Read It and Lacrimate

I didn't know what to say. I had no backup plan! So I thanked her for her time and next tried Meir Kahtan, representing MasterCard.

Me: Given the degree to which the deployment of incentives-based purchasing paradigms leads to the accretion of goods and the contracting of services by consumers in patterns and to extents that may prove inimical to the sorts of budgetarily sagacious decision-making vis-a-vis the prudent marshaling of available resources and or investment strategies, might your new program, through positive reinforcement of negatively nuanced patterns of behavior, contribute to economic nonviability on a user-based scale?

Meir: That's a great question!

Me: It is? What IS the question?

Meir: You're asking if we are going to spend ourselves silly, right?

Me: Uh, right.

I felt as though I had entered an alternate reality. And, in a way, I had. I was lost in the land of the Gobbledygooks, trapped among the morbidly verbose, and I was speaking their language. By the time I got to my third call, I was a pathetic, desperate dillweed myself. And angry. I took it out on Dan Stepanek, PR guy for HQ Sustainable Maritime Industries.

Me: First, your press release identifies your chief executive as "Norbert Sporns." What is his real name?

Dan: Norbert Sporns.

Me: If you say so. Can you semiotically explain, interpret or otherwise elucidate from a hermeneutic standpoint, vis-a-vis the terminology in this press release relating to toxin-free integrated aquaculture and aquatic product processing, what actions, processes or industrial practices are performed upon what nature of product so as to encompass the aforementioned terminology as it relates to your company?

Dan: We provide frozen, toxin-free tilapia farmed in ponds in China.

Me:

Dan: Hello?

Me: You got that?

Dan: Sure.

Me:

Dan: So, do you want to talk to Norbert?

Gene Weingarten's e-mail address is weingarten@washpost.com.

Chat with him online Tuesdays at noon.