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Curation Nation

I spend a fair amount of time in NYC’s museums, so I’m accustomed to thinking of “curate” as something an art expert does. Indeed, the primary definition of this verb is “to select, organize, and look after items in a collection or exhibition.” So I was surprised to see this sign over a display of snacks:

Separating forged from authentic potato chips?

Keeping the customer safe from forged potato chips.

Okay, back to the dictionary, where I found that you can curate “content or merchandise using professional or expert knowledge.” The sign is correct if a professional snackpicker selected the food. Cynic that I am, though, I couldn’t help thinking that the advertising and marketing of this merchandise benefited more from “expert knowledge” than nutrition and taste did. I declined to test my theory because a glance at the price tags showed that curated snacks cost a lot more than just-throw-it-on-the-shelf stuff.

Once the word was stuck in my mind, I noticed it often in The New York Times. Sometimes the definitions quoted above applied: “The web has gotten so big that you need people to curate it.” No argument there, unless you’re a fan of the candidates-are-from-another-planet sort of story, in which case you’re against the act of curating, not the use of the word.

Other “curate” sentences stretched the definition: “Sometimes you see veggie burgers made with 100 ingredients, a kitchen-sink burger,” she said. “It’s better when you curate a burger.” Here “curate” seems to mean “select,” but I’d opt for curating the ingredients of the burger, not the burger itself.

An even greater stretch shows up in this sentence: “I started to curate this idea.” Now “curate” is closer to “create,” though you could make a case that the speaker sifted through many possibilities and organized the harvest into a coherent idea.

The one that really got me was a comment from a rock star: “I’ll curate my own brand.” Leaving aside the question of whether a person can or should be a brand, my best guess is that this sentence returns to the museum context for “curate.” The star sees herself as a work of art!

Anatomy Lessons

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Thousands of words have been written about the media’s tendency to present unrealistic body images. These signs are unrealistic, too, but in their own glorious way:

Where?

This shop apparently caters to customers whose toenails center around their spines. If that’s your situation, you’d certainly want a pedicure. Just think how uncomfortable it would be to settle into a chair, lean back, and hit a toenail.

Staying on the subject of feet, I can’t resist reposting this sign (see “Massage Tips” at http://www.grammarianinthecity.com/?p=1253):

Front feet not included.

The hyphen in “back-foot” creates one description; therefore, this store massages only your back foot. Go somewhere else if your front feet are sore.

Here’s another sign that assumes some strange anatomical features:

How many upper lips do you have?

Okay, “upper lips” and “under lips” may be a general reference to body parts, not a strict count of what’s on a client’s face. But why the singular “chin” then? A customer is more likely to have more than one chin than more than one upper or under lip, even in this city well supplied with supermodels who wear size zero. And what’s a “side face”? Is each side $10, or do some people opt for an asymmetrical look?

I’m not even going to speculate about the meaning of “Men Ear Wax or Thread.” But if you want to do so, go for it!

Numbers Game

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In the spirit of “five out of four people don’t understand fractions,” I present these gems from math-challenged sign-makers:

How much more and less?

Forgive me for relying on logic here, but isn’t “more and less” a contradiction? Perhaps the writer meant “more or less,” a description that could apply to a penny and to a trillion bucks. At least that interpretation might be true. “More and less,” on the other hand, could only mean . . . well, what could it mean? Ideas welcome.

And then there’s time. Einstein’s theory of relativity (but not math) is alive and well in NYC:

Long week.

The above photo is from a store named Muji, where a week lasts thirty days. One can only hope that the employees are paid by the hour.

The next sign proves that government is just as “innumerate” (the number version of “illiterate”) as private enterprise:

Weak on the definition of “week.”

If anyone tells you that government employees indulge in four-day weeks, especially in the summer, whip out this sign. In New York City, Restaurant Week lasts 26 days.

“Punctuation”; Puzzles.

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The title looks strange — on purpose — and it’s no stranger than the random addition or removal of periods, commas, and quotation marks in NYC’s signs. I wrote about the placement of periods in “Stop Full Stop” (http://www.grammarianinthecity.com/?p=1364). In this post I expand on the puzzles of punctuation. First up is this photo, which my friend Erica Berenstein sent me:

Can you spot the period?

Reluctantly leaving aside the issue of capital letters, I can’t figure out the marketing advantage of placing a period after “dream” and nowhere else. True, the list separates the clauses (subject-verb pairs), but then why place any periods at all in this ad?

Microsoft takes a different approach to punctuation, as you see in these messages that popped up on my screen during a recent update:

And the comma is there because . . .?

The first part of the statement seems to be a shortened form of “we are getting things ready,” an independent clause. But if that’s the intended construction, the rules of Standard English don’t allow you to attach the first independent clause to the second (“Please don’t turn off your PC”) with a comma. Another possible interpretation is that “getting things ready” is an introductory participle, in which case the participle should modify the subject of the following clause. The problem with this explanation is that the subject of “please don’t turn off your PC” is an implied “you.” But “you” aren’t getting things ready. Microsoft is, or so it claims. By the way, there’s a period missing after “PC.” With such attention to detail, the upgrade promises to be buggy at best.

Here’s another Microsoft gem:

windows2

Okay, the words make sense, and the sentence begins with a capital letter. It ends with . . . nothing. No period. No exclamation point. Not even a question mark, which, given the state of internet security these days, would be more than appropriate.

Last one. Can anyone find a reason for these quotation marks?

P1020112

I’m stumped. Feel free to send in your theories, properly punctuated, of course!

April Fool

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Slightly out of season, I know, but like most New Yorkers, I’ve spent this August dreaming of a time when the city wasn’t wrapped in a blanket of hot, wet air. Specifically April, when I snapped these photos and mentally placed them in the “April Fool” category, though I’m fairly certain the creators thought their signs were models of clarity. First up is a statement about a mysterious “shirt machine”:

How are your shirt conditions?

I’d probably be tempted to use this device if my clothing were in good “conditions.” But my tees and blouses currently feature sweaty patches, grass stains, and one blob of what may be somebody’s used chewing gum. I’m not interested in keeping those conditions “better and longer” or, for that matter, keeping them at all.

From the next sign I learned that the city has a “Business Integrity Commission.” Great. If only NYC had a grammar commission as well:

Recycling what?

Absent punctuation, the establishment is “recycling used cooking oil services.” How exactly do you recycle “services”? And did someone call a hyphen strike without informing me? I’d rewrite the sign this way: “Bio Energy Development, Inc. recycles used cooking-oil from this establishment.”

One more, also punctuation-challenged:

Refinish repair?

As written, the shop is offering “restoration” of antique furniture. They also do “caning,” which has nothing to do (I think) with corporal punishment and instead involves weaving strips of stiff grass into a chair seat. So far, so good. Both services are nouns, and both may apply to antique furniture.

Where I crash and burn is “refinish repair,” which seem to be verbs in this context. Is the store refinishing something it had previously repaired, or are they refinishing and repairing upholstery? If so, a couple of -ing syllables would be helpful. Also, is it possible to “refinish” upholstery? Paging furniture specialists! Send in your clarifications, please. While I wait to hear from you, I’ll dream of cooler days.

Ritual Pick-Up

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I spotted this sign in a food court near Battery Park in Lower Manhattan. I lurked for a while, hoping to see what sort of customers or services were associated with it. But it was a holiday weekend, when most New Yorkers were anywhere-but-here, so I was left alone with my speculations.

All I wanted was coffee.

First, I concentrated on “ritual.” This is a city with its own unit of time — a “New York minute,” which lasts only a couple of nanoseconds and which a comedian once defined as “the interval between the traffic light turning green and the guy behind you honking his horn.” To save time, New Yorkers will do almost anything. So, I reasoned, if you’re too busy to plan, say, a wedding ceremony, a baptism, or a bar mitzvah, you can pick one up here. And if the timing is right, your next life event may even be on sale.

Then I shifted my attention to “pick-up.” Perhaps, I thought, this is where you meet when you’ve donned your sexiest outfit, artfully mussed your hair, and practiced lines like “Come here often?” or “What’s your sign?” or “Has anyone ever told you that you have beautiful eyes/great abs?” Nice to know that the hackneyed has an official spot in NYC, I thought.

A quick Internet search revealed that an app called “Ritual” allows you to order and pay for food online, which you then pick up at this location. Efficient and useful, true, but much less fun than my interpretations.

Business Bites and other follies

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I recently ate at a local pub, but instead of concentrating on the food (which was actually quite good), I spent the time trying to figure out the meaning of these words, which appeared in large type on the menu: “Business Bites Lunch.” There was no punctuation in the original, so I’m assuming this is not a sentence about pin-striped-suiters gnawing on midday meals. The only alternative meaning I could come up with was that “business” is biting into the time allotted for lunch. Your ideas welcome.

And then there’s this sign:

Which executive would you like to eat for lunch?

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Wading into a swamp of uncertainty

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To read signs in NYC is to wade into a swamp of uncertainty. Please, dear reader, put on your thinking cap and thigh-high boots. Rescue me from the swamp generated by these signs.

First up: this beauty, which was affixed to the fence surrounding a site associated with the never-ending construction of a new subway:

What kind of location?

I fooled around with hyphens for a while in the context of this sign. But what’s a “white-hat location” or a “white hat-location”? The punctuation mark solved nothing, because I don’t know the significance of a “white hat,” beyond the traditional (and somewhat racist) idea that good guys always wear white hats. I pondered whether the sign referred to “hard hats,” which are supposed to protect workers from head trauma. But then why not say so? Also, I’ve seen many construction workers wearing hard hats in other colors. Perhaps the hat color is associated with rank, in which case this location is open only to those who have earned a white hat, which, like a black belt in karate, signifies that they’ve achieved proficiency in something (subway building? procrastinating? maneuvering around piles of metal rods and concrete blocks?). Your guess is as good as mine.

Next up is this awning:

No candlestick maker?

I went through the hyphen calculation again with this sign and came up with nothing. If it’s “prime-butcher baker,” is the baker toasting top-notch butchers? Maybe it’s “prime butcher-baker” and the store employs a skilled (prime) person who works on both meat and baked goods. At one point the concept of prime numbers flashed through my consciousness, but I couldn’t link 2, 17, or 983 (to name a few) to the “butcher baker” idea. If any mathematicians have theories, please send me a note.

Last and maybe least is this one:

For cars?

What’s a “reduced garage”? For tiny cars only? A garage with fewer spaces? I thought the sign might refer to “reduced prices” until I took a look at the fees, which, I promise you, were in no way “reduced” unless your standard of measurement is the amount charged to park a car inside a luxury hotel suite (a ridiculous but apparently real offer to billionaires who have abnormal relationships with their vehicles).

I have more, but I’ll wait for a future post. I don’t want to swamp your speculative powers.

Plan Ahea

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Lest you think that my photographic skills (minimal at best) are responsible for the strange messages on these signs, let me assure you that what you see here is what I saw there, with “there” being New York City. The first was tacked to the inside of a shop window:

Ou: my favorite non-word. An: my second favorite.

Yes, I know what they were trying to say. But isn’t it fun to speculate about the missing letters? First, the OU: “Please visit oubliette” (for horror/dungeon fans). Or “Outback” (for those seeking a restaurant). Maybe “outdoors,” “outlook,” or “outcropping” (for nature lovers) or “outcasts” (for compassionate souls). Now the AN: “self service analgesic” or “anti-venom” (for snakebite victims). Perhaps “analogy,” “Anglican,” “anapest,” or “antonyms” (for English teachers).

I could go on, but I need space for this one:

A rat by any other name . . .

Instead of completing the last word, I choose to see this message as complete. The company caters to groups of rats (semi-) regulated by the SEC. Keep that in mind the next time your boss throws an office party.

I’m not sure how this post appears on your device. When I check new posts on my laptop, they often appear fine. Then, when I see the same post on my tablet, I find extra or missing spaces. Tech devices, for all they have evolved, do not always play nicely together. These signs, however, were printed on paper. There is no excuse for lopping off one edge.

In making your own signs, take care to allow enough room for the whole message. In other words, plan ahea.

Boxing, New York Style

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Manhattan apartments are notoriously tiny, and so are Manhattan closets. So it’s not surprising that during my walks around the borough I encounter many shops offering storage. What is surprising is the nature of that storage. For example:

Legal? Illegal?

Could be oregano, parsley, or . . . well, I’m sure the DEA would supply a list of herbs that people might want to stash off-site.

And then there’s this beauty:

Put your cold in a box.

Absent a hyphen, the sign’s meaning is ambiguous. The shop may be offering to store boxes that are low in temperature (cold-box storage). Or, the sign may be targeting sneezers, coughers, and those with similar symptoms (cold box-storage). I know I’d like to stash my ailments at times, especially when I see this sign:

What’s free?

I also know, however, that the old adage, “you get what you pay for,” is true. So what’s free: the storage of a box (contents cost extra) or the box (storage charges apply)? I’ll let you know if my kitchen runs out of space and I have to store some herbs, eggs, milk, or anything else.

Grammarian in the City

Snarky remarks on language I see and hear in New York City

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Anatomy Lessons

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“Punctuation”; Puzzles.

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April Fool

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Boxing, New York Style

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