Empty

Holy moly.

I think this is the first time since I started working at my current job six years ago that I have had an EMPTY inbox!! Had to take a screen shot to commemorate it since it will probably be another six years before it happens again. Kind of like a lunar eclipse...

Happy Friday!

Still Life at Work

I call it "Waiting for Lunch"

Yes, I need to find more productive things to do with my time.

No More Wire Hangers Comic Sans Ever!

(image source)

I never realized how many people hate Comic Sans. I thought I was the only one. And I was a teacher; the profession is riddled with folks who use it for ev.ree.thing.*

(image source)

There's even a whole website about it:



At least someone's trying to spare its feelings:

(image source)

*The author of this post fully admits that this is not considered humorous to anyone other than computer geeks, editors, and other such employees of publishing companies. Hey, she's gotta find humor at work where she can find it.

Just Ask Me How My Day is Going. I Dare You.

Burro Milk and Scary Little Girls

258. Things from 1960 That Are Hard to Find Today
Burma Shave signs

Working at a publishing company means I often come in contact with various sources to aid in writing. (Duh.) Recently I was looking for synonyms, antonyms, and analogies of different words for a game we were creating. I hunted around the dusty shelves and found a series of books called, The [insert subject] Teacher's Book of Lists. There is a book for reading, science, math, ESL, and Social Studies. I looked through all of them for different words, and ended up using the reading teacher's book the most. However, perusing the Social Studies teacher book was the most fun. It not only contains lists of historical events, but also psychological and sociological lists as well.

For example, in the Sociology section:

257. Things Not Around in 1960
(from a list of over 130 items)

bar codes
Zip codes
cubic zirconium

911 emergency number
non-smoking sections
seat belts
smoke detectors
two-liter soda bottles
Valium
skateboards
Department of Education
DNA fingerprinting



234. Cowboy Slang

Slang: Meaning
Arkansas toothpick: long knife
nutcrackers: teeth
wallow in velvet: to be wealthy

pearl diver: dishwasher
burro milk: nonsense!
idiot stick: a shovel
eatin' irons: knives, forks, spoons
fodder forker: farmer
salty dog: someone who does a good job
belly-wash: weak coffee



From the Psychology Section:

286. Phobias

Phobia: Abnormal fear of...
scriptophobia: writing in public
aulophobia: flutes
geumophobia: flavors
hedonophobia: sunlight
parthenophobia: little girls
heliophobia: pleasure
phronemophobia: thinking
ombrophobia: rain
gamophobia: marriage
bymnophobia: nudity
blennophobia: slime
leukophobia: the color white



299. Early Treatments for Mental Illness

beating
lowering the afflicted into snake pits
copious bleeding
tossing the afflicted from high cliffs
hot irons applied to the head
spinning in a centrifuge
trephining (boring a hole in the skull)

These are just partial lists; most of them are quite long.

The book was published in 1992, and I would love to see the newest edition, reprinted in 2003. I noticed the author added some categories, such as and 311. Candy Consumption in the U.S., 405. Fizzled Fashion Fads, and 442. Famous Twins. Now if I can just rationalize to my boss why we need the updated version...

Hmmm.... I think I know people like this

(image source)

My Coworkers Think I'm Trashy

Okay, not really. But yesterday one of them asked me, "What is that trash you have hanging in your cubicle?" That, my friend, is what we like to call a ragamuffin garland.


It's basically just a bunch of fabric scraps that you tie onto a ribbon. This fabric was my original motivation for making a Valentine garland.


Unfortunately, the pinkish garland doesn't really fit in with my house full of men, plus it clashes with the red drapes that hang in the same room I was planning on hanging it. So I figured, why not bring it to work and dress up my cubicle a bit? I added some vintage Valentine-postcard images I found online. I'll eventually attach them with ribbon; for the time being, they are just pinned to the wall.






So sue me for trying to add a bit of color to my drab cube. Actually, most people have made nice comments about it, or at the very least have simply kept quiet about it. Just Cinnamon Carl had a problem with it. But he has a problem with everything, so I didn't take it too personally. I think I'll make one for every holiday just to keep him guessing. Or grumbling....

Editors' Worst Nightmares and other Tattoos

I think every editor's worst fear is finding a mistake after their work has already been published. Therefore, I can only imagine the absolute anguish one of us would feel upon finding one of the following permanent mistakes (cue screams of horror from all my co-workers):



If you think it doesn't happen that often, think again. I'm not kidding. The L Magazine showed these insane (and I'm pretty sure real) tattoos that just make me want to cry as an editor. (And as someone who has tattoos. And as someone who has enough brains to check that my tattoos are spelled right, even if they are in a foreign language. I triple checked, even with professors of the language.)

So many misspellings and punctuation issues!

The blog Awful Tattoos has some doozies, too, but I only found one with grammar/usage issues (is that bad or good?):



Do you think that the tattoo artists notice these mistakes and just don't say anything? Or do they not check their spelling either? Sacrilege!

Even though these are spelled correctly, I wouldn't want them on my body:

I did happen upon a pretty cool blog called Contrariwise: Literary Tattoos which pays homage to tattoos quoting books, poems, and lyrics.

I noticed a lot of people like Kurt Vonnegut:

Sylvia Plath:

and J.R.R. Tolkein, although his are mostly in Elvish:

Another site even has tattoos in Braille:

So many ways to express yourself!

I like the idea of getting a tattoo of a quote from a book, but there are so many from which to choose. If I ever do decide, though, I'm definitely spell-checking it first.

Oh, and for those of you whose passions lie in other forms of art/knowledge/information, literary tattoos are certainly not the only way to go. Check out Carl Zimmer's Science Tattoo Emporium:

Who knew??

Overheard Over the Cubicle

I work at an education publishing company that sells supplemental books to teachers. As an editor, I work with the art coordinator to find artists to illustrate said books. We are having an artist shortage at the moment, and one of the other editors was unhappy to hear that there was no one to illustrate one of the pages in her books. So she took it upon herself to search our antiquated art files stuffed away in a dusty cabinet...

1st editor: Hey, do you think this picture could pass for a captain, um, (checks her page) James Cook?
2nd editor: Isn't that Thomas Jefferson?
1st editor: Well, yeah. But doesn't he look like he could be this other guy?
2nd editor: I guess....

You be the judge:

Captain James Cook, courtesy of
the National Maritime Museum blog.

And Mr. Thomas Jefferson

Well, duh, all old white guys with wigs look the same!!

And we wonder why kids don't know anything nowadays.