Customer service ain’t what it use to be. That’s really what prompted me several weeks ago to draw this one: when there are multiple, abandoned, unoccupied, off-line check out lanes, say for instance at a grocery store, and yet everyone is channelled into the one and only line that snakes its way toward the light as though it were the illuminated path of the Three Wise Men.
However, the bigger question is this: When you’re in this situation, are you standing in or on line?
Today was my final session. I feel better.
Can’t live with’em; can’t live without’em!
“Heaven is reserved for people who like surprises.” Personal communication. Demetrius Dumm, O.S.B.
N.B. I add this particular note a couple of years later, November 9, 2016 to be precise. When I originally posted this, I did not know that Fr. Demetrius had just died a few weeks earlier. His death came as a surprise to me sometime in early 2014. Click here for his obituary and here for books written by him.
J. P. Wynne High School Inter-Office Electronic Mail
TO: Mr. Walter White, Chemistry Department
FROM: Ms. Carmen Molina, Assistant Principal
Walter, I hate to ask you for this favor on such short notice and since, I know, you haven’t been feeling well lately, but Ted had to leave due to a family emergency, and I need you to take his last period Drivers Ed class today. Thanks, I owe you one! Carmen
Real estate and rental property ads. Those who write them should accommodate or at least consider the learning styles of those of us who take things literally.
I believe that even Santa fantasizes about cutting loose on a John Deere, no GPS, on the open field.
SAD NOTE: I used to sell a small greeting card featuring this image on my Redbubble page . Pretty sure I sold 11 copies…worldwide! No, just checked: I sold 14 greeting cards and one t-shirt!!! Earned $11.74 (USD)!! On April 4, 2019 Redbubble notified me that they received a complaint from Deere & Company alleging my artwork violated their rights; consequently, Redbubble removed it. A spokesperson from Santa Clause declined to comment.
Merry Christmas, hear!
I love language even though it’s my back-up medium; and even though I’m fascinated by grammar, what I love even more is how language keeps trying to escape from grammar, i.e., langue here parole there (See Ferdinand de Saussure). We’re all sorta’ bilingual in this regard. We’re code switchers, better yet. Under certain circumstances our grammar can let its hair down and play it by ear; but occasionally we gotta polish it up, comb its hair, and hope it’s as compliant as possible.
It’s like it is the way it is when the way it is says so, which means it could be this way or that way or this way and that way both rolled up into an overarching it is what it is-ness!
Hit it Duke! Listen to a 1943 recording of It Don’t Mean a Thing, Duke Ellington (1931)
It took some real carpentry skills to diagram sentences back in the day, didn’t it? Not only did you need to know grammar, but then you had to build a contraption on which each and every part of speech could rest in suspended animation indefinitely, correctly, and comfortably! It wasn’t easy. Imagine building this one!!!
I added this image/poem on Dec. 18, 2024 because I believe it helps deepen our understanding and appreciation of grammar and the architecture of expression.
“I really do not know that anything has ever been more exciting than diagramming sentences.”
― Gertrude Stein, Lectures in America (1935)
portfoliolongo 