Susan's Scribblings the Blog

So last night I went to the opening night for the movie version of Twilight and took my mother along.  We went to our favorite theatre which recently changed ownership and now allows more mainstream films and the admission of young people (only older children were allowed under the old regime and no G movies were on the roster).

The house was packed with tweens, teens and a stewpot of dark lurker types and a few vanilla moviegoers like us waiting for the seating to begin.  Believe it or not, they began admitting 45 minutes before showtime and the best seats already were marked with discarded coats while their owners mingled in the lobby.  We managed to get a second tier pair of seats together with no tall people sitting in front of us, so we sat and had popcorn for dinner while watching the free slide show on the movie screen for 40 minutes.

The school crowd created a high-pitched, somewhat nasal (I already wrote about this teen phenomenon, so I won’t complain again here) and constant din as familiar faces from their cliques appeared in the house and were hugged or fist-bumped to death or subjected to introductions around the room.  Somebody decided to serve as timekeeper and would announce the countdown enthusiastically until the start ran past its scheduled time:  at least nobody started impatient chanting.

Once the previews began the crowd settled down with resignation until the familiar “Feature Presentation” trailer appeared onscreen, and then somebody yelled “Take your pants off, Edward Cullen,” to a reply of screams as if we were seated at a Beatles reunion.

Even audience participation at Rocky Horror Picture Show was not crotch obsessed, and Stephenie Meyer certainly would not have expected that comment to stem from what she wrote in four bestselling novels.  My mother and I looked at each other and saw we were both worried about how our appreciation of the film would be helped or hampered by such a vocal crowd.

We really didn’t have to worry.  Sure there were lots of giggles, shrieks and a knowing “woooo” or two at choice moments,  but Twilight was easy and enjoyable to view and share with others.  We even had the oppportunity to talk to some total strangers (moms) who had brought their entourage along (since those folks were years from obtaining learning permits), and the camaraderie was relaxing.  For two hours and two minutes (plus the trailers and evacuation notice), Twilight was worth the anticipation and experience.

I hope that young lady was not disappointed that Robert Pattinson’s Edward did not doff his pants.

No wonder everybody gets so fat around the holidays.  It isn’t the dinners that cause the problem; it’s the food you send and get sent by mail.

Did anybody ever stop to consider who far in advance those catalogue people start baking, pouring, molding and packing those little pots of cheese, tins of popcorn and vacuum packed smoked meats to mail via the parcel system to wreath festooned doorways the world over?  Food by mail gives me the hinkeys anyway.  If the supermarket doesn’t carry it, or if I can’t find it within an hour’s drive of home, I don’t think it’s worth it.

It seems strange to me to have some poor Maine lobster thrown into a box with some survival munchies to keep it alive, sent tooling through some shipping facility, parked in cargo on a plane and flown to someplace that probably never sees an ocean, only to see it arrive at a family’s doorstep, have some happy cook throw open the lid and shout with glee, “Oh ducky, it’s the lobster we’re going to execute for dinner tonight.”  Mind you, I’m not a vegetarian, and I don’t have a problem with going out and buying meat that has been prepared in a package for me, and I go to Red Lobster regularly, but I will not be the executioner of some poor crustacean living out its last days in a fish tank, and I won’t let somebody ship one to me.

Those little containers of twenty different cheese spreads can look like a gourmet dream, but one time I had a shipment of those and only found one to be enjoyable let alone edible.

If I’m going to ship something to somebody as a holiday gift, I’ll make it something really useful like a potholder or a gift certificate, not a dried and processed overpriced thingajiggy from who knows where.

I’ve noticed something strange lately:  it seems some folks are toying around with their license plates.

Sure, people put funny frames around their plates, which itself is a problem.  Have you ever gotten too close to a vehicle ahead of you simply to get a clearer view of what is written on the license plate frame?  Some frames obliterate the information on the top and bottom of the plate, which is where the state name is normally located.  That I’ve always had an issue about.

What I’ve noticed is that a large number of plates seem to be missing paint around the numbers and letters.  If the folks making the plates found a defect in the painting process, I’m sure they would do something about it, but in this case the missing paint shows traces of scratches around the imprints.  This would lead me to believe that people are actually taking steel wool to their plate numbers.

This is most disturbing when one stops to wonder why anybody would want to disrupt the readability of their vehicle’s identification, and the obvious answer is to avoid such identification.  Are there that many people afraid of the law driving around our highways?  Would you want to share the road with them?  It’s bad enough to deal with the fact that our roadways are becoming anarchist Autobahns in which everybody feels compelled to disregard speed limits and common sense to get where they’re going, but when one has to resort to disguise to do so, that is sad indeed.  I’m just saying. . . .

It’s terrible to be an older adult with pepperoni size acne, but I had a major breakout this past week which, I was extremely self-conscious and vain, would have kept me indoors in a dark corner of the house until it cleared up.  As it turned out, I made do with the usual makeup efforts that were ineffective, and since my office cubicle is in a corner I didn’t have to gross out anybody.

Why can we decode the human genome but we can’t fix acne?

Well, the mind is on vacation, anyway.  That’s what happens when your whole life centers around work, school, eating, reading and sleeping and nothing else.  With a paper due it’s not easy to take one’s mind off the paper topic.  While eating dinner I’m mulling over what references I will use on page six.  I wake up remembering I forgot to add a footnote.  I’ve lapsed into that state of mind that is the human in autumn.  It may take a week or two to set things right.  Have patience:  I have no other choice.

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.