Doesn't MSNBC.com have copyeditors? Probably not. As budgets for content shrink, copyeditors are considered expendable. In fact, sadly enough, many editors don't even know what a real copyeditor is or does.
From a recent MSNBC article on the bus monitor who was bullied:
So which is it, MSNBC? Klein or Kline? Maybe we should throw a third spelling in there, just for fun. How about "Kleyne"?
For the record, her name is spelled "Klein." I'm puzzled at how someone could write this article and misspell her name four times, while also spelling her name correctly, once in a while. But then perhaps I'm the rare person who's bugged by this kind of thing.
As for the video itself -- which you can watch at the link above -- I finally saw it this morning, and I could only get through two minutes of it, stopping well before what I hear are the worst parts. Cringe-inducing and horrible; it gave me flashbacks to both riding the bus and being teased at school, though I hesitate to say "bullied," because I never got anything remotely close to this. I know the kids have apologized, but I hope they feel genuinely bad and ashamed of their behavior. More than that, I hope their parents do.
You know what's weird? They don't check your ID at jury duty. Not when you enter the courthouse, not when you report to the jury pool, not when you're called onto a panel. So in theory, you could send another person to serve in your place, couldn't you? Maybe some friend who's bored, and would welcome having something to do in exchange for lunch money and a beer? Of course, that's probably "against the law" or something, but I do wonder if anyone's ever done it.
I got excused from jury duty today, and thank goodness. I was put on the panel for a rape trial, and the moment the judge said the word "rape," half the potential jurors let out gasps of horror. My stomach dropped. (I'm not sure whether I gasped out loud, but I was making horrified noises in my head.) As with the murder trial I served on before, the defendant was in the courtroom with us, which was unnerving to say the least.
I was, I'll admit, frantically trying to think of things I could say to get dismissed from the jury. They wouldn't have been lies. Forget about the fact that serving on a long trial might have endangered my new job; any case involving violence against women invokes all sorts of knee-jerk reactions from me, fair or not. I doubt, however, that I had any real grounds to be dismissed. It was clear that nobody else wanted to serve on this jury, either, and I was sure everyone was thinking similar thoughts, preparing themselves to come off as biased, hostile and uncooperative. I wondered how the lawyers would be able to decide which jurors were the least unfit to serve.
Despite how little I wanted to be on this case, however, I wouldn't have been able to answer "yes" to any of the questions that might get someone off a rape trial. I'm also a generally truthful person, and I'm not going to lie and say I'm biased if I'm not. Also, I'm not good at being obnoxious in public. Based on the several other people around me who did not appear to have that problem, I was certain I would get picked.
Before questioning, the judge let us take a lunch break, and when we reported back, we sat and waited for another hour with no word about what was going on. People started getting grumpy. Some voiced the assumption that, since it was getting late in the afternoon, we'd have to come back tomorrow for the questioning. I overheard one woman fretting that she was supposed to go out of town tomorrow -- she had her ticket and everything -- and she had thought that since the jury summons had today's date on it, she only had to report today, and then she'd be done. I couldn't be that sympathetic. How long does she think trials last? Does she not understand what a jury is?
We were finally called back in, only to have the judge -- who was simultaneously presiding over another trial that was going through jury deliberations -- tell us a complication had come up that was impeding his ability to oversee this case either today or tomorrow. (I'm guessing it was related to the other trial, but I have no idea.) Therefore, we were all dismissed. We looked at each other in confusion. "It's a good thing!" one of the court officers told us. "You're done!"
In the elevator back down to the jury pool room, everyone expressed relief, with one guy saying that the defendant "looked like he did it." (Was he joking? I couldn't tell.) "I'll see that guy again," a woman in the back said, revealing that she was a corrections officer. "He's going to jail." On the one hand, despite my natural inclination toward the alleged victim, these comments bothered me; it offends my admittedly tenuous faith in the justice system that people would pre-judge anyone, even an accused rapist. I would hope that any person standing trial does get the benefit of the doubt, and is regarded as innocent until proven guilty.
On the other hand, I'm really, really glad and relieved that -- this time, anyway -- I didn't have to test those beliefs for myself.
I am going to start posting typos and other linguistic errors I find around the web on this blog. Because it's easy, and it amuses me. Also, I just got back from California last night, and I can't sleep. I slept great when I was in California -- bless the suburbs for their dark, peaceful quiet and spacious bedrooms -- but here I am back in New York and back on the Ambien, which I hope is only temporary. (The Ambien, that is. New York's got its hooks in me. I just wish it were quieter, darker, and had bigger bedrooms.)
I'd never watched a Gordon Ramsay show before yesterday, but I caught an episode of "Master Chef" on the plane, and then tonight was the next new episode, so I watched that because nothing else was on. Ah, summer: the period of time when there's no good TV, which should free me up to do actual work and productive things, but somehow it doesn't.
Well, dang blast it if my pristinely empty DVR might now have to be filled up with this show, because I find myself rooting for that blind chick to win it all. Christine Ha, one of the cooking contestants, is blind -- not blind as in "she's blind to the ways of the world" or "blinded by love" or even "blind" as I call myself because I need glasses to see three inches in front of me. She literally can't see. And somehow or other she manages to keep cooking great food, even when she had to cook a live crab that was snapping at her hands and bit her finger without her being able to stop it. Or when she put an apple pie in the oven and had to take it out without knowing what the crust looked like.
A likable reality show contestant is a rare thing, but even the other contestants on the show are supporting and applauding this woman, though eventually she may have to stop it with the crying. (In this case, however, the tears are somewhat understandable.) There was also one douchebag of a contestant who, having won an advantage in an earlier challenge, picked a live crab for her knowing it would cause problems, with her inability to see and all. But the joke was on him, because she won the challenge with a bright-looking crab ceviche. I hope she makes up t-shirts that read, "Ha, I can cook" or or "Ha, how you like them apples?" or just "Ha HA, douchebag."
Anyway, I went looking for some bio information on her, and this is what I found:
Fist blind? Am I a perv (don't answer that) for thinking that's some kind of sexual reference? Maybe she was blinded because someone punched her with a fist? Or is "fist blind" a term for the loss of ability to see your fist? "I'm sorry! I can't give you that fist-bump, I'm fist-blind!"
Click on the article itself, and you'll see that the word has been corrected to "first." Booooring.
Hello, ladies and germs! So nice to see you again. How's everybody doing tonight? Hope you missed me. [cough cough] Is this thing on?
Things have been weird and busy lately, or weirdly busy, if you prefer. (Busily weird?) First off, the personal news: After a year of searching, I got a jay-oh-bee. A job. Ish. It's with a startup, and it's freelance (hence the "ish"), but it's full-time -- or it will be, eventually -- which means that, in theory, I can get off this job-market treadmill for just a little bit. I'm excited to join a startup, and I'm trying hard to forget that I once worked at a startup that laid me off six months after I joined, and folded completely a couple months later.
Looking for a job is ... mm, how can I put this? ... not fun, especially when you don't already have a job to begin with. This past year hasn't been easy. I found myself going through all sorts of strategies, from "I'm going to apply for a job every day" to "I'm going to try to network every day" to "screw it, I'm going to lie on my couch and watch old episodes of Sports Night."
None of these strategies were all that wonderful for my self-esteem. For one thing, applying for jobs online is a tedious, time-consuming, demoralizing business. I hesitate to say "waste of time" because presumablysomeone in human resources is looking at these things, and in at least a few cases there exists the remote possibility that the job is still open; but the frustrating thing from the applicant's end is that you don't know what they're looking for, not really, and these forms can take hours to fill out.
It's not just the cover letter and resume they require now, but, on top of that, a listing for each job you've held, along with your duties for each, starting and ending salary, supervisor, address, phone number, reason for leaving, etc. I'm surprised they didn't ask for my shoe size, weight, cholesterol levels and sixth-grade report card in the bargain. And then you hit "submit," and after that, of course, there's silence. Crickets and empty desert plains and siiiilence. Spending over two hours applying for a job only never to hear a word back is disheartening, to say the least, no matter how futile you already suspected the enterprise might be.
But I did, I will say, learn a whole lot about networking. When you're looking for a job, people advise you to network constantly, except they don't actually tell you what "networking" is. Is it inviting everyone you know to meet you for dinner, even though the money in your savings account is bleeding slowly away? Is it asking friends to connect you with people they know who work at cool places, which leads to your writing them stilted/near-desperate emails and soldiering through awkward small talk over tepid cups of coffee? Is it hitting up recruiters? Is it sending cold messages over LinkedIn? Is it approaching strangers at cocktail parties and answering their polite "What do you do?" by blurting out, "I'm looking for a job"?
It's all of those things, and more, and less. No one tells you what networking is because it's different in every situation. I can't say I ever got good at it -- I'm intrinsically bad at putting myself out there, meeting new people, and selling myself -- but I did get slightly more comfortable with reaching out to people, taking unanswered emails in stride, meeting new contacts just to meet them, learning not to take every perceived rejection personally. Once, a recruiter, after I'd told her over the phone about how I lost my job, responded, "That was YOU?!" and shortly thereafter said she had to take care of something and would call me back in an hour. My phone never rang. I felt like I'd gone on a blind date, and, after 15 minutes of conversation, my date had gone to the bathroom and never returned. (It turned out the recruiter had just gotten really busy, and we ended up meeting later, though only after I spent that one night feeling sorry for myself and playing Florence and the Machine's "Shake It Out" about 50 times. I also watched this song from Jim Henson's memorial service, and cried. I guess today is "someday," because I am already looking back at it and laughing.)
Well, enough about that. New things are afoot, I hope, and I'm excited to see how they work out. I say "I hope" because, in a horrible twist of irony, I've been summoned for jury duty, right when my schedule is about to get busier and precisely six years -- the first moment at which I was eligible -- after I served on that murder trial the last time (which I chronicled here and here). Therefore, the start date for my new job has been delayed, and I can only pray that doing my civic duty won't cause me to lose my new job. I'm not going to be one of those people who raises my hand and claims, in perfect English, that I don't speak English, but I'll admit I'm nervous about how this will all play out. Will my potential new employer still want me if I get on a trial lasting two months? I may have to throw myself on the mercy of the court, even though the Brooklyn courthouse is notoriously unmerciful (to jurors, anyway).
One more thing: I started a food blog a couple of months back, mostly to create my own food-writing experience, and also to have a project to keep me busy. It's called Just Another Meal, and my initial goal is to review bar food, specifically chicken wings. I haven't been writing in it as much as I've wanted to (so don't feel neglected, Insomnia Haiku), but I do sort of like the stuff I've done there already. So if you like chicken wings or just food generally -- or me -- and felt like taking a look, you can here.
And that's it for me, for now. I've seen The Avengers and Moonrise Kingdom this summer, and loved both. But for some reason the movie I'm most delirious to see right now is Magic Mike, and yes this makes me a cliche, but I don't care, because it's Channing Tatum (who for the most part does nothing for me) and a bunch of other handsome young men (plus Matthew McConaughey) ripping their clothes off and doing a lot of hip-thrusting, and it's Steven Soderbergh directing, which makes it practically an Oscar contender, so that's OK that I'm dying to see it, right? Oh, fine, I don't care that this whole thing is making me feel like one of those silly women screaming "TAKE IT ALL OFF!" at Thunder From Down Under. I am not alone, and therefore, I am no longer embarrassed. I must have watched the trailer about 12 times already, mostly showing it on my iPhone to previously uninformed friends who then immediately ask to see it again. And if you yourself haven't seen the trailer, here is the redband version, which features a lot of shirtlessness and pantlessness and is, not to put too fine a point on it, awesome. Feast your eyes, ladies. Feast.
Bonus photo: The bouncy house at my nephew's birthday party last weekend, after it was invaded by the adults. We can probably blame management for not putting a weight limit on that thing (but not the adults for invading, because why should the kids have all the fun?). I call this picture "Terror at the Bouncy House."