Isn’t the Light OK?

In Steely Dan’s song “Show Biz Kids,” the back­ing singers keep repeat­ing a refrain of “Go to lost wages” over every part of the song. I heard it the other day when the guy dri­ving for our car­pool played a tape of Count­down to Ecstasy.
It occurred to me that this was well before Pro Tools […]

(Hmm…that post title sounds like it could be an old Bob Dylan song…)
Con­tin­u­ing along the theme of regional dialect, I found this lit­tle test via Alex King’s blog. The results are inter­est­ing, if not sur­pris­ing given where I live.

Your Lin­guis­tic Profile:

65% Gen­eral Amer­i­can English

20% Yan­kee

10% Upper Midwestern

0% Dixie

0% Mid­west­ern

What Kind of Amer­i­can Eng­lish Do You Speak?

Heather, a high school friend of my wife’s, posts about some stu­pid­ity she’s run into at work.
I just fin­ished typ­ing a form for a cus­tomer. Part of it was a request for a new sec­tion that detailed cer­tain con­di­tions under which they would not oper­ate. One such con­di­tion, you ask?Incli­mate weather.
That’s even bet­ter than the […]

Last Sat­ur­day, Carla and I found a Christmas-themed Ziploc bag on the driver’s seat of her car with an official-looking doc­u­ment in it. The per­son from whom I bought the Hyundai had hand-delivered the title to us.
As of two days ago, the beast is on the road and get­ting me to work. It’s not the prettiest […]

So…still no title.
The DMV tells me the VIN num­ber for our “new” car isn’t even in their sys­tem. Appar­ently, it’s not uncom­mon for it to take 3 weeks or more to get a VIN num­ber entered, then once it’s in their sys­tem, another 7–10 busi­ness days for a title to be issued. Wel­come to beau­racracy, folks.
This […]