On Helping My Brother Move

ME: You're giving him my headboard?!?
MOM: Well you didn't want it, and he needs a headboard...
ME: OK fine. But he's gonna have to put his own notches in it!
MOM: *is not amused*

The Email You Wish You Could Send

It's weird, being a human person. It's even weirder when people get offended at the idea that we are all descended from apes. Apes are very much a step up from most human people we interact with on a daily basis.

Take me, for instance. Yesterday I decided I wanted a book from the library. (How quaint!) I probably went to the library's website 5-10 times over the course of the day, trying to work out which branches had the book I wanted, which one I could most conveniently stop by, what the hours were, whether I might want to pick up another similar book at the same time... And every time I went to the library website, I saw this:

ATTENTION! ALL BRANCHES WILL BE CLOSED ON MONDAY JANUARY 16TH IN OBSERVATION OF MARTIN LUTHER KING DAY

And every time I saw that, I thought, "Ugh! I KNOW! I get it! You're closed today! Just take me to the stupid catalog page!"

And yet, at 5:30pm, having battled ridiculous rain-induced traffic past my condo and all the way to the other side of town, I found myself standing outside a darkened library building, scratching my head (like an ape!) and saying, "But the website said it would be open til 8! Oh wait... SON OF A!!!!"

Given that breathtaking display of oblivious stupidity, you might think I would be a very compassionate person with an infinite well of patience for those people around me who are similarly oblivious. WRONG!

Take today, for instance. I'll have to modify a few things to protect the innocent a guilt-ridden harlot (yours truly). Let's say I sent this document to someone today:

The Nebraska River Beaver is a very friendly creature. Despite its large teeth, which are ideally suited to eating delicious crunchy snack products, its digestive system is unable to process salt & vinegar flavored potato chips, making it the saddest member of the animal kingdom.

A few hours after sending my masterpiece, I received a reply from the recipient:

To: Me

From: The Get These Beavers Lay'd Initiative

Subject: Document

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Your document bites (STOP LAUGHING THAT'S NOT A BEAVER JOKE). We specifically asked you to stop using the letters Z, Q, and J as of six months ago (see attached). Please revise accordingly and re-send.

ATTACHMENT:

I stared at the attachment, scratching my head, but not like an ape. More like Albert Einstein watching Jersey Shore. Then I pulled up my document and searched for the letters Z, Q, and J. Finding none of them, I figured the search function wasn't working and I myself went through letter by letter, searching for the offending graphemes. After wasting about 15 minutes of my life on this, I came to the inevitable conclusion that The GTBLI was perhaps having an "off" day, and had hallucinated any errors they believed to exist. But how to tell them that, without seeming mean or sarcastic?

To: The Get These Beavers Lay'd Initiative

From: Me

Subject: Re: Document

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hi again Gordon!

I am so sorry for failing to observe the instructions you never sent, but I really appreciate the completely unintelligible email and attachments you sent today to provide me with guidance going forward. After carefully reviewing the document using both 21st-century technology and good old-fashioned eyeball grease, I realized that the document I sent you is already completely in line with all of your requests. Naturally, I immediately travelled to an alternate dimension where these mistakes did exist and corrected them. If you reopen the document now, I think you will find it to your satisfaction. In the event that you see any additional glaring errors, please don't hesitate to ask a reliable adult if said errors really exist before asking me to fix them. Also: if anyone hands you a stamp with a picture of the Mad Hatter on it, DON'T put it in your mouth.

Hugs and Cuddles!

Kimberly

Delivery: One Beating With a Baseball Bat. Please Sign Here.

Imagine if you will...

I've posted this on my blog. You, loyal reader, have come upon it by way of my Twitter feed, or your RSS reader, or an email someone sent you (Subject: Who Gave This Girl a Blog?!?!) with a link. In any case, you read over what I've written. And then you click your Farmville bookmark to navigate away, and this pops up...

Aw HELL no!

I bet you'd feel pretty insulted wouldn't you? Because "Kimberly Welsh has requested a read receipt..." is really code for "Kimberly Welsh doesn't trust you as far as she can throw you, and in order to stop you in your lying, cheating, stealing tracks, she wants you to acknowledge HERE AND NOW that you have read this blog post, so when she hounds you about it later, you can't get away with claiming you didn't see it! You big fat lying LIAR!"

I hate read receipts. They are the nasty nose-picking tattle-tales of the virtual playground. Seriously, if we're gonna be this immature, why not also add cooties to anti-virus searches? Because the sender is not sitting at their desk, staring intently at their screen, waiting eagerly to see that you have read their email. That read receipt is just gonna sit in a folder marked "Ammo I Can Use To Pressure, Annoy and Pester People" unless/until they feel compelled to use it as Exhibit A when you go on trial for failing to forward their chain letter to 35 people in the time allotted.

I know all too well that there are people in just about every workplace who blow off their responsibilities. But I don't believe that chasing them around with a piece of paper that says "Jim Bob read this email at 10:15am on September 3rd" is going to motivate them to change their evil ways. Meanwhile, when you attach a read receipt to every email you send, you are accusing literally ALL of your contacts of being lazy immature children who cannot be trusted to do their jobs. Every time you send a read receipt from now on, imagine that this is what comes up on the other person's screen:

(Substantially less headache-inducing when zoomed. Just a suggestion.)

Maybe then you will think twice.

A Poem About Punctuation. You're Welcome.

Commas are lovely, friendly things

They give your lengthy thinkings wings!

They help you make a long, long list

Or insert a "Well, you get the gist..."

 

My point is you should always use them

Never splice or else abuse them

And faithful friends you'll ever be

And I won't have to write any more bitchy poems to people who DON'T UNDERSTAND HOW EFFING COMMAS WORK. Refer to your notes from third grade. Figure it out.

Ceci n'est pas le français.

Fun fact: I speak French, and I am a HUGE pain in the ass about it. Seriously. You can ask anybody.

Once upon a time, I could speak and read French, and that was fine. Then I spent 3 years teaching it, and now every time I see or hear a grammar error in French, it makes my face contort into inhuman shapes and I make a weird high-pitched shrieking noise that only dogs can hear. It doesn't bother me that people make mistakes with languages they're just learning - that's normal and perfectly alright. What bothers me is when companies with billions of dollars decide to slap some French on an advertisement or a product and can't be bothered to take 5 seconds to ask someone if it's right. Google it, for God's sake! Ask your kid's French teacher! Call the French embassy! Ask ANYONE who took five seconds of high school French! Most francophones I know would gladly review this stuff for free JUST so they could be spared the endless onslaught of Franglais that greets them around every corner.

So you can imagine my consternation when I was shopping for a new wallet and came across a gaudy travesty of a leather thing emblazoned with pictures of the Eiffel Tower and peppered with font screaming "LA TOUR D'EIFFEL*".

Cringe.

I wish I had a picture for you, but then again no I don't. Because if I had that image on my phone, said phone would then have required an exorcism, and I've already lost 3 phones that way. I glared at the wallet and, finding it unmoved to spontaneously correct itself, threw it violently back into the pile on the shelf.

Two minutes later, as I browsed a nearby aisle, I heard a teenage girl say "Oh mom, I want THIS one! It has French on it!"

...and one more kid gets her IQ lowered by corporate America.

*In case you were wondering: there shouldn't be a "d'". It's just "La Tour Eiffel". YOU'RE WELCOME.