The Iron Law of Bureaucracy at Work

So, fifth time in six years that “city” *cough* workers *cough* are “repairing” the water line to the house. Yeh, the guy in the hole didn’t like me sticking around to see that he was just putting a patch over the hole in their line. Replace the faulty line? Heck no! That would take work. *sigh*

But at least it keeps them busy going back and re-doing their crappy work.

One of the principles of Type II “Bureaucraps” is to NEVER actually solve a problem, because that doesn’t let them request more funding, more personnel (at the end of the “job” there were five “workers” busyworking the job. Oh, it never needed more than one to do the “work” and another to lean on a shovel and issue directions (which, when it came to the so-so use of the backhoe/FEL at least gave the guy five minutes out of two hours of legitimacy, but it needed five to eat up some time on some time cards), more “turf” to claim as their own.

And their supervisor, of course, set it all up the way it was run, from excess workers using equipment oin a manner assured to take the most possible time with the equipment used, to shoddy repair. All designed to eat up resources in the most inefficient manner possible and assure ANOTHER leak down the road.

Three of many Reasons Things About The Trumpery That Chap My Gizzard. . . Plus a Bonus

It’s my opinion and I’m sticking to it, unless someone can give me verifiable facts and sound reason to modify it. So there.

Here are three:

“Just to show you how unfair [1] Republican primary politics can be, I won the State of Louisiana and get less [2] delegates than Cruz-Lawsuit coming.[3]”

#1 is a two-fer, but we’ll call it just one. The Trumpery whiny baby. And he lies. What’s “unfair” about following the rules? Only dummies don’t bother to even learn the rues before trying to play the game at master level.

#2 is easy. He’s subliterate at best. He wants to run the country and is too butt lazy to even learn English. “Less” is for things that are measured. “Fewer” is for things that can be counted. Any person who has bothered to become literate knows this. The Trumpery is too butt lazy to bother his “good brain” with speaking literate English. Impressive in a president, no?

#3 His resort to losing because he was too butt lazy to do his homework and to do the essential ground work to actually win is to threaten a lawsuit he cannot win. *yawn* Moron. Go ahead, emphasize your weakness.

And last, the whole, “I was cheated” is just another page in his primary life strategy: lie, lie, lie and then? Lie again.

Here ya go: 101 of The Trumpery’s lies. Oh, the list is nowhere NEAR exhaustive, but it’s a place to start.

Warning Signs

1.) The book blurb for a self-pub contains orthographic and grammar errors as egregious as this, first sentence of a blurb did,

“A global flu pandemic has wiped out ninety nine [sic] percent of the worlds [sic] population.”

The first page of the book includes, among other offenses, “He staggered back, unable to breath.”

You might well, with signs like this, think, “Hmmm, Cupcake, if you haven’t bothered to learn basic English, why should you expect to have English speakers/readers buy your book?”

Oh, and if “Cupcake” thinks so highly of his own subliterate capabilities (and is so dismissive of his readers) as to eschew paying a competent line editor to mend his execrable grasp of grammar and vocabulary, well, that’s another strike against him and his “literary” non-efforts.

(And yeh, the butchery of English continued in that case, until I finally exited the snippet and sought some mind-cleansing in better-written text.)

Note: there is a lot of non-fiction written nowadays that is just as bad as in the fiction referred to above. Damn democratic influences in the arts! *heh*

The Nut of an Exchange Between Two Rare Adults on FarceBook

Part of a FarceBook discussion of the phenomenon of His Ignoble Trumpery’s supporters viewing him as “anti-establishment” and Ted Cruz, whose entire public career has been in combat against “establishment” intrusions into Americans’ liberties is excerpted below:

JB: “These days, having once been inside a federal building for lunch makes one a career politician. Just like having once held an elective office of any kind makes one ‘Establishment.'”

JD: “But building casinos using tax breaks and eminent domain, while buying candidates left and right, does not. I think I’m beginning to get it.”

Yeh, apparently “owning” politicians (and openly BRAGGING about it!) and using one’s influence with “the establishment” to enrich oneself at the expense of others (via sweetheart “gummint takings” to benefit himself), and more, somehow just doesn’t penetrate the angry, tantrum-throwing toddlers’ pea-brains. Nope. His Ignoble Trumpery makes growling noises and barks really, really loudly, so he’s “ati-establishment” regardless the testimony of his actual history.

Meanwhile, Cruz, whose public career includes winning defenses of individual liberties and states rights before the SCOTUS and excoriation of “establishment” abuses on the floor of the senate, defense of our borders (even Jeff Sessions admits Cruz was integral to the defeat of Lil Marco and the Gang of Eight) and more is all just part of being an “establishment” politician.

Almost? See Inigo Montoya

Had to chuckle when I read (identity withheld to protect the guilty from embarrassment) a recent reference to John Moses Browning’s Colt 1911 that read, “It’s an engineering masterpiece with a design that’s endured almost 100 years.” Almost? Browning began work on the specifics of the design around 1890, and the pistol was in Army field trials between 1907 and 1911, when it was adopted for use. That’s not “almost 100 years” but MORE THAN 100 years, no matter when one chooses its start date.

Should I blame common core math for the writer’s faux pas?

Good, Bad and Downright Ugly

I “buy” more than a few free ebooks. Book blurbs, reader reviews, and sample text allow me to filter many unworthy offerings, but some do slip through. And then there are the borderline examples. Well-written, for the most part, interesting stories (again, for the most part) with characters that seem more genuine than not (not that “genuine” is always good, when a young, semi-or-sub-literate writer is genuinely reflecting his/her own cohort *sigh*), etc., but with gaping holes in literacy, research, or understanding of a few basic concepts.

Many of the problems noted here could be easily mended were it not for the frequently overriding problem of the Dunning-Kruger Effect. It seems many writers don’t feel a need to have competent, literate line and copy editors (or are too chintzy to pay for such). After all, they have their attendance certificate (diploma) from some college or university, so that MUST mean they are literate and competent, and do not need to seek out someone who is literate and competent to line/copy edit their “masterwork,” right? Wrong. Even the most literate and competent writer can use literate, competent editing by a third party, preferably an adult. No, a real one.

The worst problems aren’t language or character development or plotting. No, the worst problems in a lot of writing in many of these freebies by millennial “grups” lie in their basic world view, their misunderstandings of human nature formed by living in a morass of media fantasy instead of

An example (I’ll name one author who deserves praise and not name another who tried really, really hard [#gagamaggot] to write a decent story but failed, “deserving” only a “participation trophy”): Many of the freebies I read are introductions to series. Good practice. . . if the intro is a good read. Some of them I read specifically to review for recommendation/disapprobation for my Wonder Woman who is always seeking new writers to appeal to her students, especially her 7th/8th grade students. This practice led me to read (for review) a book by Shelley Adina, “Lady of Devices,” a steampunk “romance” (NOT capitalized), where, for the first book at least, “romance” ~ “adventure,” as it once meant. I was so surprised by the quality of the writing (in all aspects–good use of English, good plotting, character development and descriptive narrative, etc., as well as a really sensible Victorian feel to the book that I have since read everything else Adina has written in the series,* and felt privileged to pay to do so.

Another book I just finished attempted to do what Adina accomplished, in the same genre, but the writer was both not competent in those areas where I praise Shelley Adina and apparently did not see the need (or was too cheap to pay) for competent, literate line/copy editing. On top of that, the writer committed the cardinal sin of placing “message” above story and periodically throughout the text ended up pontificating on points of the society she had designed with which she disagreed, instead of letting the story simply speak for itself. Bad writing, that, really bad writing.

And that was on top of presenting some basic concepts of human nature and relationships in what I have come to expect to be typical of jejune, shallow, millennial crybabies.

Sad. There were moments of sound grade “C” writing, with gusts up to “B+” on occasion, but I had to give the book a “One star that should be zero stars” rating and could NOT recommend it for young adolescents, as I resoundingly recommended the Adina books.

Seriously, most of these young writers really, really need to submit their work for correction and critique to literate, competent adults (NOT something they are likely to find among their circles of acquaintances) before releasing it into the wild.


*She’s also written some contemporary “juvies” directed toward (it seems middle school girls. I’ve not read those, but I did suggest that my Wonder Woman look into them for her libraries, given the quality of Adina’s steampunk books.