Vintage SNL fans will instantly know what such a phrase means….for the more mainstream population, I simply refer you to the latest dark foreboding on the prospects of our culture today: The Virgin Megastore closing.
Volume. That’s what we do.
Sometimes exposing the truth costs something
My love for euphemisms continues…
- “Is that bad?” = I am a cruel person
- “Your goals align with mine” = Your work will support my goals (variation: In this case, there IS an I in teamwork)
- “Professional” = I am not employed and have no title.
- “Executive” = same as immediately above, but I also seek a role where I can delegate and get paid a lot
- “Thanks for being so open” = I am going to do my best to forget everything you just over-shared.
..and on a darker note:
“Assigned to a special military tribunal” = time to make arrangements
[Of course, I would welcome learning of cases where such fora ruled in favor of the defendant and thus be proven wrong].
Open to correction
Really, that’s all we can ask of us imperfect beings right? Based on a crazy turn of events this evening, I hereby recant (half of) my cynical life-motto: “If it seems like it can’t get any worse, it will.”
The sordid deets:
It’s 5pm and my friend A is demoing some software on my new idol-worship Macbook, and I log back into my Gmail account only to find this incomprehensible error message:
Lieber Nutzer,
in Deutschland heißt unser E-Mail-Service Google Mail, nicht Gmail.
Sie können Ihre E-Mails in Deutschland direkt unter http://mail.google.com
abrufen. Ihr Google-Team
Der E-Mail-Service von Google ist in Deutschland nicht mehr über die von Ihnen eingegebene URL abrufbar.
Allgemeine Informationen zu Google finden Sie in Deutschland wie gewohnt unter www.google.de oder www.google.com.
Um….this is disturbing, to say the least. I’m convinced I’ve been violated by a trojan. I’ll stop there.
But sit tight: the incredibly audacious thing is that (even more than the fact that “Lieber Nutzer” means “Dear User” and not, as A prefers, “Dear Nutcase”) this is…LEGIT!
My gmail was truly “rehubbed” and all I had to do was use mail.google.com vs. gmail.google.com
All on Google servers. All legit. All clean.
So in this case, things didn’t get worse than I expected…. they actually got BETTER! C-raz-y.
My Lieber Nutzer message makes me want to break out the Sacher Torte!