I’m working on a project so am taking this week off. A new post may appear earlier than usual next week as I won’t be posting on Saturday 5/03.
I’m working on a project so am taking this week off. A new post may appear earlier than usual next week as I won’t be posting on Saturday 5/03.
Put snow with vehicles, and chaos is bound to occur. This past week I and a few people I know have fallen victim to winter related car problems. One of my office managers was traveling on the New Jersey Turnpike when one of the many trucks surrounding him had a bad case of roof dandruff erupt and the resulting accumulated snow landed in his lap after shattering his windshield. Another friend was in an accident as well. The PA Turnpike had a multi-vehicle mishap which snarled traffic for miles as one car or truck after the other slid to stop and could not find enough empty roadway to do so safely.
The problem with today’s drivers is that our speeds are too high, our braking distance too short, and our time shorter (even though we are still on a 24-hour day). Even when a major highway has a low number of vehicles, we tend to speed up to congregate with those ahead of us, and then complain because we have to apply the brakes. If you are complaining because you have to apply brakes, you are too close to the guy in front of you. Slow the heck down.
Truckers do not seem to have access to something with which they can clear their roofs, and I and many a driver on the road with me will fall behind one of these behemoths trailing plumes of light snow or hurling chunks of congealed snow and ice like oversized discus to shatter on the road (or crash into our windshields). What would it take to fix this? Perhaps two tall stationary poles with a large rope strung between them under which a truck could drive and scrape the offensive material off. What about one of those car wash brush attachments hung from the roof of the warehouse or garage? Two guys with hoses on ladders? Come on, folks; it’s snow removal, not rocket science.
So what has been happening to me? In the past three weeks, I have lost two windshield wiper blades to the storm. The first time I pulled into the service station and asked if they had a replacement for my passenger side; they did, but the young fellow (who, I assume, took a job in a service station to learn about cars) could not figure out how to remove the old wiper blade. An older gentlemen from the service bay–and who was apparently born in the days before guys were allowed to attain the age of 18 without knowing how to change a wiper blade–did the job in a minute flat. Two days ago part of the clamp on the driver’s side blade broke, so though my wiper functions well enough, the arm flies off its track with each swipe. I pulled into the same service station last night; the young fellow asked if I could come back in ten minutes so the other (I assume older) man could help him. By that time, I was fixing dinner. On the stove. Without a microwave. My kitchen skills are old school, while it seemed I was in a world where service stations no longer have simple repair skills.
Finding myself short an able-bodied man to fix my wiper blade (and, though I think that, with the motivation, I could do the repair myself), I figured I still have a good blade without the annoyance of the assembly being unsecured, so I pulled a twist tie from the kitchen and tied the assembly together. It took ten seconds, it was free, and required no skills beyond common sense. With any luck, the next week will restore some to all the drivers out there, and there will be no more of the craziness from snow on the brain.
Snow makes the greatest jailer of all, and we’re all its prisoners. Days of numbing cold and piles of relentless white have enervated everybody in the country to some extent. The people who still have the benefit of warm temperatures have to deal with news of us sufferers dealing with the issue elsewhere, and I’m sure it’s as annoying to watch it as to be in it.
Our latest snow event took place the day after a holiday and gave parents little or no time to restore their lives to normal before the kids were back home again, sent back from school in anticipation of weather-related disasters to come. They were right; a drive home which normally takes me a half hour in New Jersey took me over three that day. Most of it I spent doing the Brake Tap Tango in one jam after another because vehicles ahead of me succumbed to years of neglected scheduled maintenance.
Once secured in the home, there were the relentless hours of snow coverage on the local news. Anybody who slept in with sleep shades and earbuds on and did not look out the window needed only to turn on the tube and, within the half hour, they would know what was going on.
Snow makes for great photos, great human interest stories (a baby was born while the family tried a sled to get the mother down the driveway in the icy cold) and a great deal of physical and mental stress. Fortunately some gentlemen on my block were kind enough to dig me out of the driveway, and the local plows did not touch the street and, therefore, saved me having to relocate the inevitable trench in front of the driveway apron. Snow shovelilng is a good workout for men (who have the heat and stamina to do it) and women who want something other than Curves or Zumba. Fortunately this last storm was powdery and not as icy, so shoveling or sweeping was not such a trying cardio session. I remember years in which the average shovel filled with snow could be used in Olympic weightlifting (in which case I pushed, rather than flung). The overabundance of white, and the closed-in feeling of accumulated snow has a psychological effect on the mind, and sometimes people can get a bad case of cabin fever. This is best resolved by adding device batteries to your bread and milk list before every storm. And don’t play “Candy Crush Saga(R)” if you’re at a level you’ve been challenged upon to beat, as losing multiple times can also add to your depression.
Since I am in a job which requires my presence in any type of weather, I am glad to have the tools needed to clear off my car: an ergonomically designed scraper and brush, a broom, an old reliable hand-held scraper from 1972 (before they invented ergonomics), and a pocketful of tissues (for the runny nose that comes from being out in the cold scraping off the car). The handy pack of window wipes in my glove box froze in the storm, so I took it into the office with me; when I came out to go home, they were room temperature and worked like a charm to remove the road grime from the windows (though I almost forgot myself and nearly dabbed at my nose with one). The rest of the clean-up I leave to the pros in the plow brigade, whom I hope also have a good supply of tissues.
The Academy Award nominations were announced this past week, and the nominations were horrible. What was the Academy thinking? If I didn’t know any better, I would say they did exactly what the world has accused them of for decades, and they did it just to be spiteful.
They failed to nominate Tom Hanks for “Captain Phillips,” and “Lee Daniels’ The Butler” was snubbed altogether, including a best actress nod for Oprah Winfrey. Sometimes when the nominations go against the grain, they tend to shut out everybody who should have mattered in favor of some real out-there ideas, and this time they went for broke, nominating best actors and actresses for films which were almost all late-year releases, such as “The Wolf of Wall Street” and “American Hustle.” These films have not had enough time to generate any true legacy in terms of classic film contention or lasting box office figures. It makes the whole Oscar system look like a “good old boys” network, which it truly is not.
If the nominated films are not audience oriented, the show itself will see few viewers, no matter what funny costume they put on the host or who sings the song nominees. Maybe the voters got caught short because they didn’t have enough time to shop for Christmas, either, and they put their ballots aside until the last minute. At any rate, I think “Butler” should have been nominated for Best Picture and should have won. I’m not staying up late to see any of the films nominated, because I have seen none of them. I did, however, see “Butler.” So much for America’s taste in movies: it was the most talked about film of 2013, but got no love from Oscar. So much for pressing my movie-loving buttons.
It snowed the other day. It snowed a lot. I still had to go to work, because one of the strangest aspects of my life has been that I have always taken on jobs which require my presence on holidays and in bad weather. Until you have had somebody above you demanding your presence in the workplace at the risk of losing your head to a dull guillotine, you can’t imagine what it can be like. In snow everybody sleeps in, except those who are called to serve or be served (on a platter to Salome).
Shovel and scraper in hand, I had to spend 40 minutes, at six in the morning, removing the town snow plow’s detritus from in front of my driveway, clear off my car and drive to work out-of-state. Fortunately my job has the foresight to issue me a driving waiver so I can still be seen by patrolling police cars as an idiot on the road in a state of emergency in a mid-sized Chevrolet. They must just shake their heads in amazement, because I don’t get pulled over so they can ask to see who gave me permission to drive on bad snow days. My driving waiver sits pristinely in my wallet just like my New Jersey paper driver’s license of old (those of us old Jersey folk remember the squarish, easy to reproduce fake ones version of driver ID we had before they gave in and started issuing plastic ones), which got me out of a ticket once because the officer remarked how clean it was, meaning that I was a safe enough driver to never have had to pull it out to show anybody.
Now it’s a few days after the bad weather, and we have to deal with melting and refreezing water and wheel well droppings of black slushy goop left by other cars. My car looks like a graffiti artist went to town with his idea of a splatter painting. The car wash closed early, so everybody’s vehicle looks terrible, strewn with road salt debris. All the cars look terrible, and our parking at the supermarkets is just as terrible. Without lines, and in need of milk and bread, we just take our best guess and just stay far enough from the other person’s door to open our own and trudge inside.
I haven’t seen many snow sculptures during snowstorms lately. Either that art form has passed into antiquity, or people just don’t want to build things out of discolored snow from wheel well droppings.
Alas, poor Blockuster! I knew them, Horatio; a video store of infinite variety, of most excellent selection. They hath entertained me a thousand times, and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is to know that they go into the void, having closeth 300 stores and posting videos by mail to my doorstep no more. My gorge rises at it: I am thereby compelled to ally myself with another bearer of videos. Here in my purse hangs the membership card that I used I know not how oft. Where be your online presence now? your gambols? your songs, musicals and horror festivals pressed into shiny digital orbs? your flashes of merriment that were wont to set all in a room on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own customer service smiles? quite chap-fallen? Or perhaps that was Charlie Chaplin? or the movie “The Fallen.” I know not.
My heart grieves for the passing of Blockbuster. I remember happier times when such merchants worked in harmony. I oft visited Movies Unlimited, Erol’s and Blockbuster itself, with its blue and yellow banner proclaiming its presence. What now to say of empty shops and goods priced to go indignantly into greedy hands, with shorter profits in a dying business’ coffers? What can one say to such disgrace, prithy tell me?
I shall see the red envelopes of NetFlix at my doorstep, but forget Blockbuster I wilt not.
So I just came from the Walnut Street Theatre’s new production of “Elf.” Yes, it’s a musical version of the hit movie. Yes, this is just the week after Halloween. And yes, some audience members around me felt that we were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
It’s bad enough that we spend seven months out of the year with our clocks set one hour ahead, but Christmas ads started cropping up the day after Halloween. Sure, some people like the holidays and can’t wait to start celebrating; they decorate starting on Labor Day. So do the holiday food processing plants. Just keep your eye on a box of holiday wrapped candy in your local department store and watch it sit there from September until somebody desperate for something to put under the tree grabs it up. Also makes you think about the preservatives going into that lunchmeat log on display in a cooler in the middle of the mall.
But I digress.
It’s not that I don’t have any holiday spirit; it’s just that it’s TOO #@&#! EARLY!
Remember when the Thanksgiving Day parade was the measurement of when the holiday season started? Santa Claus used to clinb a ladder into Gimbel’s to set up the toy department overnight for the kids (and their parents) for Black Friday. Now Santa takes up early residence in the mall while the Halloween store is closing out its costumes two stores down the hall.
Now I never saw the movie “Elf.” I only watch one or two holiday films every year, “Christmas Story” being one of them. At least there is a story beyond little Ralphie’s hankering for an air rifle. Now that I’ve seen the musical, I can honestly say I’ve heard enough Christmas music for the season, and it was something other than the twelve standard songs rehashed by countless singers over generations. The songs were great, the dance numbers perky and the plot s simple joy to watch. None of us was ready to think about Christmas this early; it was like going down the shore in a swimsuit. Just bad timing.
Ask me about all of this on December 26th, when I’ll be in a better frame of mind to look back on it all.
Every time an electronic gadget is improved upon, it seems everybody rushes to buy the new version and get stuck with all the bugs that come along with them. Apple fans camp out for a new gizmo every month, it seems. Windows users like me, on the other hand, enjoy long periods of peace before something new comes along. Unfortunately the problems persist.
Windows 8 is a good example. Sure, it has lots of bells and whistles, like interactive touch screen apps, but the first thing people complained about was the lack of a discernible home base from which to start exploring, because somebody removed the “Start” button. Finally the release of Windows 8.1 (which probably means that they neglected to fix nine-tenths of what will eventually become Windows 9) should have solved the problem. I haven’t been able to deal with it.
First, it took nearly twelve hours to install. You might do well to load it while you’re sleeping late into the weekend, and don’t intend to approach your computer with a hangover, because adjusting to some of the changes to Windows 8.1 might make your head explode.
The first thing that happened to me was that I received a message that not all the changes were compatible with Internet Explorer. Then, when I logged in the next day, Windows had replaced my PC login with my Microsoft login. Also, I have never been able to access Office programs such as Word and Excel without being on the Internet, so working offline seems to have disappeared from the galaxy as well.
One of my favorite Windows 8 games, Tap Tiles (R), was compromised by the new install, as I now have a “please wait” swirl of dots ghosting the middle of my screen.
I know that it’s probably a problem with trying to put so much computer language into a program which takes billions of bits of mathematical lingo just to turn on the darned machine, but if one releases a fix for a problem which isn’t itself one hundred percent ready, are you fixing something that is broken, or just putting a bandage on a severed limb?
Oh, and I haven’t yet touched a “Start” button.
Tic tac toe. The pound key. Hashtag. No wonder we get so confused about the world we live in, when symbols have more lives than a cat.
Do people still play tic tac toe anymore? I don’t see it as an app anywhere. Sure it’s hard to win when you’re a kid playing against older wiser folk, and computers make winning impossible anytime, but it is a strategic game and a time passer.
The first time I started hearing “press the pound key now” on the phone, I knew that the British use the tic tac toe sign for weight, but getting customer phone calls from confused people took years to get under control.
Now we have the hashtag on Twitter. I never had a tutorial about Twitter, and therefore I have not used a hashtag on any tweets. I’m sure there is information on there somewhere about it, so I’ll have to actually take the time to. . . .skip to the next paragraph, men. . . .read the directions.
Our world has been reduced to symbolism and innuendo. Fortunately we still need words to talk about them.
So much is going on this week, including the ongoing government shutdown, bad weather, conflicts overseas (okay, so that’s another ongoing one since time immemorial), and I could rant about any of them, but instead I’m going to talk about a table in the office cafeteria.
Every Monday at lunchtime, I go to a particular table in the cafeteria, where I have the privilege of dining with two senior colleagues who show up later. Somebody sits at that table before me, and leaves it in a horrible state. There is usually smears of sauce or gravy of some kind, and by the time I arrive it has dried on, so I break out my handy pack of Clorox(R) wipes and apply elbow grease until it comes off. I figure nobody–executive or minimum wage peon–should have to sit at a dirty table.
Which brings me to the person who leaves this horrid mess. I imagine they are the same type of person who leaves ummentionable calling cards in restrooms and garbage within an inch radius of the drain and disposal. People of this caliber seem to thrive on general ill will and tend to super glue the chip to their shoulders. Even the lowliest person down on his luck can take a moment to clean up a space before leaving it. We should all follow by example or, if none has begun the trend, start it outright.
Sure, somebody else will take care of it, but the problem is that you and I are somebody else.
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