Showing Signs

Hello World,

Happy Super Bowl Weekend! Oh wait, I forgot - that was back in the old days, when they used to finish playing professional football in January instead of February. How times have changed, and not always for the better, I can tell you that. So here we are, at the last weekend in January, and it’s not even the Super Bowl or anything. At least it is the beginning of Arena Football, for the football-deprived among us, so that’s something anyway. And Bill tells me that at the MLB web site for all of those hot-stove baseball fans out there who want to keep up on the latest trades and transactions, there’s a clock counting down to everyone’s favorite three words in the English language: "Pitchers and Catchers."
At church, we have historically had our annual congregational meeting on Super Bowl Sunday, although our congregation actually predates the Super Bowl by about 65 years. They apparently started doing that years ago so that people would remember the date of the meeting, and also so that it wouldn’t drag on all afternoon, figuring that people would want to leave to see the game. It’s not helping us any more, not only because they’re having the game in February instead of January, but it doesn’t start until 6:00 PM anyway, even the pre-game nonsense, so there’s no incentive to get the meeting over in a hurry. And so we have yet another in a series of religious traditions that have gone by the wayside, and more’s the pity, I’m sure.
And while I’m sure we can all agree that there’s certainly no point in complaining about snowstorms, at least in January in the Northeast, you can believe me when I say that many people have been complaining about the snow removal process here at the hospital where I work. AS a matter of fact, we have a staff of about 1,600 people, and I believe that I have heard from at least 1,599 of them, and all complaining about the lack of snow removal around the campus. I do understand that they are hampered in their efforts, at least in the parking lots, by the mere fact that the hospital has 24-hour staffing, so there is no time when any of the lots are completely empty of cars. But then, my feeling is, that you have to come up with a better plan that takes that into account. They not only did a terrible job on the parking lots, as expected, but the streets around the hospital were just as bad (much of that is the city’s fault, not the hospital) and also the sidewalks. Worst of all, they hadn’t created any "transition zones" in between plowed areas, so the only way to get from the parking lot, to the sidewalk, to the street and to the sidewalk across the street, was to take your life in your hands by jumping over plow tailings or slogging through snowdrifts up to your waist. Normal people might think that at a health care organization, they would take pains to make sure that their grounds were a shining example of safety in every respect. In reality, we all know that this is just one more part of the hospital’s insidious plan to drum up more business, expecting that the terrible conditions underfoot would bring more people into the Emergency Room with a variety of sprains and fractures. In fact, one of my co-workers admitted that she had been asked to push people down in the snow, but I think she was only kidding.
I may as well come right out and state that I’m no Anarchist, and I don’t mind saying that I like the federal government as much as the next fellow, or at least the fellow next to that, most likely. And I have no squawk with the Social Security Administration, so if it comes to pass that anyone fires a missile at them and blows up their building, don’t bother to come looking for me. But I will admit that the one thing I don’t understand is why they pick the dead of winter, when everyone is depressed enough as it is (and not even any hockey!!!) and it’s after the holidays, when you already know that everybody is down in the dumps anyway, and for some stupid reason, this is the time that they pick to send out those horrible statements that show you how much money you’ve made over the years, and what your benefits would be when you retire. It’s a wonder to me that the suicide rate doesn’t just skyrocket when they send these things out, and honestly, the president should just make them stop doing it. I mean, it doesn’t take a mathematical genius to realize that a person couldn’t even afford to live on cat food (even cheap supermarket cat food) at the little bitty pittance that they expect to get. Much less, live in something besides a cardboard box out on the sidewalk and carry your belongings around in a shopping cart. Ordinarily, I would say that this is just another example of the federal government’s warped sense of humor, except that no one has ever accused the feds of having any sense of humor, and I can’t see any reason to start now.
And while we’re on the subject of pet peeves, here’s another one of mine. I realize, perhaps better than most, that there are a lot of stupid people in the world, and many of them actually own their own businesses, or are in positions of authority at other companies, as hard as that may seem to believe. And many of these stupid people in business have the responsibility to order signs for the company, and ask sign companies to make them signs that either don’t make any sense, or are flat-out incorrect in English. And while I make no excuses for stupid people, here I believe that it’s the sign company’s responsibility to protect the stupid from themselves, and make the sign so that it’s correct, and not just make any old sign that stupid people ask for. Just because someone orders it, is no reason to make a 10-foot illuminated sign that screams "STATIONARY" for a stationery store, and in a case like that, I blame the sign company. You see that so often nowadays that it’s practically a standing joke, or perhaps you might refer to it as a "stationary" joke instead. (Hey, I’ll bet you didn’t see that one coming!) I also recently found myself driving past one of those "adult" stores, where the neon signs in the window advised me that I could shop there for my "novelettes" (by which I believe them to mean "novelties") and another neon sign recommended their "Free Preveiw Booths" for videos. Now, neon is an expensive medium to work in, and at the very least, I would expect the neon company to spell "preview" right for their customers. There’s no standards any more.
And since we’re on the topic of using words that aren’t what they mean, I remember someone last month telling me about going to visit her sister down south when she was terminally ill, and as she referred to it, "in hostess care." Somehow, that sounds a lot more jolly to me than what she probably meant about her sister being in "hospice" care instead. Being "in hostess care" conjures up a mental image of perky waitresses in starched uniforms, chrome tables with crisp linen tablecloths, bud vases with fresh flowers, helpful smiling staff bustling about, and watching over it all like mother hens, charming hostesses in fitted suits and tidy coiffures. I’m thinking when the time comes, that might not be such a bad way to go!

Clothes Make The Man

Hello World,

Isn’t it amazing how you can just put down your New Year’s party hats and noisemakers, and the next time you look up, it’s the 21 st already. I honestly don’t know where the time goes. I hope that you had a very pleasant and suitably civil rights-ish Martin Luther King Jr. weekend, and celebrated with the appropriate festive attire, songs, dancing and traditional foods for the holiday. As for myself, I have no idea what those might be, so if you do, please let me know and thank you very much.
We celebrated the long weekend as we always do, by going to visit friends in Albany and staying over there. Even though it’s three weeks after Christmas, our friends leave up their tree and decorations, and we exchange presents, so it’s like a mini-Christmas for us that we enjoy every year. Although it seems to fly in the face of logic to drive 200 miles north in the middle of January, we haven’t really had a lot of bad weather to contend with over the years. This year, we decided to start out on Friday, and took the day off from work so we could make an early start of it. That almost happened, and we were on our way by 11:30, in spite of many obstacles and circumstances conspiring against us. We were in good spirits, even though we left in a steady downpour, confident that we would soon drive out of it as we made our way north.
That almost worked, too, as we discovered that the farther north we went, the rain first turned into a mix of rain and snow, and then all snow as we went along. We kept on plugging, and the idea that we would drive out of it appeared ever more fanciful than our silly ideas usually do. Finally we got to a higher elevation area, where the snow seemed to be coming from every direction at once, and you couldn’t even see the hood in front of your own windshield, much less anyone else on the road. This also looked to be a handy spot for the wind to pick up, and we found ourselves being blown sideways, as well as not being able to see anything. It was a relief to start heading downhill again, and sure enough, the snow turned back to rain and snow, then just rain as we came down on the other side. It was shortly after that we noticed that the sun was out, and all we could do was look at each other and shake our heads. I’m thinking our old pal Comrade Mischka must have been having a field day.
When we finally got where we were going, they were having a beautiful day, and because they already had a lot of rain before, there wasn’t even much in the way of snow piled up anywhere. This made it a lot easier to get around, except right at our friends house, where they not only have a series of hundreds of tiny crooked wooden steps to get to their house, but they apparently make sure to coat them with ice just before we get there. It’s actually rather comical to see us try and negotiate these killer steps, all bundled up and carrying the piles of effluvia that we bring with us everywhere. I’m figuring that our friends take bets on who is going to slide the farthest after falling down on the steps, but I outsmarted them this time. When I slid down the steps, I fell into the car instead of sliding all the way down the driveway.
After that, things settled down and we had a nice dinner out, plus did a bit of shopping besides. Then we came back and opened Christmas presents, and what could be better than that! Bill got some nice new sweats and assorted techno gadgets, while I got some beautiful new clothes of my own and a bunch of nifty salt-&-pepper shakers. We finally turned in after midnght, tired but happy, and only slightly worried about the curses being heaped upon us by their monster cat, who is one of Satan’s minions, and who resents being supplanted from his roost in the guest room, and by guests, of all things.
Saturday turned out to be another nice day, and we spent it in fine style, first by joining another couple for lunch, and then checking out some local consignment shops north of Albany, just for the heck of it. The first one we went to didn’t have collectible salt shakers to speak of, so instead I bought 3 skirts for $15 and 2 nightgowns for $5 each. This was a first for me, as I very rarely look at clothes when out window-shopping, and much more likely to scarf up any souvenir spoons or shakers if I find myself in a knick-knack sort of place. But I had been planning to buy myself some patterned skirts, and I also needed new flannel nightgowns in a big way, so here was a bargain not to be missed. As it is, the nightgowns I have now are so bald that you can read the newspaper right through them, which I have to admit is a feature that I have never found much use for. After that, we returned to The Peddler’s Wagon, where we had been last year, and everyone may remember that I bought something like 8 sets of shakers for $30, and did about the same thing this time around as well. Then we had pizza for dinner, and although no one would consider downtown Valatie to be a hotbed of Italian culinary excellence, it was certainly adequate enough for a bunch of tired and hungry travelers. We went to bed late again, with our ears full of more curses from Satan’s minion.
You will scarcely believe it if I tell you that we went out again on Sunday for lunch and more shopping, but that is the gospel truth. This time it was lunch at Denny’s, followed by even more shakers across the parking lot at Cracker Barrel. This is always a real treat for us, because these two fine retail establishments are denied us in our local area, with the closest ones being about 50 miles away or so. They did not disappoint, and even more so, our stop at Hewitt’s for left-over Christmas merchandise at 75% off, where we picked up some wonderful items at great deals. All too soon, it was time to pack up and go, and although I seemed to feel someone pushing me from behind, we managed to get all of our belongings into the car without falling down the killer steps again. Although our friends were sad to see us go, the devil cat couldn’t have been happier, especially since I think he was starting to run out of curses to hurl at us.
We drove home without incident, and arrived at our doorstep to find it looking just as we had left it, which is always an encouraging sign. The cats greeted us with their usual disdain, which is a lucky thing, because it lets us know immediately that we haven’t accidentally wandered into the wrong house. The only bad part is that now Christmas is well and truly behind us for another year, and it leaves us not much to look forward to in the face of a long and dreary winter ahead. Quick! Where’s that Valentine’s Day candy?!

Get Crushed

Hello World,


And so here we find ourselves, poised on the very brink of Martin Luther King Jr. Weekend, or as the online travel web sites like to keep reminding me, the first long weekend of the year. Although, generally speaking, I would think that New Year's would be the first long weekend of any year, but that's just nitpicking for nitpicking's sake, and many of us have taken the pledge to swear off that sort of thing in 2005. As far as they're concerned, those nits are just going to have to pick themselves from now on, or lump it. I feel it's only fair to say that everyone knows I have been complaining, long and loud, about being on Jury Duty and them making me sick, and just in time for Christmas besides. I have to admit that might have been just a little bit hasty, not to mention unfair, to my fellow jurors and other people caught up in the maw of the justice system in December. In reality, half of the choir in Lessons & Carols was also sick just before Christmas, and when I got back to work after finishing with Jury Duty, everyone in my office was also sick that week. Later, it seemed that everyone I spoke to on the phone, or who came into my office, said either that they were sick for the holidays, or everyone else around them was sick. It does appear as if there was an awful lot of awful stuff out there making a whole lot of people sick at the end of the year, and not just unfortunate wretches like me on Jury Duty downtown. The scary part was that even people who never get sick, like Bill, got it and got it bad. All over the hospital, we had staff coming down with bronchitis, pneumonia and pleurisy, or going in the other direction with a stomach or intestinal virus. It was horrible. And after all winter, all the news was about how people couldn't get flu shots, there wasn't enough vaccine, and so many people were going to get flu because of the flu shot shortage, and instead everyone got everything BUT flu. I've had flu, and I still remember how miserable that is, when even your eyelashes hurt, and you figure that you're too weak to even drop dead, and you'll have to get better before you can even die. But they certainly got every other darned thing, even if there wasn't a particular name to call it by. One of my co-workers downstairs in the computer department, where people never get sick but did this time, was telling everyone that she had a bad case of "cooties." Now that I'm feeling a little more kindly to my fellow jurors, who only may or may not have made me sick for the holidays, I could relate another of my favorite stories from the jury room. In the original group of 18 jurors, we had two Asian ladies, and in the very beginning, when we were trying to determine how long we might be involved in the case, we figured that it would probably go past Christmas and New Year's at least. I said I hoped it didn't go as far as MLK weekend, because we had plans to be away. One of the Asian ladies piped up that she hoped it wouldn't be later than Chinese New Year, and I said, "Bite your tongue!" because as a movable feast, Chinese New Year can be as late as the middle of February. Then I told them that at the hospital where I work, we like to wish everyone a happy new year in Chinese, but we can't remember it exactly, so we just say "Hong Kong Bok Choy" to everyone and figure that's good enough. They honestly laughed so hard, I though their coffee was going to come out of their noses. I suppose in Chinatown where they live, people don't say "Hong Kong Bok Choy" to each other. Another favorite story from the recent legal ordeal concerned a book that had been written by a rogue member of the criminal organization involved in the case. It was apparently an insider's look at the underworld, as told by an insider, and it ripped through the organization like a car bomb. One of the government's cooperating witnesses discussed the book, and said that other members of the organization had been appalled and infuriated at this unrepentant breach of secrecy, and took umbrage at the media attention it attracted. He concluded his remarks by saying, "It had a first printing of something like 50,000 copies, and we figured the FBI was going to buy all 50,000 copies, just to make sure it was a best-seller, and really stick it to us." I love that! Meanwhile, alert readers may be wondering what's going on in the wonderful world of clothing nowadays. I'm glad you asked! I discovered in one of the J.C. Penney menswear catalogues, this delightfully arcane sidebar: =========================== MEET THE BUTTON CRUSHER Before your dress shirt is subjected to the rigors of daily wear, its buttons must survive a pounding from the button crusher. Unlike ordinary buttons, our extra-durable buttons stand up to the pressure of the 1.8-pound steel rod dropped from a height of 2.625 inches. =========================== Now, I have to tell you that my feeling about this is that if your "Button Crusher" is being dropped from a height of roughly two-and-a-half inches, it's not even worth mentioning. You want to drop that steel rod from 24 inches, you can go right ahead and tell me about it. But anything under 3 inches, I think just makes them look even more ridiculous than if they hadn't said anything about it in the first place. Button crusher, indeed. Well, I can see by the ol' clock on the wall that it must be time to wrap this up, and a good thing, too. I hope that you and your loved ones have not fallen victim to the insidious germs rattling around nowadays, which I refer to as "the crud," or if you have, that you're well on your way to recovery by now. One good thing about January is that you can count on an abundance of left-over Christmas candy in the stores at great discounts for your snacking or therapeutic needs, or if you want to splurge, the Valentine's Day candy is also on the shelves already, and what a welcome sight it is. In fact, we should all go and have some right now, and I don't know about you, but that's about the best idea I've had all day!

Windows On The World

Hello World,


Well, what is so rare as a day in January, I tell you, I just don't know. We've made it through the first week of 2005, and none the worse for wear, I hope. Around here, the weather had been so moderate for the most part, I'm sure many people were under the impression that I had gotten a new bird bath heater, with the result that we would never have any more cold weather. In fact, anyone watching the ball drop on December 31st could have found out that it was 60 degrees in Times Square at midnight, so that has to tell you something right there. Alas, that was not the case, and there were a few days with freezing temperatures, and even snow and ice, and the bird bath was frozen solid to prove it. But since then, the weather has been having its ups and downs, mostly in the mid-40s, so the erstwhile fountain has been more of a bird bath than skating rink, at least for now.
I'm sure that everyone will be relieved to hear that The Trial That Would Not End, did in fact end, and even before Christmas, which would have seemed unthinkable just the week previous to that. We were more surprised than anyone when the government rested, and the following day, the defense rested, and suddenly, here we were with the case in our hands. I had said right from the beginning that once the jury got the case, we might come up with a very bad verdict, but by golly, we'd come up with it quick. How wrong I was! I didn't realize until that day, that apparently everyone had sat through a completely different trial from anyone else, and no two people felt the same way about anything. This was a disheartening discovery at this late date, I can tell you that. People were so far apart on everything that we had no choice but to request massive amounts of testimony, evidence and other documentation sent in to the Jury Room, to help our fuzzy recollections of the details and clarify the areas of disagreement. The way things were going, I honestly believed that we were going to have to replay the entire 6 weeks of the trial, all over again, in the Jury Room. I don't mind saying that the outlook was bleak, and I was not the only one who gave way to despair, or worse. Our salvation came from an unlikely source. What seemed originally to be a significant drawback, having this lengthy trial at the end of the year close to the holidays, instead turned into the key that magically unlocked the fetters. After days of fruitless deliberations, everyone finally realized that if we wanted to be out of there before Christmas, and everyone did, we'd have to work together a whole lot better, in order to make it happen. That finally did the trick, and we turned in our verdict on the Wednesday before Christmas, and happy to be out of there.
Not so fast! Apparently nowadays, even after you hand in your verdict, they still make you come back after that for some other phase of the process before sentencing, so we weren't off the hook quite yet. When the judge said that we had to come back on Thursday, I would not have been surprised if all twelve of us had just jumped out of the windows instead. But we did come back, and I don't mind saying, in very ill humor, and left after another long, hard day in an even worse frame of mind, which would have seemed impossible, but turned out not to be after all. We were roundly criticized throughout the media for our horrible verdict, and the ink wasn't even dry on it before the defense filed an appeal. Well, I say that everyone who thinks they can do a better job, next time, they can take my place. And I would like to see anyone else make heads or tails out of what they fancifully refer to as "Jury Instructions" and which consist of 71 pages of dense legal gobbledygook, which is read aloud in court in a mind-numbing exercise that is like being locked in a room with a boring lecturer for 5 hours where you can't take notes or leave. Here is only a smattering of it, and as Dave Barry says, "I'm not making this up," and which has also not been edited for comic effect in any way --
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You must determine whether the government has proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant you are considering knowingly and willfully became a member of that conspiracy. A defendant may be found to have knowledge if he consciously avoids confirming the objective of the conspiracy. However, I caution you that the principle of conscious avoidance of knowledge has no bearing on the question of whether the conspiracy existed, or even whether the defendant participated in the conspiracy. In particular, a person cannot be found to have participated in a conspiracy based only on a finding that he consciously avoided knowing whether he was participating or not. In order to find that a defendant participated in a conspiracy, you must find that he actually knew he was participating. However, you may find that a defendant had knowledge of the objective or purpose of the conspiracy, either if he had actual knowledge or if he consciously avoided obtaining knowledge of the objective or purpose of the conspiracy.
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Anyway, I admit that my impressions of Jury Duty were irrevocably ruined when they made me sick for Christmas, so after all that, they can just kiss my habeas corpus. In other news, many people might be wondering whatever happened to Lessons & Carols, the annual service of Bible readings and Christmas hymns that we have at church every year. Somehow it managed to get squeezed in among everything else that was happening in December, and came and went without a hitch. I don't think we did any more damage to poor George Handel than we usually do, although this year was unique in that we had practically no rehearsals at all. The music that we do regularly for this service was only moderately shaky, while the new pieces only escaped total disaster by the indulgence of our audience. (That rustling noise you hear is the sound of poor G. Pergolesi spinning in his grave after we rendered his lovely "Glory to God in the Highest" nearly unrecognizable to anyone familiar with it.) But still and all, a good time was had by all, as it always is, and we all lived to tell the tale, which the way things had been going last year, was not to be scoffed at.
I did mention that we had some snow in these parts recently, and it was like old times when I climbed into the Tempo last week and found the entire front seat awash in pearly white flakes. That always used to happen in the Gremlin, which had long since outlasted its weather stripping, and the driver's side door never did close properly, and you could always count on there being a lot of the great outdoors on the inside of the Purple One. I don't expect that from the Tempo, which is not only much newer, but with a reassuringly robust framework, rock solid doors and wads of no-nonsense weather stripping to beat the band. All of this would probably have gone a long way to keeping the snow off the front seat, if only I had remembered to roll up the window when I got out of the car the day before. The devil's in the details, you know. And in my car, he's covered with snow besides, and his next stop might be the car wash, which would really give him something to think about!