excuse me, are you any good?

i tend to fall for rousing endorsements.

is this good? i ask the baker of her desserts. the best, she says unhesitatingly, and i return home with stuff i do not set out to buy. is this good? i ask the lady at the little bakery today. it depends on you, she says. some people like it.

what i say is, political correctness is the new name for lack of enthusiasm is the euphemism for poor business sense is a nice way of saying something else.

watson's

the sign says, buy 2 get 1 free. the cashier is sweetly apologetic. this is already at the reduced price, she explains, so the sign does not apply. you would have to pay the higher, canceled out price, in order to get the buy 2 get 1 free deal, even though the sign is there, and you have no way of knowing any better until you attempt to pay for it.

do you have a membership card? she asks as she rings me up.

the world's local bank

local singapore bank. automated answering system. for this, press that. for that, press some more. don't lose heart. male voice. australian accent. aussie!

what i say is, if you have to be tortured by bad accents, it should at least be your own.

error

the name says beijing. it proudly guards the entrance to the quartier chinois. the sign on the door says  zagat rated. we are ready to be impressed.

what i say is, the zagat reviewer had no idea what good chinese tastes like. 

idiot canine 2

this is what i want to say to Dog, if he only understood:

do you know what we do to human kids who refuse to eat? we let them go hungry, that's what.

clearly the entire family is being terrorized and held emotionally hostage by an entitled picky brat who would be getting his just desserts if he were human.

missing the point

a robot might be able to apply relevant algorithms to decipher this.

but humans are stuck, you know? how do you decide between

grree gmee and grnee?

grrrr.

that's my air you're breathing

today i crawl 0.9 miles into crazy traffic to collect the visa from the brutally efficient cattle ranch.

while standing in line, the gentleman of east asian extraction behind me stands sufficiently close to physically breathe down my neck. i understand that in some places respecting personal space is not exactly explicit. although i have always understood that a minimum-sized personal bubble is implicit. i have also always understood that this minimum includes the ether around my neck. perhaps i understood wrong.

obit 2

on the heels of this my friend reminds me of your you're and there they're their, which are interchangeable these days.

i wonder. do they arise and spread from spellcheck malfunction pedagogic failure or straight up incompetence? because dis is evltn. d othr is clearly grammatical.

fancy that!

creative capitalism 

meets diligent piety.
fide reflexa. ad absurdum. i daresay.

limited options

i want to join a contest. the prize includes a hotel stay in new york city for singapore day. don't book our hotel stay yet, i tell HOM, we may get lucky. here's the contest entry form:

something amiss here, surely. not to mention a tad impolitic. 

what if one day a welfare bum named steve living off his parents returns

to singapore to start a company called, say, orange?

254-467-8558

do the people who make unsolicited and unwanted calls have any idea how truly unwelcome they are? what i mean is, what kind of deformed personality gets a kick out of repeatedly calling unsuspecting telephone numbers just to hang up on them?

i mean to say, telemarketers are bad enough, but at least you get to be cuttingly rude to them, and you at least have the prerogative of hanging up on them mid-spiel. these spoofing calls on the other hand are like receiving a series of haunted house calls from an idiot phantom.

note to self. remember this website: www.donotcall.gov

uncle sam

the breakfast table is a warzone of overstuffed binders loose sheets laptops calculator and printer surrounding one irate fellow grappling with his taxes late into each night. 

should be seasoned by now, somebody says. what i want to know is, how does one get seasoned to novel demands for greater details of increasing intimacy questionable useability and complete unpredictability? as in, how was i supposed to know you would want me to keep this stuff at my fingertips for my husband to report to you? before i threw it away?  

the award for this year's bureaucrat's delight goes to: 

highest account balance recorded in reporting year 

i can't be totally sure, but i suspect a misguided young ideologue on the loose.

confession of a stiff upper lip

it occurs to me that there is a faintest whiff of smarminess in the out-gushing of lurve and other public domain statements on some facebook statuses today. i want to say, save the mush for face-to-face restricted audience voice communications, please. some of us joined a social network, not an aviary.

fort knox

the aim of packaging, someone needs to tell the merchants, should not be to create a plastic citadel that only serves to inspire all manner of uncharitable thoughts in the customers when they try to get at the innards. for the record, this one is a perfectly sealed box of hard plastic to the inside of which the individually plastic encased components are attached by long strips of tape which also serve to attach the individual little baggies to each other.

cut the stuff, bro. save some fossils.

definition

also read this. in summary, a rash of unauthorized withdrawals from various bank accounts are traced to skimming devices, presumably illegal, at a couple of ATMs. the bank says it's not a lapse in security or anything. all our ATMs are secure, our systems are fine...

what i want to know is, what is a security lapse?

ghetto justice (2011)

highly acclaimed award winning hk drama series by tvb.

there is unsatisfactory ending, and there is HIGHLY UNSATISFACTORY ENDING. there should be a warning somewhere before people invest energy and time on a series. protagonist fouls up royally, for example. or, favorite character gets bumped off. 

what i say is, they really should produce a better plot line that ends with a thumping good finale that stitches all the loose ends up, instead of one that leaves you gasping in disbelief and the sick realization that they mean to shoot a sequel.

social network

new facebook trend:

of people thanking their gods for their significant others and wishing all manner of blessing and longevity upon them, ON THEIR FACEBOOK STATUS, on their birthdays anniversaries and other dog days. significant others who, as i understand it, reside in the same household or presumably have access to restricted communiqués.

you won't catch me doing this. i'm too busy cringing.

two books

i'm working my way through these:
poorly made in china - paul midler (2008)
the cost of discipleship - d bonhoeffer (1948)

an american in china and an anti-hitler german in the second world war, both in their thirties. i begin to think it is unfair to toggle M with B simply because it shows him up in such a supremely unflattering light. B writes elegant strong prose with minimal superfluity. M is jejune by comparison and brash to boot. B's thinking is clear organized and logical. M has some logic i am still trying to decipher. also, B is clean. i expend energy anticipating M being off color.

having my expectations of american writers shaped by robin wright paul yergin and thomas friedman is unkind to paul midler i suppose. investigative journalists are not busy businessmen. but then neither are they a wartime theologian, and that one holds up well enough. i guess what i'm saying is, if you don't write well, and you write commercially, get help.

just call me Princess

the fellow at the counter at the pizza store/ deli/ cellphone repair shop/ helpline wants my first name to put me into the line waiting for service. 

all i say is, why? 

i get that we are all equal and do not lord it over one another. are we therefore intimate?

groundhog bonanza

3:30 pm go to airport

5 pm flight delayed

6 pm flight delayed

7 pm flight delayed

8 pm flight delayed

that's just the domestic leg

if you think you've heard this before you would be right on the money.