Especially a negative restaurant review. How many really negative restaurant reviews have you read?

Here’s one. Let’s see how he does it.   We’re in Toronto, by the way.

“Walk of shame” usually refers to showing up at work in last night’s clothing. It means you got lucky. It also alludes to bed head, missing buttons and incriminating clothing stains.

Basically, looking and feeling like crap.

It also describes the strip of Bloor [Street] between Bathurst and Spadina.

The Annex is no stranger to bad restaurants. The neighbourhood nearly owns a patent on the concept.

Cheap sushi joints line the street, each as barely adequate as the last. The ‘hood’s most popular sushi restaurant was closed down in March for three days by health inspectors. This month, an investigative report by the Star found it was selling tilapia as snapper. [Nice, very precise details.  Sort of amusing.]

Pubs and coffee shops sit in the shadow of the Brunswick House, where a fist fight can be had for the price of a pint. All of it is fuelled by a steady supply of undergrads from University of Toronto’s student ghetto.

T cafe, a new tea and tapas spot, is unlikely to improve the neighbourhood’s reputation.  [SOS likes the way the writer sketches the restaurant’s low-life setting before reviewing the restaurant itself.  Gives the reader a sense of the larger reality in which the place sits.]

The site – the corner of Bloor and Borden – was the home of Dooney’s for more than 20 years. In the mid-’90s, the cafe scored a victory over coffee giant Starbucks. Locals and regulars rallied their support when the property’s owner leased it to the coffee giant. After a lot of bad press, Starbucks leased the property back to Dooney’s and quietly opened up shop down the block.  [Again, a little history is good — though SOS had some trouble understanding the sequence of events as written.]

Perhaps the food at T cafe would be better if it were a Starbucks. I would rather eat one of its prepackaged ham sandwiches than another meal here.

On each visit, it’s difficult to pass the intoxicating perfume of cumin wafting from Ghazale, a wonderful Middle Eastern place across the road.

There are a few pleasing bites at T Cafe. [It’s always a good idea to start an attack with whatever positive you can think of to say.  Makes you look less nasty, more fair.]  Onions, fried with a green-tea speckled batter, are not without their charm ($4.25). Rosti are freshly fried, topped with bits of goat cheese and green-tea smoked salmon ($6).

But that’s just an attempt to say something nice.  [Refreshing directness.] Most of the food has the sprightliness of leftover wedding hors d’oeuvres.

There are cold goops of roasted zucchini and peppers ($4.25) and overcooked lamb chops ($9.25) with mate tea honey mustard. Frico (thin, baked crisps of cheese) are served as “Asiago chips” ($6). Except they are nothing like a chip. They are thick and gummy like a tougher, cheese version of a fruit roll-up.  [Goops.  Gummy.  Excellent icky words.]

The “creamy salsa verde” with won ton chips ($5.25) is yogurt with chopped peppers. Sliders with pancetta ($7.50) are straight out of a caterer’s page #1 selection. That’s the page you flip back to after you see the page #3 prices and say, “People like mini-hamburgers. I guess sliders are good enough for our guests.”

This place even manages to FUBAR something as simple as a bowl of cold soba ($4.99).  [Hold on.  Gotta look up FUBAR.  Fuck Up…?  Ah.  Fuck Up Beyond All Repair. Who knew.]  I can’t imagine how it is even possible to get soba to the consistency of licorice. I’d rather not know.  [Instead of the windy I can’t imagine how it is even possible… maybe something more direct instead:  How do you get soba to the consistency of licorice?]

Nearly all the food has tea in it. Yet nothing tastes of tea. Except for the tea, which is quite nice ($4.50).

But if I were coming here just for tea, it would infuriate me that all the teapots drip.

It’s shocking because good restaurateurs put a lot of care into these things. [Shocking overstates things and risks making the writer sound like a snot.]  A friend who owns a coffee shop has gone through three milk jugs and three sugar bowls in search of the perfect paraphernalia.

When I visit, most guests are drinking tea – couples on laptops; a boy with a stack of textbooks; a woman reading a magazine article titled “Decluttering Your Sewing Room.” A teapot and its drips clutter every table.

The only menus are placed at ceiling level over the counter, in tiny type. A server brings our food, but not cutlery or napkins. “It’s over there,” she says, motioning with her head.  [Excellent bit here.  It’s the details that do the trick.]

Despite the window sign promising a “unique tapas menu,” this is no restaurant.

No one inquires about our half-eaten food. We have leftovers wrapped up to feed someone on the street. But the container leaks red oil on my pants and the stain does not come out (thanks a lot, Shout Triple-Action).

A restaurant is a business – a big investment. It’s hard to fathom the bank employee that would approve a loan for a restaurant, in any neighbourhood, serving tea-infused tapas dishes.

The Annex doesn’t needs [typo] this, period. There is already a tea shop across the street, All Things Tea. There is no shortage of options for chicken wings. A merging of the two (chai chicken wings with peach green tea plum sauce $8) is far less than the sum of its parts.

Despite being in possession of Dooney’s’ liquor licence, there is no alcohol. Maybe this is for people who love wings but hate beer.

I might feel guilty picking on T cafe, but there are plenty of people around town working their bums off to make the best food they can. There is no excuse for this.

Popcorn at the Bloor theatre is a better meal.

… who lived in the house behind mine (and across from Nils Lofgren’s) in Garrett Park. Don’t recall how old I was — maybe thirteen? Dino’s father (here’s his obituary) owned a hair salon, House of Alexis, which Dino now manages.

I’d picked a book at random from a shelf in the Alexis living room, and it turned out to be softcore porn — not that I had that category in my head at the time. Harold Robbins kind of thing. The scene I opened to had a woman expressing her enjoyment of some mildly sadistic nipple play. “Aiee!!” she said. “Aiee!!”

This was a formative moment for little Scathing Online Schoolmarm, because it was her first encounter with the double exclamation mark. From that day forward, she gave a good deal of thought to when and how one should employ the exclamation.

Stuart Jeffries has a charming and thoughtful piece on the subject in the latest Guardian.

In general, SOS sides with those who counsel sparing use of this heavy breather; she believes that in almost all cases your prose, not funny little marks at the end of various sentences, should convey your sentiments, including exclamatory feelings like excitement, delight, surprise, rage, and love. Writing is a discipline; it’s about control. Excess exclamation marks suggest lack of control, as Jeffries notes in quoting some authors about them:

Elmore Leonard wrote of exclamation marks: “You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose.” Which means, on average, an exclamation mark every book and a half. In the ninth book of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series, Eric, one of the characters, insists that “Multiple exclamation marks are a sure sign of a diseased mind.” … Fowler’s Modern English Usage [says]: “Except in poetry the exclamation mark should be used sparingly. Excessive use of exclamation marks in expository prose is a sure sign of an unpractised writer or of one who wants to add a spurious dash of sensation to something unsensational.”

Jeffries goes on to note that in the age of email the exclamation mark is much-used. People say email’s a particularly cold and unemotional medium, and that the exclamation allows them to add warmth. Great to see you! Instead of Great to see you. Looking forward to seeing you! Rather than Looking forward to seeing you. We’re anxious for people to know we care, and the exclamation mark does the trick.

SOS notices that she only uses the exclamation mark in two ways in her emails. When a student she hasn’t heard from in a while writes to her — with simple greetings, or asking for advice, or asking for a recommendation — she in fact often opens her reply with an exclamation mark at the end of her first sentence: It’s wonderful to hear from you! She knows that students worry they’re bothering professors, or that professors don’t remember them, or whatever, so she wants to underline her happiness at having heard from them.

She also uses the mark ironically. Or sarcastically. Jeffries takes note of this use as well:

There is surely a point after which exclamation marks no longer express friendliness. In this post-literal time, exclamation marks become signs of sarcasm as witty correspondents rebel against their overuse. Hence: “I loved your last email! OMG did I LOVE it!!!!!!” The point is they didn’t. They were being IRONIC.

An undergraduate woman at the University of Minnesota writes a column in the campus newspaper.

… [W]e were supposed to be working on a group project, but instead, we decided to get drunk. Inevitably, drunk classmate girl talk leads to the question of whether we find our professor hot. Prudence’s response was something along the lines of, “Well, I find MY professor to be hot.” When we asked her exactly what she meant with that kind of emphasis on ownership, she proceeded to unveil every girl’s college fantasy:

“I’ve known him, my professor boyfriend, since I started working in his department about two years ago. I never took a class under him, but he always flirted with me…I blew him off mostly, but a couple of months ago he asked me out to dinner. We have had many, many discussions about whether or not it’s okay to pursue this, but so far it’s working out well enough. We just have to be discreet about it.” Before I could even get the question out of my mouth, Prudence added, “And yes, I call him ‘professor’ in bed.”

My classmates and I were awestruck by her academic prowess, but it did cross our minds that he could just be a hairy old man. A couple of Facebook clicks later, however, and Prudence proved us wrong. He is, in fact, a gorgeous specimen – perhaps heightened by the fact that he is not opposed to scandalous romance. (As a side note: the fact that we now have the ability to friend our professors on Facebook to learn more about their personal lives, sift through their photos, etc. makes this dating scene even more hot to handle.)

“It is highly likely that us professors are attracted to our students,” Prudence’s professor said when asked for comment….

There it is. US professors????

*****************

UD thanks Bill for the link.

… but another solid contribution to UD‘s library of student laments about worthless wired classrooms.

Why aren’t professors and administrators reading the same material, and doing something about it? UD, for instance, would love to read a professor’s description of what it’s like to teach hundreds of people totally ignoring you.

In lecture a few weeks ago, I observed a guy sitting in the row in front of me watching three-fourths of the movie [I’d drop ‘three-fourths of the movie’] “Twilight.” Two seats down from him, two people were going through Google images of Beyoncé. I turned to note this to my neighbor, who nodded while scrolling through her BlackBerry.  [Nice touch – Even the neighbor’s wired.]

These people weren’t anomalies. Though the lecture, delivered by a professor ranked 4.3 in the CUE Guide, was a fairly interesting one, a good portion of the class looked up from their various screens only when a phrase was prefaced with the warning, “This might be on the midterm.”  [Nice conclusion to sentence, but drop the many modifiers: fairly, good, various.]   It looked like in this class, at least in this lecture, intellectualism was dead. [Just make the sentence ‘Intellectualism was dead.’  See how, as is often the case, SOS is largely making your writing snappier by editing out verbiage?]  But I don’t blame the people—I blame the technology.

The introduction of laptops and wireless Internet into the classroom environment has allowed us to prioritize our time in a highly pragmatic way.  [Fuck prioritize.  Ugly bogus word.  Corporate jargon.  Save it for your career as a motivational speaker.  And drop ‘highly.‘]

No longer are the choices in class between doodling in a notebook and paying attention; now we have an entire workstation at our fingertips. We can e-mail, organize, and update away while a professor is explaining easy or boring material that presumably doesn’t warrant full attention. [This responds to cynical laptop-defending professors who insist that using a laptop during class is just another form of doodling.  No it ain’t.]

The problem is that while many initiate these side tasks with the intention of only drifting away from class for a short period of time, we often don’t have that self-control. [Drop often and only.] More and more of our attention is taken up by reading blogs or clicking through Wikipedia, until we’ve de-prioritized listening to everything but the most essential concepts. [De-prioritized!  I’m pukingized.]

This approach may allow for the best economization of time  [Oy.  What are we, a business major?  This is basically a nice, conversational essay, but the writer needs to deal with her ize problem.]—it’s probably possible to fill in gaps in the syllabus during reading period, and those emails need to be sent for tomorrow. However, taking on this cost-benefit view of class time both diminishes enjoyment of the course and contributes to a cycle of indifference under which class quality suffers.

When a successful class is defined by acquiring the minimum amount of necessary information in the minimum amount of time, then something is off. Lectures should be interesting, not just useful for the midterm, and when we budget our class time we give up on this basic intellectual ideal. The nuances that get cut with an economic approach to class time are what make the Harvard academic experience more than four years of test prep. When we drop them, we drop learning for its own sake, that clichéed goal that we laud but clearly do not internalize as we fail the simple laptop-lecture attention test.  [Again, this writing could use some sex appeal, but it’s okay.]

Furthermore, class quality on the whole suffers from individual indifference. After all, if we don’t pay attention to anything but vital concepts, why should professors attempt to engage us anymore?   [Crucial point.  Well said.]  Why should they add details or throw in a joke when we’re not looking to be interested? [The whole throw in a joke thing is important too.  Since the laptops, er, dehumanize the classroom, the professor will understandably decide that there’s no point in bothering to have a personality for the purpose of teaching.  If students want her to be another screen, fine.]  Surely, the prospect of lecturing to 200 metallic screens is a discomfiting one, and even more so when they know that an awkward non-response to a question in lecture means that 200 people are logged onto gchat. [I love the phrase ‘lecturing to 200 metallic screens’.  The word metallic is wonderful.]

The best antidote to the rise of viral activity during class time would be to pull the plug on wireless internet in classes in which it is not academically necessary. [Instead of that lame final phrase, just write ‘pull the plug on most wireless internet in class’.] This would inevitably upset many students. However, such a reaction [Students would be upset, but this would only...]  would only prove the degree to which zoning out in class thanks to technology is ingrained in the way we spend our class time  [Drop ‘in the way we spend our class time’.]. Such paternalism may not be the answer, but certainly something has to change. After all, the lecture hall is beginning to resemble Lamont Cafe, without the lattes.  [Drop ‘After all’.]

************************

Bonus extra: The old days at Harvard. James Agee describes one of his English professors:

It’s perfectly impossible for me to define anything about him or about what he taught but it was a matter of getting frequent and infinite vistas of perfection in beauty, strength, symmetry, greatness—and the reasons for them, in poetry and in living….That sounds extravagant—well, his power over people was extravagant, and almost unlimited. Everyone who knew him was left in a clear, tingling daze, at the beginning of the summer.

… quotes this sentence from an English professor’s book about the history of creative writing programs:

Technomodernism identifies with the ‘emptiness’ of pure formality — that is, with the systemacity of the system itself, drawing the machine to itself in a form of ontological prosthesis.

McGrath comments:

[Writing like this] may explain why creative writing is so popular. If stuff like this is what you get to read in regular English class, then no wonder students would rather write texts of their own.

What was that sentence again?

Technomodernism identifies with the ‘emptiness’ of pure formality — that is, with the systemacity of the system itself, drawing the machine to itself in a form of ontological prosthesis.

Let me pull on my ontological prosthesis and see what I can make of this.

[Deep breath.]

[Expulsion of breath.]

[Overwhelming sense of futility.]

[Reminder that you have clicked on University Diaries because you’re in desperate need of something beyond the ’emptiness’ of pure formality.]

Okay. The sentence appears to want to help us understand what an artistic movement, technomodernism, is. We cannot help but note, however, that the sentence does not help us. It hurts us. It hurts our understanding, and it hurts our sense of beauty. Unlike Susan Boyle who is not pretty but can sing, this sentence is not pretty and cannot sing.

Problems start almost immediately. What can it mean to say that an artistic movement identifies with something? People identify with things; things do not identify with things.

And yes. My prosthesis edges
toward the author’s upcoming
quotation marks like a ouija
pointer loaded for bear.

Emptiness, pure, and formality all mean pretty much the same thing in this sentence, but only emptiness gets the mysterious quotation marks. Why? Our sense of confusion deepens. Is pure formality — the simple functional working of this or that machine, let’s assume he means — not empty? Why not?

Have you ever seen the word systemacity before? I ain’t. I’ve seen systematicity, though I’m not proud of it. I’m not proud I hang out on street corners where people use words like systematicity, but systematicity is in fact a word. You can look it up.

You will not find systemacity in the dictionary.

Not that you won’t find it used! Google it and discover that it’s a very specialized word, used mainly by mathematicians and linguists. Why would a writer, in an effort to help people understand something, use a word like systemacity?

… drawing the machine to itself in a form of ontological prosthesis.

The repetition of “itself” only deepens our sense that instead of getting out of a confusing and circular world, we are entering it more and more surely. And what can it mean to draw a machine to itself? The word draw is clearly the problem here. What sort of an act is this? Artists draw, and the subject is art, so our mind goes perhaps to the visual arts and reads draw literally. But this can’t be what the author intends. Who or what is doing the drawing, and what sort of drawing is this? Dunno.

I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that the idea behind ontological prosthesis is that the technomodernist attempts to lend life (ontology — being) to lifeless empty machines by infusing a kind of aesthetic vibrancy, a presentness, into the technological object. This infusion is an artificial construction, as all art is, and therefore it’s …prosthetic.

Have I made myself clear?

************************

Update, correction: A reader who has looked at the book writes in this post’s comment thread:

[T]he Times seems to have misquoted the sentence from the book, which uses the word “systematicity,” not “systemacity.”

… but their content stinks. Here’s an example, from an opinion piece in today’s Boston Globe.

The title tells us The Way to Fight a Recession. The way to fight a recession is for businesses to keep going, expand, never say die, beat back their fear, etc. There’s a coffee shop chain that’s doing just that, and the writer commends them. But there’s another business, a developer named Harvard, that isn’t doing that, and the writer berates them.

… I’m standing along Western Avenue in Allston, construction site of Harvard University’s much trumpeted science center. The new complex is just the first part of what has been promised to be an epic transformation of the area. Or at least, that was the hope. The tall red construction cranes are still busy clearing the area, but Drew Faust, Harvard’s president, has just announced that the university is putting on the brakes. For the moment, work proceeds, but at the end of the year the school will reassess. This has come as a shock to many, especially Allston residents, who now fear they may be stuck indefinitely with what some call the Harvard Hole. And the rest of the projects? No one is saying, but things don’t look good.

Both of these are recession stories, tales of two significant organizations (Harvard, America’s oldest college, and Nespresso, a unit of Swiss food giant Nestle) with two different approaches to the economic crisis. One bulls forward. The other quails. [Yeah, what’s Harvard afraid of? Ain’t it a for-profit corporation just like Nestle? Isn’t it all about the bottom line, just like Nestle?]

… A reported 30 percent drop in the value of its endowment seems to have thrown the university into a tizzy. [A few hundred million off their bottom line and look what the weenies do! A tizzy! Don’t they know they’re a money-generating multinational that has to keep going in order to do what they’ve been created to do — generate money?]

… Economies are strange things. Sophisticated computer modeling, Nobel Prizes, and great thinkers notwithstanding, no one can really explain how to make them grow or why they shrink. Presented with an illness, a group of doctors would pretty quickly figure out how to assess, diagnose, and treat. That’s because medicine really is a science. Economics, pretensions otherwise, is not. Put 100 economists in a room, and the only sure thing you’d get would be 100 different theories. One can see this in today’s throw-it-on-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks approach to economic policy making or in the profession’s slippery language: consumer “confidence,” “virtuous” circles, “giddy” (or “panicked”) investors. There’s an almost self-fulfilling, touchy-feely quality to this: If we believe things are going to be good, then they will be. If we believe otherwise, then they won’t be. [Put aside the fact that medicine — especially that queen of twisted research and conflict of interest, psychiatry — is a notoriously inexact science. Concentrate only on the nonchalance with which this writer dismisses the many economists who warned money managers like those at Harvard that their risky investments would implode.]

So when a company such as Nespresso spends money and makes plans, it sends a message — the bad times will end, growth will resume. If enough companies behaved the same way, then indeed, the economy would turn. Harvard, too, is sending a message. “If Harvard can’t build, who can?” worried one construction industry publication. Perhaps, many will conclude, no one can, and, as a consequence, no one will. [Yes, the American construction giant Harvard needs to set an example, so that other construction companies around the country — Yale, Princeton — and other more specialized builders — for instance, sport franchise/construction ventures like the University of Georgia and the University of Minnesota, can be emboldened by Harvard’s business plan and keep growing.] …

… Fatiguée, as Nigella Lawson notes, is what the French call greens that have lost their crispness, from sitting around too long, or from too much dressing.

Writing can be wilted in the same ways – from sitting around too long, or from being drizzled with too many words.

The problem of tired writing compounds when your subject is itself superannuated.

Yet most subjects are old.  Not much crisp under the sun.  The point of being a good writer is taking something new to the plate.  Plumping things up so people see some aspect of the world fresh.

Consider, for instance, a seasonal problem.

Everyone knows big time university basketball is a rank enseamèd dish, stew’d in corruption.  Every March sports writers get up on little ladders and scrounge in their pantries for the canned indignation.

But why?  Why do that?  Limp writing makes nothing happen.  It’s mere ritual.  It’s filing a story because you’ve got space to fill by Tuesday.  Jim Calhoun has a job to do, and so do you.

But if you had the scruples whose lack you attack in Calhoun, you wouldn’t inflict this sort of futility on your readers.

… From showcase summer camps, to AAU tournaments, to street agents, to runners from professional agents, this is the landscape schools live in. This is the basketball culture, and for all of the NCAA’s attempts to control it, it always seems to get worse, a cesspool of inherent corruption. To the point where the NCAA recently ruled that a seventh-grader is now regarded as a “recruitable” athlete.

Think about that for a second.

Which is not to say that all schools break the rules.

It is to say, though, that this is the basketball world all schools operate in, to the point where virtually all big-time programs are fragile, a deck of cards that has the potential to crumble at any minute, whether it’s off-campus problems, allegations of recruiting violations, rumors of being carried academically, or other supposed atrocities that highlight the fact that players often are not like the other students on campus, regardless of the hype to try to convince people that there are.

Suffice it to say there are no virgins here.

Let’s scathe through that, shall we?

“From showcase summer camps, to AAU tournaments, to street agents, to runners from professional agents, this is the landscape schools live in. [The list’s okay, though all the tos are a bit awkward. Ending on in is weak; remember that you always want to end your sentence on a strong word.   And keep an eye on that landscape metaphor.] This is the basketball culture, [This is. This is. Repetition can be effective, but in this case it feels weak, in part because the language is so blah. We begin to doubt the writer’s conviction.]  and for all of the NCAA’s attempts to control it, it always seems to get worse, a cesspool of inherent corruption.  [It gets worse because the NCAA doesn’t attempt to control it, so here the writer signals his refusal to take on the heavy labor of actual critique. Things get more tired by the minute.   And a cesspool of inherent corruption tells you everything you need to know about l’écriture fatiguée.  Forget the quick transmutation of a landscape into a cesspool, and think instead about the lazy effort to lend a lifeless salad some life by suddenly spicing it way up.  Cesspool is a big ol’ word, way out there. You want to reserve it for something really big, like your suicide note (“Dear World,” wrote George Sanders, “I am leaving because I am bored.  I feel I have lived long enough.  I am leaving you with your worries in this sweet cesspool.  Good luck.”), or for a piece of your best writing, in which you demonstrate conviction.]

To the point where the NCAA recently ruled that a seventh-grader is now regarded as a “recruitable” athlete.  [Dump the quotation marks.]

Think about that for a second.

Which is not to say that all schools break the rules.

It is to say, though, that this is the basketball world all schools operate in, [Note the clumsy wordiness, the overuse of the to be verb, the ineffective repetition.]  to the point where virtually all big-time programs are fragile, a deck of cards  [Dead metaphor.]  that has the potential to crumble at any minute, whether it’s off-campus problems, allegations of recruiting violations, rumors of being carried academically, or other supposed atrocities [Tone problem.  What does he mean by calling these things supposed atrocities?  I don’t get it.] that highlight the fact that players often are not like the other students on campus, regardless of the hype to try to convince people that there are.  [There instead of they.  Mistakes will occur when you’re doing automatic writing.]

Suffice it to say there are no virgins here.  [Off we go to another dead metaphor.]”

*******************

Update:  UD is grateful to James, a reader, for pointing out that both of her fatiguées take an extra e.

No, James.  You are not a pest.

*********************

Another Update:  This is more like it.  The guy actually cares.

SOS is always screaming that at you. Your writing is you. It is extremely revelatory.

Good writers realize this and learn how to control the effect they make. Whatever sort of SOB you may in reality be, you have to learn how to control your prose so as to come across as the sort of person your reader will — let’s say you’re writing a polemical piece — agree with.

Poor writers, like the sap below, cannot help revealing themselves in ways damaging to their argument. Let’s see how they do this.

A former trustee at the University of Connecticut wishes to come to the defense of the university’s basketball coach, the highest-paid public employee in the state, and a motherfucker.

How to do this?

Well, not this way.

*************************************

“I have read and heard with irritation [Lordy, lordy. Just how many times has ol’ SOS told you that emotion is the enemy of argumentation? First sentence! I’m irritated! And who talks like this? What’s the tone? From the very, very start, what’s the tone? Queen Victoria, that’s the tone. Pompous. Vaguely bullying. Way to step up to the plate.] the attacks on the University of Connecticut’s men’s basketball coach Jim Calhoun and his reaction to quizzing about his income, his university-approved outside income opportunities, and a suggestion that he take a cut in salary to aid the university in its current financial crisis.

I would like to provide my perspective on Jim Calhoun and his relationship and importance to the university. [Drop this sentence. Totally unnecessary, and somehow adds to the sense of irritable self-importance.]

During the 1990s, Jim Calhoun was one of the five most valuable individuals in bringing interest to the university and in raising awareness of the value of the university to the state’s economy. [Cruel of the newspaper to run this without edits. Individual is a deadly word, labored and impersonal. And note the vagueness of the repeated word value, and the empty word interest. This is inhuman prose. This is a stiff bureaucrat.] In particular, the successes Coach Calhoun directed on the court have played a pivotal role in the state’s providing $2 billion support to rebuild the University of Connecticut, both physically and academically.

Jim Calhoun is also in the first tier of individuals I’ve known during the past 20 years who have given the most significant portion of their time and resources, including their money, back to UConn. [Individuals again. And it doesn’t matter how much money you give back. It matters how much money you’re overpaid. This is the Massa Saban approach to university life: Give obscene compensation to coaches and then, when the shit hits the fan and they give a little back to save their ass, praise the coach as a great benefactor.] While facing repeated health issues of his own, there has never been a “no” in Jim Calhoun’s vocabulary [Never been a “no.” Writing like this gives everyone health issues. And note the Queen for a Day form of defense here: You bastards are going after a sick man! Yet Calhoun looked mighty strong the other day, when he said no with very little effort to a reporter. No, I won’t return a penny of my compensation to the state. No No. No. Said no a whole lot. Definitely has the word in his vocabulary.] concerning his support of the health center, the cardiology center, the fight against cancer and the battle to overcome autism. [Note the absolutely dead trite language. Battle to overcome autism. Of course, this is about clueless self-importance, too. The writer actually thinks you’re stupid enough to take out your hankie at this point and demand a salary increase for Calhoun.]

I do not curse; so from time to time, I too blanch when Jim expresses his competitiveness and passion in his interaction with his players. [Things are going from worse to worser. We might be able to consider the writer a human being like ourselves, despite his robotic prose, if he cursed. But he doesn’t. Or he feels it’s a clever move to tell us he doesn’t. Interaction goes beautifully with individual in this man’s utterly unreal and unfeeling world.] I have many friends, but I dare say that their friendship and loyalty to me does not exceed the loyalty, friendship, respect and love that is evident from the players who have experienced Jim’s rants as well as his genuine caring. [Just because the Connecticut team is composed of masochists doesn’t mean I should admire their sadist.] From Clifford Robinson to Donyell Marshall to Kevin Ollie to Ray Allen to Rip Hamilton to Caron Butler to Emeka Okafor and all the rest of Huskies from the Calhoun era: Each of their lives and careers have benefited from the contact and mentoring from their coach.

During my tenure as chairman of the board of trustees at UConn, it was vividly clear to me that, from a straight dollar vantage point, Jim Calhoun more than meets the test of value given for dollars received, apart from his giving of his time and money. The investment in Jim Calhoun by the university has been repaid to UConn, and the entire state, many times over.

In 1986, no one believed that Connecticut could become one of the truly elite college basketball programs in the country. The pride that an entire state now possesses because of UConn’s basketball success is priceless. And the entertainment value provided by the Huskies is priceless. [To be sure, every citizen swells with pride because one of its university teams wins games. Also because the team’s coach has been reprimanded by the governor and is the object of hostile legislation from state representatives.]

The national spotlight that basketball success has been able to shine on the words Connecticut and UConn is also priceless. [Well, I suspect Calhoun’s cost will be able to be reckoned. Let’s see what the legislature has to say about it.]

The UConn Athletic Department recently signed important, budget-assisting 10-year agreements with outside contractors in the apparel/footwear (Nike) and corporate partner programs (IMG). Does anyone doubt that the presence of Jim Calhoun as our Hall of Fame, two-time national championship coach played a pivotal role in the desire of those companies to align themselves with UConn athletics? [We can take pride in these commercial arrangements!]

Jim Calhoun has given back and will continue to give back to the University of Connecticut, always providing that “giving” in his own private style. [Quotation marks around “giving” just right, as Calhoun gives the state the finger in his own private style.]”

Scathing Online Schoolmarm hates quotation marks. But she knows there are times when you’ve simply got to use them.

Here’s a perfect example, from an article in Forbes giving advice about philanthropy.

Inquire about whether or not there is a conflict of interest policy in place. Is the investment manager on the board of the organization (i.e., Bernard Madoff was on the board of Yeshiva University and “managed” their investments)?

A former Western Kentucky University professor pleads “guilty” to federal program fraud.

The U.S. Attorney’s office says Katrina Phelps entered into a “plea agreement” today, where she admits intentionally misapplying $27,087.20 from Western Kentucky University.

[“Guilty”? “plea agreement”? Why the quotation marks? Did she not really plead guilty? Is it not really a plea agreement? Am I living in Upper Volta where we don’t use terms like guilty and plea agreement, so you have to put them in quotation marks to introduce them to me?]

Phelps admits from March 2005 to December 2007, she took the proceeds from 16 checks from a justice department grant, and misapplied the funds.

As part of her plea agreement, Phelps agrees to pay full restitution to WKU, prior to her sentencing.

The maximum potential penalties for Phelps’ offense, include ten years in prison, a $250,000 fine, and supervised release for up to 3 years.

Adds piquancy that these were from the justice department… “Background” “here.”

… for mixing metaphors?

When you’re all hepped up and you want your writing to be red hot.

Beware, says Scathing Online Schoolmarm.

He took Capitol Hill by storm Wednesday, unleashing a double blow of written and spoken testimony that painted a devastating picture of the alleged Ponzi schemer Madoff and unleashed withering criticism of the Securities and Exchange Commission and Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.

Calm down, laddie! Your writing’s a withered painting that really blows.

LITERACY MINISTRY TOLD TO
USE PLAIN ENGLISH IN REPORTS

It’s from The Independent.

The Government department responsible for universities is castigated today for its “impenetrable” language “peppered with jargon” in its reports.

MPs on the Commons select committee monitoring the new Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills – which is also responsible for courses in basic literacy for adults – have told its civil servants to use plain English.

It accuses them of using “jargon-riddled phrases” and “euphemisms deflecting likely failure”. It cites part of the annual report, which says the department has a “challenging growth strategy for 2010”: that is, it is unlikely to meet targets. Other examples of obscure language include sentences such as: “An overarching national improvement strategy will drive up quality and performance underpinned by specific plans for strategically significant areas of activity, such as workforce and technology.”

… Even Ian Whatmore, the department’s Permanent Secretary, could not explain what this meant when asked by MPs. The department itself refused to translate it to The Independent yesterday.

Everybody’s covering the story. Let’s see what else they’re saying.

MPs said the department’s new annual report – used to measure its progress – contained so much “impenetrable” jargon that whole sections were “nearly impossible to read or understand”.

Giving evidence to the committee, even the DIUS permanent secretary Ian Watmore was “unable to explain the meaning” of one passage, MPs

Phil Willis, the committee’s Liberal Democrat chairman, said: “We were less than satisfied with the DIUS report, which we found unhelpful and too reliant on promoting a positive tone rather than providing us with clear and comprehensive information.

“While we appreciate that it will take some time for DIUS’s work to be realised, this must not be used as an excuse to produce a sub-standard report. A more concise report written in plain English with independently verified statistics would be of far greater use next year.”

A DIUS spokesman said the department had achieved a “great deal” in the past 18 months and would be replying in detail to the report.

“We are confident that DIUS is well placed to meet the challenges of the future and our work remains at the forefront of the Government’s response to the economic downturn, giving real help now to individuals and businesses,” he said.

Confidently striding forth to meet the challenge of the future, the DIUS is unable, even humiliated for it on an international scale, to write in any other way, you see. Euphemism, cliche, vague reassurance, jargon — Strange to realize that you learn this prose and this pose not merely in American schools of education. This language has the whole ed-world in its hands. We call it eduspeak here. There’s no degree of public humiliation which will change it, because the people who use it don’t understand its criticism. It’s like asking the Australian civil servants who wrote a report about depression what’s wrong with this:

MH-QUERI has partnered with VA organizational leaders to develop a focused yet flexible plan to address key factors to prepare for national dissemination and implementation of collaborative care for depression. Early indications suggest that the plan is laying an important foundation that will enhance the likelihood of successful implementation and spread across the VA healthcare system.

Same lethal bullshit. SOS is convinced a person can die from too much exposure to this. Who wants to live in a world of smiling automata always telling you things are great, moving right along, focused yet flexible? Haven’t we already seen that world in its full smiling flowering?

Yes, comrades, the Five-Year is right on track, focused yet flexible, laying an important foundation whose significant strategy for driving up quality will drive up quality…. You see how this totalitarian writing technique relies on the assumption that you are as much a mindless automaton as the totalitarian writer? There’s a strange intimacy in this approach… It says You’re exactly like me. We’re all alike. We all live within a self-pleasuring fog… We float about within a world of happy psychic stasis, constantly stimulated in a low-level way… It’s okay… It’s okay… says this writing… Everything’s fine… Always has been… Always will be… Things are just fine… And they’re getting even better… Sleep now… Let the fog of my letters envelope you…

To die: to sleep;

No more; and by a sleep to say we end

The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wish’d.

Yeah… what the hell… bring it… on………