Susan's Scribblings the Blog

Monthly Archives: February 2015

• Winter Dunderhead

  Posted at 12:26 am by kayewer, on February 23, 2015

  This post is a day later than usual because yesterday I survived a trip to New York City and a blizzard. The city got about one or two inches, and it quickly turned to brownish slush with all the city traffic: Philadelphia got an eight inch whammy, and I came home into it last night.

  The flurries were cascading gently onto Lincoln Center while I was warm and cozy inside the Metropolitan Opera enjoying Don Giovanni. The production ended at a convenient 4:00 and, being the adventurous walker I am, I decided to schlep the 20 blocks or so to the bus terminal and hope I could make the early bus home to South Jersey. Made great time and even decided to bypass the bakeries from which I normally buy a treat to bring home, just so I could get into the queue for the 5:00 bus. Fortunately I was in an ideal spot in line, because after that it grew and snaked across the concourse and I’m sure a few people had to be turned away to await the 6:30 departure.

  We pulled out on time and got to the NJ Turnpike to find that speed restrictions were posted at 35 mph. A trip that would normally take a little over 90 minutes got us home just before 8:00. I then had to trudge through calf-deep drifts to free my car from its snowy confines and slide home. It was a tough trip.

  The meteorologists had a bad winter of predicting epic storms which petered out, so in keeping with the idea of what can go wrong will go wrong, this storm hit us like a jack boot on a bug. The plows were not ready, and the unplowed crossroads were hard to navigate at best; I nearly got trapped by oncoming traffic at a major freeway intersection because none of the cars heading the other way had reached the light and, since it had gone green, who could blame them for not being inclined to stop and re-accelerate?

  Luckily for me, my car had enough traction and tires which kept me grounded. When I got home, the cars parked on the street were snowed in; normally I back up my driveway, but for about the second time since I began driving, I pulled in and got about two thirds up the grade before my tires spun.

  So this morning I had the duty of chopping and shoveling through Siberian slush. With the help of a wonderful neighbor, we got clear just in time for 40 degrees and the sun to dry out at least a part of the disaster.

  To be frank, I’m wiped out. My hands are stiff, my feet hurt and my thighs are burning. After this I’m getting a hot shower and a hot dinner. With any luck this will be the end of the big storm season. It has well overstayed its welcome everywhere, and its surprise visit to our region was a mess.

  I think I’ll consider retiring to someplace warm like Hawai’i.

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• Valentine’s Day Red or Grey?

  Posted at 1:20 am by kayewer, on February 15, 2015

  Love is hard to get and brief in its purest form. Valentine’s Day brings out love in its most painful form, especially now that 50 Shades of Grey has premiered in theatres and introduced millions to a visual primer of a “grey area” of sexual and emotional turmoil. Sure there will be flowers and candy and marriage proposals and a lot of sex of various kinds going on during a Valentine weekend, but there is more to the expressionism and commercialism than whether candy means love or bondage is exploiting to women.

  For people who go months or years without a relationship, holidays are a socially permitted reminder that some are losers. When we’re children, we actually tell people to their faces that they aren’t worthy of a valentine card. Now schools discourage distributing valentines for just that reason. In adulthood, we just ignore people who don’t seem eligible for the basic kindness of humanity. For people who have loved and lost–by divorce, death or anything else–as much as one likes to admire the fellow walking about with a balloon or bouquet of flowers for his intended other, the hole in the heart billows open with pain to go home with no such accolades.

  So with the release of a movie adaptation of a best-selling 21st century version of “The Story of O,” the big question is whether the depiction of a relationship based on a rich man’s psychological need to restrain and dominate his partner is properly done or over/underdone. Sure it’s a love story, but a kinky kind, and viewers are rating the kink.

  Some people have complained that it’s tame, while others have stood on the soapbox to protest the idea of bondage as a lifestyle choice acceptable to consenting adults (probably without having seen the movie yet). The keys here are that the adults are both agreeing to a process based upon trust and an adventurous desire to explore one’s own erotic boundaries. Nobody should confuse what is agreed to in the bedroom with any criminal activity. Nobody but the partners is involved in the sex, and it is their business.

  Having seen the movie on opening night, I can tell you from my movie chronicling experience of movies in all rating categories that, compared to adult films which can go further than what was done in this R-rated film, one can see similar scenes of bondage and flogging in videos rated X or NC-17, so the writing and production crews did a good job using realistic scenarios and didn’t cross into anything appearing inaccurate or objectionable.

  That might be the problem: fans of the books probably would want to see more blatant sexuality depicted, but if the producers did that, the ratings board would have designated it with the NC-17 kiss of death, and nobody would go see it. If people judge the film as too light and inaccurate, nobody will go see it. The crew was damned either way in that case.

  Everybody knows what their definition of smut is, but can’t put it on paper. And everybody picks on what love is, who can and cannot have it and what it all means, but nobody wants to offer alternatives or a definitive answer.

  So the losers cry every Valentine’s Day, and we still try to draw the line on smut while secretly wondering if smut lies on a smudgy grey line.

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  Posted in Uncategorized | 0 Comments | Tagged Fifty Shades of Grey

• Jaws of the Betta

  Posted at 4:46 am by kayewer, on February 8, 2015

  After years without a pet, and after checking out the possibilities, I got a fish for the office. Just one in a comfortable square tank in a corner of the cubicle; a perfect reflection of office life.

  It’s a betta, also known as a Siamese fighting fish because two males in one tank will quickly become a “Last Fish Standing” fight to the death. So the fish swims alone, as do I and my fellow walled-in denizens. He rests and circles, stares and darts, and two to three times daily he gets fed.

  I must say that, for a five dollar fish, his table manners aren’t worth two cents.

  For the first day or so, he didn’t eat. Finally he gave in and took to the food I had bought for him, like a finicky cat, and we got into a routine in which I got his attention and he casually picked at his food. At least it doesn’t come in six million varieties like dog or cat food. The betta apparently eats pellets three meals a day and blood worms for dessert. The worms look like finely cut mulch for a miniature garden. The pellets would probably fertilize a garden, but I save them for the fish anyway.

  Over the past couple of weeks, the betta has gone all “Jaws” on me, lunging at his daily pellet as if he could worry it to death like a dog at a bone. Only I don’t think he has teeth. Thank goodness for that. One day I expect him to leap from the tank and latch onto my finger.

  It’s not as if he doesn’t have company; I have motion toys at my desk to keep him amused, and coworkers visit him regularly. They also think he hasn’t been fed, so he sometimes gets overfed by day and then goes hungry overnight for eight hours. That probably explains the predatory behavior when I rush in the next morning to set him up by the desk to enjoy the view and hand feed him pellets one at a time.

  Maybe he has a case of ADHD, because I drop pellets and he swims right by them or under them. He also doesn’t pick up on pellets he missed the first trip around; or maybe he doesn’t like leftovers.

  The uneaten pellets drop to the bottom of the tank and make the water cloudy. This means cleaning up uneaten food along with poo, but at least the tank has a self-cleaning siphon function which makes it easier. No chasing Jaws around the tank to transfer him to a water glass while his environment is given a thorough sanitizing.

  Like me, bettas are low maintenance fish. They’re beautiful to watch and can be a source of relaxation in an office environment. Just watch your fingers when they’re hungry.

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  Posted in Commentary | 0 Comments | Tagged betta fish

• Good Grief Grocer

  Posted at 2:54 am by kayewer, on February 1, 2015

  I have always had issues with supermarket checkout lines, but I’ve found that self checkout is not much better. It has come down to a choice of let somebody do it for you their way, or do it yourself and deal with your own shortcomings in the process.

  Either way, the grocer wins.

  Normally the process of checking out involves a war of paper in plastic, in which the paper bag is the wrong size for the plastic bag (incredibly, they’re often too big). Or it turns out the shipment of paper bags had defects involving fused bottoms which won’t open. I pointed out three such bags to a checker, who shrugged and said, “That’s what they sent us.”

  Then no matter in what order you place your items on the conveyor belt–if you have enough time to unload your entire cart–the checker will reach for the eggs at the back of the belt and put them in the bottom of an equally defectively assembled paper-in-plastic. She then reaches for the giant can of beans and throws it in like a three pointer in the NBA.

  The problem is that checkers are monitored for speed, even if nobody is in line behind their current customer. There is no area to recover the change, bills and register tape (which these days is five feet long and always seems to include a Sports Authority ad for me). Just mash it all together somehow and get the heck out so the next customer can go through the same experience.

  So I decided to try self checkout today, and wheeled my cart up to the amazing assembly of consumer friendly technology, with its bagging stations, scales sensitive to the weight of a toenail and a touch screen which supposedly knows everything.

  At least that’s the idea.

  The first thing I did was to insert a paper bag into a plastic bag at bagging station number one before starting to “ring my order,” only to hear a computerized female voice intone, “Unauthorized item detected in bagging area: please remove item.” It seems the human attendant relegated to oversee the stupidity of self-baggers must inform the machine that one of its own bags is going combo. She had to come back for two more bags (fortunately the kiosk only has three bagging stations). The programmer who instructs the machine to say, “If you want paper in plastic, please assemble your bags now” will win the Nobel Prize for humanitarianism. The human checkers simply glare at you for combo bags; the computer reads you off.

  Three bags, a coupon inspection equivalent to an airport strip search and an empty cart later, I was thanked by the computer for shopping there. Checkers don’t often do that anymore.

  So what do I do? The experience is insufferable either way. Maybe I should invent my own supermarket, with checkers who wait for you to instruct them how you want items bagged, a recovery zone where you can put your change away and round up the rug rats, and pre-assembled combo bags.

  Maybe I’ll just shop at 24 hour markets after 1:00 AM.

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  Posted in Commentary | 0 Comments | Tagged supermarkets self checkout

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