Comments for taking fire

Comment on the facelessness of bureaucracy by air

air — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 14:12:27 +0000

> did you just call me a poached egg

Lol, no, but something is clearly scrambled ; )

Interesting point about different fluencies, will take your expertise on that one.

All the people I interacted with were bad at their important jobs. I know, because I was there. Despite this I was incredibly polite to their dim, failed faces.

It is a funny story, let me tell you about it sometime. We can talk about ‘arrogant’ and ‘ponsy pratt’ when I see you this weekend : )

Comment on the facelessness of bureaucracy by Nat

Nat — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 13:12:29 +0000

Ouch – did you just call me a poached egg? I liked the rest of your post, but I felt the need to comment on the bit that offended me. I am not good at holding my peace.

I don’t know what the CVs of federal employees look like, but you’ll find that two verbally limited individuals communicate better than when one is a lot more fluent than the other. People react better when they interact with others with the same degree of fluency as them, if the degree of fluency is poor on either side then they will make more of an an effort to understand each other. If your degree of fluency is high, generally you refuse to lower your standards and if the person in front of you cannot raise theirs, then communication will fail.

Once communication has failed, people generally feel the need to save face. It might be for example that the fluent speaker will take on some arrogant stance and call his interlocutor a poached egg. It might be also, that the less fluent speaker (aka poached egg) will think to himself “ponsy pratt”. In less formal settings, the poached egg might beat up the ponsy pratt, and the ponsy pratt might verbally abuse the poached egg, resulting in further humiliation either way.

Comment on the facelessness of bureaucracy by air

air — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 16:58:42 +0000

Aye. The key message from this post – which you picked up correctly – is that people from the Republic of Namibia have poor language skills.

Seriously though I bet his job description has ‘excellent communication skills’ on it. How do they expect their customers (often confused immigrants with poor spoken English) to get their essential stuff achieved when the federal employees themselves are equally confused and verbally limited?

Comment on the facelessness of bureaucracy by Nat

Nat — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 09:33:08 +0000

He appears to be first-generation Namibian and has only the vaguest idea of what is going on around him. He delivers his opener with all the twinkling intelligence of a poached egg

The whole American bureaucratic experience stirring up feelings of racism is it?

Comment on the facelessness of bureaucracy by brian

brian — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 11:16:04 +0000

excellent post
this is why I try to always be the other guy in these credit fiascoes!

Comment on Don’t Panic! by Dad

Dad — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 12:52:21 +0000

The known universe contains around 50 billion galaxies.
ONE galaxy contains several million stars.
We orbit around one star….

We are very, very, very, very, small,

and incredibly lucky to exist at all.

And god has nothing to do with it!

Comment on Don’t Panic! by CJ

CJ — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 21:03:55 +0000

mindboggling

Comment on Don’t Panic! by Ry

Ry — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 14:03:03 +0000

Wow, dat ist cool yah! Relatively speaking, Uranus is slightly larger than I imagined.

Comment on Don’t Panic! by air

air — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 02:09:44 +0000

This is mental. It comes up really nicely on an iPhone too!

Comment on Al Columbia, Pim and Francie by air

air — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 17:19:05 +0000

So I got the new Pim & Francie book from the nice folks at Fantagraphics (I’ve been there, and they actually are).

The ‘cooking’ strip is nicely reproduced in there, but the rest of the book is mostly fragments. The haunted forest stuff is in there but uncoloured and unfinished. Al a unique talent but evidently not great at finishing ideas?