Disarray

So here’s the latest thing that’s thrown my mental life into disarray. Casual Fridays: Can you tell me the "best" email sign-off? Thanks!

A few months ago I made the conscious decision to switch the closing of my emails from “Cordially,” which I’ve used since college, to “Best.” Now I find out that “Best,” as an email signoff, is considered brusque.

Brusque!?!

I thought is was a good shorthand for “All the Best” or “Best Wishes” or even “With every best wish.” But no, it’s brusque. Crap!

According to the chart, “Thanks” is largely innocuous, and thus right for any situation.

Ugh!

I’m thinking of switching to something obscure like “Valediction.”

At least I’ve never been a “Cheers” douchebag.

That's My Kind of Headline

Most people who know me realize that I have a lot in common with Marvin the Paranoid Android from the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

Well, it appears that the Chicago Tribune has hired either Marvin or me to write headlines for them: Miserable week ahead: Rainy, windy, chilly--snow, too

What?!!?

Has it really been that blog since I've come here to vent my spleen?!? Well, that deserves a spleen vent!!!

Cheese whiz!

And then when I do try and post—last night—I get an error message. Fantabulous!

How Bad Do I Look?

All day people kept asking me if I was ok. They said I didn’t look well. Maybe I should get some sleep.

They Cannot Be Serious

Cat Hammock

Fun Facts

Count on Wired to carry the kind of cheerful facts and stats that ye olde Spleen Venter loves to toss out at cocktail parties. First up is an article entitled “One Million Ways to Die,” which includes “a handy ranking of the various dangers confronting America, based on the number of mortalities in each category throughout the 11-year period spanning 1995 through 2005 (extrapolated from best available data).”

S E V E R E Driving off the road: 254,419 Falling: 146,542 Accidental poisoning: 140,327

H I G H Dying from work: 59,730 Walking down the street: 52,000. Accidentally drowning: 38,302

E L E V A T E D Killed by the flu: 19,415 Dying from a hernia: 16,742

G U A R D E D Accidental firing of a gun: 8,536 Electrocution: 5,171

L O W Being shot by law enforcement: 3,949 Terrorism: 3147 Carbon monoxide in products: 1,554

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Next, from the August 2006 issue, “Deadly Poisons, Ingested or Inhaled.” It’s a list of the top ten most deadly poisons. The list includes botulinum, anthrax, cyanide, and something called compound 1080 (sounds like a band that really sucks). My favorite line from the article accompanies the entry for strychnine.

it gets style points for causing one of the most horrific deaths of all: Every muscle in your body spasms violently until you die from exhaustion.

Wow!

Think of this post as the antidote to Slate.com's Weekend Cocktail Chatter, "a quick and easy guide to help you fake your way through overly cultured cocktail parties this weekend."

Or not.

Burick Update

The side-view mirror on the driver's side is now cracked straight down the middle.

Double Spleen Vent

I just found this post from June buried in the drafts folder - doh!

And I see that the link no longer works - double doh!

But I think there's enough information here for the joke to still work - yea!

Is This My Problem?
Intermittent explosive disorder affects 1 in 20. I frikin’ hope not. For all our sakes.

My Spleen: Soon to be Frozen?

The local paper reports “The Old Farmer's Almanac, which boasts an 80 percent accuracy rate for the annual weather guide it has been publishing since 1792, is predicting a colder and snowier winter for most of the U.S. this year . . . temperatures will be as much as 8 degrees below the 30-year average, with the coldest weather coming in February.”

Heavy sigh

And I Thought Things Were Bad at My Job

At least no actual dead bodies have shown up: “A man's body floated up near where a crew was filming a scene for the crime show ‘CSI: Miami,’ authorities said.” Who wants to go on location now? Yikes!

Venting My Spleen for Pomonkey

As you may know, my life-partner lady-friend, Pomonkey, is having a tough time at work. So here’s a spleen vent just for her.

To Pomonkey’s coworkers:
What the heck is wrong with you? Can I get you to just do your frikin’ job?!?! How difficult is that? Stop with the excuse making, pull yourselves together, shut yer yappers and do your jobs!!!

Wouldn’t That Make Me A Bit Of A Dandy?

Today’s Wall Street Journal reports (suckscription only) on the latest trend in men’s fashion: “shorts -- dressy and tailored -- with suit jackets, sport coats, dress shirts and even ties.”

Why on earth am I going to wear a tie with shorts?!? Free the knees yet bind the neck meat? Yeah, I don’t think so.

I’m with Tony Green (whoever that is): “Shorts with a suit jacket would make me feel a little too Little Lord Fauntleroy.”

The great thing about a blog is that if this does really catch on I can come back here and eat my friggin’ words.

Good News for Mister Ginger

USA Today reports on a new study that claims "the crabbiest people are the smartest," at least in the over 60 set. If Mister Ginger can manage to survive until he's 60 . . . well, he's already got crabby down! Mister Ginger was recently described by a friend as "57 year old man trapped in the body of a 30-something." What would the study say about that?

Spleen: Vented

I feel as if I’ve literally had my spleen vented. I spent about five hours the other night sitting on the toilet hugging a trashcan, uh, well, venting. As far as I know nothing came shooting out of my ears, but otherwise . . .

Unbelievable

The office building in which I work has classroom space adjacent to our suite of offices. This space is available for various groups to rent, and each summer a music school meets in that classroom and other available spaces in the complex of buildings around us. This year the classroom nearest my office is the site for the percussion class. Yes, it’s as bad as you think it is.

And they’ve lined up against the wall nearest us.

And this is one of our busiest times of the year.

Are we being punished?

Tryin’ to Impress the Lady

As some of you know, my life-partner lady-friend has been “on assignment,” as they say, which means that I have been on my own for five days now. One of the things I have taken the time to do while she’s gone is straighten the table by the door where I toss my watch, wallet, and keys when I come into the apartment. Over the past few months, a number of miscellaneous items from my pockets (business cards, notes to self, headphones, change, newspaper clippings, frequent buyer membership cards, receipts, a padlock, bar coasters, the hood ornament from my car, a light bulb—you get the picture) had accumulated into an unsightly and precarious pile. (OK, I admit it, I like to stack stuff. Don’t make this into some kind of Pilers Anonymous meeting—Hi, I’m Mister Ginger, and I like to stack stuff into piles).

I have a nice basket with a lid in which I am supposed to pile this kind of miscellaneous junk. So yesterday I got it all straightened, cleaned up, thrown away, and consolidated into the basket. My life-partner lady-friend will be so impressed!

Today about 12:30, I decide to walk over to the snack counter at work to buy a sandwich. It is then that I realize, I don’t have my wallet. I left it in the farkin’ basket. Oh, great. Now I can’t go to the store and get q-tips on the way home either. Crap!

Oh, and I just dropped a blue highlighter in my lap. Now I have a big green dot on my khaki pants. Crap, crap!

Fall Beans

I have no q-tips. Yesterday I stopped in a store (rhymes with fall beans) to pick up some q-tips, but what I found was a nonsensical store layout, not q-tips. I walked up and down every aisle twice before giving up and leaving. I found the aisle that has the paper products and pet food (dog, cat, and bird). The toy and small appliance aisle. The aisle with tampons, nasal spray, eye drops, and crutches. The aisle with shampoo and diapers. But no friggin’ q-tips. I would have asked an employee, but fall beans is surprisingly busy on Father’s day, particularly the greeting card, foot care, and diarrhea aisle. I’d like to meet the group of drunken monkeys that came up with the planogram for this place. And I’d really like some frikin’ q-tips!

Payin’ for the Corn

I haven’t been feeling well the last couple of days, and I know why. Corn. I guess I’m allergic to it. The last time I ate corn it made me so sick that I vowed I’d never eat it again. But then my life-partner lady-friend went and made my favorite corn recipe. So I ate some. Then I had seconds. Then I ate the leftovers the next day. Yeah, yeah, all things in moderation. Screw that. I like me some creamed corn, dang it!

Hey, That’s Not What I Meant . . . Eh, I Got Nothin’

So I had this whole post written up about how I accidentally told a guy selling newspapers that I can’t read (sounds kinda funny? doesn’t it?). Anyway, I get to re-reading it, and I realize, that just sounds stupid. It was kind of funny when it happened (ok, my life-partner was doubled over laughing), but reading about it is just lame. Maybe I’ve been awake too long. Whatever. In the end, I got nothin’. Sorry. Thanks for stopping by, though.

I Can’t Spel

The other day in a movie review post, I wondered how a particular title got in my "renal Q" rather than my rental Q. Some assumed I had done it to be clever, while others assumed that I had a painful kidney condition. The truth is I rely heavily on the spell-check function, but even the most sophisticated computers and software cannot overcome my combination of poor spelling and typographical errors.

Later the same day I was filling out an online form, a task where I’ll usually open up W*rd, type my entry to spell check, and copy and paste. This time, though, all I had to get right was "For those of you who didn’t receive the message through the Yahoo group." I thought I could do it. I concentrated hard on "i before e, except after c," but I must have slacked off at the end of the sentence. I ended up inventing a whole new service for Yahoo. The grope. That’s right, "For those of you who didn’t receive the message through the Yahoo grope . . ." well, insert your own punch line here. I guess I’m just lucky I didn't spell message "massage."

BTW, I have decided, from now on, to refer to it as my renal Q.

Noose

I had to wear a noose to work on Friday. My office is generally business casual, and Fridays are usually casual or, in the words of one of my coworkers, “dress down.” At any rate, we had a “special event” Friday that necessitated the noose. Anyway, it took seven tries to get the thing tied correctly enough to leave the house (it was still a tad too short but I was completely out of patience). By the time the “special event” was over and I could remove the noose, my neck was all chafed. Oh, and it turns out I probably could have done without the noose anyway. No one was impressed. Ugh!

Murketing

I sometimes find that reading other people’s efforts at venting their spleens is as refreshing as venting my own. I came across just such a thing today.

Rob Walker currently writes the Consumed column in the New York Times Magazine, but I’ve been sort of following his writing career since his days at Slate. At any rate, he has a blog (gasp), and today’s entry is just the sort of thing I’d write. It seems that he hates his HMO (double gasp), and every month when he gets the bill and has to write them the check, well, it’s not pretty. This month, however, the envelope with the bill included a little something extra that sent him into full spleen vent (spleen-vent?) mode. Enjoy

By the way, if you click around his site a little bit you may come across his homepage, which I take as a personal threat (although it is a really great picture).

What’s Wrong With Me?!?

I’m leaving for work the other day, and as I hear the door click shut behind me, I look down the driveway and notice that the garbage truck hasn’t been by yet. Deciding to go back upstairs and retrieve the kitchen trash, I reach into my pocket to get my keys. At almost the same moment, I realize that I forgot to put my keys in my pocket. Ugh!!

The next day, as I’m driving to work and mentally planning my day, I realize that not only did I forget to bring my lunch, I also forgot to pack a lunch. Suddenly I’m painfully aware that I have only one American dollar. Dang it! No lunch and no money!!

What the heck is wrong with me?!? Early onset Alzheimer’s? First I forget my . . . uh . . . my keys then . . . what am I talking about? Where am I? What the . . .

Screed

One of the inspirations for this spleen blog is James “The Bleat” Lileks’ Screedblog. His recent entry of excerpts from a letter to President Bush is more onion than screed, but I love it nonetheless. (For true screed, see his entry on “the so-called ‘Ports Deal’ flap.”)

So I’m not really venting my spleen in this post. Ugh! Hold on a minute, how many freakin’ links does one paragraph (see above) need?!? I’m an idiot!

My Achin’ DVD Player

My DVD player has quit working. I looked online and followed the instructions for my problem (Error: NO DISC, DISC ERROR, or INSERT DISC) in the eSupport Knowledge Base. (It was the second item under “Hot Topics” for my model — surprise, surprise.) The final diagnosis: service will be required.

My player is covered under some sort of exchange program. For $131.75 I can mail it in and receive a refurbished model. I couldn’t remember how much it cost new, so I looked to see what a comparable model by the same manufacturer would cost. Turns out the brand spankin’ new model — same brand with similar features, plus newer features like HD Upconversion — is $139.00. They cannot be serious.

Well, I don’t have an HD TV, so that new feature doesn’t mean much to me (today anyway). And I hate to simply throw out my DVD player. So I’m going to try and find a repair place nearby and see what they’ll charge to take a look at it. I should start a pool on how close to $139 I’m going to spend trying to avoid leaving this thing by the curb. And did I mention gas it $3 a gallon?

Pump #08

GALLONS:   13.303
PRICE/G:  $ 2.999
FUEL SALE $ 39.90

No Particular Focus

I'm feeling vaguely irritated today. I can't point to any one thing, nor am I really angry. I'm just kind of miffed at the world. While working on a writing assignment today, I found it necessary to consult a thesaurus wherein I came across lists of words for how I was feeling about everything:

befoul, belittle, besmear, besmirch, bespatter, blacken, cloud, decry, denigrate, deprecate, depreciate, derogate, detract, dirty, discount, disparage, downgrade, minimize, run down, slight, smear, smudge, smut, soil, spatter, stain, sully, taint, talk down, tarnish

Yeah, that feels about right.

Every Single Time

I'm driving on the interstate, to my right there's an entrance ramp. A van is coming down the ramp. Our relative positions put him at the end of the ramp slightly ahead of me. I slow down slightly to allow the van enough space to merge. Then the van slows. I slow a little more. The van slows a little more. Every stinkin' time! Flippin' heck! Why won't people speed up when they get on the interstate?!? Ugh!

Stupid Internet

First off, I wake up with a pounding headache (two guesses at my mood). Now I'm seeing floaters. Not just regular floaters, but shooting-star floaters. For some reason, I decide to Google these symptoms. Based on the rank and frequency of the results, I have preeclampsia, or high-blood pressure brought on by pregnancy. Now, I know that my little spleen-vent blog is anonymous and that you can be anyone on the internet, but not only am I not pregnant, I'M NOT FEMALE! Stupid internet!

Foibles

Yesterday, one of my colleagues attempted to send a box to another department in another building (but on our same campus) via inter-office mail. For whatever reason my coworker printed out a full mailing label, complete with return address, and put it on the box. The box was picked up with yesterday afternoon's mail and delivered back to us with this morning's mail.

In all honesty, I'm a bit surprised at this. When I saw the box—complete with mailing label yet destined only for another building on campus—sitting beside the outgoing mail, I was pretty certain that the mailroom would apply the appropriate postage and send it through the USPS.

The department name has now been highlighted on the label with a pink highlighter, and we took the bold step of pointing out to the guy who picked it up today exactly where it goes.

$40

To fill up my car. $3.049 per Gallon! UGH!!

SkyMall: Crap Nobody Needs

Bill McKibben vents his spleen (in a really mild and sort of humorous way) over crap that nobody really needs, but which SkyMall cheerfully advertises anyway.

Only a real jerk or a Christian or something would point out that there might possibly be items in this world that it would make more sense to spend our money on.

Preach it!

Who Still Doesn't Get It?

Who doesn't understand that DVD's are copyrighted, that the opinions expressed in the commentaries and extra features and the like are those of the person expressing them and not the picture studio distributing the disc? Really! Why do I have to sit through or fast-forward through that crap every time I sit down to watch a DVD?

We get it! Start the show already!! Come on!!!

I Have Had It

and I can't take it anymore. I need a place to pour out my rage. A place to purge. A place to vent my spleen. Anonymously. This is that.

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Spleen

NOUN: 1 a. A large, highly vascular lymphoid organ, lying in the human body to the left of the stomach below the diaphragm, serving to store blood, disintegrate old blood cells, filter foreign substances from the blood, and produce lymphocytes. b. A homologous organ or tissue in other vertebrates. 2. Obsolete This organ conceived as the seat of emotions or passions. 3. Ill temper: vent one's spleen. 4. Archaic Melancholy. 5. Obsolete A whim; a caprice.

ETYMOLOGY:Middle English splen, from Old French esplen, from Latin splen, from Greek.