Thought-provoking article in the Times today on the non-coherence of sizing among different stores. I have taken to frequenting only establishments that have the most ridiculous vanity sizing. Living in the USA will allow you to indulge in this pastime (In this regard, Ann Taylor should be commended in particular).
I was somewhat confused by one part of this article, though. The writer recycles that old "a size six today was a size eleventy bajillion in 1950" chestnut. To wit:
A woman with a 32-inch bust would have worn a Size 14 in Sears’s 1937 catalog. By 1967, she would have worn an 8, Ms. Zulli found.
Today, she would wear a zero.
Which makes me think, just how small were people in 1937? If a 32-inch bust was a size 14, who or what was a size zero? If you take off half-an-inch for each size down (counting by twos), a size zero would be a 25 inch bust!!! Can you even fit an adult sized set of internal organs into a 25 inch bust? I know size zero is a recent phenomenon, but you catch my drift, right? Obviously, I am missing part of the puzzle. Perhaps there was no children's sizing and all clothes were on the same scale. That's my best guess so far.
So, a month ago, I was cc'd (CC'D!) on a message to someone else, asking them (NOT ME!) to draft a letter. Okay, fine whatevs. The letter was due later that week. OK. This is not even someone in this office, or even in this country.
Today, I get a message asking why I didn't send the letter on time. ME? The request was sent to someone else but apparently I was supposed to divine that it was my responsibility to complete the letter.
On top of that, the message remonstrating me for failing to draft the letter was cc'd to the world. TO THE FREAKING WORLD. My boss. My boss's boss. The most senior people in the department!
My reaction surprised me. Usually, I would be embarassed to be taken to task in such a public fashion. But instead, I became enraged. Filled with white-hot rage.
My first instinct was to send a message giving this person a piece of my mind re: her incompetence, and general CYA attitude, cc'd to the whole wide world. But that would be a career-limiting move.
Instead, I searched my Outlook thoroughly to make sure I was in the right (always do this, otherwise someone will invariably come up with a smoking gun email that makes you look like a tool.) Then I sent a very curt (but polite email) attaching the original message and saying (in a passive-aggressive manner, I grant you), my apologies for the mix-up, when you sent a message to someone else, I didn't realise you were actually telepathically sending it to me. Also when you said you would be sending that person follow up documents, and I never received them that sort of confirmed in my mind that the message was not addressed to me but, you know, MY MISTAKE, or, you know NOT AT ALL MY MISTAKE, you incompetent twit! (In my head, the word was not twit).
So, I probably could have benefited from a few more minutes of sober second thought but there you have it. There you have it. I haven't heard back yet. Oh dear.
I am not really in touch with my feelings, usually. I think it's better that way, because when I am, there are a lot of tears and anger.
If you are looking to make me cry, simply play an excerpt of the song "Somewhere Out There" from the 1986 film, An American Tail. *Not* the Linda Ronstadt/James Ingram version, blech... No, the original version from the movie, the duet between little Fievel and his sister, who each believe they will never see each other again. The song is sung by the two child actors who voice the characters and their voices break as they reach the high notes. Devastating. I'm just typing about this song right now, and I've got tears in my eyes.
Though the song has stuck with me all these years, I also had some vague good memories of the movie, which I watched in After-Four club sometime in the late eighties. Yesterday, when I saw it was playing on cable and decided to watch it again.
Big mistake.
An American Tail is a harrowing, HARROWING, tale about anti-semitism, the false promises of immigration, and the fundamentally harsh nature of the world. At the end of this hour and a half of misery, they tack on a happy ending and send the children on their way, as though they haven't painted a bleak and ultimately unredeemable view of our modern world. My hope is that kids who saw this movie, like me, were too dumb and naive to truly understand the horror of what was unfolding before their eyes.
First, the evil cats that drive Fievel away from his home in 1885 Russia are clearly Cossacks leading pogroms against the Jewish mice (the Mousekewitzes aka Moskowitzes!). The killing does not happen off-screen either. The cats clearly kill mice during the pogrom and leave them for dead right there on screen. From that heart-warming start, the family, whose house has been burned down, begins its journey across the Atlantic to America, where they've been told there are no cats and the streets are paved with cheese! During a storm at sea, Fievel is swept away. His father tries to save him and fails. Little Fievel is presumed dead! DEAD! Papa Mousekewitz blames himself for the death of his son.
So the Mouskewitz family arrives in America, thinking their child has died, though Fievel, somehow, has made it to shore in a bottle. When he get there, he realises there *are* cats in America (also streets=not paved with cheese, which would be impractical, really). Said cats proceed to make Fievel's life miserable, even while he searches fruitlessly for his family, who, I repeat, believe he is dead. At one point, Fievel hears his father playing violin and runs towards the music. But no, it's not his dad, it's a gramophone playing a recording of violin music, so Fievel climbs into the gramophone to cry about how much he misses his family.
In the last five minutes, Fievel comes off with a scheme to send all the cats to Hong Kong (this part was confusing) and is reunited with his family. How this deus-ex-machina happy end is supposed to make up for the preceding 90 minutes, I'm not sure.
I recall shedding a few tears over the movie, and being very upset at the handful of close-calls Fievel and his family have, where they *almost* find each other. Mostly, though, I remembered the songs and "the streets are paved with cheese" bits. Actually, now that I think about it, this movie may be more appropriate for kids than it is for adults. For children too young to get it = *** For adults * 1/2
This is no Aaron Sorkin, but it puts paid to the notion that Canadians don't do political speeches well. This is pretty good for just another campaign stop. Do you agree?
“Now let me just end with this, my friends. It has been an unbelievable experience, the experience of a lifetime, to be your Prime Minister,” he said on that night two and a half years ago. “You get to travel across the country, to see the true breadth of our country. You get to meet people in every corner and from every background in this great country. And you get to travel the world. And you get to see other people and the situations they live in, and the difference and the advantages that we have here.
“When I come to Saskatchewan, even on a beautiful day like this, I never cease to be amazed. To look out and to think — especially as that cold wind whistles across the prairie in the wintertime — to think how tough the people who came here had it. To break the land and to build everything that we have today. How tough it must have been for the Aboriginal people before that, to live in that environment.
“But I also never forget this: there are very few places in the world where you can look out as far as the eye can see and see land that is rich, land you can grow things on, land you can build your families on, land that is full of potential. That’s what people see in this country when they come from every corner of the earth. They see opportunity as limitless as the horizon of Saskatchewan. That’s what we’re building here.”
From Paul Wells' latest election piece in Maclean's an excerpt of a Stephen Harper stump speech from the 2008 campaign.
This is no Aaron Sorkin, but it puts paid to the notion that Canadians don't do political speeches well. This is pretty good for just another campaign stop. Do you agree?
“Now let me just end with this, my friends. It has been an unbelievable experience, the experience of a lifetime, to be your Prime Minister,” he said on that night two and a half years ago. “You get to travel across the country, to see the true breadth of our country. You get to meet people in every corner and from every background in this great country. And you get to travel the world. And you get to see other people and the situations they live in, and the difference and the advantages that we have here.
“When I come to Saskatchewan, even on a beautiful day like this, I never cease to be amazed. To look out and to think — especially as that cold wind whistles across the prairie in the wintertime — to think how tough the people who came here had it. To break the land and to build everything that we have today. How tough it must have been for the Aboriginal people before that, to live in that environment.
“But I also never forget this: there are very few places in the world where you can look out as far as the eye can see and see land that is rich, land you can grow things on, land you can build your families on, land that is full of potential. That’s what people see in this country when they come from every corner of the earth. They see opportunity as limitless as the horizon of Saskatchewan. That’s what we’re building here.”
Last night, I went to the Sara Bareilles concert in Baltimore. It was supposed to be a big group but one by one people started to drop out, until it was just me and a man I had met once in my life for about 20 minutes. Also, he was driving which made me super uncomfortable, because I hate being driven by anyone whose sanity and will to live I have not been able to ascertain fully ahead of time. But there you have it. We made it back alive and chit chatted semi-awkwardly throughout the evening.
The concert itself was great. I really enjoy her music. Sort of like a non-douchey female John Mayer, but piano-based and with a more pop sensibility. Michelle Obama is a fan, need I say more?
The highlight of the evening was Baltimore, though. BALTIMORE! I love it. Driving past Camden Yards, the waterfront, the crabshacks. Lovely...I am sure there are gross parts, as portrayed on"The Wire", "The Corner", "Homicide: Life on the Streets" and more... but I saw the charming Baltimore, the one in Anne Tyler books. What? You haven't read "The Accidental Tourist?" Tsk. Get on that.
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