Time For A Change
Hello World,
Well, Bob Dylan wasn't just whistling Dixie when he said, "You've got a lot of nerve, to say you are my friend." No wait a minute, that can't be right. What I meant to say was from that classic protest song, "The times, they are a-changing." They are a-changing indeed, my friends, and it seems that our two choices in the matter are to like it or lump it. It certainly turned into an eventful week full of news, notoriety and nuisances, and some of them, all at once. Obviously, there were the elections on Tuesday, when all good citizens could get out there and exercise their French fries, which is a bad pun that probably hasn't been heard since high school Civics classes back in the Stone Age, and I ought to know. I thought that the presidential election was closer than I would have expected, with the popular vote at 64,651,436 to 56,910,716, while the real difference was in the electoral votes at 364 to 162. I was gratified to see that Ralph Nader, that perennial presidential hopeful, got over 667,000 votes, and deserves credit for longevity and persistence, if nothing else. The candidate I voted for was probably glad to have me, because without my vote, he would have only gotten 494,189 instead, so I'm happy to have made a positive difference in his results. Apparently, you can also go to the polls and vote for "None of These Candidates," which some 6,251 Americans did this year, making it a more popular choice than the bottom 13 of the real candidates, who all got fewer votes than that. If I'm one of these 13 candidates, I might want to rethink my campaign strategy, after coming in even below Nobody, that's gotta hurt.
The week also saw the end of the Tampa Bay Rays improbable season, as they couldn't prevent the dratted Phillies from winning their first World Series in ages, although we should all be prepared to take the moral high road and allow their beleaguered fans to enjoy their moment of glory in the spotlight after all this time. You go first. I'm sure I'll catch up later, and if not, start without me. I'm sure there's plenty to do with your spare time up there on that moral high road. You bet.
Speaking of time, unlike other people in the modern world, those of us shackled with Windows 2000NT at the workplace have been living in two time zones for the past three weeks, as the operating system was programmed to change the system time automatically to account for the switch-over back to Standard Time, when it was originally scheduled early in October, not the beginning of November. So my computer at work had already decided on its own to "fall back" several weeks ago, which was distracting at the best of times, and other times, downright confusing. I don't mind saying that I'm usually confused enough at work as it is, so this added a new and thoroughly unwelcome element into the equation that I had not bargained for. I kept waiting for Rod Serling to show up and announce, "These people don't know it ..... " and explain that we had just entered "The Hospital Zone," where time and space take on a life of their own, apart from the real world, and certainly not an improvement in any way, I can tell you that. So I would have to say that it came as a relief last weekend, when the official reckoning actually changed back over to Standard Time, and my work computer could finally catch up with the rest of humanity at long last.
It was a wonder to me that so many millions of people went out to vote, what with all the horror stories floating around everywhere. I heard from a co-worker who went to vote at 6:30 AM before dropping off her son at school, and she said the lines were so long that she had to leave, or she would be late for work. Her mother was working at the polls, and said that people had already lined up before they even opened the doors in the morning. Other early birds that I spoke to reported huge crowds of people, with long waits, and lots of problems finding the correct information for so many newly-registered first-time voters. When the registration could not be verified, they were given paper ballots instead as a backup, with the disadvantages of being even more time-consuming and unwieldy. I also heard reports of the new computerized voting machines to replace the standard lever models, which reputedly require 15 minutes per person, and are only available for handicapped voters at this time, which is probably just as well. On Wednesday, the local newspaper had front page stories and pictures of long lines and mobs in Washington DC and Boston, in spite of millions of voters who took advantage of the opportunities in states that allowed early voting. I admit that I was concerned that this voting ritual was going to turn into more of an investment in time than I would have preferred. I didn't want to go at lunch time, so I raced out of work at 4:57 PM and dashed over to the elementary school, where I found practically no cars in the parking lot, and started to worry that they had changed my polling place on me and I hadn't paid attention to the notice. But when I got inside, the greeter directed me to the auditorium as usual, and there was not a soul in the place, it was practically spooky. The nice poll workers would have been happy for me to stay and chitchat about old movies with them, but I felt like someone who had just dodged a bullet, or gotten a reprieve from the governor, and I couldn't get out of there fast enough. It may have gotten busy again later, but I really lucked out, and I don't mind saying, glad of it.
Speaking of the election, the local brouhaha was about a notice mailed to all registered voters from the Board of Elections headquarters in White Plains to explain about a new ballot marking device that would be available at the polling place for use by any "differently-abled" voters with special needs. They went to all the trouble to print this on a large piece of card stock, with English on one side and Spanish on the other, and mail them out in plenty of time before the election. Unfortunately, what they failed to do was proofread it sufficiently, so that while the English side identified Election Day correctly as November 4, on the Spanish side, here was Dr. Freud showing up with his slip, and they informed those hapless voters that Election Day would be November 9 instead. This caused an uproar of epic proportions, leading the Board of Elections to contact every voter by telephone, in order to correct the error, in both English and Spanish, just to be on the safe side. Next time, they should leave Dr. Freud in the closet, with his slip, maybe all the way in the back, tucked in behind the Nehru jackets and go-go boots, and only let him out for April Fool's Day and not Election Day.
Meanwhile on the sports front, we certainly didn't know what to expect from the New York Rangers this year, since the off-season saw them losing many of their established players, to other teams at home and abroad, and going instead with a roster of new and untested youngsters with unfamiliar names. This can be a hard sell in New York City, where the fans take their sports much more seriously than life and death, and will not hesitate to boo everyone from the parking lot attendant to the highest echelon of the team's ownership, if they feel they're not getting their money's worth. Frankly, I would not have cared much for the chances of this "new look, no-name" hockey team to score points with the home town loyalists, especially after years of disappointment, in spite of having some of the biggest stars in the sport in their line-up. However, in true "Cinderella" fashion, the squad of young nobodies got off to a torrid start, winning their first five games, for the first time in 25 years, and after a couple of setbacks, reeled off another five wins in a row, to the astonishment of practically everybody. Last week, their record of 10-2 was the best start ever in franchise history, and not only far and away the best record in the entire NHL, but also running away with their division and leading their closest rival by 10 points already. They played toe-to-toe with some of the toughest teams in the league, including New Jersey, Buffalo, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, and showed real grit and determination against the top contenders, not just skating off with cheap wins against the bottom-dwellers. It's been a real revelation, and nobody knows what to expect from them, because they're such an unknown quantity, like something newly-hatched and just wobbling out from its shell. So far, the only one unhappy about the Rangers' early success is our TiVo, because we record and save the games they win, so the TiVo keeps complaining that it doesn't have enough space to record things that it likes, such as bad cooking shows and sitcoms that we don't even watch, because we've got all this hockey clogging up the works. I can't say how things are going to go from here, but as for myself, I'd be just as glad if the TiVo continued to be unhappy from now until the Stanley Cup finals in June, thank you very much.
One thing I did forget to mention in my note about Halloween at the hospital, was how many places I went to trick-or-treat, and unlike previous years, so many people took my picture along the way. It seems like everyone has a cell phone with a camera nowadays, and they were not a bit shy about taking my picture wherever they found me on my rounds. I expect that The Hula Girl is being plastered all over the Internet by now, which might only be considered an improvement by an indulgent few, of which Bill might actually be the only one. Speaking of improvements, or not, I had to empty out 40 unused goodie bags after last Friday, since I had made that many more bags than we had callers. Usually when I bring left-over Halloween candy in to work, it's very popular, because I work with bunches of vultures that will eat anything as long as it slows down long enough for them to catch it. Unfortunately this year, everyone had the same problem at home as I did, so left-over candy was a drug on the market from one end of the hospital to the other, and you couldn't unload it for love or money. At this rate, we're going to have marshmallow ghosts and pumpkin lollipops until Christmas.
Somehow, I also neglected to include my favorite story from Halloween, when a tiny elephant came to the door, in what may have been his maiden voyage in the annual junk food smorgasbord that we have at the end of October. There was no mistaking that the toddler appeared perplexed by the entire process, in spite of his mother behind him, prompting him to say "trick-or-treat," which they had obviously practiced at home beforehand. Meanwhile, he was busy fishing around in his treat bag for a fun-size candy bar and handing it to me. "Oh no," I assured him, 'You've got this whole thing backwards. You're not supposed to give me candy, I give you candy." This was apparently a new and unproven concept for him, and he regarded me with a skepticism far beyond his years, like he was not just going to fall for any old fairy tale that some adult would tell him. I handed him a goodie bag and he stared at it suspiciously, as if this was some elaborate practical joke being foisted upon his good nature. I had to laugh.
Another laughing matter, or perhaps not, was when one of our new neighbors (in fact, it was the elephant's mother) picked this time to introduce herself and her son Emmett (I said, "Emmett the Elephant!" which was not hailed as the witticism that I thought it was) and just about as soon as she told me her name, it went right out of my head. As a matter of fact, she told me her name two different times, and it went out of my head both times, which you would think would be hard to do even if you were trying. Fortunately, I always run a tape recorder on Halloween, so when I open the door and ask the youngsters what their costumes are, I can keep a list of how many people came, and all the different costumes there were. I find when there are too many callers all at the same time, I can't write them down fast enough, and it's easy to lose track, so I have the tape as a backup, and I play it back later to check against my list and fill in what's missing. So sure enough, here's the new neighbor on my tape introducing herself (twice) and her elephant son Emmett, plus me babbling incoherently in a confectionery-fueled stupor, so that my brain was incapable of paying attention to anything she said. But at least I got a third chance at her name, and thanks to the miracle of modern technology, that was all I needed, because that last time, I made a point to write it down, instead of thinking that I could remember it later, with just my poor addled brain cells to guide me. That's never worked so far, so I have no reason to expect it to work now, heaven knows. It's true that change may be afoot, and it may even be ahead, but no one ever said that it's abrain, at least not my brain, and that's not just the candy corn talking, either. Say, is that Bob Dylan I hear whistling Dixie?
Well, Bob Dylan wasn't just whistling Dixie when he said, "You've got a lot of nerve, to say you are my friend." No wait a minute, that can't be right. What I meant to say was from that classic protest song, "The times, they are a-changing." They are a-changing indeed, my friends, and it seems that our two choices in the matter are to like it or lump it. It certainly turned into an eventful week full of news, notoriety and nuisances, and some of them, all at once. Obviously, there were the elections on Tuesday, when all good citizens could get out there and exercise their French fries, which is a bad pun that probably hasn't been heard since high school Civics classes back in the Stone Age, and I ought to know. I thought that the presidential election was closer than I would have expected, with the popular vote at 64,651,436 to 56,910,716, while the real difference was in the electoral votes at 364 to 162. I was gratified to see that Ralph Nader, that perennial presidential hopeful, got over 667,000 votes, and deserves credit for longevity and persistence, if nothing else. The candidate I voted for was probably glad to have me, because without my vote, he would have only gotten 494,189 instead, so I'm happy to have made a positive difference in his results. Apparently, you can also go to the polls and vote for "None of These Candidates," which some 6,251 Americans did this year, making it a more popular choice than the bottom 13 of the real candidates, who all got fewer votes than that. If I'm one of these 13 candidates, I might want to rethink my campaign strategy, after coming in even below Nobody, that's gotta hurt.
The week also saw the end of the Tampa Bay Rays improbable season, as they couldn't prevent the dratted Phillies from winning their first World Series in ages, although we should all be prepared to take the moral high road and allow their beleaguered fans to enjoy their moment of glory in the spotlight after all this time. You go first. I'm sure I'll catch up later, and if not, start without me. I'm sure there's plenty to do with your spare time up there on that moral high road. You bet.
Speaking of time, unlike other people in the modern world, those of us shackled with Windows 2000NT at the workplace have been living in two time zones for the past three weeks, as the operating system was programmed to change the system time automatically to account for the switch-over back to Standard Time, when it was originally scheduled early in October, not the beginning of November. So my computer at work had already decided on its own to "fall back" several weeks ago, which was distracting at the best of times, and other times, downright confusing. I don't mind saying that I'm usually confused enough at work as it is, so this added a new and thoroughly unwelcome element into the equation that I had not bargained for. I kept waiting for Rod Serling to show up and announce, "These people don't know it ..... " and explain that we had just entered "The Hospital Zone," where time and space take on a life of their own, apart from the real world, and certainly not an improvement in any way, I can tell you that. So I would have to say that it came as a relief last weekend, when the official reckoning actually changed back over to Standard Time, and my work computer could finally catch up with the rest of humanity at long last.
It was a wonder to me that so many millions of people went out to vote, what with all the horror stories floating around everywhere. I heard from a co-worker who went to vote at 6:30 AM before dropping off her son at school, and she said the lines were so long that she had to leave, or she would be late for work. Her mother was working at the polls, and said that people had already lined up before they even opened the doors in the morning. Other early birds that I spoke to reported huge crowds of people, with long waits, and lots of problems finding the correct information for so many newly-registered first-time voters. When the registration could not be verified, they were given paper ballots instead as a backup, with the disadvantages of being even more time-consuming and unwieldy. I also heard reports of the new computerized voting machines to replace the standard lever models, which reputedly require 15 minutes per person, and are only available for handicapped voters at this time, which is probably just as well. On Wednesday, the local newspaper had front page stories and pictures of long lines and mobs in Washington DC and Boston, in spite of millions of voters who took advantage of the opportunities in states that allowed early voting. I admit that I was concerned that this voting ritual was going to turn into more of an investment in time than I would have preferred. I didn't want to go at lunch time, so I raced out of work at 4:57 PM and dashed over to the elementary school, where I found practically no cars in the parking lot, and started to worry that they had changed my polling place on me and I hadn't paid attention to the notice. But when I got inside, the greeter directed me to the auditorium as usual, and there was not a soul in the place, it was practically spooky. The nice poll workers would have been happy for me to stay and chitchat about old movies with them, but I felt like someone who had just dodged a bullet, or gotten a reprieve from the governor, and I couldn't get out of there fast enough. It may have gotten busy again later, but I really lucked out, and I don't mind saying, glad of it.
Speaking of the election, the local brouhaha was about a notice mailed to all registered voters from the Board of Elections headquarters in White Plains to explain about a new ballot marking device that would be available at the polling place for use by any "differently-abled" voters with special needs. They went to all the trouble to print this on a large piece of card stock, with English on one side and Spanish on the other, and mail them out in plenty of time before the election. Unfortunately, what they failed to do was proofread it sufficiently, so that while the English side identified Election Day correctly as November 4, on the Spanish side, here was Dr. Freud showing up with his slip, and they informed those hapless voters that Election Day would be November 9 instead. This caused an uproar of epic proportions, leading the Board of Elections to contact every voter by telephone, in order to correct the error, in both English and Spanish, just to be on the safe side. Next time, they should leave Dr. Freud in the closet, with his slip, maybe all the way in the back, tucked in behind the Nehru jackets and go-go boots, and only let him out for April Fool's Day and not Election Day.
Meanwhile on the sports front, we certainly didn't know what to expect from the New York Rangers this year, since the off-season saw them losing many of their established players, to other teams at home and abroad, and going instead with a roster of new and untested youngsters with unfamiliar names. This can be a hard sell in New York City, where the fans take their sports much more seriously than life and death, and will not hesitate to boo everyone from the parking lot attendant to the highest echelon of the team's ownership, if they feel they're not getting their money's worth. Frankly, I would not have cared much for the chances of this "new look, no-name" hockey team to score points with the home town loyalists, especially after years of disappointment, in spite of having some of the biggest stars in the sport in their line-up. However, in true "Cinderella" fashion, the squad of young nobodies got off to a torrid start, winning their first five games, for the first time in 25 years, and after a couple of setbacks, reeled off another five wins in a row, to the astonishment of practically everybody. Last week, their record of 10-2 was the best start ever in franchise history, and not only far and away the best record in the entire NHL, but also running away with their division and leading their closest rival by 10 points already. They played toe-to-toe with some of the toughest teams in the league, including New Jersey, Buffalo, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, and showed real grit and determination against the top contenders, not just skating off with cheap wins against the bottom-dwellers. It's been a real revelation, and nobody knows what to expect from them, because they're such an unknown quantity, like something newly-hatched and just wobbling out from its shell. So far, the only one unhappy about the Rangers' early success is our TiVo, because we record and save the games they win, so the TiVo keeps complaining that it doesn't have enough space to record things that it likes, such as bad cooking shows and sitcoms that we don't even watch, because we've got all this hockey clogging up the works. I can't say how things are going to go from here, but as for myself, I'd be just as glad if the TiVo continued to be unhappy from now until the Stanley Cup finals in June, thank you very much.
One thing I did forget to mention in my note about Halloween at the hospital, was how many places I went to trick-or-treat, and unlike previous years, so many people took my picture along the way. It seems like everyone has a cell phone with a camera nowadays, and they were not a bit shy about taking my picture wherever they found me on my rounds. I expect that The Hula Girl is being plastered all over the Internet by now, which might only be considered an improvement by an indulgent few, of which Bill might actually be the only one. Speaking of improvements, or not, I had to empty out 40 unused goodie bags after last Friday, since I had made that many more bags than we had callers. Usually when I bring left-over Halloween candy in to work, it's very popular, because I work with bunches of vultures that will eat anything as long as it slows down long enough for them to catch it. Unfortunately this year, everyone had the same problem at home as I did, so left-over candy was a drug on the market from one end of the hospital to the other, and you couldn't unload it for love or money. At this rate, we're going to have marshmallow ghosts and pumpkin lollipops until Christmas.
Somehow, I also neglected to include my favorite story from Halloween, when a tiny elephant came to the door, in what may have been his maiden voyage in the annual junk food smorgasbord that we have at the end of October. There was no mistaking that the toddler appeared perplexed by the entire process, in spite of his mother behind him, prompting him to say "trick-or-treat," which they had obviously practiced at home beforehand. Meanwhile, he was busy fishing around in his treat bag for a fun-size candy bar and handing it to me. "Oh no," I assured him, 'You've got this whole thing backwards. You're not supposed to give me candy, I give you candy." This was apparently a new and unproven concept for him, and he regarded me with a skepticism far beyond his years, like he was not just going to fall for any old fairy tale that some adult would tell him. I handed him a goodie bag and he stared at it suspiciously, as if this was some elaborate practical joke being foisted upon his good nature. I had to laugh.
Another laughing matter, or perhaps not, was when one of our new neighbors (in fact, it was the elephant's mother) picked this time to introduce herself and her son Emmett (I said, "Emmett the Elephant!" which was not hailed as the witticism that I thought it was) and just about as soon as she told me her name, it went right out of my head. As a matter of fact, she told me her name two different times, and it went out of my head both times, which you would think would be hard to do even if you were trying. Fortunately, I always run a tape recorder on Halloween, so when I open the door and ask the youngsters what their costumes are, I can keep a list of how many people came, and all the different costumes there were. I find when there are too many callers all at the same time, I can't write them down fast enough, and it's easy to lose track, so I have the tape as a backup, and I play it back later to check against my list and fill in what's missing. So sure enough, here's the new neighbor on my tape introducing herself (twice) and her elephant son Emmett, plus me babbling incoherently in a confectionery-fueled stupor, so that my brain was incapable of paying attention to anything she said. But at least I got a third chance at her name, and thanks to the miracle of modern technology, that was all I needed, because that last time, I made a point to write it down, instead of thinking that I could remember it later, with just my poor addled brain cells to guide me. That's never worked so far, so I have no reason to expect it to work now, heaven knows. It's true that change may be afoot, and it may even be ahead, but no one ever said that it's abrain, at least not my brain, and that's not just the candy corn talking, either. Say, is that Bob Dylan I hear whistling Dixie?
posted by El Tango Fandango @ 9:16 PM
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