I'm sitting here doing some grading at Borders. While I recognize my liberal credentials would be bolstered if I expressed affection for some independent bookstore and independent/fair-trade coffeehouse, I love Borders. Indeed, I love Borders so much that I feel sorry sometimes for those doctors without them.
Not to be an e-avesdropper, but there was a hyperearnest-looking guy sitting next to me who was putting together a PowerPoint presentation that had something to do with getting people equipped for some outdoorsy exercise thing. His opening slide said, in big letters, GET FIT(ED). I imagined him standing in front of people with this presentation and people snickering at how he didn't know that fitted was spelled with two t's. I imagined his credibility being ruined and him being tainted meat in the snobby circle of educated-outdoorspeople for years to come. Crunchy folks with college degrees never forgive.
So, given that he seemed to be dangling over a chasm of reputational ruin, I spent some time internally debating whether there was any way I could casually note the misspelling to him without seeming like I was violating all kinds of norms of laptop privacy. Then, remarkably, he suddenly scrolled up and corrected the error himself. Can lexical duress, in the right circumstances, lead to telepathy? I report, you decide. (I feel compelled to add that the correction happened at seemingly exactly the same moment as this freaky first-of-May snow began to fall outside.)
10 comments:
you are truly a powerful entity, jeremy. i am in awe. i really am.
btw, can you read my mind from where you are? what am i thinking?
Hmm, let me guess, you are either thinking about:
(1) How something isn't fair
(2) How somebody irritates you
or
(3) Some combination of (1) and (2); like how it isn't fair that other people don't renounce somebody who irritates you, etc..
wow! it was 3! i was thinking that you are really irritating with your constant pestering me to comment on your blog and how it isn't fair that you don't renounce yourself for this and how that isn't fair.
Isn't Dorotha precious? Interestingly, I was just talking about the concept of "the self-fulfilling prophecy" in my methods class last week.
lately i've been one petty shy of a petticoat, so i'd be happy to set aside a day to renounce someone on your behalf, dorotha. if you'd like, i could make it jeremy by default and only stop my renouncing once he successfully reads my mind as well.
Dorotha IS precious. Snarkiness has a beauty all its own.
Was Dorotha the one who wanted to rearrange your face, er, put you on Extreme Makeover?
--EGP
No, it wasn't Dorotha, although it may have been her who told me about it. I think there was a broad, graduate-student-body-wide consensus that I would have the most to gain from an Extreme Makeover appearance.
If there was a broad, graduate-student-body-wide consensus, then I missed the session in which we decided this issue.
I say "What Not To Wear" by all means, but "Extreme Makeover" is a little, well, extreme. Cosmetic surgery is icky. And on a man, squicky as well.
--EGP
Gee, EGP, thanks.
Anytime, my good man, anytime.
--EGP
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