Susan's Scribblings the Blog

To start with, I find it amazing and downright disturbing that I can’t go into an office supply or electronics store and buy a battery for a laptop computer.  I checked this out, since I know laptops are popular choices these days, and I figured it would be worth looking into.  Why are the batteries only available to order online?  If they run out, they’re likely to do so at a critical moment, so don’t you think the stores would want to get your money and sell you a replacement in such an emergency?  I saw batteries for every kind of electronic gizmo, but a high-end purchase like a laptop?  I don’t get it?

I stopped in Office Depot this past week.  It wasn’t my usual location, but it was near my office, so I expected nothing to be different.  Well, it was.  The staff didn’t even know I was there.  They were engaged in a conversation at the copy corner.  The outside was deplorable, with peeling signage and a parking lot that was difficult to navigate.  Since there is an Office Max within a quarter mile, I’ll probably stop there next time.

I stopped in the AT&T phone store this past week as well, to buy something for my cell phone.  When I stepped into the store, people at various times turned to look at me, then turned away as if I were walking carrion.  Couldn’t figure out why:  I had just showered, my clothes were neat and I certainly wasn’t a “What Not to Wear” candidate, and I hadn’t done anything to draw attention to myself except walk in.  Maybe that’s it:  I walked in on something and they wanted me to leave (?).

I went to Macy’s this past week:  they’re putting up Christmas garland.  I left.

My mother made an interesting observation today:  why are women suddenly talking so high and in a nasal pitch?  What ever happened to the sultry deep Ingrid Bergman voice that signals maturity and draws males like moths to the conjugal flame?

If one were to stand twenty young women together and ask them to read a sentence, they’d all sound alike.  They’d all look alike too, of course, if they were all high school age, but the point is that they all seem to have bad colds or sinus conditions, causing them to speak at a whiny mosquito-like drone.

Even the female weather forecasters (excuse me, maybe I should say meteorologists) sound this way.  Nobody on the morning news seems to speak at a level below that of an annoying cartoon character.  The sound is almost like the Chipmunks, only less endearing to listen to in the long term.

Play back that famous line from the original version of The Fly:  “Helllllp meeeeeee. . . .” and you may notice no difference between poor Vincent Price played back at the wrong speed and your average female these days.  I never know the ages of women I’m with in dressing rooms, because the cacophony is all at the same level.  Maybe I’ve been shopping in Stepford, and in the stalls next to me are all those wives waiting for a chance to convert me to a drone clone.

I don’t know if this is a new trend or not.  Maybe my suspicions that overusage of earbuds are causing people to develop a loss of hearing that affects bass tones are correct (maybe we need the advice of a good audiologist on this site).  Think about it.  All that boom-box high volume bass in your ears cannot be right for the hearinig.  The more you need to turn it up, the more likely you are losing your ability to actually process or “hear” it.  As a result, you modulate your own voice to make yourself heard, and all your friends are falling into the same trap.  But that’s just my theory.

So much for the sultry ladies of yesteryear.  If this trend continues, we may all find ourselves in the hearing aid store saying “Hellllp meeeeeeeee. . . .”

I wish to politely complain about the ritual/fiasco that is the checkout aisle.  Every week I leave the market with a markedly higher blood pressure than when I first arrived, because the experience of accounting for bagging my purchases is a relentless assault on my sense of security.

I would try the self checkout kiosk, but I have found that the computer is much too difficult to deal with.  I learned that I can’t remove a bag from the carefully calibrated turntable, even if it is packed to my satisfaction and I elect to put it in my cart and start another bag.  Also, I feel funny about a voice talking to me while I’m trying to arrange my purchases and scan them to its satisfaction:  I’m not used to being talked to by the checkers, so the computer doesn’t make up for anything.

I’m never allowed to take my time to put paper in plastic so I can carry my purchases comfortably.  If the supermarket chains don’t want us to put paper in plastic, kindly put handles on the paper bags.  I’ve also found that the paper bags are never the right size to fit nimbly inside the plastic bags.  Sometimes I can’t get them open when I do manage to square them off inside each other, and by this time the efficient checker has started shoving my rung up purchases down at me faster than I can bag them.

I know the checkers are instructed to move the line along, and these poor employees are already in pain from prolonged standing and would like to take a break between customers, but why do they rush me so?  I have tried (if I have time) to place the items I plan to put in the bottom of a bag first, frozen in the front, followed by refrigerated items, then boxes, bags, fragile items and so on.  My failure to set the items into bags fast enough results in the checker popping open a fresh bag and speedily throwing the rest of my waiting items willy-nilly into them.  Sometimes I find myself with one bag of pretzels stuck horizontally into one plastic bag as if it was an afterthought.

Can’t things be more relaxed?  Maybe you should have aisles for “leisurely checkout.”  Maybe you should have a relay team to do the bagging for us.  Or maybe you should just stop cramming the whole checkout experience into a marathon pace and lighten up a bit.

Sincerely. . . .

The games in Beijing are drawing to a close, and I hardly saw anything I really wanted to see.  The 12 hour time difference caused events to begin overnight for most of the US.  This meant that live coverage was limited to whatever was on the schedule between eight and eleven in the morning Beijing time.  It didn’t work for me.

I’d rather have seen equestrian and gymnastics on tape in prime time than the endless tedium of volleyball, diving or weightlifting.  Sure there will be fans out there who were thrilled to see these before bedtime, and still more people who could watch overnight or record hours of mistimed events to watch later, but the rest of us were cheated by the choices made at NBC and its kindred networks’ airing choices.  Maybe there will be a difference in another four years.

I have a question about gymnastics:  why can’t computers score vaults and other events better than human judges?  Computers are used frequently to measure the human body in action, so why not outfit the gymnasts with the same type of equipment and have a computer program record the best renditions of each activity to measure the Olympic athletes’ performances against the “ideal?”  It would alleviate the need to pull judges from the representative countries out of the scoring pool (which leaves sometimes less efficient judges to score the events).

A noted authority claimed in a recent Reader’s Digest article that as many as one in four Americans may have a mental issue such as depression or similar disorder.  If my poor math skills still have an iota of function left, that means that for every 100 people in this country, 25 of them have a problem.  Well, I’m glad for the explanation.  I was worried that I was the only person who saw things that way.

Of course, depression or bipolar disorder are big name problems counted in this one-in-four scenario, but other people in this group may have just a little brain quirk like an OCD.  I’m sure the noted authority didn’t want to scare us by implying that a quarter of the folks you see on a public street are likely to do a psychological Mr. Hyde turn any moment.  It does make me wonder, though, what is wrong with people that we can’t keep our minds in check.

Because we don’t fully understand the human mind, the best we can do most times is try to find the glitch and fix it without ruining things that don’t have a glitch.  It’s like fixing a computer, in a way.  Or better yet, trying to find the bad bulb in your holiday tree lights and get it running without the others burning out.  We will never all act exactly the same.  Conformity is impossible.  Understanding why we do what we do is a step in the right direction, but maybe we shouldn’t call everything a disorder or a problem.  Maybe the real issue is how misdirected we can be by circumstances in our lives that we can’t control.  We get so frustrated by them, we redirect our lives to things we can control, like arranging our closets obsessively.  It’s only bad when we hurt ourselves or others in the crossfire.

Still, I don’t like the idea that I could be in a mall with 99 other people, and we could all be looking so distrustfully at each other wondering who the 25% are.  Maybe the real mental problem is labeling a percentage of people with a name describing their problem.

I’ve become a Twilight fan.  The series of four books by new author Stephenie Meyer, conclude with the release of book four:  Breaking Dawn, which came out at midnight.  A line of fans rivaling Harry Potter’s reign of bibliophilic wonderment, queued up at bookstores nationwide to snap up the book the moment it became legal to sell.  I chose the pre-order and mail path, figuring it was not my place at my age to lurk in large book retail stores late on a Friday night with over-hyped up young folks and their parents.  I am neither a parent nor a young folk.  I also don’t like the idea of having to dodge the “spoilsports” who haunt book release parties and try to ruin the surprise for the fans.

The books, originally geared to a young adult audience but accepted by all ages, takes place in present day Washington where Isabella has moved to live with her divorced father.  Bella, as she prefers to be called, manages to fit in at the local high school but is rather self conscious because she is inept at sports and prone to accidents and awkwardness at all times.  One day she encounters a strange boy and his adopted family, and after some uncomfortable moments they find that they are all wrong and yet right for each other:  he turns out to be a 100-year-old vampire, and his desire for Bella’s humanity battles with his omnipresent bloodlust.

I wish more stories were written with such age barrier crossing style.  There are online groups for teens, adults and even men devoted to the stories (Twilight is the first, followed by New Moon and Eclipse).  A movie version of Twilight is due December 12.  The excitement of a good book is a balm for the spirit, and if the movie is anywhere near as interesting as these stories, I’ll officially declare that the entertainment industry is back in full swing.

So I was going to the theatre.  This involved shaving, showering, shampooing, styling, powdering, makeup, moisterizer, sunscreen, hairspray, perfume, two layers of clothing, two pounds of purse, public transportation fare, the cost of a fifth row theatre ticket and fifty cents for parking.  I walked only two blocks, thank goodness, because the heat was inching toward 100 degrees and the transportation is conveniently located.  Through it all I managed to stay cool and well put together.  The show was great, and I got to make some new acquaintances.

Afterward I went home, ate dinner, watched a movie, changed into nightwear and went to bed.

Something is out of balance there, don’t you think?

Hello.  My name is Kayewer, and I have an obsession with pens.  Put me in the writing implement aisle at Staples, and I’m a goner.  In the bank, I always pick up a pen if they’re free.  Just one, mind you:  I’m cutting back.  I carry at least three with me at all times.  At work, I have them in pen holders in nice, neat groupings:  markers here, gels there, highlighters in the middle because they’re taller.  If there’s a color I don’t have, let me know so I can go pick it up and fill out my collection.

The pens that really excite me are Pentel RSVP pens:  they come in enough colors to make Crayola stand up and take notice, and they also offer a choice of capped or click styles.  If I were an artist rather than a writer, I’d love to sit and doodle with them, but instead I color code my scribblings, changing color when the mood suits me.

Sure I have lots of other pens, including BICs, Sharpies and Zebras.  Funny thing, though:  I don’t collect pencils.  I’m sure a psychiatrist would have a ball deconstructing my brain for any reason, but it would be even more exciting to find out why people have office supply obsessions.  Believe me, there are more of us out there than you think:  just hang out at your local biz widgets joint.

A little over a year ago, I became a resident of Second Life.  For the uninitiated, Second Life (SL for short) gives computer users an opportunity to experience an online rendition of reality not available before.  You might think of it as Alice in Computer Wonderland.

First, you must choose an identity for yourself by selecting from a pre-set (but regularly updated) list of last names to which you attach your own identity through a first name of your choice; then you select an online persona to represent yourself, known as an avatar.  Once you open your free account, give “birth” to your avi and download the virtual world to your computer (known as the SL grid), you learn how to move your avatar by walking, flying or teleporting.  You learn how to gesture to other avatars, build things for yourself or to sell to others, communicate via messaging (either private or public), how to update your appearance so you can look as much like (or unlike) yourself in real life as possible, and how to use online currency, called the Linden, to shop, party and even get a college education.  SL has become so far reaching, universities have set up campuses to which your avatars can find courses and participate in with other like-minded individuals.

Second Life is not a game, but a portal into another type of computer interaction.  Since becoming a resident, I’ve toured some amazing landmarks (even a resident’s rendering of Transylvania or the Star Wars planet Tatooine are available to visit), bought some nice avatar clothing, met amazing people from all over the world and learned some more about using my computer that I would never have done by reading a book.  It’s worth a visit and a tryout for free:  simply go to www.secondlife.com to read more.

I’m not as big a performance nut as I used to be, but I still collect my pennies for something special when the conditions are right.  Usually this means I’m going to an event within a reasonable distance from home, I know how to get there and it doesn’t require a car.   God bless public transportation.

For years I’ve enjoyed the opera, but in the past few years I’ve rediscovered the theatre.  My introductory theatre college course last spring exposed me to more productions than I would usually attend on my own, and after being saturated with so many offerings onstage I began to wonder which I like more:  opera or theatre.

Opera is a bit exclusive in the minds of most people.  Even though many of the orchestral pieces we hear everyday on the airwaves come from opera productions, if you ask the average person on the street about them, they probably wouldn’t be able to identify them.  A song from a good musical, however, is guaranteed to outlast the production’s shelf life.

Non-musical theatre is sometimes like television without the box.  This perspective changes the further you sit from the stage, but usually the action takes place in a huge niche in the wall, and you’re sitting on the outside looking in.  If you are exposed to a performance in an open setting, such as a thrust stage in which the audience usually surrounds the performers on all sides, it’s often hard to detach from the action in front of you.  That can be disconcerting.  I’ve seen three such performances in my life, and only one of them was light enough to be enjoyable.  It was a farce featuring prominent actor Louis Jourdan:  he actually had a scene in which he ran offstage in his boxers, socks and garters.  The other two were the (non-musical) adaptation of Spring Awakening and Othello:  sitting through both felt like I was an unwilling witness to behaviors I would normally want to report to the police (both feature death prominently), so I guess this style isn’t for me.

Opera features artists who are classically trained to sing, and it is rare to hear spoken dialogue:  musicals feature professionally trained singers who also have to act.  A play can feature either of these, but they have to be able to act:  you can’t escape a bad acting job by breaking into song.

On the other hand, musical productions these days are just so darned commercial and come off as emotion-stroking psychological mass hypnosis events.  They all promote largely and loud, and with Disney helming three productions on Broadway these days, a walk through New York City, just to wind my way to the Metropolitan Opera for a dose of Puccini, seems like I’m in the middle of a municipal mega mart.  The signs are huge, the lights glaring, the tickets expensive and, in the long run, it feels like being overwhelmed with sixty different brands of corn flakes.

I’m actually going to see a touring production of Les Miserables next month.  It’s my first big ticket smash show in years.  I’m going for the cast, rather than the production.  At least I know what I’m getting into, but I won’t know until it’s over whether I’m a bigger fan of the theatre or the opera.  It will be up to them, not me, what the outcome will be.