Cutting costs at GM

As part of its effort "to cut $15 billion in costs," General Motors no longer maintains the 562 clocks at its proving grounds, thus saving on replacement batteries and the labor required to reset for DST. Things are changing in the supply closets too:

At the proving grounds in Milford, Mich., where the clocks are now frozen in time, GM has switched to regular Ticonderoga No. 2 pencils instead of the more expensive mechanical pencils that used to be freely available in storage closets, known in GM-speak as "pull stations." Many of the moves have left employees scratching their heads. "Is this the best they can do to save money?" asked one engineer recently while checking the drawers at one pull station near his desk. "There's a lot of rubber bands but not much else — a handful of pens and Post-It Notes," he said.

Pencils? Wall Clocks? No Cost Cuts Are Too Small at GM (Wall Street Journal)

Yes, the Wall Street Journal, not The Onion.

General Motors is also cutting costs by selling two of its five corporate planes.

Orange crate art (Brown)

[Illustration by Leonard Shortall.]

Encyclopedia Brown and Sally Kimball match wits:

The great battle of brains took place in the Tigers' clubhouse. The two champions, seated on orange crates, faced each other. The Tigers crowded behind Encyclopedia. The girls' softball team crowded behind Sally. That left just enough room in the tool shed to think.

Donald J. Sobol, Encyclopedia Brown, Boy Detective (New York: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1963) 24–25

Thinking about the Scholastic Book Club and reading some comments at Boing Boing made me want to read Encyclopedia Brown books. Yes, I'm reading Encyclopedia Browns. And I understand now why my daughter read so many of them when she was younger.

One element I especially like in these stories: irrefutable presentations of fact compel bad guys to confess, every time. Confronted with evidence of his dishonesty, Bugs Meany doesn't hit Encyclopedia over the head and run off. He owns up to his wrongdoing and returns stolen items to their owners. Con artists, kidnappers, and robbers admit their crimes on the spot. Truth is a powerful thing in the world of Encyclopedia Brown, more powerful perhaps than Sally Kimball's punches. (Sorry, Sally.)

Streets and alleys of the Depression

On the telephone today, my mom and dad mentioned some bits of their Depression childhoods. My mom recalled an organ grinder and monkey at an entrance to the BMT elevated subway in Brooklyn. The monkey collected money from the audience. My dad recalled singers serenading apartment buildings from alleys (never streets) in Union City, New Jersey. What songs? "My Wild Irish Rose" and such. Sometimes a saxophonist or trumpeter would come by. People threw coins wrapped in pieces of newspaper.

Other familiar figures: the fish man, the ice man, the vegetable man, all with horse-drawn carts.

Channel flipping

A man has a chance to make positive changes by reliving Christmas Day over and over again.

*

A ten-year-old orphan spreads a rumor that an elderly man is really Santa Claus.

*

Determined to break into show business, Lucy fakes amnesia.

Bingo.

How to improve writing (no. 23 in a series)

David Frauenfelder, whose Breakfast with Pandora is fine reading for anyone interested in language and myth and storytelling, wonders what I would do with the following sentence, from a Los Angeles Times article by Rachel Abramowitz:

Of all the major American artists, [Woody] Allen has experienced one of the cruelest and most violent whipsaws of fortune, of tumbling from audience adulation to mass approbation.

David notes the various problems with this sentence: "preposition abuse," "false genitive," "a terrible mixed metaphor," "and to top it off, a hilarious malapropism at the end."

Preposition abuse: check. Of all . . . , one of . . . of fortune, of tumbling . . . . The repetition is awkward; the final of could be cut with no loss.

False genitive: check. The genetive or possessive case "marks a noun as modifying another noun." "[A]udience adulation" should be "audiences' adulation." (I'm grateful to know the name for this problem, which I correct often in my students' writing.)

A terrible mixed metaphor: check. P.R. Wilkinson's Thesaurus of Traditional English Metaphors (London: Routledge, 2002) defines whipsaw as "A double disadvantage; bad dilemma; something that cuts both ways and is injurious whatever you do [Amer]." Nothing to do with tumbling, and nothing to do with what happened to Allen. The writer may have been thinking of whiplash or backlash, though those tired metaphors too don't go well with "of fortune" or "tumbling."

A hilarious malapropism at the end: check. Approbation is "an act of approving formally or officially." David suggests that the writer was in search of opprobrium: "something that brings disgrace," "public disgrace or ill fame that follows from conduct considered grossly wrong or vicious."

So what to do with the original sentence? I'd revise to give a clearer sense that Allen's relationship with Soon-Yi Previn generated more widespread interest than his movies. I'd also remove the pretension of "major American artists" and the melodrama of "fortune." Reversal of fortune is a trope that applies to, say, Oedipus or Lear. Such reversal follows from choices made with inadequate knowledge, by those who have no way to foresee what will befall them. It's reasonable though to anticipate disapproval when embarking on a relationship with the adopted daughter of one's long-time partner. My sentence:

Once celebrated by critics and fans, Allen is now a figure of scandal even among those who have never seen his films.

[This post is no. 23 in a very occasional series, "How to improve writing," dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose. And by the way, I like Woody Allen's films, or most of them.]

Related reading
All "How to improve writing" posts (via Pinboard)

Hi and "Lois"

Today's Hi and Lois features another dictionary with thumb-notches at the tops of pages. I didn't expect to see one of those again. There's also an assortment of disappearing objects (collect them all!), an off-kilter wall, and a mutant iPod (the iPod enormo). But what's most disturbing here is the teacher, who looks an awful lot like Hi Flagston in drag. Yikes.



Related reading
All Hi and Lois posts

Overheard

A hallway exchange:

"Where is the A?"

"There is no A."

Creeping realism, I guess.

Related reading
All "overheard" posts (Pinboard)

Clapathy

At Urban Dictionary, B. Kennison has posted a well-made word, clapathy. Its definition: "When an audience grows weary of clapping, either at a ceremony or musical performance."

As I write, clapathy is being voted down by UD's readers. If you like this word, you might want to visit its page and give it a thumbs-up. Browse the comments (and the rest of the site) at your own risk: Urban Dictionary contributors are a pretty salty and saucy group of neologists.

Prophylactic medicine: "Please hold your applause" helps prevent clapathy (I speak as both audience member and occasional emcee).

"The experiment is over"

Yes, thank goodness.

If you'd like to guess what happened to the man in this Alfred Eisenstadt photograph, leave your answer in a comment. When you give up, you can find the answer here.

This photograph is one of several million (?!) from Life magazine, now hosted by Google in its Life photo archive.

Willa Cather and James Schuyler

From James Schuyler's "Hymn to Life" (1974): "Willa Cather alone is worth / The price of admission to the horrors of civilization."

Like James Schuyler, I like Willa Cather. (Also James Schuyler.)