![\"Moon&LeafBlower\"](\"http:\/\/jasonhall.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/MoonLeafBlower.jpg\")
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Apart from the noise and the self-evident futility of the common leaf blower, what most disturbs me about the whole practice of charging money to fling nature\u2019s bounty into the neighbour\u2019s yard is its name. It lacks a certain\u2026poetry<\/em>.<\/p>\n In English, we’ve employed clever tricks to give everyday joe-jobs a sense of honour and wonder. These include translation into dessert-sounding<\/em> Romance languages and obfuscation with marketing bumf (aka, bull<\/em>).<\/p>\n Take our penchant for French titles. Translating some plain old English thing into French instantly transports it from the mundane suburb where it resides to the court of Louis XIV. Thus, \u201cKitchen Help\u201d is elevated to “Sous-chef”, \u201cHairdresser\u201d is blown away by “Coiffeur\u201d, and\u00a0\u201cCivil Servant” escapes all its grey servitude in the guise of \u201cAttach\u00e9\u201d.<\/p>\n We also like to upmarket ordinary jobs by inventing bullshit English job titles. This technique effectively euphamizes their true nature, transforming the lowly “Dishwasher\u201d into a \u201cCeramic Technician\u201d and the \u201cGarbage Man\u201d (in addition to solving the need for gender neutrality) into the commanding \u201cWaste Aquisition Officer\u201d. This practice circulates so widely it scarcely raises eyebrows anymore, as in the \u201cMarketing Assistant\u201d who now can claim status as \u201cSocial Media Guru”.<\/p>\n But \u201cLeaf Blower\u201d\u2026hm. That one stands awkwardly in its field (both the job and the machine)\u2014unadorned and entirely lacking any pretension of upward mobility.<\/p>\n What if we borrowed a little from French\u2014would the title gain some of that gallic allure if we opted for “Coureur de Feuilles\u201d? Has a certain je ne sais quoi, non<\/em>?<\/p>\n Or taking a more technical tack, we could simply render \u201cLeaf Blower” as “Astro-arborist”, as in \u201cDammit Jim, I’m just a doctor, not an Astro-arborist!\u201d<\/p>\n “Ah, Moon of my Delight, who know’st no wane,<\/em> Apart from the noise and the self-evident futility of the common leaf blower, what most disturbs me about the whole practice of charging money to fling nature\u2019s bounty into the neighbour\u2019s yard is its name. It lacks a certain\u2026poetry. In English, we’ve employed clever tricks to give everyday joe-jobs a sense of honour and wonder. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jasonhall.ca\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29503"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jasonhall.ca\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jasonhall.ca\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jasonhall.ca\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jasonhall.ca\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29503"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/jasonhall.ca\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29503\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29790,"href":"http:\/\/jasonhall.ca\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29503\/revisions\/29790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jasonhall.ca\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jasonhall.ca\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jasonhall.ca\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nThe Moon of Heav’n is rising once again:<\/em>
\nHow oft hereafter rising shall she look<\/em>
\nThrough this same Garden after me\u2014in vain!”<\/em>
\n\u2014Omar Khayy\u00e1m<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/jasonhall.ca\/music\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/scroll.gif\")
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