Susan's Scribblings the Blog

When Alexander Graham Bell summoned his assistant Mr. Watson with the first message heard on what became known as the telephone, maybe he should have simply repeated the telegraph’s first message:  what hath God wrought?  At the very least, it could have been an afterthought.

Phones today fit in a pocket, take pictures, make your movie ticket reservations and help locate your car in a parking lot without the help of lamppost signage (“Remember everybody, we’re parked in G29”).  What they can’t do is hardwire some common sense into the user’s brain or encourage some manners in everyday society.

Ringtones interrupt the opera house at least once every performance at the Metropolitan Opera.  Fortunately nobody there seems to program it for rap hits.  When society has to remind us in an entertainment venue to turn off electronic devices or set them to vibrate, we’ve become a little strange, if you ask me.  I admit, however, to finding vibrating phones amusing, especially when they vibrate off a tabletop onto the floor.

Sometimes it’s a revelation when somebody’s phone rings.  The most respectable person in the room may have Def Leppard for a ringtone, and the dude with the multiple lip rings will answer the summons of Puccini (I’d rather have him in the audience at the opera).

What I don’t understand is what is so important that people seem to chat on their cell phones constantly.  Don’t people stop to breathe anymore?  Even in the restroom I can hear conversations I would prefer not to be privy to (excuse the pun).  If I were on the receiving end of a call made from a restroom stall, I’d tell whoever it is to call back.

I have a small non-committal plan, since I only use the phone for emergencies such as the time the train home was discontinued and it took me two hours to get out of the city with bus service.  I don’t use a gizmo to attach my cell phone calls to my ear, and I don’t access the Internet with it.  That probably makes me a dimwitted anachronism, but at least you won’t find me answering a ringtone in the restroom.

Has anybody noticed that President Obama is always on the air?  The office cafeteria shows CNN every day on a wall-mounted screen, and it seems I have lunch every day with him, standing at yet another lectern with an agenda and speech going at full tilt.

I don’t think any public figure in the United States, in the age of television, has been on the air more than Mr. Obama.  I’m sure somebody is keeping track of his total face time on the air.  Trying to digest lunch while our elected power player is discussing healthcare is rather unpleasant, though.

When the president isn’t giving a speech, the news seems to concentrate on anything that will give us diners in the cafeteria a hard time.  I’d complain, but I don’t know what the building maintenance crew would substitute for CNN.  MTV, perhaps?

At least we have the privilege of watching a groundbreaking US president set the wheels in motion to try to change our country to meet new goals in a world that is going topsy-turvy.  And he always wears a nice suit.

I always feel a bit disappointed when somebody drops the “F bomb” over the public airwaves.   The use of foul language is not necessary in 99 percent of conversations, and the other one percent is questionable.

So our second in charge Mr. Biden let fly the wretched colorful metaphor (nods to Star Trek) during an appearance with President Obama, and it hasn’t been the first time.  The word is obviously firmly entrenched in his vocabulary somewhere in the gap between his foot and mouth.

What ever happened to the scandal associated with Rhett Butler’s not giving a damn in Gone With the Wind?  What became of sentences in general, without the added baggage of excess obscene filler?  With all the communication devices around this world today, can’t we speak in full sentences without adding a shocking punch to the sensibilities?

I think we should each try a one-day ban on using such language.  Some of us will fail within seconds (right now somebody might be reading and saying, “#@&, I couldn’t go for one #$&! second without saying —-!” and they lasted less than one second).

If JFK, Martin Luther King and Mae West could all speak fluently in public without using a naughty word, so can our public figures, and so can we.

After about 20 years, my old GE clock radio died.  Well, half of it died:  the clock part.  The LED readout went on the fritz except for one segment which would disappear whenever the time ended in a 2 or 4.

We had another clock radio in the house, but it had the same problem (and had been relegated to serving as just a radio), so I couldn’t even switch out gadgets to see me through the week.  Mine, fortunately, still knew what time it was, even though it was technically blind.  The alarm went off for three mornings in a row on schedule while I relied on a travel clock with a malfunctioning alarm switch to actually tell me the time.

I just didn’t have time to shop for a replacement until the weekend, so Old Paint hung in there the last day of Daylight Standard Time.  It would’ve made it through the entire Saturday, except that we were hit with a torrential rain event that caused the power to go out.  Once that happened, there was no way to restore life to the old faithful guy, so I was forced to endure gale force winds to traverse a surprisingly crowded Best Buy to shop for a new clock radio.

It amazed me to find so many people shopping for electronics on such a dismal, wet day.  The parking lot was packed, and everybody ran across the lot to the store without umbrellas (what’s up with that?), while I broke out my trusty wind-proof bumbershoot and managed to only wet my feet.

The selection of clock radios has changed a bit in 20 years.  Fortunately I managed to find a small unit that actually sets itself, recognizes Daylight Saving Time and has a backup battery in case of power outages.  Delighted with my purchase–which only came to about $20–I broke it in that night and was happy to see that it met expectations by setting its own time when I plugged it in, and turning itself ahead one hour overnight with no complicated programming needed.

What I will do with the radio half of a dead clock radio is still uncertain.

Awhile ago I wrote about the study linking high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) to obesity.  The information in the study–apparently regarded enough to be publicized on the public airwaves–has now been toned down because it may have been slightly overblown, according to the latest news sources, particulary evening newscasts.

In 1980, the United States started using HFCS instead of sugar because it comes from corn, a highly subsidized farm food in this country.  That makes it cheaper because sugar, on the other hand, is imported under tight restrictions, making it cost more.

The graphic presented on the newscast indicated that HFCS contains a slightly higher percentage of fructose than sugar, thus the “high” designation.   HFCS is used in various foods to make them taste better, including ketchup and salad dressings.

No matter what type of sugar you eat in your foods, however, it all ends up being processed in the liver.  Too much sugar of any type is not good for anybody’s health, and as Americans we consume more than anybody else.

Some sign-toters (mostly mothers) have managed to ban sugary sodas from public schools, and in some cities like Philadelphia, there has been talk of a per-ounce tax on such drinks to discourage their over-consumption.

Will I avoid products with HFCS?  Yes, but now in the same way in which I avoid sugar altogether.  Anything in moderation is fine, but by cutting some of the unneeded sugar from the diet, I hope to avoid health problems in the future.

I admit to being a low-income student, and I know that being an adult in college will have its unusual situations, but when the students around me started talking about their plans for spring break, I was stunned.  They go to the Caribbean; they go west to California; they go to Mexico.

I thought it was a bad economy, and that any time spent in an airport–with the body scans and shoe checks–was akin to waiting in a proctologist’s office for a high colonic appointment.  Every vacation for me has been a staycation for years, because it doesn’t seem like a good time to travel at all.  Who wants to stay in a hotel that has free bedbugs with every bed?  Who wants to play tourist when every place you visit has people who don’t like Americans in general and will only smile at you when you flash money destined for their hands?

Besides, I don’t have a figure for a swimsuit.  If the resorts only want 98 pound visitors, three-fourths of Americans are obese according to the statistics, so we might as well stay home.

Spring break for me will be a week in which I won’t take only a half hour lunch  half the week to make up for the 90 minutes I need on my school night to leave early and get from work to college.  I’ll spend the school night working on the next week’s assignment, and I’ll have time to re-read the assigned reading.  It’ll be a recharging session, but not fun in the sun.

Unless I work in the back yard and it isn’t cloudy.

Winter can be depressing, but you know things are bad when you rejoice at seeing the edges of your lawn–which isn’t even green–appear under melting snow.  We’ve been under feet of the stuff for weeks, and are prepared to continue topping old snowfall totals for at least another week or more.  Work and school have been affected, businesses are hurting for customers, and hospitals are overwhelmed with cold-related deaths,  injuries and newborns coming to term and deciding for some odd reason that a blizzard is the ideal time to make their debuts.

Oh, and there is cabin fever, too.  Those video games kids would normally spend 23 hours a day playing suddenly become boring when they have to be the only source of amusement while cooped up at home.  The video store is not easy to get to, and cable on demand hasn’t seen a new decent movie in months, and the regular programming is either in reruns or focused on the Olympics (where, by the way, they were begging for snow due to unusually mild weather).  Go figure.

The local networks have also decided to postpone regular programming during storm activity to spend 12 hours or more telling everybody about the snow. I don’t understand the logic behind this.  Psychologically it’s more draining than watching the world out your front door vanish under impermeable white stuff.   They interview people braving the cold to find an open quick mart.  They show the radar maps every few minutes until those frontal systems start to look like an advancing enemy horde come to pillage our homes.    The commentators start to get punchy and lose track of their scripts, but they struggle on with no apparent goal in mind.  I’d prefer the escape found in Ellen DeGeneres or Dr. Phil to a full day of what I can see for myself outside my window.

I notice that the news segments are always about the same subjects when it snows:  people buy out the shovels and ice melter at the local home stores, and supermarkets sell out of milk and bread.  It’s not as if people don’t buy out bread on regular weekdays (this is especially inconvenient when the delivery truck hasn’t arrived on schedule), but I’d like to know what people do with their shovels from the last storm, or even last season.  I know people like to buy the next year’s model car, but has it become necessary to buy a new shovel each year, too?  If you’re breaking shovels, you’re either working too hard or those shovels were made in a very cheap shop.

Another thing about snow:  everybody dresses to stay warm, not to look like a Dr. Zhivago postcard.  The hat may not match the overcoat, and the boots may sound like the footfalls of a battalion, but we all have the same idea in mind, and we’re all just shoveling through it all and waiting to see it melt away when spring finally decides to show up.  Sometime in June, if we’re lucky.

A Pennsylvania school district is in trouble because a laptop on loan to a student had its webcam activated after school hours.  The school claims it uses the camera technology to track missing computers, but a student was called on the carpet for what the webcam recorded during its activation,  family is pursuing an invasion of privacy legal action against the school.

This is a road not yet travelled, so it will be interesting to find out what happens.  On one hand, the laptop was school property and on loan; on the other hand, how many pieces of school-issued equipment can possibly be used to tattle on its owner?  On another hand (consider me an octopus), students today can rework a piece of computer equipment in a matter of minutes, so a school district should be able to track anything that could be damaged outside its borders.  Would any parent want a student well versed in techno misbehavior, rigging a machine to transmit porn or other illegal materials to its next owner?

Also, I don’t understand why students can’t use their own computers at home, unless all the hype I’m hearing about everybody owning computers is a lie.

I feel a bit nervous about having a camera attached to any device that can access worldwide networks.  It may seem paranoid, but I would never have a computer in any area in which I might even be seen by a web camera adjusting my shirt sleeve.  With the dangers of “sexting” and other illicit behaviors going on in this world, I think schools should have some controls on hand to protect the students and their taxpaying parents, even if it does include a laptop device that tracks the whereabouts of the machine.  Activating a camera, however, might not have been a wise idea.  Instead, there should have been a GPS based locator.

On the other hand, if I were a parent unable to be sure of what my child was up to, having that webcam access could save a life.

It has been a snow season for the books.  We were buried under so much of the white stuff in four out of six days, it will take forever to see the lawn again.  Fortunately all the neighbors pitched in to dig everybody out, but the problem of snow storage still exists.

The lawns are piled up with snow; the sidewalks are surrounded on all sides by snow.  The city of Philadelphia, like many others, decided not to haul truckloads of snow to the waterways for dumping.  The environmental effects of putting snow inundated with lawn chemicals and other contaminants into the river make it an unwise choice.

So what do we do with what could be called the weather equivalent of the houseguest who won’t leave?

I wonder why we can’t melt and treat the water, then put it in the waterways?  Wouldn’t that create jobs and provide insurance against drought in the summer?  Can’t we send treated water to places like Haiti and Darfur?  Can’t it be used in manufacturing?

Maybe we should all hold statewide ice hotel contests and make buildings and sculptures out of snow in our arena parking lots or local fields.

How about one big nationwide snowball fight?

There has to be a way to get rid of this stuff.  My driveway apron is so narrow, parking on the street should be temporarily banned, but it isn’t going to happen.  Sometimes driving around the cars parked on the street is like playing a real life video game; the only problem would be if you miss a turn.

Snow is a necessary part of nature, but our society has yet to figure out how to live with it.  At least rain water runs off, but this frozen stuff hangs out for ever.  Also, we’re in for more of it, and it’s only February.

I don’t want to see what happens if and when all this accumulation starts melting.