Susan's Scribblings the Blog

I thought I had just one topic about which to blog this week, but suddenly I was overwhelmed by possible topics, and none of them were pleasant.

I was ready to play devil’s advocate for Steve Harvey, the king of TV show hosting whose recent attempts to gain some privacy by sending out a memo about when and how to approach him became tabloid fodder. Hey, being a celebrity does not mean you sacrifice the locks to the bathroom stall doors; the man does need some space. I think if the folks read between the lines, he really meant that people should knock first; who really needs to make an appointment to ask in-the-moment questions when a show is taping and you’re on the clock? He had obviously had enough of asking politely because people just didn’t listen.

http://www.etonline.com/tv/217372_steve_harvey_tearful_after_leaked_memo_did_not_attend_wrap_party_sources_say/

I was ready to grieve with a parent of an eight-year-old boy who committed suicide following a school bathroom incident in which he lay unconscious on the floor for a while and was poked and kicked and avoided by fellow students.

http://nypost.com/2017/05/12/video-shows-brutal-bullying-at-school-days-before-8-year-olds-suicide/

Then along came a ten-year-old who provided a note with a list of bullies who had driven him past his endurance, and he also hanged himself. I had still been working on notes from the first one, which isn’t easy because I, too, was bullied (and repressed by the faculty), so I had to step back as a writer and work hard to be informative without going off on a tear and become morbid or hateful. The topic will have to wait a bit longer.

http://6abc.com/news/mom-says-bullying-led-to-10-year-old-sons-death/1986682/

Then there was the follow-up story about a parent whose son he named Adolf Hitler, who ran into a problem with a bakery that would not put the name on a birthday cake. It seems the dad has adapted the Hitler name for himself.

http://www.dw.com/en/father-who-named-children-adolf-hitler-and-eva-braun-changes-own-name-to-hitler/a-38792953

Then there was a story about a woman with overactive bladder who, while flying, was forced by the airline crew to find relief in a cup, then had to carry the cup in a walk of shame down the corridor to the restroom while the attendant said aloud that her seat would have to be cleaned by a hazmat crew.

https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/05/10/woman-forced-to-pee-in-cup-on-united-airlines-flight/22080007/

While I’m sorting all of this out, Mother’s Day is tomorrow. I hope all mothers out there reflect on the good things tomorrow. Maybe Monday we won’t have as bad a week of news as this past one.

How many human beings does it take to change a light bulb? Or to put it into the context of my recent situation, how many does it take to process an online order for in-store pickup? At least five, but probably about eight to ten.

I ordered a product online. Delivery was expected in a week. The day before the product was to be sent to the store, I got a text from my ever-vigilant credit card asking, “Is this charge yours?” At the same time, I got a phone call asking the same question. I was in a situation where I couldn’t answer either. Bad idea. Automation doesn’t care about what human tasks you are engaged in. The charge didn’t go through. So when I could get online I tried to run it through again through the vendor’s site. No luck.

The next morning, I called the store’s customer service. After navigating the phone menu (which is designed to route calls but is not always a good match for how people communicate what they want), I got a nice person who, after a few minutes on hold, told me my item was in the store, and simply go and pay for it there.

At the store, I went to the pick-up counter and provided my order number. The sales associate went to the racks of pick-up items and found nothing. The situation started turning into the famous “Gas Cooker Sketch” from Monty Python.

She went to another associate to find out where the item was; he thought it would not have been shipped without an approval code. A third thought it might be in stock, in which case my original order could be cancelled and a purchase done with the in-stock item. After a fourth and fifth person chimed in, one of them actually went back to the stock room and found the item. It still had to be charged as a separate sale, and my original order cancelled. Who knows why.

So there was the person who processed the original online order, a stock locator, a packer, a shipper, the transportation people, the stock staffers at the store, the credit card processor, the person who sent the phone message, the person who sent the text, and the five in the store.

One item.

No wonder prices are ridiculous.

Tomorrow is the first day of May, also known as May Day. The term is known both as the date on the calendar and a distress call, but one has a history behind it.  Legend has it that in 1923 Frederick Mockford, a British radio operator, took the french term M’aidez, meaning “Help me,” and anglicized it into the term we know today.

Of course, for those of us who work in places where the first of the month is a real pain in the neck, we will be calling for help quite a bit tomorrow.

Visitors to the courthouse (known as the Juanita Kidd Stout Center for Criminal Justice) in Philadelphia are rebelling against a policy which requires them to secure their cell phones in an inaccessible bag while court is in session. The idea is to put a stop to unnecessary and potentially case-affecting device use. People will suffer through sitting in a smoke-free zone, but apparently not through a phone-free zone.

Courtroom guests have been reported to have set the secure pouches, a product of a company called Yondr, on fire. They have hacked them open with sharp objects and thrown them out in a show of contempt. They would rather do that than have the device freed of its pouch so it can be taken off the property for use.

Those who don’t have to secure their devices, such as attorneys and other employees, are grumbling about having to show ID before being allowed to shun the bag of doom.

If you tried to convince yourself that our society is not a bunch of overgrown three-year-olds, stop trying.

Pictures of witnesses and other courtroom personnel have been taken and used as fodder for social media threats and witness intimidation. The sanctity of the courtroom and our justice system are being intimidated by dumbbells playing the “I have my rights” card for the wrong card game.

Of course I’m speaking from a neanderthal point of view, since I have yet to figure out how to use a cellphone camera. They’re not really that good, anyway. However, if one cannot be without what is essentially a toy disguised as a mobile safety tool for a few hours, we must truly be a society of cyber junkies with no hope of redemption.

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/crime/Some-find-ways-to-defeat-Phila-courts-new-locking-cellphone-pouch.html

This morning my mother and I watched the miracle of birth on a live feed from YouTube. After a month of anxious anticipation, April the giraffe from the Animal Adventure Park in Harpursville, NY finally delivered her fourth calf. An audience of over one million viewers watched with a camera’s eye view sponsored by the home of a trademark cartoon giraffe mascot, Toys”R”Us. Who would have thought that such an event would happen while the greatest generation could see it?

The expectation was enough to bring major newscasts to cover the event. That made a great break from international scandal and politics. Babies wait for nobody. In April’s case, they bide their time.

Births in the wild are usually relegated to documentaries on television, but April has become a sponsor for her species, as the park’s website notes a 40% decline of giraffes in the wild. Breeding in controlled environments and gene pool management will help preserve them and other animals. In the (hopefully near) future when we decide to set aside natural habitats for wildlife safe from poaching, populations may rebound.

While humans have obstetricians to catch babies upon arrival, giraffes give birth standing up, with the front hooves and snout arriving first; a newborn dangles for a spell from the birth canal and then plummets to the ground. Talk about hitting the ground running. The calf attempted to stand within fifteen minutes of birth and was soon wobbling around following mama. My mama and I watched, fascinated. For her it was a first, but I hope to see other miraculous events in my remaining lifetime.

Really, we should have more of these kinds of stories. People will always have conflict, but nature continues on its way in its own time, and if we’re smart, we pause to enjoy it.

Every once in a while a customer complains by sending an email and really gets into the invective. Why anybody would want to be on permanent record showing their liberal use of F-bombs and/or (in)ability to communicate a difficulty effectively, is beyond me.

This person said that we ****ing suck (that is what was referred to in the classic movie A Christmas Story as the “F-dash-dash-dash word”) because said customer has the same problem every year and we need to fix it for them. Immediately when I looked at what the situation was, I knew what was going on. First of all, the problem was due to being in the wrong place to do what they wanted to do. Second, they were apparently not trying to get out of the wrong place, which is like doing something again and again hoping for a different outcome.

There is also the third thing; that nobody should get angry enough for more than one year and not ask the obvious question: “Is there something else I need to know so I don’t have this problem again the next time?”

So it boiled down to explaining how to get out of the wrong place, which I did.

What I keep wondering is, why would anybody want to perform a sex act and be terrible at doing something else simultaneously. What I mean is, if somebody says so-and-so is the “****ing best race car driver in the world,” doesn’t that mean that they are engaged in sex while being the best driver? If a meal tastes “****ing great,” I never see it doing the nasty while it is in the act of being delicious.

So liberal use of the F-dash-dash-dash word doesn’t always get the point across any better than simply saying something like, “In my opinion, you are an ineffective so-and-so because I am having a problem I didn’t decide to tell you about until now.”

We should say what we mean and stay cool doing it.

I am not April fooling today, though I could. Just walking through a store today was enough to convince me that we conduct ourselves like April fools 364 days a year, so this should instead be our day off.

I think I know what is happening to shopping in live stores: we can’t stand each other anymore. Now that any type of manners or decorum, or just plain common sense, has gone out the window, public shopping has become a parade of the absurd. The upper class don’t want to be talked up to, the middle class are trying to hold together what prevents them from sliding down into poverty and avoid talking altogether, and the lower class doesn’t want to be talked down to. This is why we bury our noses in our phones to avoid contact of any kind that might break the bubble of tenuous self-secure righteous pseudo-normalcy.

People shop wearing pajama bottoms, begging the question of whether they have underwear on. People shop wearing no undergarments at all, and it is obvious. People shop looking like they just came from a week at a survival camp. The children are smelly, sullen and indifferent. The senior citizens are ignored as if they are the wretched scum of the earth. Those in the middle–the 20- and 30-somethings–cling to shopping carts as if they are the only means to stay upright, the men looking like they’re on a death march and the women like prisoners in a work detail.

And yes, everybody still hates waiting in checkout lines. Instead of clerks in cattle chutes, maybe we should have checkout in each department, at a self-serve kiosk overseen by a human intervention assistant should things go wrong.  Scan your item, pay for it, bag it (and have some way to seal it against padding the purchase later), and you’re on your way. The only time one would have to see an employee is to complain, which is usually what is done anyway.

Probably none of the people I saw shopping today even looked up more than a second when they voted last November, either. But that’s a subject I’m not going into today. That would be foolish.

I may have invented a term by accident. While watching Shark Tank recently, I noticed the “Queen of QVC,” Lori Greiner, was wearing a dress with a bodice in a rounded contrasting color. Of course it looked great on her, but I realized that the particular piece of the dress on the front created an interesting illusion. Narrow on top and rounded on both sides at the bottom, it looks more like an inverted heart with the point a bit wider, but I commented to those watching with me (before I could stop myself), “She looks like she has chesticles.”

Sorry, Lori. Nobody wants to be remembered as having an upper half which reminds people of the lower half of the opposite gender. But the term is official, and I did it.

Naturally the designer didn’t intend the dress to look like that. Probably the design is meant to draw the eye above the waist. Obviously my mind was elsewhere. Way down elsewhere.

At least I was paying attention to the dress. And Lori looked great in it.

https://www.google.com/search?q=lori+greiner&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiw8OiOs8fQAhUl7oMKHcpKDbEQiR4ImgE&biw=1536&bih=708#tbm=isch&q=lori+greiner+shark+tank&imgrc=APQ_6A7p4AjQ_M%3A

If there were two things you would not think of as being replacements for the news (un) worthy world of politics, it would be a pregnant giraffe and a giant chicken, but that is what happened this week. Thank goodness for a bit of strangeness in the midst of chaos.

April the giraffe at the Animal Adventure Park in Harpursville, New York, is expecting another calf, but either her conception date was off or she is way overdue. The typical giraffe pregnancy lasts 15 months, so she’s going on double the amount of time we human ladies spend with swollen feet and back pain. And look at the legs she stands on every day.

A live feed has been tracking her for some time now, and viewers are anxiously waiting for the first signs that we will witness the miracle of birth. What is a real miracle is that giraffe give birth standing up, so the baby’s welcome to world is a fall, head and front feet first, of several feet to the ground. In the wild, they must stand and start walking quickly or risk being dinner to the predators lurking about.

The feed was removed temporarily after somebody complained about the content being too sexual in nature, but common sense prevailed and it was restored. A problem with the video spurred numerous phone calls to the site; nobody wants to miss the big moment.

And then there is the vieeo of a huge bird emerging from a small coop entrance and puffing out to monstrous proportions to strut about the pen. It was finally identified as a giant Brahma chicken, a huge clucker of a breed created from inter-breeding of similar large fowl. The males weigh in at about 18 pounds. Skeptics claimed the video was of somebody in a costume, but it was confirmed as a real video. The featured chicken is named Merikli and apparently lives on a farm in Kosovo. And undoubtedly the hens love him like some women get hot and steamy over wrestling stars with biceps that could feed a family of ten. But who would really want to serve up this big guy, even though that is the purpose for which he was created?

Believe it or not, instead of thinking about firing up the deep fryer, people have expressed fear of this bird; enough that one could construct a horror movie about it. (Cue ominous-sounding voice-over) “It came from beyond the coop to destroy the earth. More than feathers will fly tonight. Merikli, the Movie, rated R for scenes of rooster violence.”

Yes, it has been a bad week for politics, but a good one to be just a little crazy with animals in the news. They’re a whole lot more interesting than the animals in Washington, like the weasels, snakes and hyenas. I’ll take eight straight hours of April strolling her pen, or meeting up with Merikli in a dark alley, to fifteen more seconds of political fodder, and it looks like lately lots of other people agree with me. If the president wants truth in news, these are it.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClnQCgFa9lCBL-KXZMOoO9Q/live

McDonald’s has announced that it is moving more toward fresh, rather than frozen, beef patties, fulfilling an idea that first took shape in 2014. This after a test run proved a winner with guests at over 300 locations in Texas and the test expanded to Tulsa, Oklahoma.

That makes sense: the beef can be had practically off the hoof in Texas.

From the abattoir to your table in a matter of hours.

I don’t know how much beef is hoofing around Oklahoma.

This will, of course, cause a clash between those people who want good fresh food and good fast food. The line at the drive-through may slow down a bit if one has to wait for a fresh patty to cook thoroughly, though I can’t imagine how, other than a super hero employee at the cooking station using a laser blaster, a frozen patty would cook more quickly. I don’t time them: I just watch for them to get more gray than pink and stick a thermometer in when necessary.

The folks at “Mickey D’s” will have to come up with some new ideas, but we’ve always loved those arches and embraced the culture. They’re not going anywhere, just upping their game.