The irritating old Vietnam vet who frequents the coffee shop has finally been outed (by a professional) as being a terrible writer.

For years, he's been submitting written work to be proofread by us unlucky employees and, in particular, our manager. For years, we've been saying his writing is pompous, wordy, and often difficult to comprehend--not because it's incredibly esoteric, but because he arranges his sentences in such a way that they resemble prose that has been translated from English into Russian and then back again using freetranslation.com.

We don't tell him what we think to his face because he never takes any of the advice to heart. Anyone who has ever suggested grammatical reconstruction to him has been met with a barrage of why the way he said it is more effective than the way the reader could actually make sense of what he said.

So.

He has spent approximately the past forever since the Vietnam war writing a book about it, and today he told us he recently went to a "book doctor." Apparently a "book doctor" is a person who reads a book and then decides whether or not it's ready to be submitted to a publisher. The "book doctor" he sent his manuscript to told him that he could not recommend it to any publisher as the book is now.

While telling this story to my boss, he looked as though he might cry.

I LOLed. On the inside.

I can't be too mean to him, though, because he leaves great tips.

But oh god he's a terrible writer. Eeesh.

Yesterday was my mom's birthday. She turned 51. I shipped her some books. Readable books. Not about Vietnam as far as I'm aware. She's, like, totally in love with Nora Roberts, so I got her the Born In trilogy--my brother said she didn't already have it.