Hanging's too good for him (vol 17, ch 3)

[desperance]

There was a man on the radio this morning, and I swear I heard him say "when we operationalise this project." That got me out of bed. Shrieking and slavering, largely.

Also, this from a book I've been reading (and largely enjoying, hence discretion), the most extraordinarily mixed of metaphors:

"You've kept those wasps trapped in a jar for a thousand years, and now they want to re-paint the canvas without you in the picture."

Uh-huh. I don't blame the author (well, not much) - but where was the editor? Where?

In other news, I just went downstairs to verify the quotation, because I'm punctilious like that, and found Barry sitting neatly on the chopping-board, in close proximity to the sausages sizzling on the stove. Not wickedly about to steal one, as Mac might have been: rather expectantly, waiting for his sausage to be supplied him.

And! I have reshelved the whole of the living-room! That's 213 linear feet, thus far. Today we move into the dining-room. Which will be significantly less, alas: the dining-room had 13 walls at last count, all at weird angles to each other, and few of them long enough to take even a single shelving-unit. Still, we'll do what we can. I shall work on, though my pain. (I hurt everywhere, all the way through. Saw the doctor yesterday about internal pains; he supplied symptomatic medicines and took blood, to see what that could teach him. Otherwise I have flaring RSI - and have bought new keyboard to combat it, having given up trying to save old one, bloody cat, bloody bloody - and much muscle-ache and back pain from all this hauling heavy stuff to and fro. I was in the pub with a charming young man t'other week who simply refused to believe I was as old as I am; if he had access to my internal workings, he would have no doubts at all...)

Off to turn the sausages. Cook-cook.

Comments

[szandara.livejournal.com]

Not wickedly about to steal one, as Mac might have been: rather expectantly, waiting for his sausage to be supplied him.

How very polite! It sounds as if you and Berry have reached an excellent working agreement; he won't steal the sausages because he trusts you to give him his share.

Congrats on the shelving progress. There is very little in the way of décor that I find quite as pleasing as walls covered with books.

Also, I must admit that I lose just the slightest bit of intellectual respect for anyone I hear using "impact" as a verb, no matter how much I like them. It's a pet peeve of mine. (The only exception is if the conversation concerns wisdom teeth, and even then it's a close thing.)

[desperance.livejournal.com]

I guess we all have some uses or misuses that just get to us. Me, I'm none too bothered by 'impact' - especially as my dictionaries are happy to define it as a verb: one says 'although recent, the new usages are entirely standard', which seems about right to me - and I'm entirely heretical about the hoi-polloi (yes, I know 'hoi' means 'the' - but that's in Greek, and I'm speaking English...), but 'obsessing on' will get me every time. It obsesses you; you are obsessed by it. You cannot actively obsess on it. Etc. Snarrrrl...!

[szandara.livejournal.com]

In any case, I think we can agree that 'operationalise" is well beyond the pale, and ought to be illegal in any civilized English-speaking country.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Yup.

[handworn.livejournal.com]

"Impactful" appeared in this morning's newspaper. I expect "impactize" and "impactionalization" will be next. Bleah.

[szandara.livejournal.com]

Such abuse of perfectly innocent words makes me want to interact impactfully with the newspaper editors, operationalising a largish hammer to defunctionalize their verbalizationary capacities.

Or something of the sort. I think my ability to communicationalize may have been damaginated.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

*g* Thank you; you express my own feelings. With perfectuity.

[handworn.livejournal.com]

A super response.

Er.

A supercalifragilisticexpialidocious response.

(Let's tie the Iraq funding to Bush correctly pronouncing that.)

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

*LAUGHS*

[grndexter.livejournal.com]

Ahhh. You must be using Webster's. They are the folk who think that if it's in everyday use, it's proper and correct. They justify the pronunciation of nuclear as "nukuler" by saying that three presidents pronounced it that way. (All of them morons, no doubt.)

And there is one other proper usage for "impacted" - it's medical and none too pleasant... for the impacted individual.

One that gets me is the way the government, or law enforcement, is always "probing" someone. What... they don't get any at home? Of course, I used to laugh every time Kepten Kirk ordered a probe launched, too. "Let's probe that nebula, Mr Spook. See if it has any life in it."

As to the metaphors... well... I live in Missouri and that's one of our favorite sports. We make up those "sayings" that you hear on the news or in TV shows. "Why, that's crazier than selling tickets to a horse's piano recital." And another one I made up some time ago, "... busier than a worm in a piranha pond."

[the-acrobat.livejournal.com]

"You've kept those wasps trapped in a jar for a thousand years, and now they want to re-paint the canvas without you in the picture."

I love the mental image of a swarm of angry thousand-year old wasps screaming out of a jar with little wasp-sized paintbrushes (they've had 1,000 years to evolve... it's a Cat/Red Dwarf sort of thing) to re-paint everything (I suppose they've also had 1,000 years to meditate on what does and does not need to be in the picture and were just waiting for the canvas).

[costumeimp.livejournal.com]

Hope you are feeling better soon doll!!

[(Anonymous)]

Monetise.
I ran from the room screaming.

[cornishmoth.livejournal.com]

Our department is currently undertaking a "vertical audit". Once this is complete... go on guess. Yup! A horizontal audit!
I have no desire to find out what this means.