In the kitchenette corner of the office that I sometimes find myself in

There is a coffee machine. It is made by a company called Westinghouse, who may be the same company that "provides fuel, services, technology, plant design and equipment for the commercial nuclear electric power industry", or it may not. On this coffee machine is a slogan: The ultimate coffee house experience.

I have, over the years, grown to love marketing's passion for mirrorworld, "say it and it's so" psychology. Or lying, as others might have it. This slogan is, needless to say, an out-an-out lie. The machine does not provide the ultimate anything. Not the ultimate coffee, nor the ultimate house, and the ultimate experience only in the same way that a filthy squat toilet at a French lorry stop might do.

Unless they mean by ultimate, "last ever", instead of "best ever". In which case, Westinghouse does provide at least my ultimate coffee machine experience.

age-old grief

I believed, when I was young,
that grieving wasn't for the one
who'd gone
but for the grieved

Not the grieved-for,
the one at rest,
but for the ones who were left

But now I'm old, when I die,
I hope you cry
For me

Regressive investigation

At a presentation on how to make TV programmes out of investigative journalism. The presenter wants to play us a recording of a phone conversation. He tries, but the big TV is showing the wrong input, and there are a few minutes while he and the office assistant fiddle with things to get his laptop screen showing. Finally they manage it, and he clicks the button on his laptop to play the video, which shows two people sitting around an identical laptop. One of them clicks the button on their laptop, and we watch them sitting there, listening to the muffled audio.