In Case You Were Wondering What I Was Thinking

In Case You Were Wondering What I Was Thinking

Kale is disgusting no matter how it’s cooked or prepared. It’s the new Brussels Sprouts but without the personality.

“Curate” is now the most inappropriately, overused word in the lexicon. Linkedin editors “curate” the daily stories? You curate the paleontology department in a museum. Curate is the kale of language.

People who damn with faint praise are too stupid to think we’re not smart enough to know what they’re doing. Typical: “Although most of your article I could agree with….” or “Your book is interesting but I would argue with Chapter 11….” Argue this.

The “fast writing” bit with the cartoon and graphics was fascinating the first time, derivative the fourth time, and flat-out boring after that. Can’t people come up with original ideas?

Automated email responses telling me you’re out of town, studying Swahili, or beset with yellow jackets are totally unnecessary. I haven’t dropped all I’m doing and stopped taking in fluids until I hear back from you.

Your kids and your dogs are cute only in the first two photos. After that they become increasingly unattractive until they look like the Hunchback of Notre Dame and those crazy flying monkeys in the Wizard of Oz.

If you’re going to say “Between you and I” or “It was given to he and me” I’m not going to listen to what comes after and I’m going to forget what came before. If you don’t know the nominative from the objective, well, maybe you shouldn’t speak too much until you do.

FORte, with that emphasis on the first syllable, means “loud” in Italian. But FORT means “strong” in Italian. A great many of you are calling your strengths “loud.” There is no such spelling as “fortay.”

How does someone past the test to become a flight attendant who says, “Final destination” (a “destination” IS final) and “terminal descent” (this is not our final descent, one would hope)?

Who expects women to buy clothing which only looks good on a model who would be blown away in a strong wind and who has never seen a cheeseburger?

Whenever I ask a server in a good restaurant what kinds of excellent vodka they stock and that person says, “We have everything,” I know two things: they don’t, and the server has no clue about vodka.

I tell people that I will not arrive at the virtual meeting if they insist on sending me automated reminders on the computer. You have no right to nag me about a meeting. Who are you, my  mother?

Around 80% of people who are asked reply that they believe they are above average.

If you are truly allergic to dogs, fine. But if you simply don’t like dogs then I believe you have an emotional deficit.

Why are we so obsessed with who can use which bathrooms? Put on floor to ceiling doors with locks and provide a common washing area. Our problem isn’t with gender identity, it’s with puritanism.

How stupid and miserly is publishing? A 20-something permissions editor threatened to hold up production of one of my books because I didn’t have written permission from someone I’d quoted. When I asked who it was, she said, completely serious, “Oscar Wilde.” (When I told the publisher, whom I’ve known for a long time, he groaned.)

Tell me again: If the Supreme Court can have the Ten Commandments carved into the stone of the building, why can’t a school?

Why does the airplane captain tell us which way the wind is blowing when we’re landing? I’d rather have him give me the ball scores.

The supreme vice is shallowness. (Oscar Wilde)

© Alan Weiss 2018