As if wage disputes weren't bad enough

While fast food workers across the country agitate for higher pay and for working conditions that are not modeled on sodium chloride mining operations in Siberia, smaller groups are also demanding recognition and, unusually, better lexical treatment. Here are three stories from recent news coverage.

Spain is a major source of wine corks, and the industry provides substantial employment for agrarian workers. However, some specialists in the work force object to the dismissive manner in which management addresses them. Specifically, the teams of skilled technicians (many of whom suffer from severe speech disorders) who gather the shaped final product and bulk-package it are asking for a more dignified term for their profession. They object strongly to being listed in personnel rosters as "that bunch of dumb cork sackers."

Closer to home, US obstetric facilities are experiencing periodic spikes in demand, days when large numbers of women simultaneously go into labor (usually during full moons or nine months after widespread power outages). When this happens, normal ambulance service can be overwhelmed, and other vehicles are pressed into service, including delivery vans and even semi trucks. In order to regularize the employment status of the temporary personnel who operate this ad hoc patient transportation, a study was done and the age, sex, income, ethnic background, and other attributes of the operators were collected and analyzed. One individual, a man in New Jersey, was identified as having all the average characteristics, and there were plans to use him as a spokesman, but he refused to participate after an NIH administrator referred to him as "a mean mother trucker."

Finally, concerns over semantics are not limited to the human species. Here in Ann Arbor, a quadrupedally-advantaged person of fur is involved in a close primary race for a city council seat. After his opponent made what would, under other taxonomic circumstances, have been a derogatory reference, Mr. Hamilton "Ham" Mudd stated for the record, "Yes! I admit it! I'm a son of a bitch. So is he. And that guy over there. We're all sons of bitches! Now, can we get on with it?"

Management at Wood-Charles regrets that it finds itself unable to find better material than the above, but it promises to try.

Ann Arbor's Traffic Problems are Solved!

Simply restrict driving -- especially of AATA buses -- to this emerging demographic, and all will be well.

(By the way, "L plates" is UK and Commonwealth-speak for Learner Permits.)

(And of course, see here for Elliot Erwitt's take on the same topic.)

A good week ...

... for those unclear on the concept.

First, our beloved Ann Arbor News ran a piece on a family who try to buy American as much as possible. Not a problem, philosophically, right up to the point where Mrs. needed a new "mixer." They went to local stores, and looked for products that said "Made in America" on the box. Then they went home and bought one, for cheap, on eBay. Let's protect American jobs. Idiots.

Next, in reference to her mother who was killed by a neighbor's pack of American Bulldogs, a woman said, "It's ok for God to take her. But for God to take her like this is unacceptable."

So there's now some kind of standard for acts of God? And God stepped over the line on this one? Are you planning on suing God, Madame, or just talking trash about him on the talk show circuit? As far as I could tell from the newspaper coverage (admittedly it was the Detroit Free Press), everyone except the victim seemed to be an Idiot.

As an aside, I was reading the bulldog story, aloud with annotation, to Linda this morning in the cafe', down at Kerrytown, and the young woman sitting next to us got up and left. She'd been reading "Jewels of (something) from the Gospel of Matthew."