Susan's Scribblings the Blog

I can’t figure out why we should have to watch people throw up on television shows and in movies.  I enjoyed the movie “Super 8” until a character got sick.  That ruined it for me.  Sure, it’s a part of being human, but back in the old days people put their hands to their mouths and exited the scene, and we got the picture.  Have we grown so jaded by the sensationism we get onscreen that we need to be exposed to such disgusting behavior?

Of course we have many euphemisms for the act of vomiting, such as throwing up, hurling, puking, talking to Ralph.  It’s strange how we try to skirt around unpleasant things in life when talking about them, but put them out front visually in movies and shows and call it entertaining.  I’d prefer being bored to watching somebody else’s stomach discomfort in living color.

Passing by a hospital, I saw a large sign for the “Eye Emergency Room.”  Sure, it’s great to have a place which specializes in eye problems, but would somebody with an eye emergency actually be looking for a sign that says “Eye Emergency Room?”

Yes it is a well-worn subject, a Monty Python staple skit, an ongoing preachable subject at church and arguable in front of women’s services facilities and on the steps of political buildings.  Why add to the confusion?  Because only by discussing it can we come to terms with it.

Some people live without existing; others exist without living.  Humans and other creatures of varying degrees of substance or purpose are born and die every second of every day.  Some living things we have too much of, while others are in short supply.  Yet when it comes to human beings we often argue over the subject of life as if everybody should be expected to conform to one idea without exception.  That can and should never happen.  It is the diversity of life itself that makes the very notion of pigeonholing it into absolute law, book, chapter and verse impossible.  Even God in His wisdom made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Adam and Adam ad infinitum.  He also made trees and rocks, lions and tigers, clouds and earthworms.  If you subscribe to evolutionary theory, the creation of the universe included such diversity as a part of the greater plan (the dinosaurs probably had a purpose that was short but necessary in the grander scheme of planetary development, but that discussion is for another time).  Either way you look at it, diversity is the key to how the earth works.

Life is its own chaotic experience.  From one second to the next, every square microscopic measurement of space on this planet is being changed just by our being here.  As you read something like this online, billions of particles that could or might have a purpose are starting their journey, and others are ending theirs.  We will never know how many opportunities never came into being, or which ones should not have been started.  What life truly means comes from what good is made from what does live.

. . . .to be continued.

I posted here yesterday, but my computer didn’t know it.  I was out and about, but had a chance to write earlier in the day than usual, so I wrote about my pending Saturday activities, and it was ready to go.  I hit the “Post” button, but nothing happened.

Oh-oh, sounds like the computer might be sick.

I don’t care if the computer in question is a Mac or PC, there is nothing like the threat of a computer crash to put despair into the hearts of men.  Fifty years ago the equivalent might have been watching an errant bulldozer on fire plowing toward your home and all your precious belongings doomed to become irreplacable rubble.

It’s bad enough when a PC starts booting up slowly, or decides to run an update when you have to power down and pack it up.  It’s always frustrating to write through pages of inspired prose, only to find it impossible to save or store, or that you’ve put off your automatic update for ten minutes, the ten minutes are up and your machine shuts down.

I don’t know what happened to the stuff I wrote.  It must have vanished like those gems of ideas I get at three in the morning that translate into garbage in the morning because I wrote them down in the dark while half asleep.

My intentions were good.  The computer was bad.  But I’m here now, and I think this rant will be a go.  It’ll never replace yesterday’s, but I always promised myself that I would never look back on writing that never got anywhere.

The town municipal calendar arrived today.  Inside were pieces of nostalgia from the good old days, including some images from an old ice cream parlor which has long been out of business.  A restaurant and bar has put on its facade and made a few cosmetic changes, but I have never set foot inside.  I wouldn’t like what they had done to the place.

Back when it was the hangout for everybody between eight and 80, the owners made everything on site.  They had real ice cream, served in abundance in glass dishes, topped with real whipped cream and a huge cherry on top.  There was a basket of pretzel sticks at every table, and a jukebox from which many kids were first exposed to popular music or even the hits of their parents’ generation.

They delivered their own milk to local households, and you could actually have food put on your doorstep without worry back then.

Today ice cream contains strangely named concoctions and comes in cardboard containers from massive processing plants.  The good old parlor is going away like drive-in movies and even one-screen movie theatres.

Sure I still eat ice cream and have a particular fancy for Blue Bunny, now that Baskin-Robbins is not to be found anywhere nearby (they have the best chocolate chip).  Nothing will replace that old joint that is nothing more now than a nostalgia photo in a town calendar.

There is something to be said for the idea of requiring passable skills in a language by persons from outside its native spoken country who choose to live there.  Sure it’s not a bad thing for people who speak a language other than the local tongue to congregate and share their stories comfortably without pausing to translate, and our nation grew with “Little This Country” or enclaves of that dialect.  Heck, in London–if you believe Professor Higgins in My Fair Lady–the language changes from one block to the next.  I’ve never been able to figure out who in the Philadelphia area tends to call a crowd of other people “youse” and who uses the term “yis” (as in “all ‘a yis”), but on any public street today there is such a mixture of languages, it’s amazing anybody can understand anything.

The other day a piece of mail came to our office, addressed to somebody with an oriental-sounding name.  The recipient in question isn’t oriental, nor is married to one, but the writer was obviously not aware of Anglican surnames.  Some mistakes that result in shoring up the language barrier are forgivable, but others are costly and cannot be ignored.

The impression in the media is that non-native speakers tend to be more wary of authorities than the very criminals the police and investigators are trying to root out for the public’s safety.  Maybe the criminals speak their language, while the cops do not.

What is most disturbing is the occasional television interview in which a speaker with residency in this country for some time utilises a translator to talk to the reporter.  Let’s say a car was coming their way and was doomed to run them down:  would the subject of the interview respond to the words, “Look out!” in time to save their own lives?  In the time it would take for the translator to put the warning into the proper words, they’d be goners.

It seems logical that nobody can speak every language there is in the world, but most people can obtain enough ability in a second language with proper attention and study.  Children are particularly open to learning additional languages, and they are often employed to translate in the home for the older adults who lack aptitude.  For those who refuse to adapt, it is a sad and isolating trend that ultimately causes that language barrier to become an unbreakable block to true freedom.  It isn’t discriminatory to establish and require one language, but it is dangerous for people to have voices that nobody can understand.

Language is power.

With a new year one often receives new responsibilities.  Our office decided to institute a forty-hour week.  We used to work 2 1/2 hours fewer, not counting times when lunch was cut short or the managers asked for overtime; then it was easy to do 40 hours a week or more if desired.

Once the change was approved, the question became how to add the extra time on to everybody’s already packed schedule without affecting the other two thirds of their lives.  It’s amazing to look over the new schedules and see how adding 30 minutes a day to the work week can change people’s lifestyle dynamics.  For one thing, bad weather can affect travel time, so parents of school-age children had to consider whether it would be prudent to move around their mornings or evenings.

Ultimately some folks asked for an earlier start, while others chose the “caboose.”  Somebody (I was one such somebody) had to read a sheet which contained the original proposed schedules and the changes made to meet the needs of the staff involved.  It took awhile to translate it, calculate it and enter it.  In the end, however, nobody seems to have complained about the new protocol, only that the new hours now meant less overtime.

Some of us, unfortunately, had lunches reduced from 45 to 30 minutes.  With only 30 minutes, it’s a challenge to eat lunch, especially when the cafeteria needs time to prepare your food.  Add the actual consumption of the food, bathroom time and fielding cellphone calls which had to go unanswered on company time, and those 30 minutes disappear faster than a panicked cat.

Some stomachs were growling the first week, but not loudly.

The great thing about work is, when you work, you get paid.  The more time you work, the more you get paid.  The money goes into that cafeteria lunch, and if you don’t eat it all, you can take it home a half hour later than usual.