I attended two work meetings today, one on accessibility considerations when creating Word documents, PowerPoint slides, and PDFs, and the other on Web site organization with regards to the director to whom our department reports.
A tweet after that meeting was rather telling of how it went:
| Myers-Briggs-speak: I need to do some (S to N) and (F to T) work. #ncsu_oit 1:57 PM Dec 2nd from web |
As a result of following @GrammarGirl on Twitter, I’ve been followed by @definethis. One of @definethis’s gigs is that she awards the best tweet devised using Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day. Today’s word was prolix, and this was my tweet:
|
@definethis The genre, introduced & enforced by Twitter is one such that, by its very nature, discourages-disallows really-prolix sentences.
|
I actually loved it (what a surprise), but it did not win.
Somebody tweeted about an article that I found so compelling, that I retweeted about it. It’s about a complete paradigm shift in airport screening, “shifting from analyzing the content of carry-ons to analyzing the content of passengers’ intentions and emotions.” The article is called, Behavioral screening — the future of airport security?
I got my haircut tonight, and during the short time I waited I thumbed through GQ magazine, which is pretty much a tome. At first glanced, due to its thickness, I thought $3.99 for the issue was a bargain.
However, the first 20-30 pages of the magazine are full-page ad glossies of (very hot, but I digress…) men modeling designer clothing with the obvious subtext being either: (1) you are nothing if you aren’t wearing this stuff, or (2) you will be something if you do wear this stuff.
It made me think about the very brief time in my life that my self-worth was dependent, at least in part, upon wearing a pair of Calvin Klein jeans—even though at no time in my life were the shape of my hips (what hips?) conducive to wearing them. These days, I’m quite sure I’d be wearing Applebottom jeans.
After my haircut, I stopped next door to the Pearl Chinese Restaurant, which I rarely frequent, and picked up some dinner.
The few times I’ve been there before, I haven’t been impressed, but this time I chose something different—their Hot & Spicy Beef, which in spite of having a redundant name, was quite good.
Off and running: The word hot in the name of this dish is used to mean the flavor, not the temperature—as who would want Cold Spicy Beef? But the word spicy is also describing the flavor, so basically the name is really saying either: (1) Hot and Hot Beef, or (2) Spicy and Spicy Beef.
I met Joe at Flex at a little after 9:00, where we played two or three games of pool, and then listened to some karaoke. It was definitely not our kind of crowd tonight, and we left at about 11:00.