just type the damn words!

I was poking around the blog-o-shpere today looking for people to make fun of. Instead I was reminded of something people do that aggravates me. I am really tired of seeing DH anywhere on the internet. Chats, blogs, bulletin boards… I don't care where, I am to the point where every time I read it I want to poke the person who typed those two little letters in the eyeball.

For the unwashed, DH means dear Husband. You know what I think? If he was really that dear, you would take the time to type the damn words! Would it kill you? Even I manage to type efficiently enough that adding an additional nine letters and one space doesn't significantly set back my day.

GEEZ! And I would like to thank the Purple Puzzler, whose blog included this gem:

"...if DH hadn't been home, since the baby didn't sleep very well. DH was really tired after his trip, so he... Now it's quiet time and DH came home from work to put them down for their naps..."

DH way too many times on the page. Once in back to back sentences even! Is it really that hard to use the damn thesaurus? In my case its just a right-click away, but I suppose it may not be that simple for everyone. Microsoft Word hasn't really caught on yet... has it?

The use of such web-breviations as DH is annoying and stupid. As far as I'm concerned, using it (and other similar abbreviations) is a sign that a person is not only too lazy to type few letters, but also too lazy to think up something interesting, thoughtful, or just DIFFERENT to say.

Why would I want to always refer to someone that close to me in some obligatory way over and over? I realize people prefer DH to using names, but if we had half a brain and truly considered a person a DH then couldn't we possibly take .127 seconds to let our brain try to come up with a variation on the theme? Show your "dear" husband you really care. It’s cheaper than steak, and it sure beats having to sit through Monday Night Football without commenting on big muscular guys in really tight pants.

Sometimes it is the little things.

I don't really mean to single out this Purple Puzzler, because she is only one of maybe a meellion people who do that... wow, its kind of staggering to think that there are that many people who annoy the shit out of me.

On another side of this coin... To me, the letters DH mean Designated Hitter. Someone who hits in the place of the pitcher (in baseball) but doesn't play a defensive position. When I relate that to the context in which I usually read the letters DH on the internet, I think of that person as not being the Dear Husband of the writer, but instead some guy who comes in from time to time to "hit the ball hard," "drive in a few runs," and with any luck "get as many bases as he can." (nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more!) That line of thinking is a product of my own warped and twisted mind... who besides myself would read what is meant to be an innocent term of endearment and think instead of something so seedy and illicit?

When reduced to two letters, whatever "Dear Husband" actually means runs the risk of becoming flat or even lost. I personally think those are words that shouldn't lose their meaning. It’s like a person who says "sorry" eight hundred and fifty-two times a day. After a while it becomes less of an apology and more of a reason to avoid an idiot. This is a trend I find a little disquieting.

Another trend that mildly disturbs me is the thought that I may very well championing the English Language here... GAG.. May family would be SOOOOOOooooo proud.

a brief note - I was going to make fun of a blog by a guy named Eric, but I saw his header which read "Mostly news with a focus on copyright law and intellectual property issues, plus whatever else I feel like throwing in" and realized that I couldn't ever do any better than that... unless he wrote "plus whatever else I find interesting."

I tried to keep quiet on this

I really have tried to keep my mouth shut about this.

I've tried to do my own thing and not let the actions of others ruin my whole shopping experience... but I can't go another day without bitching about people who can't properly navigate a damn parking lot.

ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS FOLLOW THE FUCKING ARROWS!

You don't even have to read, you barely have to think. Just follow the pretty pictures on the ground. If you are too stupid to do that, then I'd hate to see you try to figure out something really difficult... like CANDYLAND!

And yes, I do get that some people are just inconsiderate assholes. But they are stupid too.

questions on my mind

I keep hearing about movies that are better on weed. Are there any movies that are actually worse on weed?

Why would the band Everclear cover a great song like "brown eyed girl" only to make it sound like an Everclear song?

Does a snickers still satisfy when divided into thirds?

Will I ever know the answers?

what's that like?

When people find out that I work graveyards, one of the first questions they ask is "graveyards? What’s that like?" Sadly, I have no snappy sarcastic one-liner answer other than "it's Dyn-O-mite!"

I have found that explaining working nights is kind of like explaining what went wrong in The Matrix trilogy. You kind of have to see it with your own eyes to understand what’s going down...

Lets see... you know that feeling you get at the end of your work day? You're just so relieved that work is over and you want to make the most of that burst of post work energy by getting out and doing something fun with your friends? Well we get that too, only when we get off work the only places that are open are Denny's and Wal-Mart.

Similar is that feeling at the end of the work week where you want enjoy a cold one and thank bob its Friday... Try explaining to your wife (or your AA group) that even though you are cracking open a beer at 5:30 in the AM you do not have a drinking problem.

I know that people who work graveyards tend to have more physical and emotional and relationship problems in general. I read that on CNN.com a couple of years ago so it must be true. I remember telling my colleagues about the facts and figures. There were some that actually laughed at me and my crazy statistics. Several months later I had a heart attack at work. Who's laughing now?

Every work environment is going to be unique, and mine is no different. Working at a soulless retailer we "overnighters" find an intense amount of friction between ourselves and the group of people who work during days. They work with the customers; we do all the filthy, sweaty, manual labor. Everyone who works days thinks the night people are a bunch of uneducated, lazy thugs who hang out at the store all night doing nothing, and will steal things out of your locker. Everyone who works nights thinks the day people are pretentiously pretty, annoying, idiots who never do their jobs and don't have anything decent to steal in a locker anyway.

When our paths cross, the tension is palpable. We're always on the verge of breaking out into a scene from Westside Story, with the finger snapping, and rolled up sleeves, and the Leonard Bernstein music... "when you're a Jet you're a Jet to the end..."

On a tangent - I once saw a comedian who talked about his friends learning to fight by watching Bruce Lee movies, lamenting the fact that he always got his ass kicked because he learned to fight by watching Westside Story.

Back on track - Since I can't really tell you what its like to work graveyards (you have to do it to know it) I will at least provide you with a few of the differences between the day and the night crews at my own place of employment.

· Someone who works nights is 8 times as likely to have killed a guy with their bare hands, while someone who works days is 867% more likely to own seasons 1 & 2 of The OC on DVD.

· Someone who works nights is 3 times as likely to be in the process of recording their own hip hop (or techno) CD, while someone on the day team is 87% more likely to utter the phrase "I can't think of it getting any better than when Michael Bolton sings When a man Loves a Woman."

· A person who work nights is 8,000 times more likely to be referred to as Sir or Ma'am by our boss, while someone on the day crew will try to tell you that the plural of Stylus is Status.

Does that paint a clear enough picture? On the whole, most of us on the graveyards are pretty average, normal people. A lot of us are in situations that necessitate an overnight schedule... and there are probably more women then men. For whatever reason, people assume that we're all a bunch of tough guys with prison tattoos and tattered levis waiting to hear from our probation officer about that better job opportunity while we pass the time putting out our cigarettes on kittens.... But that is just one guy, and he doesn't really work there anymore. Management is just too nervous to tell him he's fired so he keeps coming in.

my own fault for shopping at Walmart - To whom it may concern

Dear Walmart

I went to your store today and purchased two items. I stood in line for 18 minutes, but it was the fastest because it was "the express line." The people in the self checkout were not moving any faster than me since every one of them were still in the store when I left. Self checkout does not always translate to speedy checkout. I myself was in the 20 items or less line behind 8 other people who were all trying to find some way to buy more than 20 items. As I have learned the secret to exceeding the limit in the 20 items or less line at Walmart is when you get to the cashier you say "Oh I didn't realize this was 20 items or less. Silly me."

I think the people in the other line had it worse due to the jackass who was trying to find a way to split up a full shopping cart amongst his family so they could each buy 20 items... Jeez, and the 10 items or less line wasn't even open.

Since you fail to actually enforce the "20 items or less" rule the mantel falls upon the consumer to utilize the "honor system"... a plan I don't actually see working.

Sincerely,

Noodles Blunderson III

YIKES

Do you know what a stylus is? For those who don't know, it's that pen-like doohickey you use to write on the screen of your palm pilot.

I was putting some away tonight while working in the electronics department of the soulless retailer that employs my sorry ass. Actually, I was putting away a three pack but the package still said STYLUS. So I wondered if the plural for Stylus was STYLI or if you say STYLUS whether you have one or twenty-seven thousand.

I asked my best friend what he thought and though he did not know he speculated on the possibilities briefly before being interrupted by another employee. We had never seen this guy before, but that isn't so strange since he works a completely different shift than us. He interrupted my friend saying " it's status.... statuses... status..." He spent the next several minutes wandering around the department muttering the word status over and over.

It was a little disturbing... enough so that for all intents and purposes it may have been the most disturbing thing I've witnessed in days.

One thing about this story that kind of bums me out is that this is the kind of thing I could ask my brother. Most likely he would know the answer... if he didn't he would discover it quickly enough, only to explain it back in a way that makes even the most mundane interesting.

My bro is great at explaining anything and everything. And since he has such broad interests (Bordeaux to Broadway) he's very easy to listen to...

France is so lucky.

biggest moron on the planet

Hot off the press:

REXBURG, Idaho (AP) -- Getting a 34-year Harvard man to abandon one of the nation's most prestigious business schools for an Idaho church college seems like a task that would demand divine revelation.

For Kim Clark, who left his post as Harvard Business School dean last week, it came down to the next best thing.

A member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Clark took a call in May from Gordon Hinckley, the 95-year-old president of the Mormons. Hinckley asked the economist to head Brigham Young University-Idaho, which just five years ago was a two-year junior college.

And he took the Job. He took the job?! Idaho?! Are you kidding me?

If I had a job mopping the floors at Harvard and God herself told me to head out to Idaho--even if it meant I'd be king of the world--I'd tell her to cram it.

Kim Clark, you are one big fucking idiot. Good luck with that.

to/for all intents and purposes

I love my brother so I really hate to bitch-slap him on the internet. He found what he believed a "flaw" in my last entry where I was making fun of dorks who say "intensive purposes" as opposed to "intents and purposes." He corrected me, pointing out that I had the expression wrong by using to instead of for. That would have made me look pretty silly.

Except...

I have seen it both ways in literature and have heard it used both ways by people who I can only imagine knew what they were talking about. I used to because I had just read it as such (in Arthur Miller no less), and I was reminded of jerks who butcher that cliche and that I should put it in my blog. To support my claim I found some page on the internet which says:

This cliche (meaning "practically") is a shortening of the legal phrase "to all intents, constructions, and purposes" (found in an act adopted under Henry VIII in 1547). The corruption "for all intensive purposes" is frequently reported.

http://alt-usage-english.org/excerpts/fxtoalli.html

Some other web site has this to say:

The correct phrase is "to all intents and purposes:" Also [bastardized as:] for all intents and purposes; [has the same meaning as:] for all practical purposes. Definition: In every practical sense, virtually. For example, For all intents and purposes the case is closed, or For all practical purposes the Vice-President is the chief executive while the President is in the hospital. The first phrase, dating from the 1500s, originated in English law, where it was to all intents, constructions, and purposes.

http://www.faqfarm.com/Q/Is_the_saying_'all_intents_and_purposes'_or_'all_intense_purposes'

Bottom line - people who use the term "intensive purposes" probably don't read and are trying to parrot things they have heard in an attempt to sound smarter than they really are.

http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/intensive.html

I did a search using Google Print, which located the phrase in 17,200 instances in literature so there are certainly plenty of places to read it... I only wonder how many of those are books about cliches... I myself must have read it at least 12 times in Penthouse Forums... err... I mean great literature that is old, and REAL and gets read in schools and bathrooms.

On a related note, people who want to type stuff to appear smarter than they really are have blogs.

To be fair to my brother he didn't really say I was wrong, only that I used a less common form of the expression. But since its been nearly 85 entries since I've overeacted to anything via my blog, I figured it was about time. To my Bro I'd just like to say: for all intensive purposes, I get the idea.

never boring

One thing you probably know about me as you read my blog is that I live in small town Utah.

Real exciting, I know.

First of all, I can tell you that I live in what has been described as one of the most conservative counties in the US. Not only is this county nearly all republicans, it is also has a very high percentage of Mormons. Shocker, I know. Those two things alone make me stick out like a sore thumb. It can be tough to be anything even slightly left of the right around here, but when you are also a Unitarian Universalist, you are out there... and I am.

There is not a lot of diversity around here, and for that I definitely think the place suffers. Culture around here couldn't be more blah. We get a lot of Mormon related crap... "art." Let me tell you that you have know idea how bad music, or literature can be until its been inspired by the "spirit of god."

But besides living in a white bread conservative theocracy that produces such gems like Kurt Bestor and (uuuugh) really awful paintings of the 10 virgins, and having not one decent deli, this place can manage to be interesting.

Most places you say the word "Trojan" and people think of condoms and then of USC. Around here you say the word "Trojan" and people think of condoms and THEN a little place at the mouth of Spanish Fork Canyon on Highway 6 that happens to manufacture explosives (I should note that the company is now called Ensign-Bickford, but all the locals remember the big read sheds with the Trojan painted on the side), and then USC.

We compensate for our lack of culture and learning with mortal danger (although I suppose you can really get that anywhere. I remember one time when I was a wee lad, they had an explosion on a Sunday morning. My folks were gone so it was just us kids at the house. There was a moment where I actually thought the world was going to end. The sound of the explosion rolled across the valley in a way that put the fear of god into me and my siblings... we thought it was an earthquake and so we hid under tables and desks. I can still see my brother bracing himself in the doorway...

I know its not LA or New York, but exploding explosive plants have got to account for something, right? NO? Okay, how about what happened YESTERDAY:

Yesterday afternoon a truck on its way to Oklahoma (from the explosives plant) through the Canyon on highway 6 overturned while taking a corner too fast. Apparently, the 20 or 30 people who stopped to help were all relieved to see the two drivers escape the cab apparently unharmed until they heard what the truck drivers where screaming - "It's explosives! Get out of here!"

35,500 pounds of explosives to be exact. One driver managed to get about 75 yards from the truck but was still picked up and thrown to the ground by the explosion that left a crater that was thirty feet deep, 70 feet wide, and took out the highway, part of the canyon wall, the train tracks, and started a dozen or so brush fires near by. The explosion blew the truck 100 feet UP a rock cliff.

If the truckers had not been able to warn people of the impending danger, people could have been killed. Its bad enough that 6 people were injured--don't get me wrong--but the situation could have been much worse.

On a personal note, I get really annoyed by people who try to say things but can't. Like when they tell me something is a mute point, or say pacifically, when they mean specifically.

The one that is really bugging me now is when people say or write to all intensive purposes...

What the hell?!

... To all intents AND purposes, dumbass.

Like I can talk, I can't spell and I went to a private school. I suppose I shouldn't expect anyone with a college education to know something like that.

its an update because I say its an update

You had better tighten your seat belt, as this entry is going to be all over the road.

I was going to refer to this as yet another obligatory blog update, but it occurs to me that perhaps all 111 updates have been just that. Why should this one be so fucking special that I single it out?

This entry is just like all the others. Before its over I'll mention that I hate Michael Bay, I'll tell you that my sorry ass is employed by a soulless retailer, and you'll read once more time that Yale President Richard Levin is out to get me.

There has been one subtle change that has made work extra-super-great these last few weeks. One thing that seemed way too good to be true. My friends and I talked about how nice the atmosphere at work had been lately, and speculated between ourselves how such a change had come about... there was a curiosity building in each of us--way worse than the curiosity that my faithful reader has gained from reading this vague "inside" tale from work--and I said to my friend Pat that the moment we asked someone who knew what was going on, we would be told that the next day things would be back to how they used to be... which was less than stellar.

And then they had to go and ask. And you know what? It looks like tomorrow, things will go back to the way they were.

SHIT!

Lesson learned - when life is going good, don't question it. Just smile, scratch your ass, and breathe in the good day.

Today I made the best mashed potatoes in the history of the planet. They were sooooo good. The down side is that with each bite you take of my tatoes you actually lose three days of your life... but you know what? Its totally worth it.

I've really hit a wall as far as my blog is concerned. It could be that I'm burning out. Maybe I have enough crap going on that I don't feel like this is such a priority at the moment--I'm as shocked as anyone to see my life becoming less blog-o-centric.

Perhaps the time has actually come for me to put the "blah" in blog...

Maybe trying to continue my blog at a time like this is a worse idea than tunafish nachos.

I must be in a funk. I know I am when a brand new Uberhack movie came out and I didn't mention it even ONCE. Michael Bay is the Antichrist of film and I can't even bust out an entry that bags on him or his shitty new movie... what the hell?

I've got this running drama with my family that is starting to go really bad. I have not been to a family gathering in a very long time. My mom always tries to guilt me into going ("its been so long since anyone has seen your kids...") and since that has not worked so well, this time she tried to work the mojo on my wife. Well, the party came and went and SHOCKER I didn't go.

Social stuff is really overwhelming for me. I think that the reason I don't get to the family stuff is that since there are so many other social obligations that I can't weasel my way out of that somewhere deep down I assume that my family of all people should understand if I blow them off periodically...

But months turn into years...

My family is strange--as every family manages to be. They have moments where they can be really wonderful or really intense. Sometimes its a frenzied cross section of the best and the worst bombarding the innocent with the speed and might of the blitzkrieg... in other words we're probably pretty average.

I guess I'd better get my ass to some family something next time around, just so I'll quit getting shit about missing it... and it'll probably be good to see them... probably

That pretty much wraps it up for today. If you stuck with me through this wild ride I say thanks... I feel like I'm missing something...

Oh yeah, Richard Levin thinks I suck.

-the end-