captioner thoughts

So here we are.

Have you ever watched live newscasts with closed captioning on? Did you ever imagine what the captioner was thinking as he or she was typing those captions in real time? Well, guess what? I did!

I’m tired of writing other people’s words. I want to write my own.

Damn. Typo.

Why can’t people talk slower?

sleeves

So here we are.

There was a fascinating story the other day about a section of the New York State standardized English test, recently taken by area eighth graders, that left the students “baffled,” according to the New York Times. It was one of those “read this story and answer questions about it” sections, and the story was adapted for the test from a Daniel Pinkwater children’s book passage. I’d never heard the story before, but it goes something like this:

clock

So here we are.

A freelancer’s life has its pros and cons. Even some of the cons can lead to pros: a lack of work is distressing, but it allows one to have a much wider range of dental appointment times when the need arises. (That pro, however, can lead to another con if one has not worked enough to qualify for dental coverage.)

Or, the con of not having work can lead to the pro of getting to sleep in... leading to the additional pro of staying up later... but if the pro of a last-minute job should kick in, it becomes a big con when one who has become accustomed to night-owl-ism has to rise much earlier than usual.

sing happy

So here we are. 

Aside and wholly apart from my hard, hard love for NBC’s Community (and holy crap, what a stellar episode last week’s “Pillows and Blankets” was!), I have a big crush on FOX’s New Girl. I did not want to like this show. Truly, I did not. And if my husby did not have an all-too stereotypical crush on Zooey Deschanel, it’s charming tree would have fallen alone in my abandoned forest. I guess I should be thankful for that. Because it has brought me joy.

And I have come to accept its five-word theme song, though it took me half a season to do so. (Okay, sometimes it’s fifteen words.) It’s catchy. It’s short. It’s cute. And it’s happy. It makes me realize that it’s been a long time since there have been shiny happy lyrics in TV theme songs. So many theme songs today don’t have lyrics, and those that do are just snippets of existing songs by alt rock bands (thus the bouncy-bleak we could be roped up, tied up, dead in a year that opens Community every week). 

a toast

So here we are.

I would like to propose a toast: to the idiots.