Database Delirium

For the past five months, I have been putting in a number of hours every week correcting and standardizing 43,000+ entries in a work database. It is exceedingly mind-numbing work, has little practical significance (as I don't think the final product will do what the boss thinks it will), but pays the bills. I amuse myself by listening to music, laughing at typos (favorite: "Sots for Tots"), and fondly recalling visits to cities listed, from NYC to Woonsocket, South Dakota.

Today I got a chuckle when using Google to check on the address of a "Springfield Clinic." One of Google's listings for the clinic read, "Careers at Springfield Clinic" and the first 'career' listed was "brain tumor removal." Now I realize this is probably all automatically generated, but it struck me as funny all the same. Are there hundreds of brain tumor removal sub-specialists searching the Internet for a job? And is that really a job title? (wouldn't you be called a neurosurgeon or something?)

And for some reason, that all reminded me of another funny from years ago when a friend and I were working for $7/hour as teacher's aides so we could start an art program at our kids' elementary school. At our city-wide mandatory training session we were told there was a way we could earn an extra dollar an hour. Our interest evaporated when informed that the job would then include intubating students (for whom intubation was indicated, of course!) Now that would be a job title--Teacher's aide/art and theater instructor/intubator.

Pawl Bunyan (the Gov in mostly seeds)