2324 Weak End

Occasionally I'll be going through life minding my own business and then see something that gives me a cause for pause.

I saw one of those things recently on a drive up to Everett. I went by the Cabelas up there and they had a big banner on their building that said, "NRA Weekend Sale." 

I thought it was interesting because no matter where you are on the whole gun thing it's odd that a quasi-political organization would be featured by a retailer with a weekend sale. 

I wouldn't expect to see a Target having a "NEA Weekend" during back to school shopping season. Or REI having a "Sierra Club Weekend," but who knows? Maybe that's next. Retail's tough. You need to target market to your ideal demographic. 

Speaking of targeting, another thing that made me pause was when I opened up my Google account the other day and instead of going to the regular sign-in page there was first a landing page on which they asked for my mobile phone number.

"Help us keep your accounts safe," they entreated by way of explanation. 

Um, no. I'm already upset that you compromised my security by providing me with only one password for multiple accounts. One hackable password, I may add. Thanks for making it easy for them, despite all the anti-hacker literature saying multiple passwords are the best way to protect different silos of data. 

Now you want to have my mobile phone number tied to it so if and when some foreign or domestic troll decides to hack into my multiple accounts they can hack into my personal and business phone data too.

It's like you're getting a kickback from them through the back door or something. Maybe your Google store should have a "Hacker's Weekend."

America, ya gotta love it.

2323 Shift Happens

Words. They sure are shifty. Whether because the rules of speech make us expect something else or new changes in culture nudge our brains to move in different directions.

Like when a friend sent me a video she took at a recent event. What was different from the old video technology was she had taken it with her phone. When folks took photographs with a camera they were a photographer. When they took video they were a videographer. When you take it with your smartphone are you a phonographer? 

A problematic word. As it also suggests you made phonograph records. And it sounds uncomfortably close to pornographer. 

In another word shift I drove by a place near the airport called Spa Depot. Except in their big building sign they run the two words together into SpaDepot. And for the first time, I guess because of a combination of the font and a recent news story that put my mind in mind of the new marijuana law I read spadepot as spade pot. 

Oh yeah. Spade Pot, that new marijuana garden supply house.

Lastly I was confronted with a conundrum in a commercial I heard on the radio recently. It was for McDonalds and they were talking about groups of things. Like a Flock of Falcons and a Herd of Colts. And they also mentioned a Group of Saints. 

It made me wonder. "Group" sounds so un-special and un-saintly. Are you sure that isn't a Bevy of Saints? Or, since many folks think saints turn into angels and since angels have wings, a Flock of Saints might be more appropriate.  

Or maybe the word they use for bats. Since, like saints, bats are mammals with wings. How about a Cloud of Saints?

Doesn't sound shifty at all. 

America, ya gotta love it. 

2322 Ash Questions

Not long ago, I was at an event up north and one of the motivational speakers there named Tim Richardson told me about a banner he'd seen. It was at a place where deceased loved ones were turned into ashes. A crematorium.

Tim said the banner they had hanging on the front of the building seemed wrong somehow. Wrong in the first place because it just didn't seem dignified to hang a banner on the front of a institution that ushers the remains of folks to eternal rest. And even wronger because the banner said, "We do cremations right." 

Really? Have we reached the time in our national decline from all things mannerly and appropriate that we wax hyperbolic and competitive about the services we render in the funeral industry? 

We do cremations right? 

Has there been a spate of cremations done wrong that the ordinary cremation consumer has been subjected to? "Yeah, I took in my granny and boy oh boy did they mess her up. Not even close to complete incineration. And the urn had obviously been purchased on sale at K-Mart." 

I suppose it's possible. A crematorium I once visited had a fancy machine that automatically sifted the cremated ashes to take out lumps of bone and other bits like tooth fillings and such. It was called, of all things, a cremulator, which for some reason sounded like a machine I operated when I was a teenager working at Dairy Queen.

So it's possible some less than right crematorium didn't employ a cremulator and the one that does cremations right does. "We were so disappointed in what that inferior place did with Aunt Madge. The ashes were a little chunky... 

"So we took her into the place that does cremations right. And had her re-cremated."

America, ya gotta love it.