Susan's Scribblings the Blog

So the term “jawn” has been officially considered to be added to the dictionary. It’s a term common in Philadelphia and parts of eastern PA, and defined as something, or several things, which one cannot put a specific name to. I don’t really think we have run out of nouns, but we are developing so many new things that it’s hard to get the word out to everybody at once. If you don’t know what it is, it’s jawn.

Whatever happened to whatchamacallit or thingamabob , or doohickey? I guess they are just so yesterday as to be out of style today. I have yet to see something to which I would say, “What is that jawn?” Or maybe I’m not getting it right.

I recently read about the exciting lives of people who work in the offices of dictionary researchers. They don’t socialize much: they simply contemplate the purest meaning of words for 40 hours a week. A stranger entering that workplace would probably ask, “What’s this jawn about?” The answer would be, “Shh!”

Well, enough about jawn. I promise to have something more defined to say next week.

I’m working on retooling the blog, which is kind of like redecorating the home, only this is autumn instead of spring, so it’s a bit harder to do.

For an expert, no big deal: just click this, tell the system to do that, and done. For somebody like me who is in the computer geek zone somewhere between somebody who doesn’t quite know enough to one who just got sat in front of a screen after they were in the woods for 20 years raised by wolves. At least I can figure out what I don’t know. If I were raised by wolves, I’d hide behind the sofa.

Sure there are books out there, with titles like “Total Idiots’ Guide to Embarrassing Yourself on the Web,” but if I can’t even read books by my favorite authors, how am I going to read one of those? The process takes hours, so I’m tackling it one hour at a time. In case nobody has noticed, one hour doesn’t seem as long as it used to. I think the universe is speeding up, and we’re still trying to run on a 24-hour clock.

The important thing is to keep at it and not give up. I don’t quit anything, but I may not get the courage to revisit the situation right away. It may take an extra day or two. I’m trying to figure out how I want the site to look, which is like picking paint.

If you are a commercial watcher, you may recall an ad in which a woman has a myriad of blue smears on her wall as she tries to figure out which one works the best. That’s kind of what I’m doing. Maybe I should look at it again at dawn; if the page design jolts me awake before I get my eyes truly open, it’s too garish. If it puts me back to sleep, it’s too boring.

At least I don’t have to worry about getting new furniture to match the new paint.

I’m working on retooling some online content, and I will have a week off for some rest. When I see you in October, things should look slightly different, but it will be the same old me. Just more rested. See you around October 7.

I decided to rename the blog. It felt right to give it a name which would be more familiar. Nothing fancy, though. So it’s now “Susan’s Scribblings: the Blog.” As I try to get my online presence in better order, you will start to see some different things appearing here. My goal is to have everything in order by October, which was when my site–called “Susan’s Scribblings” with the “the Blog” by it– was born.

I’m certainly not a computer nerd and can’t do a lot of fancy stuff, but what I can do is experiment and see what works. It’s sort of like trying on new makeup. I want to come off looking professional but also having a bit of fun.

Stay tuned.

I  have a bit of a green thumb, but not with orchids. Now that they are available in grocery stores, I’ve bought a few, and they have turned out to be rather unrewarding. The blooms die and never seem to come back. I feel like I’ve killed them with my ignorance, which makes me an orchid-ocidal maniac or something.

When you can’t keep a plant alive, you do feel kind of like a jerk.

African violets are fine, along with snake plants and spider plants. Not that I’m a big fan of spiders and snakes, but if the creatures go their own way and the plant versions thrive on my windowsill, I’m okay with that.

It may not be me. The orchids may be so over-bred that they really can’t thrive. You’re supposed to feed them once a week with an ice cube, which is rather strange. Orchids don’t grow anywhere near cold temperatures. Also, mine have fought back: there is no space in the pot in which to set an ice cube without freezing the leaves.

I have another one in the office which requires a certain measurement of water every 20 days.  I have it on my calendar as an appointment (“Feed orchid”), but all I have to show for it is a few leaves. It was pretty in the spring, but at least I can grow leaves. I tried following the instructions to cut back the plant to get more blooms, but I may have amputated too much. So I still have leaves.

Maybe it’s because I have the plants in the office, and they hate cubicle life. But that doesn’t explain why the violets are doing so well. But at least they’re cheap and green, and I won’t part with them unless they quit on me. So my thumb is not as green, but I’m true blue when it comes to whatever still looks alive in a pot.

The latest issue of Reader’s Digest features an article about punctuation marks we may not know about but might want to use more frequently. The one that caught my attention is called the interrobang, a combination of a question mark and exclamation point used to stress excitement in a question instead of using clusters of both marks together.  Its cousin is the percontation mark, a reverse question mark designed to designate a sentence a rhetorical question.  A third interesting mark is called the certitude point, used to denote absolute finality and conviction.

Many applications online do not use these marks, but probably the best places to bring them back to life would be social media. Imagine looking at a snarky sentence in a post, and seeing a snark mark–a dot and curlicue–which leaves no doubt as to the user’s frame of mind.  There is a mark to denote irony, to encourage skepticism and to express open-hearted love. Our online crack sites are the perfect places for these distinctive marks.

Here is an article from Mental Floss to explain more:

http://mentalfloss.com/article/12710/13-little-known-punctuation-marks-we-should-be-using

If you agree, let’s storm social media and bring these marks back to life.

I don’t know what to think about tearing down statues in the South. Removing them does not make the Civil War go away, nor does it make the persons depicted on them any more or less human and error-prone than they were in life. We are human, and if history is doomed to repeat itself, then we will continue to make stupid mistakes. That doesn’t mean we can’t recognize the good things people do, even if we make it a point to also make note of their flaws.

When Shakespeare noted that our evil deeds remain long after we die while the good is buried with us, he probably had no idea we would be coming to this. Sure slaves built and maintained the South under many evil watchful eyes, but good people–black and white–live there now, free except for the emotional baggage they keep bringing up every once in awhile. For some, it is an emotional scar, but for others it is just like carrying around a burr to sit upon on occasion to remember how our past was so hurtful.

Sure we need to recognize that our history had some dark times. We are certainly not guaranteed a future without more of them. Taking down representations of our history won’t change who we are, were or will be. It will simply warp the remembrances of our past and lessen the chance that we may learn about how to improve what is to come.

It looks like the leader of North Korea might be a Star Wars fan, because he thinks the island of Guam is Alderaan  (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0qLzsIhUMk); a peaceful place which would make a good demonstration model to show off his tactical might. I am trying to put anything but a deadly spin on this issue because the idea of somebody hurting the island infuriates and terrifies me.

Of course, the island in the Pacific Ocean does hold an Air Force base, but other than being a prominent non-continental player in WWII, it’s really just an off campus site for the military to learn to park, work on and sometimes fly jets. What North Korea would really do, if they aimed weapons at the island, is annihilate an entire indigenous people and likely doom an oceanic ecosystem, both of which cannot be replaced.

It is sad that the future of our country and world is coming down to a political pissing contest between two people in power who refuse to budge. It almost looks like the end of the Dr. Seuss story “The Butter Battle Book,” in which two sides hold destructive devices in their hands and simply wait for whomever will make the first move.

It would be better if they both took a bathroom break.

We women all know about the one fingernail on our hands that never behaves. Sure we have bad hand days, but ultimately our biggest manual fails are the fault of one particular finger.

Some of us have two bad nails. I am one of them.

Back in high school, one of my fingers decided to linger in a doorway of the library, and the door closed on it. The nail died and took a couple of months to grow out and drop off, and the new one has a permanent vertical ridge in it as a reminder of that fateful day. So that nail has a kink in it. Fortunately it didn’t cause me any grief today.

My thumb, on the other hand–well, actually it’s the same hand–tends to get me in trouble not by trying to hitch rides, but by running into things. This morning, while trying to turn the car radio off, I put a horizontal split in my thumbnail. It’s in one of those places one cannot take a file or emery to. So I did the old school fix of trying to seal it up with nail polish, and promptly spilled the bottle on the living room carpet.

So today it feels like I have ten children, and one of them is spoiling it for the other eight. No thumb ring for you, buster, until you grow up and grow out.

A popular song from the older generation was called “In Other Words,” and we often substitute words when we want to soften a tough tirade or embellish dull prose. Sometimes the word we need is the one we started with in the first place.

At work we have a few departments for customers, and the difference between them can be just one word. In one case, Customer Administration and Customer Relations are two different entities. One takes care of the billing and such, and the other handles direct comments, feedback and complaints.

At least once a week, a piece of mail (yes, in an envelope with postage on it) comes across my desk addressed to “Administration” when it should have gone to “Relations.” The address is clearly marked, in nice and easy-to-read print, so it is the customers who choose to change it. Sometimes they add “Supervisor,” “Manager,” or even the president of the company, which goes back to the topic of entitlement from a previous post. Believe me, the president of the company is holding the company together through the skills of the very people to whom you should actually be addressing your envelope. He would pass it on to us anyway, so kindly leave the prez out of the picture.

So here is what happens when I get that misdirected mail: if the mail room person is coming by, I redirect it or, if I am getting out of my seat (which I try to do once every three to four hours if I’m not heading to lunch or to the ladies’ room), I will take it upstairs and drop it off if I have time. Anyway, customers who do this are lucky, because we happen to be one floor apart. In some places the misplaced missal would have to go to another building, or even another city.

We try to say what we mean, but please don’t blame somebody if you change something we have taken pains to make clear. It could mean faster service, and that makes everybody happier.