It's the Small Joys That Make Irregular Employment Worth It

It's the small joys that make irregular employment worth it. For example, while tutoring tonight I had a student who tried to make up a great word: multaplicitus. While I told him I was pretty sure that no such word existed (multitudinous was the word I suggested he was probably looking for), I nonetheless liked the word he invented. Here's my suggested definition for it:

multaplicitus: adjective, derived from combining "multiple" and "duplicitous," describes anything which employs a high number of examples in support of something which is nonetheless false

Perhaps the spelling should be regularized to multiplicitous? What do you think? Any takers for making this an actual neologism? If you can come up with a better definition, too, leave it in the comments section. (Something involving Tacitus maybe was my only other thought, but I'm sure you can do better.)

Isn't this messed up? Leave me a comment about how messed up this is.

First, the context: I recently volunteered for an organization which sends inmates educational and recreational reading material. The image below is of a postcard that an inmate had used to write to the organization in order to request books.



In case it's blurry, the front of the postcard reads: "Rescued Dogs & Cats enjoy Sheriff Joe Arpaio in an Air Conditioned Jail."

In smaller print, the back of the postcard continues (unpictured): "Front: While inmates live in the hot desert's Tent City, rescued dogs and cats enjoy the air conditioned comfort of a converted jail. Phoenix, Arizona."

How messed up is that? Here's my beginning effort at cataloging how messed up this is:

1) So they had enough prison space, but decided to make a Tent City anyway? Did they have a brainstorming session about how to make prison worse? (I love cats and dogs as much as the next guy -- well, dogs anyway -- but I'd rather see them have their own shelter than a converted jail. I suspect finding the converted use for the jail was a secondary happening anyway.)
2) They are so proud of their Tent City that they made postcards to promote it? (I mean, seriously, a postcard? Hmmm, let's look at the gift shop rack: Ooh, sunset on the Potomac, that's nice. Oh, "wish you were her" with a picture of a woman in a bikini, that's cute in a tacky way. Hmm, what's this? WE ARE AS CRUEL AS POSSIBLE TO OUR PRISONERS. Oh god, why is this here!?)
3) They then made those postcards available for inmates to use? I can't even imagine the theory of mind going on there.
4) They must be the only postcards available, or perhaps cheaper than others, because why else would an inmate want to "brag" about the fact that he/she was forced to live in a tent city? That adds an additional layer of messed-up-ness to the people who made the postcards and then made them available to the inmates.
5) Not just jails, but both times: "air-conditioned jail."
6) How creepy is that photo? And how creepy is the choice of the word "enjoy" ? (The dogs are not enjoying the air-conditioned jail -- they're specifically enjoying Sheriff Joe Arpaio.)

Isn't this messed up? Leave me a comment about how messed up this is.

Things I Enjoy

I saw a hand-made sign today on which various students had posted messages about their commitments to action for the semester. One in particular caught my eye:

"I'm committed to being more apart of the freshman experience."

Why I enjoyed this:
(1) Because of one little typo, the sentence expresses the opposite of its (most likely) intended meaning.
(2) If there is no typo, it raises some serious questions about what the student had been doing previously that was so pernicious to the freshman experience, plus the level of self-awareness required to then make this pledge suggests an interesting example of akrasia.
(3) I don't know if anyone else has ever noticed this about the sign, and since I was a guest in another department's office, I didn't mention it and just tried to keep my giggling in.

And let's not talk about the use of "freshman" in place of the preferred term "first year."

Things I Enjoy

A local lunch spot has a hand-written sign on the soft drink machine: "Water cups are for water only. No outside containers neither." The spacing and the handwriting make it clear that the "n" on "neither" was added after the message was written.

Why I enjoy this:
(1) Tautologies make me happy, particularly when there is any kind of justification for them (as it appears there is in this case). Water cups are for water and a is a.
(2) I love that in attempting to fix the second sentence someone only added a grammatical error where there was not one before. Good intentions led to a poor result. I'm sure it's a metaphor for something, and charming in its way.
(3) There's no particular reason that the "no/neither" pairing couldn't be correct, except that English has capriciously decided that it is not. In Spanish the double negative would actually be the correct concordance (ni/ninguno). (And I suspect the misapplication of a Spanish rule to the English sentence is the reason the change was made -- I'm sure this is some kind of metaphor, too.)