Susan's Scribblings the Blog

Category: Uncategorized

• Oscar Nigh a Winner

  Posted at 2:17 am by kayewer, on February 24, 2013

  So it’s award season at last, and the movie industry would like to convince you that there are some good pictures in contention for a sleek humanoid trophy.  My issues with movie awards is that the guys in suits who bankroll the films we watch all year go out of their way to promote their films as great, yet a majority of the big attendance productions don’t get recognized at award time.

  I think it’s a plot.  And not one found in a script.

  The theatres put out a few movies a week.  Most get packed theatres the first weekend, then they taper off because social rules state that if you don’t see the film the first weekend, you’ll be on the back-end of the discussions about it.  In fact, one must know all about the actors, the shooting schedule, the special effects, the scandal and the spoilers before entering the theatre.  If you don’t, some goof seated behind you will fill you in while talking on his cell phone to his computer geek friend who can’t leave the house while Worlds of Mayhem Part 19 is loading on his gaming system.

  The movies that get nominated for minor categories like costumes, effects and such might well be designed for that purpose.  One or two well-done movies still need competition to look good when they win.

  The blockbuster movies are specially filmed, casted, promoted and fine tuned to lure a huge demographic of people who fit in a nice middle range in the system of categorizing populations.  You buy the tickets, the nachos and the promotional clothing and tie-in gear.  By the time you leave the theatre, the hype is over like the restroom door slamming behind you; quickly forgotten. Like a roller coaster with one big plunge, there is a moment of exhilaration, then it’s just another ride.

  The B-grade movies draw a more exclusive demographic and will never make in profits what was spent.  They also never get nominated for an award.

  I actually did see Les Miserables and it was a good movie.  It was not great, but it had the mechanics of a well made production, and that is what matters.  It won’t win anything major because it is a movie version of a Broadway musical based on a classic novel.  That’s three strikes in a world where brief YouTube videos are more popular than novels and musicals are looked upon as creative fodder for filler films rather than a trustworthy source for good movie material.  I don’t agree with that, but it would take more than a blog to explain it all.

   The award season is still begging for good movies.  Sure we recognize the best, but even that isn’t all we could have.

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  Posted in Uncategorized | 0 Comments | Tagged academy awards, oscars

• Killing Joy

  Posted at 3:01 am by kayewer, on February 17, 2013

  This past week, two people were charged with conspiracy to commit murder.  The weaponry to be used against their intended targets included a knife and gun; the gun was a  .45-caliber semi-automatic handgun and the knife was 3.25 inches.

  We hear about murder plots every day. The shocking part of this incident is that the boys are fifth grade elementary school students, ages ten and eleven.  Their primary victim was a girl–a fellow student whom they both dated previously but they claim made fun of and annoyed them–and they plotted against six other students they intended to lure away from school one by one to kill. One brother intended to use the knife while the other stood guard with the gun.

  The gun belonged to one suspect’s older brother’s late grandfather and had been stolen when the brother visited the grandfather’s home.  He is also a juvenile.

  So let’s look at the story in detail for a minute.  Fifth grade students dating?  They shouldn’t even be looking at each other.  Then after experiencing two breakups, the boys think about murder, while the girl entertains her friends with derogatory stories about the failed relationships.  Worse, these young men are under the impression that the best way to handle other persons’ shortcomings is to kill them.

  This is the generation we should worry about because they don’t seem to know how to tackle anything that does not provide gratification or instantaneous results.  Bottle-fed on ego overstuffing ads and commercials, brainwashed by the concepts of manufactured perfection and entitlement, and visually bombarded by the constant stimulation of instant messaging, thanks to youngsters like this pair we are engaged in a fight against a type of prejudice and gang ethic nobody could have imagined twenty years ago.  These young people may grow up to be spin-off radicals that make the Taliban look like a poker night social party.  If you worry about bullying now, wait until the school system collapses completely under the weight of a student body out of control.

  If somebody annoys you, kill them?  What would they do to a teacher who gave them a “C” in social studies?

   

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  Posted in Uncategorized | 0 Comments | Tagged juvenile violence

• It Was Clean. Really

  Posted at 3:25 am by kayewer, on February 10, 2013

    I cleaned the kitchen a few days ago, but this morning I caught the sunlight bouncing off a cobweb under a chair.  Isn’t a cobweb a strange concept?  A spider spins a spider web, so I assume a cob spins a cobweb.  That was one fast cob, too.  Makes me look bad, too, to have cobwebs under my kitchen chair, especially when I just cleaned.

  Cobwebs in visual media like television and the movies symbolize unused creepy homes or neglected hidden rooms.  My kitchen is not part of that category.  In fact, I just finished a gigantic pot of lentil soup in my cobwebby kitchen (which I had to delay in order to remove said cobwebs from the chair).  The recipe came from a magazine a few years ago, and I’ve made this soup quite a few times.  It contains vegetable stock, carrots, onions, cumin, tomatoes and baby spinach.  I doubled the recipe to give some to a friend, and I wasn’t sure it would all fit into the huge dutch oven I had chosen, but the spinach shrank suitably and I wound up with two big containers and a bowl for a week’s worth for myself.  Not bad for an hour in the kitchen: an hour and ten minutes if you count my cobweb removing duties.

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  Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment | Tagged cobwebs, lentil soup

• Dinner for Lunch? Linner?

  Posted at 3:15 am by kayewer, on February 3, 2013

  I have a favorite term for the meal that falls–either accidentally or on purpose–between the lunch and dinner times:  linner.  Like brunch (the time for a meal not considered totally breakfast or lunch), linner can be a meal of any size and be almost anything to get you through the afternoon.

  It seems that people are increasingly falling into the habit of eating a big meal for lunch.  My company cafeteria prepares wonderful meals starting at 11:00 in the morning, including turkey breast carved from the actual bird, salmon with risotto (which I hope would not make Gordon Ramsay’s blood boil) and a variety of specialties one would not expect to sit on a hot table with a sneeze shield.

  The problem is that linner can cost $5.00 and up, while preparing a meal at home can be much less expensive.  Now that some of the tax breaks we enjoyed until the new year have gone away, my food budget went down with my take-home pay.  Who can spend $25 or more a week to eat lunch?  Or linner?

  Of course the food offered for lunch is comfort food (one must have stuffing and gravy with that turkey breast carved to order), and nutrition experts and exercise gurus would advise heading to the salad bar instead.  I’ve done that, too.  A few spinach on a foam plate with mushrooms, tomatoes and vinaigrette can do the trick on some occasions.  It doesn’t always fill the gut until 5:00, though.

   The struggle for a good three meal day goes on.  Do brunch and linner count as four meals or just two?

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• On the Black Mountain

  Posted at 3:33 am by kayewer, on January 27, 2013

  I just read an article about a place called Negro Mountain, a ridge in the Alleghenies in Pennsylvania near the borders of Maryland and West Virginia.  A lawmaker, Rosita Youngblood (D., PA) wants the name to be changed, but more on that later.

  Names of things can cause difficulties in the wrong context, so I can see how the name of this mountain might cause a raised eyebrow or two in today’s anti-racism culture.  On the other hand, the mountain has had the name since the 1700s to recognize the sacrifice of a man who defended the cause during the French & Indian War.  The article does mention that the original moniker was another “n word” which nobody uses in civilized society, so somebody apparently did make an effort to be more polite by changing it once already.

  In Spanish countries, negro is the term for the color black, so using the current name gives it a distinction from the Black Hills we all know.  Nobody that I know has ever had an issue with the color black, though dictionaries refer to the term black as being dark in nature or attitude, or even diabolic (think of the “black arts” or black souls).  Some hills and mountains are indeed diabolic, as you can find out from anybody who has tried to scale them.

  But we digress.  A Spanish person would find nothing wrong with negro/black mountain.  Our issue is over our understanding of who a negro is to us and why a place should be named for what one is rather than who.

  So somebody back in the 18th century dedicated a mountain to a person by referring to him by his race, probably because he was a rarity in a world still dealing with the subject of a person’s place when in forced servitude: this person fought alongside others for the common cause, apparently because he wanted to.  In a world where we’re trying to decide how to refer to people without offense, we have to be clear on things that help with identification, and avoid  being demeaning.

  However, when we look at words like black, and realize they refer to a person of color during a controversial time in our history, does Youngblood really want to rename the mountain for the person’s name, which itself defines a contrarian, unfriendly relationship between people?

  The hero’s name is Nemesis.

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  Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments | Tagged negro mountain, nemesis

• Can I Not Help You?

  Posted at 4:02 am by kayewer, on January 20, 2013

  My office is planning an event which encourages coming dressed with a theme or full costume.  Being budget conscious, I figured I might be able to put something together without going full out for a rental outfit or buy one which would be passe’ if worn twice.  I had an appropriately themed shirt and hoodie which would serve well (and which made a store employee very happy when I bought them), but I knew there was more I could do and still not bust my budget.

  Since my schedule had me going to Philadelphia, I checked out some options by searching online for costume shops.  The perfect answer came up instantly in the form of Baum’s, a Philadelphia staple for dance which also advertises costume ideas.  I’m familiar with Baum’s; as a little ballerina at dance school, our slippers and outfits came from Baum’s.  The air of nostalgia washed over me as I walked into their store.

  It took the sales representative about ten seconds to flog nostalgia to death.

  After about 35 years off pointe, I guess I don’t look like the typical ballet customer, but it would not have hurt the lady standing by a display case courting achy feet and no sales to go to some effort.  I was pleasant and enthusiastic, but in return I received lukewarm involvement from her and little hope of finding anything worthwhile.

  While browsing about the store, hoping for some revival of spirit from my disinterested salesperson, I came upon a skirt which looked promising, and I had visions of how I could add a pair of tights.  All they had was black and pink, she replied.  Come on, what ever happened to dancewear in colors, for goodness sake?

  Baum’s lost, but so did I.  I won’t be going to the event in costume, and they won’t have a bigger sales tally when they add up the day’s potential paycheck money.  What a shame.

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• Unfit Sheet

  Posted at 3:10 am by kayewer, on January 13, 2013

  Sometimes things change so quietly, nobody notices.  The changes can suddenly become part of a new definition of normal, so one must adapt or eventually catch up.  My example for this rant about changes for the worst is the common fitted bed sheet.

  When I was growing up, sheets came in separate packages of top sheets, fitted sheets and twin packs of pillowcases.  If you used one pillow, you always had a spare pillowcase in your linen closet.  Then the sheet set came out, with one of each thing in one package.  The sheets stayed the same all these years.

  Recently a worn spot appeared on a beloved patterned fitted sheet, so I went to buy a replacement.  Since the pattern of the flat sheet was rather old, I knew I would never find an exact match (memo: when you like a sheet pattern, buy spare sets), so I opted for a solid.  As I examined my options, I found that the fitted sheet is no longer what I expected.

  Fitted sheets used to come with four gathered corners and four finished sides.  The only fitted sheet I could buy was gathered around the entire edge.  It has tortured me ever since, because it is impossible to straighten on the bed and won’t fold when it comes out of the dryer.  The fitted sheet has become like a shower cap:  it only looks neat and square fresh out of the package and never again.

  I don’t know why the bedding industry would rather waste elastic and thread sewing the entire circumference of a fitted sheet than simply cinch in four corners.  Are today’s workers unable to learn to do them the old way?  Maybe the new fitted sheet has something to do with the mattress industry on which the bedding industry is so dependent.

  The new mattresses are grossly padded and heightened enough to cause a nosebleed.  If the famed leading lady in the fairytale “The Princess and the Pea” had slept upon twenty of the behemoths found in mattress stores these days, she would never have been declared a princess with a butt sensitive enough to feel a lump under the bed (plus the nosebleed).

  Of course, she might not have been able to get into a bed that high, if it weren’t for the cathedral ceilings in the modern new homes of today.  If a fitted sheet gathered all around is a sign of progress, I’d rather stay in the dark ages.

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• Too Many Peanut Butters

  Posted at 2:41 am by kayewer, on January 6, 2013

  I did my first big food shopping trip at Wegman’s today, since my local SuperFresh is closing down.  It’s always fun to explore a new grocery chain and learn what exciting things they stock that other stores don’t, like expensive caviar (!!!) and fresh fish displayed in the open.  Luckily my wallet told me to stick to the essentials this trip, so I bought things like orange juice and looked over everything else.

  One thing that caught my eye was the peanut butter section and these two jars of Peter Pan(R) Peanut Butter.  Or at least one of them is peanut butter: the other is natural peanut butter spread which, the label notes, does not need stirring.

  

  Don’t they both spread?

  Having had the detestable experience of stirring a jar of natural peanut butter, this caught my eye.  The label ingredients are less on the natural version, suggesting that it is closer to peanut butter in its “from the nut to the jar” state., without many more additives like high fructose corn syrup or trans fats.  The calorie and fat content seemed the same on both labels, and so was the price. 

  Peanut butter is a growing section of the store, and there are at least a half-dozen brands trying to get noticed.  Peter Pan has come through in spite of past problems which shut down production for a time, and I have never found another brand I like as much.  Having said that, I think there are too many choices on the shelf:  creamy and crunchy still dominate, but now one can also choose honey, low-fat, low sugar and organic.

  When I think of the word “spread,” I think of those watery butter products that dampen one’s toast and seem to add little flavor.  I had not inventoried my peanut butter needs, but once I do, I will be trying this product and reviewing it herein for the sake of imparting helpful information to readers who might want to know.  It sounds like a great idea, so if it spreads on my bread and tastes good, we’ll have a winner.

   

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  Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment | Tagged peter pan natural peanut butter spread, wegmans

• Farewell 2012

  Posted at 2:08 am by kayewer, on December 30, 2012

  Gee, where did 2012 go?  I didn’t even see the screen door slap it on its way out.  Good thing, too, because there was quite a bit of negativity going on, and more than a few of us would like 2013 to get here so we can start fresh, even if we in America do wind up taking a header off the so-called fiscal cliff.

  Jobs are still hard to find, and the government still can’t figure out how to handle money.  Nature sent us Sandy, along with major drought and fires during the peak of summer.  All the good celebrities from the golden era are going to the great proscenium in the sky.  The bad guys shoot up schools and movie theatres, then kill themselves to avoid arrest.

  On the other hand, people have reached out and sacrificed their money, organs, homes and valuable time to help others.  Compassion still hasn’t been killed by a storm or a mad gunman.  Volunteerism won’t bow to bureaucrats or high gas prices.

  The top television shows may involve corporate greed (Madmen) or zombies (The Walking Dead), and the guilty pleasure/teen must-see film was fifth in a series of vampire movies (Breaking Dawn Part II), or moviegoers took a new look at an old favorite franchise (The Dark Knight Rises), but at least we do go to the movies.  DVD rentals have not stopped the unique experience of gathering in a theatre.

  Men of status continue to make bad choices, straying from the love and support of their wives and families to enjoy pleasures of the flesh elsewhere.  Women of celebrity status can’t keep from getting arrested for stupid things.  And then there’s Honey Boo-Boo, which I can’t begin to categorize.

  And there’s Gangnam Style, which should be a workout video or at least encourage people to go out and ride horses (if you look up how to do the dance, you’ll know what I mean).

  Magazines like Newsweek have gone all digital.  That’s creepy.  Sure, tablets and smart phones are cool, but give me a hard, holdable stack of paper bound with staples anytime.  I’m not giving up my magazines.

  Stores are closing.  Locally we are losing a SuperFresh and lost a Pathmark, because people are going to swank shopping destinations like Wal-Mart and Wegman’s.  Wal-Mart?  I still cringe when I spot a banana in the produce aisle at Target, because I don’t think I want to buy food where I buy my underwear.

  Lightbulbs are going out of style, with our standard bulbs (which have worked without fail since their invention) being replaced by energy-saving versions which give light only after they take a few moments to answer the summons of the light switch.  This is progress?

  Sure, we go backwards and forwards, and often not for the right things or good reasons.  The coming year won’t change that.  At least we can start with a clean agenda and, just maybe, come up with a better review next December.

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• No Ho Ho

  Posted at 3:31 am by kayewer, on December 23, 2012

  December is not a great month for all human beings.  Holidays are mixed events that are either welcomed or detested.  Some people have temporary setbacks in their holidays because of illness, disaster (imagine all the Sandy storm survivors who still don’t have four walls in which to install a Christmas tree) or a lack of persons with whom to share anything.  No wonder holiday depression is such a hot topic.

  If I had my way, I’d create an entire blog of just complaints about how lousy the holiday season is, and I could produce lots of great examples to prove my point.  Of course, nobody would want to read it, and if I said some of the things I wanted to say, I’d get in heaps of trouble with several affiliations, and I really don’t want to be known as a rabble rousing blogger.

  By December 26, all the hoopla will be over.  The family tummies will be bloated, the trashcans bulging with gift wrap and toys which broke within hours of coming out of the packaging, the fridge packed with leftovers.  The malls will open up return aisles, and the after holiday sales will commence.  In my neighborhood, Target stores will start to put out their Valentine’s Day cards.

  In other words, time to get to the next holiday that depresses people.

  Next week I will be talking about nicer things.  I just have to get to that day first.

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  Posted in Uncategorized | 0 Comments | Tagged Christmas depression

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