the world in unique ways. I thought that seemed pretty intuitive, and not being in the mood for small talk, I was content to let his observation hang in the air. Apparently, he didn't think it was as straightforward. He felt there was more to the story.

"You see the world through words, Lee" he said.

I asked him what he meant, and he told me that I tend to name and label everything; what I do, how I feel, what I perceive. It made sense to me, especially since I spend so much of my time telling stories. The problem with my world-view (word-view, even?), I soon realized, is that not everyone shares my perspective!



Close, but not exactly what I meant by seeing the world through words...


My tendency to look at things differently has made my work as an information security consultant very interesting (Don't panic. I'm not writing about security here!). Most security geeks tend to gravitate toward the technical and concrete, whereas I relish in gallivanting around in the neighborhood of prose, occasionally sojourning over into its less-manicured hinterlands of irony, juxtaposition, and metaphor. The result is that people either view me as incredibly anal (even smarmy) and aggressive in how I express myself, or they look at me with intrigue and confusion, and wonder what color the sky must be in my world.

While it may be challenging for me to tame my gift of language at work (often I feel like God blessed me with the words, now I'm waiting for him to bless me with a filter!), I have to admit that it is a lot of fun when I'm off the clock. I've lost track of how many times I've been walking around and either heard or read something that was so counterintuitive, so contradictory, or so downright idiotic, that I actually laughed out loud. It's those moments that I wish I could turn to another like-minded, word-loving, slightly egocentric kindred spirit, and ask them, "Did that really just happen?" and "Do you think that's what they REALLY meant?"

That's the great thing about words, they have meaning.

I've heard some scholars argue that the basis of comedy lies in creating an expectation (e.g., the set-up) then contradicting that set-up in a way that the audience was not expecting (the pay-off or punch line). Those expectations usually rely on language, and it makes it hard for me to imagine a world without language. Without words, we would probably have much fewer occasions in which to laugh.

Yet, sometimes I feel that people who miss these wonderfully funny moments (the ones where people want to express themselves, and try very hard to do so, but just slightly miss the mark) might as well be living in a world without words. This is the dark side of this linguistic phenominon: when people believe that words devoid of meaning are normal, language slowly dies. It shouldn't be this way. Words are meant to have meaning.

I'm reminded of people who always listen to pop music, but never pay attention to the lyrics. It sounds good, so who cares what it means? That same logic could hold true for language and communication in general, but more often than not, it leads to miscommunication. Sometimes miscommunication can be very amusing (espectially when I'm not the victim), and sometimes it is saddening. Either way, I have decided that it's worth sharing, and that is the reason why this blog exists.

I hope you enjoy reading this blog, and I hope it motivates you to say what you mean!

-Lee
Your Friendly Neighborhood Bitter Grammarian