fine whine

By the way, trucker hats are big. Get yours at Barney’s New York (when their site reopens) or wait till winter and get ‘em from the Gap.

I kid you not. Trucker hats, i.e. the ones with the stiff front and the mesh in the back. As in the ones that say John Deere or the name of a ship on them. Like the ones that rednecks and Tom Clancy wear. Incidentally, on those ship and other military ones, the laurels on the bill are commonly called “scrambled eggs”. I kid you not.

I was in a presentation today, and heard about a group of people who were “positioned and goaled” to do something or other. Now ‘position’ has for a long time been an acceptable verb, but ‘goal’? I assume from context that the people had been given a goal or a goal had been set for them, but I am at a loss to come up with another such usage. A goal just isn’t something that can be given like a slap or a kiss. Someone can be given a present or be presented something, but they cannot be goaled. It just sounds stupid.

I suppose I just don’t understand the need for certain people (generally higher up in bureaucracies) to verb nouns. I mean, is it harder to say “they have a set goal” than “they are goaled”? It saves, what, one second to say? That second is lost then if the listener has to figure out what it means. Then again, in bureaucracies, lower-downs merely are expected to nod to higher-ups, not comprehend what they’re saying.