Susan's Scribblings the Blog

Author Archives: kayewer

• Holiday Switches

  Posted at 2:32 am by kayewer, on December 20, 2015

  Instead of sharing what I want for Christmas, I’m going to change it up a bit and go over things I do not want.

  For example, I don’t want to see another movie trailer featuring somebody jumping into a void and landing on a convenient creature or transport just in time to avoid splatting. I know I’ve probably mentioned it before, so it was old at least a year ago, and now is likely as exciting as a 2010 fruitcake. When I went to see Star Wars Ep. VII last night, there were at least three of them, so it’s fresh in my mind.

  I don’t want to hear griping about how we greet people all December. Heck, if you don’t know what somebody celebrates, what is wrong with just saying, “Enjoy the holiday.”

  I don’t want to hear complaints about leftovers. They often taste better than the original serving, because they have had time to absorb flavors. Besides, I have a little pet peeve about people who waste food.

  I don’t want everybody to start conducting everyday life starting at 9:00 AM on Monday, January 4. If a place with whom you do business has a 24-hour phone line, call them on Saturday or Sunday and give the contact center personnel something meaningful to do. Otherwise they’ll launch into the holiday leftovers and gain ten more pounds.

  I don’t want to start a diet on January 1. I’ll start mine after I’ve cleared up all the holiday food.

  I don’t want school students to go back to class with their brains only partially operational. Go over things the night before and get a decent night of sleep. Don’t forget to eat breakfast.

  I don’t want to keep playing the same *#@! game on TapTiles (Foundation game 7) that I’ve been trying to win for two years. Cut me a break, guys; you’re killing me.

  I don’t want Morgana in Bubble Witch 2 Saga to laugh at me. She just comes off as a bit too cocky.

  I don’t want any of the current presidential candidates: I prefer a do-over.

  I don’t want to go into Target on Saturday after Christmas and see Valentine’s Day displays going up.

  I don’t want to spend any more than about a fifth of my blog posts griping about things. I guess that makes this my New Year’s resolution.

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• Movie Night

  Posted at 3:07 am by kayewer, on December 13, 2015

  I go to the movies with a friend whenever a good one comes around. Often it’s opening night, but last night we went to The Peanuts Movie, which has been open for weeks, and there were about ten of us in attendance. Our record is two: yes, just us (we went to a Wednesday Fathom Events encore Met Opera screening of Carmen in a teeming rainstorm). I don’t know which is better: suffocating crowds or the spacious racket of crickets chirping.

  A theater full of fans can be like an asylum full of patients on good drugs; a happy kind of chaos fills the space with anticipating humans jacked up on publicity hype and fountain soda. It’s a world in which lines at the concessions are endless and the preview trailers are deliberate torture meant to delay the main event. I’m seeing Star Wars next weekend, so I know I should find a parking space about eight hours before showtime, consume no food or beverages after noon and wear comfortable shoes.

  A movie past its premiere shelf life, on the other hand, is a much more intimate event, usually filled with people who are undergoing their second or third viewing, folks who hate the chaos of a packed theater or those who finally got a sitter and a day with no appointments or must-see shows on cable.

  This was a family movie (and if you want a recommendation, a must-see), but the screening was 9:00. What happened to kids being in bed by that hour? But then again, there were no kids in this theater; just a few nostalgic adults who wanted to see what was done to bring a comic strip to life in computer-generated depth.

  Next week there will be such a conglomeration of seventies and eighties Star Wars buffs of a certain age with their kids in (occasionally unwilling) tow, along with cosplay factions of Dark and Good Side Jedi and Sith milling around, I’m afraid I won’t know where to sit. Perhaps on one side close to the exits in case a light saber fight breaks out. Maybe I should make it comfortable steel toe shoes.

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• Bantha Fodder

  Posted at 2:48 am by kayewer, on December 6, 2015

  It’s not unusual for movie franchises to try any marketing means possible to hype the upcoming feature, but if I see Star Wars: The Force Awakens toilet paper, I’m turning in my lightsaber.

  Not that this revival is a bad thing. The movies have been great (with a few flaws here and there, like dialogue that sounded like it was short a few rewrites, or some bad character traits assigned to Jar Jar Binks), and in general the products associated with the series have been exciting. But the volume of stuff out there this time–everything from panini presses to gummy snacks to Darth Vader holiday inflatables to remote control droids to bottle openers–puts quite a burden on this film to be spectacular. How can it match up to the hype?

  Our glorification of movie culture puts us in a realm in which our brains go into hyperdrive over a successful outcome or we lose lightspeed if the movie shortchanges us in any measurable way. Excuse the metaphors, but We are all anticipating endless lines of moviegoers with adrenaline levels amped to impossible levels on December 18. This thing had better rock.

  Imagine what it would be like to be a merchandiser stuck with tons of products nobody wants to buy? Or imagine running out on the 19th with five shopping days left to go? Whoever picked the Friday before Christmas had to be lacking that first cup of Mos Eisley Cantina joy juice. We can handle big movies in May, like in past Star Wars movies; the holiday season is just like coating a lollipop in sugar.

  And yet, my entire office is apparently immune to Star Wars. When it was suggested for a holiday theme party, even the crickets were stunned into silence. I guess that’s the polarity of human existence; you’re in totally or out completely when it comes to a trend. I’ve been ignoring the stuff, because I’m downsizing and can’t find room for a Yoda action figure, but it certainly does make for an interesting trip through the stores. Have you actually seen the adult Vader footie pajamas in the men’s department?

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• The Toilet Bowl

  Posted at 1:53 am by kayewer, on November 29, 2015

  I think every professional sport ought to have an exhibition game for the two worst teams. Don’t play innings or quarters, just set up two hours and play; every score means a donation from the team to a charity of their choice. There would be no trophy or title, and it would not be a competition in which one team would be considered the worst just for not scoring a lot of points.

  Unfortunately all three of the big sports teams in Philadelphia would be participating right now. None of them are winning. But in the City of Brotherly Love, the people believe in good will if nothing else, so such an idea would probably go over well.

  That would also mean that the top winning teams in each sport would want to come up with something special of their own (other than the championships). Now that is something positive for everybody, even when a team really sucks.

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• Shows Off

  Posted at 2:33 am by kayewer, on November 22, 2015

  Every year I dread the end of the fall season. All the first-run shows wrap it up until sometime in the spring, and suddenly network television is nothing but stale seasonal fare, peppered by “Makes a Great Holiday Gift” commercials and health care enrollment reminders.

  I would like to see one network that would have the guts to designate itself a Holiday Free Zone, with no sitcoms trying to pull off a December-centric episode, no jingle bells in the background of every soundtrack and no deadpan readings of season’s greetings by the station staff (many of whom would probably rather stay on the non-lens side of the camera).

  As it is, I’m binge-watching Game of Thrones with somebody, and we just realized that we will be caught up in three weeks and have to wait until sometime in spring for the sixth season.

  Some networks, like Hallmark Channel, have produced so many holiday movies, they probably have 365 of them and could run one a night. They could call themselves the Hallmark Holiday Channel.

  Sure, some holiday movies are classics we don’t want to miss and those old Rankin-Bass stop motion animated specials with Rudolph, Frosty and company are not going away anytime soon. But when do we really see the shows we want? Why don’t they bring back some of the classic cheesy specials like the Star Wars special? What about the best special ever, featuring  John Denver and the Muppets? Oh, don’t get me started on that one.  That has to be one of the most mysterious missing Christmas specials in modern history, with no plans ever having been–or to be–made to release it on DVD or broadcast it again, for reasons unknown.

  That’s one of the problems with the holidays: we get a lot of stuff thrown at us, but most of it we don’t really need.

   

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• Spoilsports

  Posted at 10:12 pm by kayewer, on November 16, 2015

  I enjoy what I do at my job. At least until somebody comes along and mucks up all my hard work. Especially when it’s for something fun which is supposed to help boost morale.

  Somebody wrote a spoiler on a contest sheet posted in the department. Of course this meant closing the contest down before it even got started.

  Our committee in charge of fun and food decided to devote our monthly event to football for November. I am normally in charge of some details like tracking our budget and printing things. For this event I printed up a sheet showing all the NFL team logos and produced a one-question quiz for a prize drawing. So while my cohorts were in a conference with the door closed, somebody spotted a worker engaged in an activity which involved pointing at the sheet. Fine. They were probably pointing something out to somebody. But later the crime was discovered. The answer was scrawled in neat print below the contest instructions.

  For those of you who catch commercials, you might know about the current ad for Mucinex, in which the Mucus character tries to find a congested and cough ridden couple in a movie theatre and, when the usher takes him outside, he yells, “Spoiler alert: she doesn’t make it!” It’s times like this when I’d like to know some big burly guy named Guido who can take spoilsports outside.

  As for the contest, we will be giving prizes out to those who got an entry in before the crime was committed. The next time, I’m putting the contest sheet under glass.

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• The Best Presents

  Posted at 2:43 am by kayewer, on November 8, 2015

  Adults don’t need as many tangible presents on holidays or birthdays, which is why I think I get some of the best gifts, and they don’t really cost anything. I feel grateful to be alive when I read a positive human story in the news or on social media, and as a year winds down and the new one begins, all it takes is one such story and it feels as if hope never truly dies.

  I most enjoy the stories that feature true appreciation of people who used to be marginalized because of visible or hidden life challenges. I read about students with Down Syndrome being crowned prom king and queen. I see posts in which students have adopted victims of bullying, surrounding them with positive presence to keep them a safe distance from their tormentors. Never would I have thought that I would see these things in my lifetime, yet they have come true.

  Human kindness is the most inexpensive thing you can give to somebody, yet sometimes it can be the most difficult as well. We’re programmed to accept the disappointments of a cruel world and pass them on as if “it’s always been like that” or “It was done to me that way” is a suitable excuse to do so. When the gang wants to do “A” and one person says, “Let’s just not do ‘A’ for once,” it’s such a shocking revelation that the others become defensive and insist that everybody present must do “A” or some great unwritten rule will be forever changed. Somebody might be the first person to not get hurt; that’s tough, to end the cycle with yourself if you were part of the way it was before. Money wise, though, it still costs nothing.

  Folks, it takes some painful changes to make the world better sometimes. I’d even go out on a limb and say that there is surely some radical person out there right now who is watching people like him doing something horrible, and he might be thinking, “I really don’t want to do that.” Of course that scares him, because that impenetrable wall of radical thinking cannot survive even one chink in its structure, so even the thought of not following the prescribed agenda means one is not truly one hundred percent with the program. Two snowflakes are not alike, but by gosh radicalism demands that everybody be the same or risk certain doom. They hit for the soul, these non-changeable folks.

  The other week I was watching the panoply of North Korea’s military on parade, and while I admired the precision of the even rows of countless goose-stepping marching militants, I wondered if one of the men wore boxers instead of briefs or even–Heaven forbid!!–was going commando. On the outside they looked the same, so would it matter? Okay, a military parade demands uniforms and uniformity, but how far does sameness go? Down to the underwear, or into the very spirits of humanity?

  I have seen people with unusually colored hair or body jewelry nobody would have dreamed of wearing ten years ago on the street, let alone in the workplace. Somebody recently showed me studs consisting of subcutaneous posts inserted under the skin of both arms to enhance tattoos. Jobs get done just the same as they did back in the good old days of uniforms and personal appearance strictures. Sure there are places where the demand for decorum is greater, but we still have choices as to where we want to work and how much compromise we can handle.

  Thank goodness there is room for changes to happen today. We could still be in a world where unusual things are shunned in favor of what has always been. That can get expensive and doesn’t warm the heart like real change for the good of humanity.

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• Happy Halloween!

  Posted at 10:54 pm by kayewer, on October 31, 2015

  I’m going to give out the candy this year. For the past few years I haven’t been able to get home in time to participate, so this being a Saturday event, I can’t pass it up. See you next week.

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• The Heck With STEM: Teach Curiosity

  Posted at 1:38 am by kayewer, on October 25, 2015

  When I was in first grade, the teacher told my parents not to let me read ahead in the textbook because it would make me non-conforming. Imagine: here is a whole book full of excitement and education, and the teacher said don’t read it! Of course, today the reply from most parents (including mine) would have been a flat out refusal of that idea, or even a more coarsely worded version of “Get lost.” But back then teachers were on a level with superhuman demigods whose words were law, especially if they wore the impenetrable mantle of tenure. It didn’t mean they were right: a few years later we all fell victim to the black hole of New Math, from which it seems the education system and millions of children have never recovered.

  Curiosity is usually held back from our children. Sometimes it saves lives to step in and stop something like stepping into traffic or touching that nice red stove burner, but if we aren’t curious, we don’t discover anything. We don’t evolve. We go stagnant.

  For a time, I was so afraid to read anything that might cause a life-altering event like removal from school, I didn’t read much beyond what I was instructed to cover for assignments. What I didn’t know was that some other students were reading on their own time and the teacher ignored it. But I’m digressing. We should not be afraid to inquire, explore and ask questions. A man once looked at mold on bread and wondered what it did, and had my first grade teacher intervened, we would never have had the benefits of penicillin. Sure, we would have conformed: we’d have all been wiped out by disease, and dead bodies all look alike in the grave.

  Why are students not enrolling in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math)? They are not being encouraged to be curious. They’re being plucked not only from music–which teaches math skills–and sports which keep the body (including the brain) in great shape, but from the laboratories and shops and taught how to take tests which measure nothing. In New Jersey, some forty percent of students did not do well in the current version of proficiency tests. Why does that not seem surprising?

  I was in a think tank meeting recently, to determine what to do about some website content which is referenced by departments across several areas. A participant indicated that nobody knew what was in much of the linked content on a particular page by its label. Having worked on the content as a project participant some years ago, I was ready to reply that we had been restricted by content size, page capacity and approval issues, so labels were not particularly wide-ranging, but all it would take was a click on a link to see what was in the content.

  Don’t look any further than you have to. Conform and don’t make waves.

  Conform, my white middle-aged posterior!!! Conformity has its place, but not in human discovery. It doesn’t mean to lock up the brain and close the door on knowledge itself. I’ll be damned if I’ll not read ahead, go ahead, plow ahead and take the head of anybody who stands in my road and ram it into the cream pie in my other hand and call them whipped cream face. I will not stop learning until the brain hits the off button.

  What did you learn today? Did you read ahead?

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• Gaper Delays

  Posted at 2:03 am by kayewer, on October 18, 2015

  At least once a week I come across a traffic accident. These days fender benders (more like crushers) seem to involve three or four vehicles at a time. The days of a dent in the front of one vehicle and the rear of the one in front of it are gone. In its place are mutilated tin foil masses with tires on them.

  On a major highway the most common problem is simply going way too fast. Second place goes to misjudgments in timing when changing lanes or watching for sudden stops. Auto manufacturers have discarded the good, sturdy metal bumper for a sleek fiberglass thing which should be relegated to the Ferrari on the Autobahn. This is why crash tests measure how the “cabin” holds up in a collision; they know everything sticking out of the main passenger portion of the vehicle is doomed in a crash, so as long as the sitting space is protected, they can feel they have done their part to keep drivers safe.

  Once vehicles have been compromised by running into each other, the passengers who can exit their rides have the ignominious distinction of standing off to one side with their faces set in the “I never saw this one coming” expression. The cell phones come out and calls are made to expectant parties to inform of pending lateness, while the police and tow trucks and flatbeds seal off the area so it can be stared at and notes taken.

  This all results in what traffic reporters on the rush hour newscasts call the Gaper Delay, because people actually slow down to look at the scene and gape with mouths open at the results. It’s probably an instinctive “there but for the grace of God and my good driving ability go I” kind of moment. In order to properly gape, one must get to the point of passing the area of the accident. This can take anywhere from ten minutes to two hours to accomplish.

  A properly run Gaper Delay consists of each vehicle in the traffic jam yielding to the principle that, if every vehicle lets another squeeze over into the reduced field of open lanes, everybody can move somewhat faster. This one I just experienced did not run properly. The lucky folks riding in the left lane against the infamous “Jersey barriers” (which is technically against the law) loved having clear passage and would not let vehicles to their right merge. I was in lane three, so I had to drive for about half a mile before I got into lane two.

  What also bothers me about these delays is that people in accidents exit their vehicles while other cars are driving by at normal speed (which is about ten miles per hour higher than posted). If all vehicles would stop the minute an accident happens, the victims might be able to get to the median or the side of the road (whichever is closer) quicker. Instead of gaping, we would be acknowledging that life has been slightly disrupted, and that those involved matter. Then we can navigate our way around so the police and rescue teams can do their job. Of course nobody thinks about that while rushing through life, but when you think about it, our mouths gape open for all of us at least once: when the last breath of life is through.

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