Cheerleader Hazing

I know that some of you are going to be shocked, but hazing at high school still happens. Kids don’t seem to mind that they can get busted by the cops for it. Did I mention that the Morton Ranch High School Hazing that happened recently involves the school that one of my daughters attends? I have no problem with every single one of the perps being arrested, cuffed, stuffed, booked, tried, kicked off the team, and permanently suspended from school. And let’s not forget the black mark on their permanent records.

Jews Can’t Dance

Generally, the statement should be “White males should never attempt to emulate a dancing technique in public other than the ‘white man’s overbite’.”

Tales From The Nanny State

At what point does responsibility for one’s self simply disappear? In one part of Los Angeles, the time is now. A one year moratorium on all new fast food restaurants in South LA has been proposed by council. Now for the stats. There are about 8,200 restaurants in an area covering about 32 square miles with about a half million residents in South LA. About 30% of the kids in the area are considered obese. The proposal sailed through a vote with nary a scuffle.

It’s just gubbermint. They’re here to help you, at your expense, because you are too stupid to take care of yourself. Wait until the council finds out that more than half of the proposed new fast food restaurants could be considered “ethnic”. Then the moratorium will be found to be a violation of civil rights… Or that some of the new restaurants were being funded with economic grants to minorities from the same city council… Is the constriction of commerce in support of “helping” those who cannot be bothered to take care of themselves really a desirable goal of goverment?

Fit For Pets or People

Am I the only one who is tired of the perpetually perky brand juggernaut of Racel Ray? She’s made an empire out of beenie weenie casseroles and hammie cheesie roll-ups (which I enjoy, but do not need to see made on TV, offered as meaningful cuisine). But now she has her own line of dog food. Sheesh. Dogs do not respond to marketing, people do. And Rachel’s smile is a little too shiny white. Some would say that she has always served up pet food…

Latex Pimp

I know that we live in a consumer based society. And I know that condoms are valuable product in the prevention of pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. But I think that I am a little uncomfortable with Hannah Montana being the paid spokesperson for LifeStyles condoms. But here’s the deal… the 15 year old who has pledged not to have sex until she is married hasn’t received an offer from LifeStyles. Yep, they’ve offered her $1,000,000 to be the shill, just not officially. Miley Cyrus’ (her real name) rep has stated that the offer was never received, nor would it be considered. Is this the new trend in consumer marketing? Create a story where none exists… oh wait, happens every day.

Love Your Pets Longer

I am not an animal rights activist. I don’t like PETA. But I do wear leather and I do eat the flesh of other animals. I think I finally found out where I draw the line. Turning your pet into a pelt (warning, extremely disturbing photos). And I think I know why. The cow, fish, chicken, pig, whatever… did not provide companionship to me. This is just not right.

And The Silly Gang Bangers of The Year…

There are more than a few “gangs” in the Houston area. Some of them are for real and other are just bored kids with a spray paint can. It’s the bored kids that worry me. You see, they have taken to tagging everything that isn’t moving (and some that are). The problem is especially bad in middle class residential communities where these wannabe hellions mark their territory. What they fail to realize is that, at some point, a real gang is going to take notice. And then people will get hurt. In the mean time, we can rest safely knowing that these midget miscreants are doing their best to weed themselves out of the gene pool.

I had need to go to Wally World over the weekend. I really do not like the place at all and I like it even less on the weekends, but honey do’s on the weekend have a final buzzer element, so I went. There has been a little turf battle between the summer vacationers since school let out. HOA’s, businesses, gubbermints and local residents spend their money dutifully scraping, sandblasting, power washing and otherwise trying to keep up with the tags and tags over tags. This subdivision is mine! And this one is mine! This post office sign marks my property, and the empty lot with the district attorney election sign (she lost) is mine!

Apparently, the children want to claim the Wal Mart parking lot. Yep… The place that doesn’t need resurfacing because the used gum works better than asphalt… the land of dirty diapers, Sonic bags, puke from a bender, a Waffle House and Denny’s, RV parking (with no discharge facilities), zombie shopping carts, and imaginative condom refuse… is gang property. Every single light pole’s concrete base was tagged. While picking up what I needed for the project, I also got another can of spray solvent to do my part keeping my street clean. I also picked up another box of Winchester White Box .45 caliber ammunition. Same reason… Tagging a Wal Mart parking lot? Lovely.

Who’s Seen Your Fiddly Bits?

I’m certainly not the first to mention this… Spencer Elden has got quite a lot of exposure. He’s the baby on the Nirvana cover who is now 17. Can you imagine trying to be a “normal” high schooler knowing that just about everyone has already seen your junk? I wonder how many girls try to offer him a dollar bill while giggling?

Safe To Bank?

Think the economy is in the crapper? Maybe, maybe not. Down markets generally present interesting, albeit risky, investment opportunities. What about your cash? No, I’m not talking about the spare change stuck in the sofa or the couple of Benjamins you stash in your underwear drawer. I’m talking about the money you keep on deposit at THE BANK. THE BANK… as in that financial institution that you count on to be as safe as our food supply. US regulators have closed the sixth and seventh banks to go belly up this year. “All depositors, including those with deposits in excess of the FDIC’s insurance limits, will automatically become depositors of Mutual of Omaha Bank for the full amount of their deposits,” the FDIC said. That’s comforting. They are letting you know that they really don’t have to insure you above the limit, but are granting you a boon. Banks closed this year:

• First National Bank of Nevada
• First Heritage Bank
• IndyMac Bancorp
• First Integrity Bank
• ANB Financial
• Hume Bank
• Douglass National Bank

Lenders on the FDIC’s “problem list” grew to 90 in the first quarter from 76 in the fourth quarter of 2007, the FDIC said in May. The FDIC insures deposits at 8,494 institutions with $13.4 trillion in assets. I would not suggest investing in Zimbabwe’s currency as a hedge strategy. Right now, their 100 BILLION dollar note might buy you a loaf of bread, if they can get the things printed.

Corporate Communication

There are few issues in the workplace that have more bearing on success than communication. Let’s face it, most communication on the job is perfunctory and ineffective. It’s this crappy communication that often causes the most problems. Expectations are not clearly expressed… there will be a train wreck. Job skills are not defined… calamity. Corrective actions taken without explanation… smoldering nuclear inferno. While communication is crucial in any endeavor, it is even more so when the employer and employee have to involve opinion in their interaction. Let’s face it, most times your opinion at work is not given much weight. Asking for your opinion is the corporate equivalent of saying “What’s up?”. The one who asks has absolutely no desire to here what is really up or what you really think. It’s an “I dotter” or “T crosser” designed to provide minimul lubrication to the friction of day to day activity. What’s more, the questioner almost always already thinks they know the answers and really doen’t give a rat’s ass about your take. An employee can either take it as it comes and let the insincerity (and accompanying criticisms) roll of his back, quit, or engage in the very dangerous game of proving that he is smarter than the boss. Take, for example, this reprinted letter from The Guardian:

Chaps,

I am mightily pissed off. I have addressed this to Owen, Amanda and Ben because I don’t know who i am supposed to be pissed off with (i’m assuming owen, but i filed to amanda and ben so it’s only fair), and also to Tony, who wasn’t here – if he had been I’m guessing it wouldn’t have happened.

I don’t really like people tinkering with my copy for the sake of tinkering. I do not enjoy the suggestion that you have a better ear or eye for how I want my words to read than I do. Owen, we discussed your turning three of my long sentences into six short ones in a single piece, and how that wasn’t going to happen anymore, so I’m really hoping it wasn’t you that fucked up my review on saturday.

It was the final sentence. Final sentences are very, very important. A piece builds to them, they are the little jingle that the reader takes with him into the weekend.

I wrote: “I can’t think of a nicer place to sit this spring over a glass of rosé and watch the boys and girls in the street outside smiling gaily to each other, and wondering where to go for a nosh.”

It appeared as: “I can’t think of a nicer place to sit this spring over a glass of rosé and watch the boys and girls in the street outside smiling gaily to each other, and wondering where to go for nosh.”

There is no length issue. This is someone thinking “I’ll just remove this indefinite article because Coren is an illiterate cunt and i know best”.

Well, you fucking don’t.
This was shit, shit sub-editing for three reasons.
1) ‘Nosh’, as I’m sure you fluent Yiddish speakers know, is a noun formed from a bastardisation of the German ‘naschen’. It is a verb, and can be construed into two distinct nouns. One, ‘nosh’, means simply ‘food’. You have decided that this is what i meant and removed the ‘a’. I am insulted enough that you think you have a better ear for English than me. But a better ear for Yiddish? I doubt it. Because the other noun, ‘nosh’ means “a session of eating” – in this sense you might think of its dual valency as being similar to that of ‘scoff’. you can go for a scoff. or you can buy some scoff. the sentence you left me with is shit, and is not what i meant. Why would you change a sentnece aso that it meant something i didn’t mean? I don’t know, but you risk doing it every time you change something. And the way you avoid this kind of fuck up is by not changing a word of my copy without asking me, okay? it’s easy. Not. A. Word. Ever.

2) I will now explain why your error is even more shit than it looks. You see, i was making a joke. I do that sometimes. I have set up the street as “sexually-charged”. I have described the shenanigans across the road at G.A.Y.. I have used the word ‘gaily’ as a gentle nudge. And “looking for a nosh” has a secondary meaning of looking for a blowjob. Not specifically gay, for this is soho, and there are plenty of girls there who take money for noshing boys. “looking for nosh” does not have that ambiguity. the joke is gone. I only wrote that sodding paragraph to make that joke. And you’ve fucking stripped it out like a pissed Irish plasterer restoring a renaissance fresco and thinking jesus looks shit with a bear so plastering over it. You might as well have removed the whole paragraph. I mean, fucking christ, don’t you read the copy?

3) And worst of all. Dumbest, deafest, shittest of all, you have removed the unstressed ‘a’ so that the stress that should have fallen on “nosh” is lost, and my piece ends on an unstressed syllable. When you’re winding up a piece of prose, metre is crucial. Can’t you hear? Can’t you hear that it is wrong? It’s not fucking rocket science. It’s fucking pre-GCSE scansion. I have written 350 restaurant reviews for The Times and i have never ended on an unstressed syllable. Fuck. fuck, fuck, fuck.

I am sorry if this looks petty (last time i mailed a Times sub about the change of a single word i got in all sorts of trouble) but i care deeply about my work and i hate to have it fucked up by shit subbing. I have been away, you’ve been subbing joe and hugo and maybe they just file and fuck off and think “hey ho, it’s tomorrow’s fish and chips” – well, not me. I woke up at three in the morning on sunday and fucking lay there, furious, for two hours. weird, maybe. but that’s how it is.

It strips me of all confidence in writing for the magazine. No exaggeration. i’ve got a review to write this morning and i really don’t feel like doing it, for fear that some nuance is going to be removed from the final line, the pay-off, and i’m going to have another weekend ruined for me.

I’ve been writing for The Times for 15 years and i have never asked this before – i have never asked it of anyone i have written for – but I must insist, from now on, that i am sent a proof of every review i do, in pdf format, so i can check it for fuck-ups. and i must be sent it in good time in case changes are needed. It is the only way i can carry on in the job.

And, just out of interest, I’d like whoever made that change to email me and tell me why. Tell me the exact reasoning which led you to remove that word from my copy.

Right,
Sorry to go on. Anger, real steaming fucking anger can make a man verbose.
All the best
Giles

Giles has plainly embarked upon a dangerous path. All employers want to hire smart, competent people so that the tasks are performed well. The dirty little secret is that most employers always believe that they are smarter than the people they hire. In some cases, this is true. Mostly, it is not. Giles has demonstrated that he is more intelligent than the folks that are responsible for proofing his workand he has demonstrated that he will absolutely not tolerate inferior efforts of others. His choice was to either take it or to communicate his displeasure. We shall see how good management is and what they decide is an appropriate reaction.