I met Joe at Panera Bread, where I was a sitting geek alert with two laptops. A couple of people felt obligated to make a comment as they walked by. One guy said something about a lot of technology, and I reached down on the seat and said, “Yeah, and I have my iPod and my Palm Pilot here, too.”
I got my podcast downloads caught up, and deleted the ones I’ve listened to. All set to go again, whenever I can find time to listen to some.
I spent more time than I wanted to upgrading iTunes, uploading a CD someone made for me I don’t know when with “Diva Mix” written on it. I didn’t recognize most of the songs, so Joe put my ear buds in and he did “Name That Tune.”
With a little help from Google, he nailed all 15 songs:
| Song | Artist |
| Simply the Best | Tina Turner |
| From This Moment | Shania Twain |
| No More “I Love You’s” | Annie Lennox |
| Butterfly | Mariah Carey |
| I’m Gonna Be Strong | Cyndi Lauper |
| Cry Like a Rainstorm | Linda Rhondstat |
| To Deserve You | Bette Midler |
| Force Behind the Power | Diana Ross |
| Tell Him | Barbra Streisand & Celine Dion |
| Frozen | Madonna |
| It’s Not Right | Whitney Houston |
| Whatever You Want Me To Do | Tina Turner |
| Save Up All Your Tears | Cher |
| Heaven Is What I Feel | Gloria Estefan |
| I’m Coming Out | Diana Ross |
I just can’t fathom who gave me this CD. Adam and Van are the only guys to have ever given me CDs as far as I can remember, but this so doesn’t sound like their kind of music. For one thing, there’s not one song on it by Dolly Parton.
slate.com has announced their follow-up on their “corporate euphemisms” contest. Here are some I liked.
These are euphemisms for “layoff”:
- She’s been urged to be successful elsewhere.
- He’s in transition to the competition.
- She’s been promoted to customer.
- He’s been uninstalled.
- She’s on eternity leave.
Writing recommendations for people you really can’t endorse, you can use these:
- I really can’t say enough good things about him.
- I could not give this applicant a higher recommendation!
- If you can get her to work for you, you will be lucky.
To serve you better as a corporate euphemism:
- To serve you better, we’ve removed all humans from the bank lobby and replaced them with ATMs.
- To serve you better, we’ve added a ticket charge to an online transaction that actually costs us less to complete.
There was even a corporate euphemism for “winning a contract”: “exclusively downselected,” which ironically, sounds like a bad thing.
The corporate euphemism “winner” was not funny, but accurate, and it’s a euphemism for outsourcing: “labor arbitrage.”
noun: a kind of hedged investment meant to captures light differences in price; when there is a difference in the price of something on two different markets the arbitrageur simultaneously buys at the lower price and sells at the higher price |
I walked around the lake today, and listened to a bunch of podcasts during the hour’s time. The Onion Radio News remains one of my favorite podcasts. They’re just so irreverent sometimes. These three podcast titles alone, made me laugh:
- Cash-Strapped Suicide Hotline Lets Curious Listen In For $1.99 a Minute
- Crazy Uncle Makes Good Point About Bitch Aunt
- Two-Week Bender Just Flies By
I met Joe at Flex at around 8:00, where we played several games of pool, including two games of cut-throat with Randy, who’s “back on the market.”
At around 10:00, we walked up to Snoopy’s, where we split a chicken-salad sandwich and an order of fries.
Kevin (av8rdude) arrived at about 10:30.
It was George’s last night. He’s moving to Portland, leaving on Tuesday.