Business jargon we all hate

Business jargon we all hate, by Tom Cutler of "The Gentleman's Instant Genius Guide" fame. Only criticism? He missed a few (paradigm, helicopter view, push the envelope etc). Anyway, enjoy: Here are twenty-five examples of hideous business jargon, with notes, and translations into English. Where does this rubbish come from?

1. Going forward: ‘in future’ 2. Seamless: nonsense 3. Global: ‘offices in more than one country’ 4. Blue-sky thinking: nonsense 5. Change management: sugar-coated mass sackings 6. Implement: ‘do’ 7. Team leader: ‘upstart’ 8. Consultancy: ‘money for old rope’ 9. Team player: code for ‘lacklustre and useless’ 10. Not a team player: ‘rude, selfish, and unpleasant’ 11. Think outside the box: a cliché revealing the user to be thinking inside the box 12. Strategy: a military term, which generally just means ‘plan’ 13. Actioning: ‘doing’, or telling someone else to do 14. Escalate up: take something to the/a boss. The ‘up’ is redundant 15. Leveraging: just horrible – verbing nouns weirds language 16. Manage expectations: make sure X knows how useless you are 17. Turnkey solution: unutterable nonsense 18. Upskill: ‘train’ 19. Pushing the envelope: a maths term reduced to nonsense by ignoramuses 20. Best practice: not putting a live toaster in the bath with you 21. Enabler: lazy boss 22. Facetime: hideous nonsense 23. Repurpose: hammer in nail with screwdriver 24. Robust: likely to come apart at any moment 25. World-class: about as crappy as everyone else

UncategorizedJack Dyson Comments
The cat that walked by himself

A Just So story about the cat that walked by himself, by Rudyard Kipling [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IbTHL-AXH8&w=700] EAR and attend and listen; for this befell and behappened and became and was, O my Best Beloved, when the Tame animals were wild. The Dog was wild, and the Horse was wild, and the Cow was wild, and the Sheep was wild, and the Pig was wild--as wild as wild could be--and they walked in the Wet Wild Woods by their wild lones. But the wildest of all the wild animals was the Cat. He walked by himself, and all places were alike to him.

Of course the Man was wild too. He was dreadfully wild. He didn't even begin to be tame till he met the Woman, and she told him that she did not like living in his wild ways. She picked out a nice dry Cave, instead of a heap of wet leaves, to lie down in; and she strewed clean sand on the floor; and she lit a nice fire of wood at the back of the Cave; and she hung a dried wild-horse skin, tail-down, across the opening of the Cave; and she said, 'Wipe you feet, dear, when you come in, and now we'll keep house.'

That night, Best Beloved, they ate wild sheep roasted on the hot stones, and flavoured with wild garlic and wild pepper; and wild duck stuffed with wild rice and wild fenugreek and wild coriander; and marrow-bones of wild oxen; and wild cherries, and wild grenadillas. Then the Man went to sleep in front of the fire ever so happy; but the Woman sat up, combing her hair. She took the bone of the shoulder of mutton--the big fat blade-bone--and she looked at the wonderful marks on it, and she threw more wood on the fire, and she made a Magic. She made the First Singing Magic in the world.

Out in the Wet Wild Woods all the wild animals gathered together where they could see the light of the fire a long way off, and they wondered what it meant.

Then Wild Horse stamped with his wild foot and said, 'O my Friends and O my Enemies, why have the Man and the Woman made that great light in that great Cave, and what harm will it do us?'

Wild Dog lifted up his wild nose and smelled the smell of roast mutton, and said, 'I will go up and see and look, and say; for I think it is good. Cat, come with me.'

'Nenni!' said the Cat. 'I am the Cat who walks by himself, and all places are alike to me. I will not come.'

'Then we can never be friends again,' said Wild Dog, and he trotted off to the Cave. But when he had gone a little way the Cat said to himself, 'All places are alike to me. Why should I not go too and see and look and come away at my own liking.' So he slipped after Wild Dog softly, very softly, and hid himself where he could hear everything. (click here to read the rest of this lovely story or just enjoy the reading at the top)

UncategorizedJack Dysoncat, cats, just so, marrow bones, origins of man, reading, rudyard kipling, shoulder of mutton, stories, story, wild, wild cherries, wild garlic, wild oxen, wild sheepComment
Mrs Allonby on The Ideal Man (from A Woman of No Importance)

(Oscar Wilde at his finest) MRS. ALLONBY: The Ideal Man! Oh, the Ideal Man should talk to us as if we were goddesses, and treat us as if we were children. He should refuse all our serious requests, and gratify every one of our whims. He should encourage us to have caprices, and forbid us to have missions. He should always say much more than he means, and always mean much more than he says. He should never run down other pretty women. That would show he had no taste, or make one suspect that he had too much. No; he should be nice about them all, but say that somehow they don't attract him. If we ask him a question about anything, he should give us an answer all about ourselves. He should invariably praise us for whatever qualities he knows we haven't got. But he should be pitiless, quite pitiless, in reproaching us for the virtues that we have never dreamed of possessing. He should never believe that we know the use of useful things. That would be unforgivable. But he should shower on us everything we don't want. He should persistently compromise us in public, and treat us with absolute respect when we are alone. And yet he should be always ready to have a perfectly terrible scene, whenever we want one, and to become miserable, absolutely miserable, at a moment's notice, and to overwhelm us with just reproaches in less than twenty minutes, and to be positively violent at the end of half an hour, and to leave us for ever at a quarter to eight, when we have to go and dress for dinner. And when, after that, one has seen him for really the last time, and he has refused to take back the little things he has given one, and promised never to communicate with one again, or to write one any foolish letters, he should be perfectly broken-hearted, and telegraph to one all day long, and send one little notes every half-hour by a private hansom, and dine quite alone at the club, so that every one should know how unhappy he was. And after a whole dreadful week, during which one has gone about everywhere with one's husband, just to show how absolutely lonely one was, he may be given a third last parting, in the evening, and then, if his conduct has been quite irreproachable, and one has behaved really badly to him, he should be allowed to admit that he has been entirely in the wrong, and when he has admitted that, it becomes a woman's duty to forgive, and one can do it all over again from the beginning, with variations.

UncategorizedJack Dysona woman of no importance, comedy, ideal man, monologues, mrs allonby, oscar wilde, theatre, womenComment
A line-storm song, by Robert Frost 
The line-storm clouds fly tattered and swift,  
  The road is forlorn all day,  
Where a myriad snowy quartz stones lift,  
  And the hoof-prints vanish away.  
The roadside flowers, too wet for the bee,
  Expend their bloom in vain.  
Come over the hills and far with me,  
  And be my love in the rain.  

The birds have less to say for themselves  
  In the wood-world’s torn despair
Than now these numberless years the elves,  
  Although they are no less there:  
All song of the woods is crushed like some  
  Wild, easily shattered rose.  
Come, be my love in the wet woods; come,
  Where the boughs rain when it blows.  

There is the gale to urge behind  
  And bruit our singing down,  
And the shallow waters aflutter with wind  
  From which to gather your gown.     
What matter if we go clear to the west,  
  And come not through dry-shod?  
For wilding brooch shall wet your breast  
  The rain-fresh goldenrod.  

Oh, never this whelming east wind swells    
  But it seems like the sea’s return  
To the ancient lands where it left the shells  
  Before the age of the fern;  
And it seems like the time when after doubt  
  Our love came back amain.       
Oh, come forth into the storm and rout  
  And be my love in the rain.

[youtube=http://youtu.be/0QM1QdRpFxU&w=700]

UncategorizedJack Dysonlove, poem, poetry, robert frost, sigur rosComment