Ever get into one of those e-mail exchanges with everybody in your entire organization?

You know: when one person e-mails a giant list (the wrong giant list) and then the cc list, down to the last e-mail account, replies all with the message “This is not for me” or “Remove me,” until, eventually, a crazy person replies (to all, mind you) “STOP REPLYING ALL”?

It happened to me (noted here). And it happened to (yes, believe it) the U.S. State Department, where so many people replied all “you got it wrong” and “stop replying all” that it crashed the State Department’s servers and now anyone abusing reply all will be subject to unspecified “disciplinary actions” (read: Kabul embassy transfer).

Rather than a vague governmental threat of “disciplinary actions,” my company is cutting off the problem at the source:

The [My Company] Executive Council ([MC]EC) reviewed suggestions that would eliminate bureaucracy and inefficiency. Beginning Thursday, January 29, we will remove the “Reply to All” functionality from Microsoft Outlook.

I hope they mean remove the functionality from Microsoft Outlook on machines within our company, unless they have a hot phone that directly rings Bill Gates.

And moreover: we have an “Executive Council”? Like the Jedi? And moreover still: we have an Executive Council dedicated to removing bureaucracy? Isn’t than a Zen koan? “First order of business: disband Executive Council!” Poof.

In more cutting-nose/spiting-face fashion, the Executive Council goes on to explain:

We have noticed that the “Reply to All” functionality results in unnecessary inbox clutter. Responders who want to copy all can do so by selecting the names or using a distribution list.

Yes, we will now reduce inefficiency by copying and pasting enormous lists one e-mail at a time, or creating spreadsheets of distribution lists. You know what else causes unnecessary inbox clutter? Inboxes. If everybody had to write e-mails by hand, and buy a stamp, well, they’d damn well think twice before replying all! I’ll get the Executive Council to call Bill Gates.

I listened to President Obama’s inaugural address on NPR yesterday.    The tone certainly galvanized me.  It sounded like a jeremiad — “We’re going to do a 180, and it’s not going to be easy.”   Hear, hear!

At one line, though, I just cheered:

“What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them, that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long, no longer apply.”

Let me begin to enumerate the verbal jiujitsu of this line.  I love in particular the metaphor of the ground shifting beneath people.   This image is not at a distance and cannot, in fact, be distanced from the hearer, the way an image appealing to the senses of sight or hearing could be distanced.  People can imagine a visual image at any distance they choose, up to miles away from them, a tiny speck on the horizon.  People can be deaf, willfully or through a deficiency in their senses, to a sound image.  They can be deaf to bells of freedom ringing or imagine the promised land as seen from a mountaintop, far, far away.

The ground shifting beneath somebody, however, is immediate and palpable.  The ground beneath your feet is touching you.  To understand what the speaker is saying here, you have to imagine feeling it in your body.

Obama could have ssaid it so many different ways.  He doesn’t say, “The landscape [around us] has changed.”  He doesn’t say, “Change is coming.”  Either of those are visual and imaginable from a huge distance away.

Not only are you touching the ground, but you also depend on it for support, of your body and by extension any political argument you make.  People say metaphorically, “He [his argument] doesn’t have a leg to stand on,” but those legs are supported by the ground.

If the ground itself has shifted — well, the bases of our arguments and reasoning have changed.

At Christmas this year, my ten year-old nephew (the one who inspired Kris’s silliness below, and left) told us this joke, and then explained to us what made it funny– he pointed out that it’s usually funnier when you have to figure out what the punch line means, instead of having it explained to you. So we’ve been thinking about how to ruin jokes, and thought it might make for a fun 12apostrophes game.

Here’s an example:

A horse walks into a bar, and the bartender asks, “why are you so sad?”

(See, the REAL line is, the bartender asks, “why the long face?” Get how the joke is ruined?)

Now you try one. It’s best to use jokes that most people might have heard, but, if you think it’s unfamiliar, start with the real punchline and then give us the spoiled version.