Client: Make that a lighter black.
Me: Okay. So dark grey for the background.
Client: No! I absolutely don’t want any shade of grey on my website. I just want a lighter black.
Me: …Okay. Lighter black for the background it is. Now, did you want the same shade of white, or did you want that to be darker?
Client: Don’t be ridiculous.
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I guess is the best we got?
This looks exhausting — flirting signals, from Daniel R. Shafer’s Secrets of Life Unveiled, 1877:
“Handkerchief flirtations”:
Drawing it across the lips: Desiring an acquaintance
Drawing it across the cheek: I love you
Drawing it across the forehead: Look, we are watched
Drawing it through the hands: I hate you
Dropping it: We will be friends
Folding it: I wish to speak with you
Letting it rest on the right cheek: Yes
Letting it rest on the left cheek: No
Letting it remain on the eyes: You are so cruel
Opposite corners in both hands: Do wait for me
Over the shoulder: Follow me
Placing it over the right ear: How you have changed
Putting it in the pocket: No more love at present
Taking it by the centre: You are most too willing
Twisting it in the left hand: I wish to be rid of you
Twisting it in the right hand: I love another
Winding it around the forefinger: I am engaged
Winding it around the third finger: I am married
“Glove flirtations”:
Biting the tips: I wish to be rid of you very soon
Clenching them, rolled up in right hand: No
Drawing half way on left hand: Indifference
Dropping both of them: I love you
Dropping one of them: Yes
Folding up carefully: Get rid of your company
Holding the tips downward: I wish to be acquainted
Holding them loose in the right hand: Be contented
Holding them loose in the left hand: I am satisfied
Left hand with the naked thumb exposed: Do you love me?
Putting them away: I am vexed
Right hand with the naked thumb exposed: Kiss me
Smoothing them out gently: I am displeased
Striking them over the shoulder: Follow me
Tapping the chin: I love another
Tossing them up gently: I am engaged
Turning them inside out: I hate you
Twisting them around the fingers: Be careful, we are watched
Using them as a fan: Introduce me to your company
“Fan flirtations”:
Carrying in right hand: You are too willing
Carrying in right hand in front of face: Follow me
Carrying in left hand: Desirous of an acquaintance
Closing it: I wish to speak with you
Drawing across the forehead: We are watched
Drawing across the cheek: I love you
Drawing across the eyes: I am sorry
Drawing through the hand: I hate you
Dropping: We will be friends
Fanning fast: I am engaged
Fanning slow: I am married
Letting it rest on right cheek: Yes
Letting it rest on left cheek: No
Open and shut: You are cruel
Open wide: Wait for me
Shut: I have changed
Placing it on the right ear: You have changed
Twirling in left hand: I love another
With handle to lips: Kiss me
“Parasol flirtations”:
Carrying it elevated in left hand: Desiring acquaintance
Carrying it elevated in right hand: You are too willing
Carrying it closed in left hand: Meet on the first crossing
Carrying it closed in right hand by the side: Follow me
Carrying it over the right shoulder: You can speak to me
Carrying it over the left shoulder: You are too cruel
Closing up: I wish to speak to you
Dropping it: I love you
End of tips to lips: Do you love me?
Folding it up: Get rid of your company
Letting it rest on the right cheek: Yes
Letting it rest on the left cheek: No
Striking it on the hand: I am very displeased
Swinging it to and fro by the handle on left side: I am engaged
Swinging it to and fro by the handle on the right side: I am married
Tapping the chin gently: I am in love with another
Twirling it around: Be careful; we are watched
Using it as a fan: Introduce me to your company
With handle to lips: Kiss me
(From Elizabeth Aldrich, From the Ballroom to Hell: Grace and Folly in Nineteenth-Century Dance, 1991.)
HpeckerThis shows so good btw
I’ll stop you at the top: those racists didn’t even watch part of an episode. They got mad at a title.
When J.R.R. Tolkien wrote his first story, at age 7, “my mother … pointed out that one could not say ‘a green great dragon,’ but had to say ‘a great green dragon.’ I wondered why, and still do.” It turns out that there’s an unwritten rule in English that governs the order in which we string our adjectives together:
opinion
size
age
shape
color
origin
material
type
purpose
In The Elements of Eloquence, Mark Forsyth writes, “So you can have a lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife. But if you mess with that word order in the slightest you’ll sound like a maniac. It’s an odd thing that every English speaker uses that list, but almost none of us could write it out.”
Another unwritten rule concerns ablaut reduplication: In terms such as chit-chat or dilly-dally, in which a word is repeated with an altered vowel, the vowels will follow the pattern I-A-O if there are three words and I-A or I-O if there are two. So:
tip-top
clip-clop
King Kong
flip-flop
sing-song
shilly-shally
And so on. Interestingly, these rules about precedence seem to follow a precedence rule of their own: The “royal order of adjectives” would require Red Riding Hood to meet the “Bad Big Wolf” (opinion before size). But the rule of ablaut reduplication apparently trumps this, making him the Big Bad Wolf.
“Why this should be is a subject of endless debate among linguists,” Forsyth writes. “It might be to do with the movement of your tongue or an ancient language of the Caucasus. It doesn’t matter. It’s the law, and, as with the adjectives, you knew it even if you didn’t know you knew it. And the law is so important that you just can’t have a Bad Big Wolf.”
I don’t know how this applies to dragons.
(Thanks, Nick and Armin.)
Client: Are you the one who manages the online store?
Me: Yes, that’s me.
Client: Well, you’re going to have to fix the website. I’m trying to order some metallic varnish but every time I click the ‘Buy’ button I get an annoying pop-up and it won’t let me place the product in my basket.
Me: What does the pop-up say?
Client: It says ‘Product out of stock’.
Me: Yes, this product IS indeed out of stock, that’s why you can’t order it.
Client: Well then get rid of the pop-up so that I can order it.
Me: We can’t get rid of it, because we don’t have that product in the store.
Client: Ugh, fine, I’ll place my order for the other items, but send me the metallic varnish, too.
Me: …
The conversation went on for about 20 minutes after that.
Send all that speeding ticket money to a social justice non-profit?
Hell yes, if these white parents are too lazy to raise their kid right (it’s a problem in the white community), you might have to do it.
Old rule too.
Hpeckerfeel like i should bookmark this one...
if there’s anything you’re worried about at high levels of american government, those parts are jokes too
Sydney mayor Pat Hills had a trying day on Nov. 18, 1956. That year’s Olympic torch had been wending its way across Australia and was scheduled to arrive in town that evening, carried by former marathon champion Harry Dillon. Huge crowds lined the streets, perching on fences and climbing poles for a better view.
Presently a runner appeared, holding a torch aloft. He bounded up the steps and handed it to Hills, who started his welcome address and then stopped, realizing that the handle he was holding bore wet paint.
It turned out to be a chair leg surmounted by a plum pudding can. Students at the University of Sydney had organized the hoax to protest thoughtless reverence for the Olympic torch. “It was being treated as a god, whereas in fact it was originally invented by the Nazis for the Berlin Games in 1936,” said veterinary student Barry Larkin, who had melted into the crowd after handing the fake torch to Hills.
“Our friends from the university think things like that are funny,” Hill told the crowd. “I hope you are enjoying the joke.” He was lucky it hadn’t gone off as planned — the torch had originally contained a pair of burning underwear.
When Mariner 4 flew past Mars in summer 1965, NASA scientists were eager to get their first close look at another planet. So rather than wait for their computers to render the probe’s data into a proper photograph, the employees in the agency’s telecommunications group mounted printed strips of data in a display panel and colored them by hand to create a rough visualization.
The hand-colored vista became the first image of Mars based on data collected by an interplanetary probe. They framed the finished image and presented it to agency director William H. Pickering.
That’s a fact, if the current environment has shown us anything, men are weak as fuck.
“i tried to share the memo you sent but you got mad at me when i screenshotted it”
This isn’t a story about a client from hell, but I know for a fact that it is advice that comes from dealing with them.
When I was studying 3D animation and visualization, we did customer projects as a part of our education. For each project we had a tutor, someone who worked in the industry and knew the ropes. This is legitimately one of the lessons one of our tutors gave us:
Tutor: In our company, we have what we call an “Ugly Red Blob” method. When a design has been finalized, and it’s time to send it to the client for final review, the last thing we do is we add a big, red blob somewhere in the design. The client will look at the mock-up and say: “Okay, that’s good, but take out that red blob, it doesn’t work with the rest.” The client gets a feeling that they’ve contributed to the design in a significant way, and we can get on with our work, without the client trying to micro-manage every font and color.
In The Limits of Language, Swedish linguist Mikael Parkvall awards this his recognition for “best apologetic endnote”:
“This paper was undertaken in an attempt to shed light on some very mysterious problems. I fear I have done little more than show which lamps have cords too short to reach the outlets.”
(From Georgia Green, “Some Observations on the Syntax and Semantics of Instrumental Verbs,” Papers from the 8th Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society 8 [1972], 83-97.)
