More Thumbs-Up/Down

- by Frank Shiell

from here, please continue to STILL MORE  for updates and  High Thumbs

 

THUMBS DOWN:   Dumb telephone protocol – don’t you hate time-clutter phone announcements?:  “I’m either away from my desk or on the other line…yada yada.”  Liar Liar pants on fire – - he/she could be in the bathroom, sneaking a cigarette outdoors, or even attending a real meeting, and I don’t care! If  I eventually talk to the person, I may ask…”well, tell me which was it: were you away from your desk, or were you on the other line? I bet you were doing something else. Be original. Fix your bloody message, it’s stupid. Even worse, they usually they don’t get it!  My friend and mentor has the best recorded message of all, simply: ”Leave a message”.
One more: “In order to serve you better, please have your account number handy…” OUCH, doesn’t anybody care about grammar any more?  Thant’s a flunk for subject-verb disagreement.  And on and on (with klanky “Ain’t Music” in the background) — “Yerr call is important to us…our menu has changed…this call may be recorded…we’re sorry, you have pressed an invalid numbbb…”

Can anybody give me advice? I shouldn’t care and dumb myself down? Should I try to correct them and make a better world? Or, as some tell me, “If you don’t like it move to another country.”

THUMBS DOWN DOWN:  The ugliest “religious” pastor in all Florida, Terry Jones, media-hungry bigot whose barber should be hanged-by-the-neck until dripping, is also a known perv. May he and his Koran-burning hate stunt fade fast in to the past. 

THUMBS DOWN:  Joe the Plumber, the once-new “merican metaphore”.   I suffered through the presidential debates last night (Oct 15, 08) – perhaps morbid curiosity kept me watching…my god, McCain is a creepy geezer. He slumps, and his mouth twists into that nya-nya condescending immaturity-revealing smartass smirk (hey, a quick Google of “McCain” and “smirk” yields some 416,000 entries). He fakes sincerity uttering apple pie brainwashing sound bites with eye-blinking insecurity – liar, liar, pants on fire!  But the worst insult to my intelligence was that “Joe the Plumber” crap.  Smart Keith Olbermann (MSNBC) agrees, saying (subsequently, on Oct. 23), “One more mention of JoeThePlumber, Senator McCain, and you’ll have us all hugging the commode”….Put a snake down it. All this candidate vetting should include IQ and emotional stability tests.  Our chronically forgetful geriatric, childishly smirkey Republican looser will go back to Arizona where they don’t mind his arms and neck being too short — haven’t you noticed?

Today in Manhattan, I saw a plumber’s truck painted with additional words “Joe the …”   All this J.T.P. nonsense probably reduces esteem toward professional plumbers; and now they’ll be asked to show their licenses.

Do other countries traditionally declare that God blesses them? Don’t think so. I prefer the patriotic exclamationsViva México, and Viva España. Fyi, valid statistics indicate USA is the most religious country in the world. Also, incidentally, USA is ranked with the world’s highest obesity rate, despite the fact that gluttony is one of the seven deadly sins. And, as William Safire wrote a while ago in the New York Times, we live in a country without a name, populated by…err…”Unitedstatsians?”

What’s going ta happen?  I do wish Obama would say “to” instead of “ta”, and he should have sat up with better posture last night during the “debate”. And both candidates do that dumb-downspeak gunna, and gotta. Alas, even the venerated moderator Bob Schieffer needs to brush up his grammar — “Each of you are….”  Each is singular, not plural. Bob, it should be “Each of you is” when you address the candidates.

Oh well. I’ll tune in to Spain’s and Mexico’s newscasts in the morning to find out what is really happening in the world, articulately.

Well, it will be “over” come November 4. As they always say, “God bless America”. I suppose that refers to “USA”  because the word “America” is really the name of the entire continent: (North America, shared with Mexico and Canada), as well as the entire Western Hemisphere (“The Americas”). This usurped “America” moniker for a nameless country confuses the Spaniards and other Europeans, and disconcerts the Mexican whose country (officiallyEstados Unidos Mexicanos) is also located in North American.  Both default to yankis or gringos, respectivly, simply for clarity; they both use estadounidenses (Unitedstatesians, suggested in lieu of “Americans” by William Safire in his New York Times past article concerning this country’s namelessness and proposing nomenclatural options.)

Do other countries traditionally declare that God blesses them? Don’t think so. I prefer the patriotic exclamationsViva México, and Viva España.

Perhaps the ”God bless” tradition is due to the fact that, according to statistics, USA is the most religious country in the world. USA leads with the world’s highest obesity rate as well, despite the fact that gluttony is one of the seven deadly sins.

~O.O~