The "Stuck on Stupid" Dictionary #37

Just when we thought we had addressed all of the productivity issues (one way or the other) with our crew of rather lackadaisical lexicographers, something beyond the inexcusable occurs; creating the kind of thing that drives the senior editorial staff here at 'Just Blowing Smoke; positively berserk.  (This is a journey which I can assure readers does not add significantly to the carbon footprint of JBS.)

It seems that having recognized that the best way to get back into the good graces of management would be to show some form of exemplary effort where their livelihoods were concerned, this shiftless gaggle of glossarians were attempting to purge their work area of its customary level of filth, when they discovered an entry that had become lost in the flotsam, jetsam, and decaying organic matter that normally keeps the rest of us from entering their work area.  It is therefore with the greatest of apologies (on a number of levels) that we belatedly enter this effort into the SOS lexicon.

For those of you who have somehow managed to miss previous postings in this tome of tomfoolery (shame on you, now go back and read all of the postings under the label of dictionary), the SOS dictionary is a reference guide to terms which nominally mean something to the rest of the English speaking world, but which appear to mean something entirely different when looked at through the jaded eyes and rose colored glasses of the SOS dictionary staff.

Substantially Compliant:

1. Compliance with the essential requirements of a law or statute that satisfies its objective or intent without formally complying with same.

2. The curious claim of City Councilwoman Lindsay Webb during her last re-election bid that written acceptance of her nomination 12 days after being notified is acceptable, in spite of the fact that the City Charter of Toledo requires that such written acceptance be submitted within 5 days (making her argument both weak and a week late).

3. The curious action of the Board of Election in accepting Councilwoman Webb's substantially late paperwork and certifying her for election in spite of being notified by one of its employees of the belated arrival of said documents and the Charter violation involved.

4. The equally belated challenge of her opponent in the election Douglas DeCamp when he filed his paperwork with that same Board of Elections; and the subsequent block of a belated review of this belated paperwork by the Sixth District Court of Appeals.  The result of which left all in substantial compliance with something, but no two in compliance with the same thing.

5. The level of failure shown to good order and discipline by the unintentionally postponed posting of this entire embarrassing episode by the inexcusable retardation of normal activities by the loitering (and littering) behavior of the lexicographers of the SOS Dictionary.  (One cannot help but note however, that this dastardly delinquency does seem curiously appropriate, if not substantially consistent with the whole affair.)