For the record, I am neither religious nor superstitious. However, enough things have gone wrong today to make me wonder if I shouldn’t at least be knocking on wood my house is still standing and (obviously) my fingers are still working.
The first thing to go on the fritz was our only service/tool I would consider a social tool where I work. We’ve had our IT folks and support from the vendor look at everything and each one of them, so far (time to put the hammer down), is looking at the machine logs and – seeing nothing untoward – shifting responsibility. The problem, however, remains and needs to be dealt with immediately, if not sooner.
So . . . then Twitter suffers a denial of service attack and is either down or clunky for hours on end. I was going through double withdrawal and it was beginning to make me twitch a little bit. Something had to be done.
Well, not much I can do about Twitter but, as the project manager for our internal social tool, I could raise a ruckus and get people doing something – collectively – to help fix this problem. So we get the vendor rep on the phone and he is always helpful and knowledgeable and we work with him frequently to resolve minor issues and discuss feature upgrades, etc.
The conversation starts out just fine but suddenly his phone starts distorting and cutting out. He tries using his cell phone and, after a couple of minutes, it drops from the call. He calls back and, again after a few minutes, it starts distorting again. As of now, we’ve been on and off the phone for over an hour, the problem still exists internally, Twitter stills seem famischt, but at least the phones kinda worked.
I’m wondering, the Perseid meteor shower is only six days away. Maybe Comet Swift-Tuttle is returning to slam us and we’ve just missed it. Maybe its the end-of-days, maybe the Mayan calendar is right or Nostrildamus hit it “on the nose”. Stay tuned.
Systems Savvy 
August 21st, 2009 at 9:45 pm
And Rick, thanks for note, and neither place published it, natch, par for the course, here I come with a great STOP THE PRESSES story, and nobody will publish it anywhere. it remains a blog and comment phenon only. SIGH.
SMILE
Danny le BLoom,
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August 21st, 2009 at 11:16 am
Danny – Thanks for this. The likelihood of my seeing it at either of the sites you sent it to (whether they print it or not) is the same as the likelihood of my winning the lottery, which I don’t indulge in. So I’m glad you sent it here.
Rick
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August 18th, 2009 at 6:55 am
Rick,
I wrote a new news story on this too and sent it to the JTA offices in NYC and also to the San Diego Jewish World newspaper in California. If they don’t use it, and you don’t see it, here it is: ENJOY!
http://zippy1300.blogspot.com/2009/08/syndicated-cartoon-gets-its-yiddish.html
Syndicated cartoon gets its Yiddish inflections wrong — and guilty
cartoonist says : “OOPS!”
by Dan E. Bloom
Bill Griffith is one of America’s most famous newspaper cartoonists,
and his comic strip called ZIPPY is syndicated in newspapers around
the country, and overseas as well. You can view his website at
http://zippythepinhead.com
Griffith’s cartoons have been called surreal, intellectual, zany,
goofy, underground, catchy, you name it. He is a brilliant satirizer
of American culture, and he takes aim at almost everyone, VIP
personages to celebrities to, well, to everyone. Griffith has an eye
for what’s happening in American culture, and he’s been doing this for
years. His fan base in legion.
Now to the Yididsh story.
The August 15 edition of ZIPPY, published already in newspapers around
the nation, was a pointed jab at how technology is often taking over
our lives, and the very first panel of the strip began with one of the
characters reading a book and saying to his pal, who was watchiing TV:
“Kindle, schwindle….I still like a real page-turner with pages you can
turn!”
To which his pal replies: “Twitter, schwitter….I still like network
TV ….where commercials rule!”
Spot the mistake? See the gaffe? Read the dialog phrases above again.
Of course, the cartoonist meant to write “Kindle, schmindle” and
Twitter, schmitter” … but he absentmindedly mixed up the schm sound
with the schw sound, and of course, in Yiddish, the schm sound rules!
As in “Cancer, schmancer, as long as you’re healthy!” and other
Yiddish sayings. Actually, the “schw” sound does not mean anything in
Yiddish-inflected English or even in Yiddish. It’s the “schm” sound
that packs the comic punch.
See the cartoon here.
http://zippy1300.blogspot.com/2009/08/kindle-schmindle-twitter-schmitter.html
When the cartoonist was contacted at his home office in Connecticut,
the Long Island native — who was actually born in Levittown; yes,
that famous Levittown — and who actually knows very well how
Yiddish-English should be inflected for best comic results, replied:
“Oops!”
But it’s too late to change the comic strip. It’s already in print in
over 500 newspapers worldwide and online as well. The good news? It’s
now a collector’s item!
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August 18th, 2009 at 6:51 am
“Zippy strikes me as the kind of guy who might eat a blueberry bagel with melted emmenthaler …” — good one! I think it was a totally unconcious mistake on the cartoonist’s part, he grew up among Jewish people as a kid and has many Jewish friends in his circle of acquaintances, and he probably knows more Yiddish vocabulary than many young Jewish kids today. I think his brain misfired, and he didn’t catch the mistake even as he was inking in the cartoon 6 weeks ago to prepare it for publication this August. When I wrote to him, to tell him about the, er, gaffe, pardon my French, he actually wrote back, in a humorous way with just two words: “Bloom! Schmoom!”
He gets it. He will never make that mistake again. I loved it. A teachable moment, as Leo Rosen would have said.
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August 18th, 2009 at 5:37 am
Danny:
Gut yontiff? Is there a whole month’s difference on the other side of the International Dateline now? Not sure what you’re asking me. I don’t think I can top what you’ve written. I did, of course, notice the mistake immediately. It was so obvious I was afraid I was missing something. Zippy strikes me as the kind of guy who might eat a blueberry bagel with melted emmenthaler and kvell over his Yiddishosity. Thanks for the comment and the compliment.
Rick
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August 17th, 2009 at 11:27 pm
Gut yontif,,,could you do a blog post about this Yididsh gaffe in a recent popular USA cartoon? danny bloom in Taiwan asks
http://zippy1300.blogspot.com/2009/08/kindle-schmindle-twitter-schmitter.html
can you spot the mistake right away>?
DANNY aged 60
love yr blog
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