Back in August of last year I had a post about George W. covering John Lennon. Now the video is out. Strangely enough (or not, depending how you look at it), YouTube lets you watch the clip only after you signed in. Their warning: “This video may contain content that is inappropriate for some users, as flagged by YouTube’s user community. To view this video, please verify you are 18 or older by logging in or signing up.”
Believe me, there is nothing in that video that would require a warning, other than that it may make you think. But we don’t know who the flagging users were or what they felt was inappropriate. So there.
But it wouldn’t be the Internet if blocked access remained for long without an alternative. Check out the alternative for yourself:
Sometimes, scanning the messages in the spam folder yields some unexpected poetry:
The clipping was his obituary. Although she was the most levelheaded and practical of women, the sudden outburst of knocking startled a little scream from her, and she scalded herself with the hot milk she had been pouring from pot to cup.
No idea what this is advertising. I did not open the attachment.
Client: “Could you please proofread a small translation for us?” Me: “Proofread or edit?” After some discussion, it turns out that they want me to compare it to the source, fix it up, edit it, and write an assessment of the quality. I normally don’t do this kind of work since the quality of the material is unpredictable and can be very low – which requires more work than translating it from scratch and pays less. But is is a regular client and we are only talking about 200 words. Well, I should have guessed. Here a taste (no product or company names to protect the guilty):
Die einfachen Teile gibt Ihnen Avatar in Ihere freien Erstklassigen Mitgliedschaft. Viel besser ist es, dass die besonderen Sachen einfach gekauft werden koennen, mit dem „Token „ Spielgeld, die sie im unseren Token Tournamenten gewinnen koennen. Zeignen Sie Ihr Talent und Ihren Style gemeinsam.
“This translation is beyond repair,” I tell the client, “but I can translate the source for my usual fee.” Silence on the other end. They have to regroup and think it over. What is there to think over?
An interesting on-line tool provided by the Modern Language Association which gives insight into the linguistic composition of the United States down to the county level. Useful for translation and localization – and especially useful for preparing client proposals. In addition to the interactive map, users have access to tabular data. According to that data, there are 685 German speakers here in Boone county, 65 of which are 65 years or older and 60 between the ages of 5 and 17. How’s that for precision?
Sitting in front of a screen all day long is hard on the back and, surprisingly, on the legs. While many translators have understood that the right keyboard and screen can have a dramatic impact on well-being and productivity, there is still a lot of reluctance to spend the necessary amount of money on the right chair.
Model Think
When the time came to replace my desk chair, I enlisted the help of a friend who works for a large office furniture distributor in the area. He let me “test drive” chairs in my office, and I tried out several models one week at a time. The final decisions came down to the Think® and the Jersey™. After much sitting, I decided on the Jersey without arms. It was the mesh back and the upright back lock that convinced me in the end. I selected a dark gray back and tomato red seat. It is a very, very comfortable chair and I do not regret having spent the amount it cost.
Ben Yagoda has an article in Slate on a “currently very popular tense” which he calls Kindergarten imperative (as in “I need you to put away your crayons now”). He sees the last remaining preserves of the old imperative in traffic signs (“Stop”), farewells (“Take care now”), and song titles, especially Beatles songs (“Come Together,” “Don’t Let Me Down,” “Get Back,” “Please Please Me”).
The Kindergarten imperative, he observes, is a construction also favored by flight attendants, who often inexplicably add the phrases “go ahead and” and “for me,” as in:
I need you to go ahead and put your seat backs in the upright position for me.
I need to check my grammar books. Somehow I thought that the imperative was a mood, not a tense. But perhaps it is different in English.
It isn’t easy to find a snappy domain name. The good ones are all taken, it seems. And some that are taken make you wonder what the takers were thinking. Parse this:
This championship art director never looked at his domain name through visitors’ eyes – or maybe he’s just off-the-wall enough that he did and liked what he saw: www.speedofart.com.
The California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists needs some advice on domain names: www.therapistfinder.com.
Pen Island may be the best place to get custom-made pens, but would you have guessed it from the domain name: www.penisland.net.
“50 albums that changed music” have been compiled by The Observer, together with a nostalgic look back at vinyl:
Entire lifestyles built up around albums, smoking dope to albums, having sex to albums. You lent your favourite albums out with trepidation; you ruefully replaced them, on CD, when they didn’t come back.
But why are The Who with My Generation only in 36th place?
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