Fancy that

If I'm to believe the packaging, McDonald's serves "fancy ketchup".



My first suspicion that the ketchup wasn't actually fancy was the decision to package it in a flimsy plastic pouch, like the marketing department insisting that "fine" should be added to the text of the label on a box of wine. "Fancy ketchup" should arrive in something special, like a specially designed match box so that the push-through drawer reveals your ketchup in a ready-to-enjoy format. With the deflated-ketchup-balloon system, every time you open a packet you accept the possibility that you will be decorating yourself with drops of tomato sauce. Maybe your hand, maybe your sleeve, maybe the appearance of a mob assassination on your lapels. They are far too volatile for anything more than "plain ketchup".

What's supposedly fancy about it, anyway? Squeezed out, it doesn't sparkle. (Sparkle is a sure-fire path to fancy---my daughters fancy princess fairy army will support me on that.) The texture is ordinary. (I expected fancy ketchup to have the consistency of warm brie cheese; this was the texture of cold tomato soup.) There are no herbs. (I'll share a secret: there's a million to be made on herbed ketchups. Basil ketchup would make a burger sing, sage ketchup for meatloaf. No longer will customers have just one ketchup bottle in their fridge---they'll have the ketchup section in the door, right next to bloated salad dressing section. Ahh, the joys of profit via manipulation of consumer appetites.)

Frankly, I can find nothing fancy about it. I think it ought to be relabeled. I'd suggest "just ketchup" but that has a quasi-green vibe, like we took out all the bad stuff, which in ketchup's case would be the ketchup. "Ketchup" wouldn't work because the consumer would wonder, "Is this ketchup fancy ketchup?" confused that the omission might have been a design decision rather than a removal of the fanciness. No, the answer is culinary accuracy: "mere ketchup"

"That burger smells good---what've you got on it?"
"Mere ketchup."
"Dude, you're still using mere ketchup? You need to get hip to Bill Reagan's Gourmet Ketchups. This burger would pop with some of his thyme ketchup."

Gluttony is a dubious virtue

One of the food-bearing watering holes in my neighborhood has opted to use their plastic-slotted-letter sidewalk sign to advertise one of their new food specials:
"One-pound Monster cheeseburger with fries $8.95."

One-pound burger. One pound of ground beef is what we order at the supermarket to make burgers for our whole family---me, my wife, my daughter, and a mini-burger for the dog---and even between that gang, the dog winds up with more than just her mini-burger. One pound of ground beef is what you’d get if you ordered a McDonald’s Quarter Pounder and told the cashier, "And add three more patty slabs."

My question is simple: Why? One pound of ground beef on a bun is literally larger than your stomach. Our hunger responds 15 minutes later than our appetite, and since it likely takes longer than 15 minutes to eat a one-pound burger with fries (it would take me the better part of an afternoon) the last bites of that burger strike me as more the completion of a dare than the final satisfaction of a growling belly. My friend Steven was extolling the virtues of one of Portland’s favored chicken-fried steak purveyors, and his description of his favorite included its reasonable size; when talk turned to other restaurants who serve oversize portions of the same item, he said, "I don’t want my meal to be a challenge." In such a challenge, reaching the finish line is hardly a victory.

I suspect this is meant as an enticement in a down economy, a huge meal at a somewhat affordable price, but it’s also the residue of the old "more is better" mindset, the misunderstanding that if plenty is satisfying, more than plenty must be more satisfying. It’s the mentality of the 64 ounce Big Gulp and all-you-can-eat pasta joints ---these things create the illusion that we need to consume as much as possible in order to maximize the "value" of the investment. But it seems to me that the best way to get value is to start by making better investments.

No wonder unemployment is high

I was looking for work last year and established a couple of auto-search features that are available on most job boards. If you’ve been blessed enough never to have had to used such a service, it’s basically a keyword search of all of the job postings: Rather than visiting the site every day, you tell the search engine what keywords you want to look for in all of the site's postings, and whenever there is a match, the site sends an email notification. I set up a free email account to receive these job notifications, and despite finding employment, I never turned off the search feature, so this electronic crawler continues to relentlessly scour the posts for “writer, copy writer, proofreader, researcher”, the keywords I chose when I started the engine.

I checked that email account today for the first time in months, and while I don’t want to change jobs, I figured I’d see what job opportunities I'd been missing out on. My search terms were “writer, copy writer, proofreader, researcher”. The results? Not one listing for a writer, proofreader, or researcher, but there were a few fascinating "matches" that appeared:

Bank Operations Manager

Oncology Nurse Practitioner

Senior Accountant

Administrative Assistant

Team Hospitalist (question: Does this involve hospitality, or hospitals?)

Associate Director of Transportation and Parking (at a large area hospital)

X-Ray film interpreter

Workman’s Compensation coordinator

I understand that any search by keywords is subject to both the whims of the job poster (perhaps an Administrative Assistant’s position includes research) and the vagaries of artificial intelligence (“interpreter” could be construed as a word-based concept, just as my search terms are), but even as diverse as the subject matter can be in copywriting, this Venn diagram does not seem plausible:

I am fortunate not to be looking for a job, as these notification emails would not encourage my search---I imagine being unemployed, broke, disheartened by prospects, concerned I would ever find a job writing, only to be told, “Perhaps you’d like to consider being an Associate Director of Transportation and Parking at the hospital.” (By the way, “Associate Director”? Associate is an HR term for a department store clerk, while a director is the head of a department. It sounds akin to “Chief Executive Intern.”)

I have friends who are looking for work, and I dread that they’re having similar experiences, search terms of “Marketing, Managing Director” likely yielding results that hit the entire spectrum between “Produce Market Manager” to “Infomercial Production Specialist.” And who knows, perhaps “Senior Accountant” as well, since that seems to come up without any logical correlation.

I pity the person at that accounting firm that has to sift through the resumes received through these search agent matches---if it showed up on a search for writing (arguably the antithesis of accounting), it’s probably showing up on a search for nearly any keywords. What if everyone who received these notifications decided to apply? After a few days, I expect they’d throw up their hands and say, “Forget this, let’s just hire the former Associate Director of Transportation and Parking. Close enough.”

Forewarning: Redundancy ahead

I heard the word "forewarned" used this week, and I've been mulling it over since. If ever our dictionaries offered a superfluous word, forewarn is it.

According to official sources, forewarn is defined as "To warn in advance."

In advance---isn't the very nature of a "warning" that it be delivered in advance? If you encounter someone under a pile of lumber and say, “Watch out when you stand under that porch, it's really shaky”, you haven't warned them, you've simply reported to them the now-obvious facts. In fact, the definition of warn is "To make aware in advance of actual or potential harm", so forewarn manages to be a single-word redundancy.

Next time you want to forewarn someone of imminent danger, please provide even more help by eliminating the time required for the extra syllable and simply warn them of what's coming.They'll appreciate it. And I will, too.

Perhaps Helen Reddy is to blame?

I'm puzzled by a particular idiosyncrasy of modern speech. In recent years, particularly after Nancy Pelosi ascended to the top of the org chart in the U.S. House, a noun that has always performed admirably as a subject has apparently been placed into the pool of available adjectives, and with growing regularity, we hear a phrase such as:

"The first woman Speaker of the House in United States history."

I admit, I do not stay current with the latest usage guide updates, but wouldn't "female" be the more appropriate designation of her gender in that sentence? After all, you would never say:

"the first man Speaker of the House in United States history."

You'd say the first male Speaker of the House. Much like the way you'd say male nurse or male athletes.

This linguistic anomaly is fast approaching common usage---I heard an interview yesterday with "the first woman Senate majority leader" in reference to Oregon Senator Kate Brown. The media seems to have agreed upon "woman", yet I've heard no explanation of female's fall from grace. Did I miss a dramatic public faux-pas that turned public opinion on this stalwart adjective? Is this dismissal a positive move for the language, or has political correctness run out of things to fix and thus set its sights on repairing even that which wasn't broken?

Personally, I like the word "female"---it's equal parts sexy and scientific, fanciful and factual. When I hear "female Speaker of the House" it doesn't sound like an inflammatory statement; it sounds like good grammar. If they referred to Ms. Brown as “the first girl Senate Majority Leader” or “the first chick Senate Majority Leader”, I would certainly protest, but I don’t hear how “female” is less respectful than “woman”.

Perhaps the answer simpler than I think: "Woman" is a noun defining a "an adult female human"; thus, since "female Speaker of the House" does not rule out that that first Speaker of the House was a ewe or a hen (both females), "female" is insufficient in it's adjectival efforts.

I don't know. Do you? I worry that I'm just an insensitive male----wait, I mean insensitive man. (Rats, where is that usage guide?)

Anagrammar

My favorite anagrams for "William Reagan":

Real animal wig
Rail law enigma
Genial mail war

Rain wall image

Linear magi law

Find yours at EasyPeasy.com
(And maybe post your faves as a reply?)

I am he as you are he

I had the good fortune of seeing the late Elliott Smith at a very intimate acoustic show at the late EJ's here in Portland circa 1997. Smith spent the pre-show hour sitting at the bar sipping beers, chatting with a couple of friends, and while I am rarely star struck, I refrained from approaching him for fear of saying, "you….good….really….thanks." He seemed so darn ordinary, in the most wonderful way, like my very talent friends who fix cars seem ordinary and my brilliant musician friends who do carpentry seem ordinary. I love extraordinary most when it comes in an ordinary box. (Prince being a notable exception.)

As the place filled up, I was struck by the number of people who looked like Elliott: black jeans and black t-shirts, pale skin, dyed-black hair under wool knit caps, a little legion of junior-league Elliotts, either consciously or subconsciously emulating their hero.

A similar phenomenon could be seen at The Hold Steady show I attended last year, the crowd featuring a disproportionate number of unkempt, doughy, curly-haired young men who appeared to have gone to the Craig Finn modeling school. Then think of an early Madonna show, where teenage girls mimicked her underwear-as-outerwear style of dress with stunning accuracy. (Much to the delight of teenage boys like me.) The same was true of Joni Mitchell in the 1970s, U2 in the 1980s (every U2 fan I knew went to Goodwill to buy a long winter coat like the band sported on War), Alanis Morisette in the 1990s and so on. (It's also true at a Guided By Voices show, but I don't think that's emulation so much as a shared disregard for so-called fashion.)

I was reminded of the Elliott show by a young man on the bus this week, a pensive-looking introvert who seemed to be on his way to a Heatmiser-themed costume party. I recalled the show, Elliott opting to set up on the floor instead of the stage, everyone sitting on the floor around him like school kids gathering to listen to the teacher at story time, the opening notes of "Speed Trials" bringing an appreciative smile to everyone's face. From where I sat, it was wonderful.

But I wonder what it looked like from where Elliott sat. While I've been blessed to play in bands that had a few loyal followers, none of them seemed to see us as fashion icons. It seems to me that it would be disconcerting to sit down in front of a crowd and find a whole bunch of people wearing Bill Reagan costumes. (I'm not even sure what that would look like: a few dozen smiling men who had gone of their diets and committed to a palette of earth tones?) It's an odd display of affection to display evidence of morphing into your hero's physical form, as if attempting a strange form of alchemy that turns tattered black t-shirts into gorgeous blue chord progressions.

Perhaps that's why I like people who look ordinary: If someone doesn't look like someone else, then they probably look like themselves, something true. No wonder others would want to emulate them.

The value of voting (clarification)

Yesterday on NPR I heard some of a call-in type show (World Have Your Say) discussing voting, whether it should be mandatory, how turn-out can be improved, etc. I was astonished to hear one caller say, "I don't think I am going to vote, because neither of these candidates have earned my vote. I don't think either of deserve my vote." More astonishing, no one bothered to retort, "Young man, you have a fundamental misunderstanding of the voting process."

I understand what he meant---our options represent opposite ends of a spectrum, and many of us fall somewhere in the middle of that spectrum. If neither of the choices represent us, why support either one of them?

This idea equates voting with consumerism, that by not purchasing a product, you aren't supporting the company that produced it. Imagine there are two brands of ice cream at your local grocery store: If you want to protest one ice cream company's treatment of local farmers, and the other's treatment of their bovine stock, you can opt not to buy, and that might send a message to the producers. It might lead to the store not carrying one or both brands because they aren't selling.

But if that grocery store was like our election process, one of the ice creams is going to remain in the store, the other is not. Period. One candidate wins, one loses. So saying "neither of them has earned my vote" isn't sending a message, it is abdicating your leadership decisions to other people who feel that one candidate has earned their vote, people more passionate (read: radical) than you. Taken to ridiculous extremes, if 98% of the nation opts to not vote because they didn't like the choices, then 2% of the nation will elect our leader. (I feel like I'm stating the very obvious here, and for those who agree, I apologize. But apparently, this isn't obvious to everyone.)

There is no "none of the above" option on the ticket---you vote for one of the candidates, or you sit out and let others elect the President. Even if you think they're both evil, you need to figure out who you think is the lesser of two evils and vote for them so that the greater of two evils isn't victorious. When they tally up the votes on election night, no one attempts to differentiate between those who didn't vote because they feel no candidate earned their vote and those who were too lazy to figure out where to vote in their precinct.

I hear intelligent people say that they don't vote because their vote doesn't matter. But by not voting, these people are ensuring that their vote doesn't matter, so the system that they complain "doesn't work" works even less as a result. The obviousness of this irony is hard to miss. Yet some seem to miss it.

So please remember, on November 4: You can't make a statement by saying nothing.

Don't believe the hype?

Talking with a friend last week, I had occasion to remember an incident from my college days that continues to amuse me.

Excepting my 20th century literature classes, my favorite courses in college were art history, for three reasons:

1. My exposure to classical and modern art had been limited (I lived in Maine, mind you, where most art included some form of raw-bark tree limb in its composition) so I delighted in learning about Albrecht Durer (cool) and Edvard Munch (enthralling) and Jan Vermeer (gorgeous).
2. While examining the pictures was wonderful, the examinations involved mostly rote memorization of facts (who did it, when, what style, back story, etc.) so I got regular A's, which helped to boost my GPA.
3. As a rule, the classes were populated by artsy, creative, gorgeous women and a few males who had discovered this interesting demographic trend. Because I got A's, I regularly found artsy, creative, gorgeous study partners.

One such woman is the star of this story. Sadly, I don't recall her name, though I think it was Susan. She looked like an extra in a movie scene that featured stylish women mingling at an Soho art gallery, the credits listing Susan as "Gallery attendee with improbably appealing derriere." Consequently, when she and her grade-challenged pal asked me and my friend Mike Sargent (who was also breezing through the course) to have a weekly study session, we readily agreed.

Back story: Mike and I both played guitar and were thoroughly immersed in the Beatles. I can understand a person not liking the Beatles, but it was then and remains to this day a display of utter stupidity to not acknowledge that the Beatles have few peers in terms of creativity, talent and influence. Every album maintained consummate quality while exploring new artistic terrain, and there isn't a throwaway album in the lot. If you say you don't like them, I honor your opinion; if you say they aren't good, you are an ignorant fool.

Cut to a study session with our voluptuous and semi-vacant classmates, where across the library table the following conversation occurred:

Susan: "So what music do you listen to?"
Bill: "Lots, though these days I'm mostly listening to the Beatles."
Susan: "Huh. I don't like the Beatles. They're all hype."
Bill (with incredulous expression): "All hype? Wow. What do you listen to?"
Susan: "Dance Music. Paula Abdul."

I was well aware that beauty was only skin deep, but it had never seemed so shallow as it had that day.

As you can imagine, Mike and I had quite a laugh in the car afterward as John, Paul, George and Ringo serenaded us on the drive home. Sure, they're no Paula Abdul, but they're my favorites none the less.

The cruelty of...Facebook?

I joined Facebook. I'm certainly not one to exercise the "social" in "social networking", but there's a Facebook group for the families of my daughter's school, and just as I once did with beer, weed, and listening to Motley Crue, I succumbed to the peer pressure. (Only because the member I met was charming and interesting.)

So I start searching for folks I know, and looked to see if my friend Frank D'Andrea was a member. (Is that what they're called, members? Participants? Lemmings?) I found a variety of people who matched that name, but many of the profile summaries were too vague to determine if it was him, so I clicked on "view friends", thinking I could confirm the real Frank by recognizing those friends. This is what I saw:


Isn't there a more delicate way to say that Frank hasn't taken advantage of the friends feature than "Frank has no friends", period? It sounds like something an elementary student would say about the classroom nerd. (Or would have in the era that I went to grade school, before the dawn of political correctness, back when exclusion was a practiced art.) You can almost hear what comes next: "Because nobody likes Frank. Frank is a loser."

Couldn't it say, "Frank has not yet populated this page", or perhaps, "Frank is a lone wolf", or even, "Frank seems to find online friendships to be as tenuous and shallow as they sometimes really are"? Social networking sites put such a premium on having "friends" that it feels like high school all over, where the "most popular" superlative can be earned by cultivating acquaintances rather than deepening your friendships. Perhaps Frank likes to actually talk to his friends rather than communicate with them in 150-character text bytes---should the man be judged for that?

Poor Frank, a virtual-reality misfit. We should all be ashamed of ourselves.

Kvetch: F-this and F-that

I was riding a crowded bus with my daughter and a friend when a shirtless, late-teen young man got on with a couple of friends. Because of the crowd, they took seats away from each other, the shirtless teen opting to stand just behind the seat where my daughter sat in my lap.

“Hey, we should go see f***in' Tony”, he said loudly across the distance to his pal. “I'm sure that f***er knows something about it.” This cuss-peppered communication continued for a few more sentences, so I looked up and asked if he could watch his language, what with the child sitting right there.

“Welcome to public, man. It's a free f***in' country. First amendment, I can say whatever the f*** I want.” He continued this for a moment before I could interject, “I'm not trying to impose on your rights, guy, I was asking a favor. Don't worry about it.” Despite his odd combination of righteousness, hostility for my request and indication of refusal, he did oblige through the rest of the tense ride, eventually moving away when a seat became available. Props to the ruffian for that.

What I wanted to say to him, but didn't because he didn't seem like a big fan of logic, is that the First Amendment is essentially wasted if the parameters of its coverage are limited to the right to say F-this and F-that.The actual text reads:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

As far as I know (and I admit, I'm no constitutional scholar), the First Amendment isn't a protection of words, it's a protection of ideas. It was written to ensure that criticizing the government or expressing unpopular ideas (for instance, racism) can not be punished or prosecuted. I”m all for the First Amendment, but I find it ridiculous when used to defend a phrase such as, “f***in' good ice cream.”

At its root, this incident annoyed me for the same reason that I ever get annoyed with the general public: Too many people are fond of exercising their rights while abdicating their responsibilities to participate in society. I'll use a simple example: A person has the right to walk as slowly through the crosswalk as they want. Absolutely, I will never deny them that right. But the world also exists outside that crosswalk, and there are cars trying to get through the intersection who are waiting for the walker, and sometimes, there are very few opportunities for those car to get into traffic. Thus, a person has a right to walk as slowly as they want, but the general flow of society will likely be improved if that person were to walk quickly through that crosswalk. That's not forfeiting your rights as an individual, it's working together to reduce the overall friction of daily life; it's noticing other people's circumstances and, without undue (or any) burden yourself, helping where you can help.

Of course, it's not just crosswalks. Four-way stop signs (a simple concept, yet it seems to perplex so many drivers and infuriate those whose turn isn't respected); holding the door for someone who is wrestling a large package (or even if they're not); watching your language when there's a five-year old child in direct line of your voice. In fact, I think there's already a word for what I'm trying to describe: courtesy.

I'm no cynic---there are a lot of courteous people, and I try to say thank you every chance I get, offering both positive reinforcement and simple gratitude. It's a shame the constitution doesn't guarantee the right to be courteous, as I like to imagine the encounter above if it were: "Don't tell me I can say anything I gosh darn please---I'll edit my vocabulary as much as I choose when I'm around a child, and there's not a darn thing you can do about it!"

Singing in my sleep (again)

I awoke this morning with Poison’s "Something to believe in" in my head.

Perhaps needless to say, this makes me uncomfortable. Sure, I went to high school in the 1980’s, so my brain is littered with fragments of hair-band anthems and images of red-zebra-striped spandex, so I can’t be surprised that one of those soundtrack-to-wine-coolers-chugged-in-Bernie’s-Chevy-Malibu would float up to consciousness again---but there are a lot of songs from that era that I would like to hear again, if only on the radio in my mind: “Never Use Love” by Ratt, which I can’t recall the melody of but I remember enjoying, or even “Way Cool Jr.” from the third album. (I fear that having typed that line, you’re now thinking, “Way lame, junior.”) I hated the first Cinderella album, but the second, Long Cold Winter, had some genuinely good songs---that’s right, I said it, “Bad Seamstress Blues/Falling Apart at the Seams” is a ringer.) There are even a few Motley Crue songs that I’d be willing to hum for a day or two without getting too annoyed. But Poison? They’re an uninvited guest, and had I not been asleep, I never would have let them through the door.

I tried to isolate the hole in my mental firewall where Brett and C.C. could have snuck through, as Poison doesn’t appear on my radar very often. Perhaps a couple of weeks back, when there was a house party in my neighborhood that featured a live garage band performing a baritone version of “Every Rose has its Thorn” to the delight of the Pabst-marinated crowd. (My daughter and I went on a pilgrimage to see/hear the band, but found the police breaking up the party right after that song. I like to think it had less to do with the volume as the song selection, that neighbors might have tolerated a robust rendition of Judas Priest’s “Devil’s Child”, but couldn’t stand that flimsy ballad for fear it would be followed up by something by Warrant.)(Who were just as bad as Poison in my book, though their “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was good enough to avoid a gong.)

But that can’t be the source, because it was the wrong song, and “Every Rose” wouldn’t bring to mind the faux-blue-collar ballad of “Something to Believe in”, it would make me think of “Unskinny Bop” (which I can’t say without continuing in my head, “bop-bop-bop-bop”.) I don’t listen to 80’s radio, I’m too broke to shop so I know I can’t blame Muzak, so I wondered---who planted this demon audio seed?

Then I remembered that I watched some of the Republican convention last week---wouldn’t it be just like them to play that song as a lead in or a follow-up to one of their speakers, demonstrating their connection to my generation of voters? I may be falsely accusing the GOP, but the pieces fit with surprising ease. Funny, had they opted for Ratt, they might have gotten my attention---but Poison? No vote for you!