Random

I thought I wrote a very good sentence for a report ... but a co-worker told me to cut it and said our work must be precise, which got me thinking about precise writing and meaning.


Government demands precise writing. However, it insists analysts write in the passive voice to avoid attributing responsibility. The precision they’re looking for quickly conveys a point, unfortunately the point is naturally unclear.

Work Day

Now I stare blankly. What should I do to get through the day? I bought a rootbear soda instead of a coffee and it is not helping me think. I have a meeting in an hour, which really means I have about five minutes to kill. Transit time, you know? Plus, I want a good seat. One where the top guns can see me, but where they cannot tell I'm half asleep.

That is one of my tricks for appearing alert and keen. Another is to feverisly write notes during a presentation, notes about grocies, tasks, chores, and shit like this driveling story.

I do have one task fo do for my team. I need to create a spreadsheet table filled with sloppy, incomprehensible, e-mail responses to a request from someone I don't know, about things that make little pracital sense. Some people choose not to work because they believe the outcomes of their efforts are meaningless. I chose not to work because they effort itself is meaningless.

My own assignment

You are working on an assignment for me, yes yes you are. I know it 'cause you told me so. I am doing additional work though because I'm a keener. I'm going to write something about this:

OTTAWA — Emergency workers were scrambling Sunday night to clear 300 people out of the bush near Richmond after the engine of a VIA Rail train caught fire. Before 9 p.m., an electrical fire broke out in the engine, stopping the train near the Richmond Centennial Golf Club, a couple of kilometres from the nearest railway crossing at McBean Street. Firefighters said the only access to the location was via the tracks. After receiving assurance from VIA that no other trains would be approaching the vicinity of the incapacitated train, firefighters began leading people out on foot. Six OC Transpo buses were sent to the area to shelter the passengers from mosquitoes. No injuries were reported.

© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen

Why? Because I just got home from this train ride.

For the cynics

I was visiting friends this weekend and it reminded me of some of my cynical classics. I consider them classics. Take what you will from my delusional writing.

...

• An uneventful life strung together by a series of inconsequential incidents
• There are two types of people in this world: those who believe there are two types of people in this world and those that don't.
• Have no expectations. They'll always be exceeded.
  

My version of Office Space ...

• Some people are obscenely liberal with their office-bathroom shits. What's the proper etiquette? It certainly isn't dropping your trousers and splattering the bowl while someone sits beside you.
• "Shucks" isn't a suitable atlernative to "shit," in fact, it's more offensive. We all know what the fuck you mean.
• Why do all fat, middle-aged women with dyed perms and glasses sound and act the same way? Like they have an enourmous stick up their asses, exuding false happiness?
  
• Stop going to the tanning booth if your skin looks like a chesterfield.
  

Anne Louise

A new assignment ... write a diary entry about how much better my youthful life is than a senior's

...

Diary Entry Dated 2009-07-19

I waited for the elevator while leering at two children. They just left the pool and were kicking a soccer ball back and forth and against the hallway walls. I didn’t care for it, but what the hell? They can do what they want as long as it doesn’t disrupt me. If they disrupt me then I will yell at them and puncture the ball. That’s how I roll.

The elevator came to a rest and the doors slid open. A cantankerous old woman appeared with a shopping cart. Anne-Louise! Oh my dear love, I haven’t seen in you weeks. It must have been the overwhelming pleasure we experienced when you materialized in the elevator that motivated you to slowly push your shopping cart into me. It must have acted as a conductor for our electric emotions that render you and I catatonic, which I assume is the reason why you blocked the entrance to the elevator until its doors shut.

You broke our trance when you saw the children. Gratefully coherent, I pushed the elevator button again and wiggled by your large, cottage cheese arms. The children followed me. As the doors to the elevator swung shut, you no longer had the look of weathered love in your eyes. You gripped your shopping cart, knuckles translucent and liver spots radiating. You cursed us in your gypsy tongue. I was shocked! The sight of me with the children brought you down from your lofty British war bride heritage to the dregs of European haberdashery.

As the elevator lifted the boys and me floor to floor, I mentioned to them that you hate children and that you told me I would be evicted from the apartment complex within a year. I did this with the strong, youthful voice you rarely hear. Partially because you are near deaf, but also because you are a miserable, dry cunt that nobody wants to talk to.

Lighten up or go fuck yourself. Either way, you might loosen up enough to realize you’re still alive instead of the walking dead.

Maria

Assignment ... sit in a coffee shop and observe someone, imagine what they are like

...

She sits alone pouring over her technical manual. One hand curled into her face, the other limped onto of the hundreds of pages dedicated to statistical analysis. Maria, a young Pilipino woman, is sitting alone along the windowed wall of a quaint coffee shop. Barely a stranger passes by outside. She looks uncomfortable in the fastened mental chair, but her intense gaze suggests notions of correlation analysis sooth her rigid posture.

Maria occasionally adjusts her angle but never moves her hands. A jean suit encases her; concealing her stout frame. She dresses this way to stand out from the other students on campus, but she wears bright runners. While serious, she maintains a flexible and durable appearance.

Her coffee is to go, but something made her stay. Between pages, she blows the coffee's steam away but never sips. As time passes, she realizes she must attend a personal engagement. She looks anxious; concerned that her twenty minutes of study will not prepare her for next week's exam, but frightful of what is to come. Regardless, she quickly packs her text into a large, square pink purse covered in hearts and trots out of the coffee shop, leaving the untouched coffee behind.

Her 5'2" frame moves unencumbered through the door and onto the grey sidewalk. The runners show their true worth as she picks up her pace. The denim flexes easily around her brisk, pumping legs. Passers-by can hear metal clanking in the pink hearted purse, but nobody stops her. Nobody recognizes the sharp steel clattering of knives in Maria's purse.

...

Maria walks into her apartment. Her cluttered, cheap porno rags covering vomit stains. The TV's rabbit ears dangle to the floor, receiving nothing. Her brother, in a brown-stained undershirt and green underwear, draped himself over the yellow, crusty couch before passing out. Maria reviles him. She spent so many years collecting these obscure pornographic magazines, touching all genres from the grotesque to fantastical. She whimpered when as pulled a magazine from a mound of her brother's underwear. Her prized magazine featuring a green, gelatinous woman with one breast, six eyes and a vagina the size of a Buick was tore down the middle.

Instantly, she grabbed the knives from her bag. They were slender, double-edged, and showed no use until now. Maria turned to her brother ...