Strength In Numbers

Hello World,

Happy Memorial Day weekend! We have come at last to that three day extravaganza of parades, barbecues, excursions and adventures, which every year, ushers in the unofficial start of Summer, regardless of the fact that it was a bracing 40 degrees earlier in the week, and felt more like the Advent countdown of getting ready for a Visit from St. Nicholas, than those lazy, hazy, crazy days of seasonal exuberance on the other side of the upcoming solstice. I do hope that you have an opportunity to enjoy three days off that will be both happy and memorable, and in the spirit of the occasion, remember the sacrifices that people have made on behalf of the liberty and democracy that we all too often take for granted. We can count on the Flag Brigade around here to fly the colors for Memorial Day, both on Sunday (traditional) and Monday (observed) -- well, that is, as much as we can count on the Flag Brigade for anything these days, heaven knows.

Meanwhile at church, some of our hard-working ladies got together and put on another one of their perennially popular tag sales, which serve the dual purposes of clearing out unwanted items from the congregation's attics, and serving as a handy resource for the local community clamoring for a bargain. All of their hard work and efforts were not in vain, as the ladies collected $175 in bills, plus a bag full of loose change, which added up to over $30 all by itself. It seems like that quantity of assorted coinage always includes a bunch of funky stuff in with it, for instance, Sacajawea dollars or even worse, those goofy new dollar coins that they're making now with mugs like Thomas Jefferson, George Washington or John Quincy Adams, and even in colonial times, these were no pin-up boys, believe me. Of course, you can expect that some joker is always going to toss in the odd Canadian penny or Mexican nickel, plus coins from other countries that you don't even know what they are, but it only takes a glance to identify them as foreign currency, when you see some grouchy-looking despot scowling back at you, like you just crossed over their border by accident and used their flag as a handkerchief or something. These are the kinds of interesting tidbits that crop up when you sort through money from a flea market, and I guess that's why they say that tag sales are broadening. At least, I think they say that, or if not, it's something close to that anyway. Of course, we all know that close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, and only one of them could be considered broadening, and frankly, the connotations are more than a little disturbing.

Speaking of disturbing, last week there was a security breach in our old rattle-trap of a building, where someone's wallet and cell phone were taken from their office in broad daylight, during regular hours when the building was full of people going about their business. Our department was moved into the building in 2000, and we were warned before we ever got there, to keep our belongings in a safe place, because even back then, the building had a reputation for trouble. I have always kept my handbag locked in a file cabinet in the closet, so that someone would have to lug the entire file cabinet out of my office and down the stairs and out of the building (with no elevator) and also without anyone stopping to ask them what they were up to, and I figure that if they go to all that effort and get away with it, then they deserve my poor impoverished old purse for their troubles. To be honest, I didn't find that to be the disturbing part, since I thought that everyone who worked in that building had long since been advised to protect their valuables at all times. It was later, when I happened to bump into the director of Security downstairs, who had a clipboard (always a bad sign) and was jotting down notes, and so I asked him if he wanted me to sign his petition, in one of those feeble attempts at humor that I am so well known for. Oh no, he assured me, he was plotting out ways to make our building more secure, to keep out those undesirable elements from the neighborhood who have no reason to be in our building, and to prevent people from other buildings from using our building as a pass-through en route to somewhere else. Although there is only one exterior door, our building does connect to several other buildings on three different floors, so it would take a multi-faceted approach to narrow down the access to just the appropriate people at the appropriate times. The disturbing part was when he mentioned having one of those new swipe systems installed on the outside of our building too, like the employee entrance on the back of the main hospital, and which alert readers may recall that I have been boycotting since they implemented it last October. If they did indeed close off access from the other buildings, that would leave only the door with the swipe system to be able to enter the building, and pretty much no way around it, even for those of us who object to the whole process as a big fat nuisance. The most disturbing part of it for me is that frankly, I think it's going to look pretty darned silly for me to throw a grappling hook over the roof and rappel up the side of the building and into my office every day.

Of course, everyone knows that there are no standards anymore, heaven knows, even in the newspapers, where you might expect them to know better, but all too often, this is not the case, alas. Falling into this category of not saying what they mean (one hopes!) I couldn't help but notice that the most recent Career Builder section of our local newspaper had the screaming headline -

PLAY TO YOUR STRENGHTS

which promised in the sub-head "Sound advice for new grads starting the job hunt," but here I'm thinking, if they can't even spell "strengths" right, how much of their so-called sound advice do they think I'm going to have any confidence in? And it's not even some arcane or complicated foreign word that is an exception to standard spelling rules, because anyone with even a minimal grasp of the English language would be able to sound it out and realize that it needed an H after the last T in order to be pronounced correctly, and it certainly wasn't going to happen the way they spelled it in the headline. And since we already know that close doesn't count in headlines, I offer a tin-plated, double-barreled, fickle-fingered hand grenade to the editorial staff at the Career Killer section of our newspaper.

Meanwhile, in the "Customer is Always Wrong" department, we get the following wording for a sign that
the client wanted to design themselves, rather than letting the professionals take care of it -

WELCOME !
VISITORS PLEASE DIAL
THE EXTENSION OF THE PERSON
YOU ARE HERE TO SEE LOCATED TO THE LEFT

which prompted Bill's comment: "As I always say, these people have no reason to exist. And here they are, piling them all up on the left side of their office entrance, apparently." Here is where I can't help but wonder that there would be a tremendous lack of productivity at this office, with all of the employees standing around to the left of the entrance, and you can't even quarrel with it, because after all, that's what the sign says. Of course, everyone knows that I have a long-standing policy against trying to use logic with irrational people, so I wouldn't bother to try improving that sign so that it would make any sense, in fact, I'm not even sure that I could come up with any way to improve upon that, try as I might. I suppose I might take a run at it, and might even get close, but we all know that close doesn't count in signs, and I've already used my hand grenade for the newspaper, and frankly, I have to say that horseshoes has never been one of my strenghts.

Elle

Happy Go Lucky

Hello World,

By golly, it seems like only yesterday that we were all dancing around the Maypole, and celebrating the Battle of La Puebla at Cinco de Mayo, and yet here we find ourselves somehow at the last weekend before Memorial Day, when the month will be nothing more than a fond memory. How time flies, and then some. And speaking of time, I realize that I spoke too soon when I said that since I no longer had the old hospital computer that never knew when to change over to Daylight Saving Time, my computers would always have the right time from now on. One of my recent acquisitions is new to me, as they say at NBC, but was already used when I bought it, and I didn't notice until yesterday that it certainly had a different system time than all the rest of the computers in my life. I hadn't thought of it previously, but it came from a specialty shop in California, so when I checked the settings in Control Panel, I was not surprised to find that it was set to Pacific Daylight Time, which I'm sure made perfect sense when it was still out there. Here in New York, it didn't make as much sense anymore, so I changed it to Eastern Daylight Time, and was ready to call it a day and get on with my life, and right on time, to boot. Not so fast! It seems that even after I changed the time zone setting, it was still the wrong time, and I had to go reset the time manually anyway. It was a real slice of yesteryear in my office once again, with (inky black night) shades of Windows 2000NT on my computer, where I had to wait around for 3 weeks for the system time to finally get around to switching over to the right time and catching up with the rest of humanity at long last.

Speaking of last, it certainly wasn't my intention, but I did a heck of a job jinxing the outcome of the Preakness on Saturday, so that we not only didn't have a Double Crown, if there was such a thing, much less a Triple Crown in our sights. The highly touted Super Saver, who was the 9-5 favorite after winning the Kentucky Derby handily, was never a factor at Pimlico, and finished in eighth place out of 12 horses. Meanwhile, Lookin At Lucky, who had been the favorite at Churchill Downs but lost, nosed out First Dude by 3/4 length, so that in an unusual coincidence, it was the second-favorite horses who won in both races. With nowhere else to turn, since Super Saver's jockey and media darling Calvin Borel was no longer the story of the day, the newspapers made a big deal out of Bob Baffert, the trainer of Lookin At Lucky, whose horses have won the Preakness five times, which in another coincidence, is second on the list of all-time winners. I will admit that I don't follow horse racing well enough to be familiar with the trainers, so this Baffert for all of his credentials, basically means nothing to me. So it came as a surprise to read further in the story and find this startling tidbit: "It was the Hall of Famer's first Triple Crown win since 2002, when War Emblem won at Pimlico." [Insert spooky Theremin music here.] Alert readers may recall that I just mentioned War Emblem last week, apropos of nothing, and here he is, turning up once again in a story about someone that I don't even know. So there you have it, sports fans, we've managed to come full circle, just like a racetrack, and wind up back where we started. And while I wouldn't rule out the possibility that it was me who jinxed the favorite in the Preakness, personally I have to wonder about the ghost of Affirmed, the last Triple Crown winner in 1978, and I'd be checking his stall for voodoo dolls of Super Saver and Calvin Borel. Not to mention, War Emblem, thanks so very much not.

Meanwhile at work, I happened to stumble upon the "Savings Beyond Price Letter," which describes itself as "Advanced Savings Strategies and Solutions that Work," which is trademarked, so you know they're serious about it. It comes to us from the editor's desk of Bob T. Yokl, which sounds like a bad joke, but if that was indeed my name, I would certainly be extremely scrupulous about editing this newsletter, so as not to give anyone the opportunity to make fun of mistakes by that "yokel." So it was probably an unfortunate oversight that this item appeared in a prominent location right on the front: "From time to time, we all buy into myths that seem logical and even credible when we first hear them. But over time, we realize these ideas aren't fact-based, but rather founded on antidotal evidence." Now, I realize that I am not a Chief Value Strategist, as our friend the yokel here, so I'm just speculating that when evidence becomes infected with some deadly disease, the emergency response team rushes in with the antidote (in this case, antidotal evidence) to cure it. Of course, I'm not a doctor, and I don't even play one on TV, so that's just a hypothesis on my part, maybe not even a very good one. But after all, I would hope if I was editing a newsletter, that I would at least understand the difference between "anecdotal" and "antidotal," and would not be using one in the place of the other, like any old yokel.

Also at work, we recently had an email sent to all of the hospital computers from our crack IT department, with this arresting subject line:

"Possible maleware infection!"

And here again, I have to point out that information technology is not my field of expertise, and I don't claim to know everything there is to know on the topic. But hazarding a guess on this, I'd be inclined to suspect that this would be some sort of computer virus that only affects men, although how it would do that, I have no idea. Or it could be that gender-based software has just been invented, and those individuals with the Y-chromosome might be specifically targeted for infections. It all seems highly futuristic and supernatural to me, and don't forget, I've been known to jinx a horse race from 500 miles away and two weeks ahead of time. But on the other hand, I would think it would not be too much to expect of our IT professionals at the hospital not to use the term "maleware" when they mean "malware," and we can't even lay the blame at the editor's desk of good old Bob T. Yokl on this one, try as we might.

In other technology news, we were having a problem at work with email in and out of the hospital server, so that it was becoming increasingly unpredictable as far as what messages would get through. This is old news to Bill and myself, where we have always numbered our notes to each other, so we can tell at a glance if any of them have been delayed, duplicated or missing altogether. But we were recently having a serious problem with our vendor for specialty surfaces over some outstanding invoices, and in an effort to straighten things out, I had sent an email to the credit manager with the payment information. Satisfied that this would address their concerns, you can imagine my chagrin two days later, when I got a notification from the network's auto-responder service that the message was never delivered, and thanks so very much not. Anyone who knows me can tell you that I'm not easily thwarted, so my next step was to print my original email, and then fax it to the credit manager instead, so at least I was sure that she received it. As cutting-edge technology goes, this is sort of the 18th century solution to a 19th century problem, and would no doubt remind the Victorians of the early days of mechanized transportation, when the owner of a newfangled motor vehicle would be trying to push it out of a ditch, while bemused onlookers in their carts and buggies would cry out: "Get a horse!" Once again satisfied that this would address their concerns, once again you can imagine my chagrin two days later, when the very same credit manager called me to ask what was going on, since she had heard nothing from us. I described to her the situation with our email's recent unreliability, and said that I had faxed the email to her instead, in an effort to bypass the problem. She promptly went and looked through her old records to see if she had the document in question, chatting away amiably while she was doing that. It seems that when a fax is sent to this particular company, she explained, their Fax Administrator scans it in to the computer and then emails it to the recipient, which in this case, had such a perfectly symmetrical, anachronistically steam-powered circumnavigation in order to come full circle, that I almost laughed out loud. On both ends of this communication, we had taken the most round-about, out-moded, technology-challenged route to solve a problem, and proceeded to go all the way around Robin Hood's proverbial barn to get back to exactly where we started. This would remind me and the dinosaurs of the early days of the wheel, when the Troglodyte would be trying to push it out of a ditch, while bemused onlookers in the trees and caves would cry out: "Get a mastodon!" Of course, that's only based on antidotal evidence, because even the yokels know that the Troglodytes were all wiped out from maleware infections, although personally, I wouldn't rule out the ghost of Affirmed either.

Elle

Merry Go Round

Hello World,

It may seem impossible to believe, but we find ourselves already just about at the middle of the merry, merry month of May, beloved throughout history by poets and minstrels alike, not to mention, the flowers for which we endured the April showers, which now seems like a trade-off worth making. In our yard, the English wood hyacinths and buttercups have put on their usual display in the front yard, while the flowering almond, allium and Star of Bethlehem have rounded out the perimeter, and even some early roses have popped out here and there. The neighborhood has no lack of stately old chestnut trees, and this is the time for them to shine, with copious blooms of creamy white flowers, making the entire tree look like a lovely wedding cake full of perfect bouquets, just ripe for the plucking. Another May arrival has been the unexpected appearance of cowbirds, which are not particularly uncommon birds, but new to this neighborhood, or at least in our yard, as we don't recall ever seeing them here before. They have a very distinctive song that is noticeably different from our regular birds, so we would have previously noticed the sound of them, even if we hadn't seen them in person, or rather, in their full-feathered regalia that distinguishes them from their more ordinary counterparts in these environs. I don't know how the local birds feel about these sudden interlopers in their midst, but we're just as glad to see them. After all, it is the merry, merry month of May, so the more, the merrier, is the way I look at it.

It's true that this would be the merry, merry month of May all over the world, near and far, far and wide, wide and long, and everywhere in between, no matter where you look. Well, except in my office at work, that is, where I just noticed that the wall calendar is already on the jolly, jolly month of June for some reason, skipping ahead of the rest of humanity by several weeks, like a rush-hour commuter with a train to catch and no time to shilly-shally. I realized only much later that I must have inadvertently flipped forward two months when I changed it at the end of April, and missed May completely. The odd part is that this is exactly the same calendar that we have in three separate offices in our department, because we got it as a promotion from our forms management company, so you'd think that I would have noticed at some point before now, that it had an entirely different picture from the other two calendars that I see every single day. Obviously, I'm not the person that they invented the Witness Protection Program for, because it's clear that I simply don't notice things that are right in front of my own face, and the witnesses would have no need to be protected from me recognizing them, that's for sure.

And speaking of charging along in May, this Saturday will see the Preakness Stakes at Pimlico, where media darling Calvin Borel will try to ride the favorite Super Saver to another win, in a bid to capture horse racing's elusive top prize, the coveted Triple Crown. The favorite of the Kentucky Derby, Lookin At Lucky, is the second favorite in the Preakness, and in another turn-around, they're expecting the track to be fast and dry, compared to the soggy slop at Churchill Downs. As for myself, if Super Saver does win, I refuse to get all worked up about it. (Ask me about War Emblem - go ahead, just ask me, I dare you!) The Derby and Preakness have a number of similarities, so that it's not extraordinary for a horse to win both races. It's on the treacherous shoals of the remorseless Belmont Stakes that untold Triple Crown hopes have been dashed, and lost to the swirling maelstrom of posterity, where close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, but not at the track. The same jockeys on the same horses doing exactly the same things will all too often be their very undoing in the dissimilar conditions of the Belmont, which favor different tactics and training than the previous two races. In fact, if the Belmont came first, the whole idea of the Triple Crown would probably not ever have taken hold, because it's winning the Belmont and any other race that's the challenge, not winning two other races that are similar, or we'd have numerous Double Crown winners through the years, if only there was such a thing. So while I wish Calvin Borel and Super Saver all the luck in the world, even if they do win both races, it's still not a shoo-in for the Triple Crown, and history will bear me out on this, so please don't go ahead and print up those T-shirts and bumper stickers just yet. Because there's a reason why they call it the Triple Crown, and not the best two out of three, since we all know there is no such thing as the Double Crown, like it or not.

Of course, last Sunday was Mother's Day, when we honor all of the mothers and important maternal figures in our lives, for all they do to make the world a better place, and us right along with it. Sunday turned out to be a beautiful day in this area, as the weather could not have been more conducive to whatever plans might have been afoot for Merrie Olde Mom, indoors or out, and all around the town. Although at least around here, the one thing I would never recommend is trying to take your mom out to eat on Mother's Day, because every place that serves food is a madhouse for the day, from the cheesiest dive to the poshest 5-star hot spot, turning what should be a delightful interlude of precious family time into more of a marathon endurance challenge and battle of wills that is not for the faint-hearted. At our house, the cats always come through with presents for the occasion, thanks to their Daddy-Cat, who is a prince among men, and this time no different, with an inviting selection of gifts that included music, apparel, jewelry, shoes, books, collectible items, and even donuts, courtesy of a brand new donut shop that just opened nearby. Having breakfast donuts in bed would be one of my favorite ways to start any day, so this was a special treat with its very own sugar-coated, creme-filled, rainbow-sprinkled goodness about it, and I ought to know.

Meanwhile at work, we were invited to attend a cocktail party on Thursday evening, which was being hosted by the Finance department on behalf of the team of well-known auditors, who had been reviewing our economic situation for the last few months, and which is also not for the faint-hearted, believe me. I suppose they wanted to celebrate the fact that not all of them had gone insane, pulled out all of their hair, jumped out of windows or otherwise succumbed to the desperation that has been inherent in the quagmire of hospital finances from time immemorial. In fact, we were told that there was good news in the offing, although I have to admit that it doesn't take much enticement to get us to attend a party, regardless of the reason for it. So we bolted out of work early on Thursday, and clambered into cars with our colleagues in Finance, Personnel, the computer department, Patient Billing, Credit, Payroll and Medical Records, and headed for the historic Olde Stone Mill in Tuckahoe, which turned out to be a lovely place, set in a quiet enclave away from the hubbub of the business district. They escorted us to an outdoor patio with tables and chairs and colorful umbrellas, where they served what seemed like a never-ending supply of drinks and hors d'oeuvres, from friendly and attentive waiters. At that point, the auditors became easily identifiable as behaving like normal people from the real world, while the hospital staff (or vultures) were true to form, pouncing on every platter as if they hadn't seen any food in a month, and eating anything that stopped moving long enough for them to catch it, with not a morsel left standing. The CFO stood up and thanked everyone for coming, and for all of their hard work that made it possible for the auditors to report many positive improvements, besides not jumping out of windows, which not only takes a lot of cleaning up, but then you're stuck filling out all of those forms for the Police, and who has time for that. We had been led to expect that there would be other announcements of a more momentous nature, but that never seemed to materialize, and although a merry time was had by all, we were left with a somewhat foreboding sense of waiting for the other shoe to drop, which may or may not actually be the case. At the hospital, it's easy to get used to the idea that the auditors are always there like the furniture, as one group of them or another seems to come and never leave, but this was the first time we ever got invited to a party with them, which I don't mind saying, is the kind of economic revolution that I can live with.

In other timely news, I suppose it should not have come as a surprise to discover the problem with my new watch was exactly the same problem as my old watch, and I probably should have thought of it sooner. These watches (which I consider sensible Timex models, not some schlocky fly-by-night gimcrack) have a couple of functions, in addition to telling the time, such as a backlight or date. In what I consider a significant design flaw, the engineers at Timex decided against adding extra buttons around the face for these functions, and instead, built all of them into the poor overworked watch stem, which is probably the flimsiest part of the entire apparatus. They came up with the plan to use the watch stem not only to set the time, but also turn on the backlight and set the date, with the idea that each function would be performed by pulling out the stem to a different depth for each one, plus an extra one when the watch is running normally. The problems start when you think that the stem is in the default position of running normally, and the watch thinks the stem is in one of the other positions, where the time stops running while you use the stem to set the other functions. Even worse, the default position of running normally isn't when the stem is pushed all the way in, which makes it harder to judge when it's in the right place to keep on running, except for the handy feature that it stops keeping time, so you suddenly notice that you're out of step with the rest of humanity, and thanks so very much not. It's at that point you figure that the battery is dead, until you pull the stem all the way out, and push it part-way back in, and just like magic, it starts running again just like nothing ever happened. Forty years ago, you could take your watch to a jeweler, and if the stem had gotten worn or loose over the ordinary course of events, they would be happy to replace it or tighten it up for you (and polish your watch besides) so that it would run like new once again. Nowadays, you not only can't get a jeweler to look at your watch, but even Timex doesn't want to know you when you want your watch repaired, and if you send it to them, they turn around and send you any old watch that they decide is comparable to yours, and call it a day. I'll be the first to admit that I have a well-deserved reputation as a wristwatch graveyard, but by golly, all of this cannot be laid at my doorstep this time around, because the real culprit is not in my house, but on the drawing board. The old-timers among us can remember when John Cameron Swayze would say that a Timex would take a licking and keep on ticking, and nowadays, I can't even get it to keep on ticking when I'm just wearing it around the house. If this is the Timex concept of progress, I'd like to invite the engineers to the hospital, because now that the auditors have left, there's plenty of windows that I could throw my watch out of, and they could just jump right out after it, and see who's still ticking after that.

Elle

Watch Your Step

Hello World,

Feliz (tardio) Cinco de Mayo! Wednesday was the time for everyone to get their Napoleon Complex on, and join with our Mexican brothers and sisters everywhere in commemorating the historic Battle of the Puebla, and all that it stands for. Who can ever forget that immortal day, when the plucky but outnumbered forces of the Ponderosa fended off the invading robot clone army of the Klingons at the historic Bridge on the River Kwai, and long may she wave, muchachos. Hmm, that doesn't sound quite right somehow, but I'm pretty sure that it had something to do with fighting and foreigners, and I'm quite certain that it was historic, so you could probably look it up and get the scoop, the whole scoop, and nothing but the scoop, so help me Bonaparte. Or as they said in the Little Colonel's kitchen after the bomb went off, "Linoleum Blownapart."

Of course, we all know that Memorial Day has turned into a movable feast, heaven knows, being observed on whatever is the last Monday of May, not on May 30 as it always was, back in its Decoration Day heyday, hi-dee-ho. Now it's as slippery as a quick-fingered pickpocket, and you really have to be on your toes to keep up with it, as it shifts around furtively from year to year, like some unwanted relative trying to borrow money. The purists among us have become resigned to this constant inconstancy, where nothing stays where you expect it, and every year ushers in a whole new set of challenges trying to pin down the holidays to their respective dates for that year only. It's bad enough with events such as Easter and Thanksgiving, which unlike Memorial Day, have never had one particular day associated with them in the first place. But I can safely say that I would not have expected the same old thing from Cinco de Mayo, which after all, is called the Fifth of May for a reason, and not just for the heck of it, so you would think that people who wanted to celebrate the occasion would at least do it on the right day. So you can imagine my surprise when I saw in the newspaper last week, that the city of Yonkers had already celebrated Cinco de Mayo on the last weekend in April, which was not even May first, complete with pictures of the parade, folk dancers, mariachi bands and schoolchildren in native costumes. Talk about a surprise attack - they beat Napoleon's army at the Battle of the Puebla two weeks before the Mexican troops ever got there, and don't forget, I've got the pictures to prove it.

Anyone who uses FaceBook can tell you it's not for the faint-hearted, especially not lately, as a nasty combination of performance issues, connectivity problems and program glitches have turned it into a woeful experience that is more flop than fab, so that the only consistent thing about it is how frustrating it is. The games and applications have been particularly hard hit, but also sending private messages has become an exercise in futility, and even just plain posting comments has been a very hit-or-miss proposition at best, and it's rarely been at its best. It was during this period of intermittent functionality that all of my games acted up, although not all in the same way. For instance, in Cafe World whenever you go back to the game, it displays a clipboard that usually says something like "Welcome back, you made 29,475 coins while you were away," because the game continues to serve meals when you're not there, until they run out, and you can make anywhere from 15,000 to 60,000 coins without even being near your computer at the time. So when I went to the game earlier in the week, and it greeted me with: "Welcome back, you made 523, 89, 100, 000, 000, 006" I knew that the snafu trolls were at it again, because that certainly wasn't what they meant, since in fact, it didn't even mean anything. I may not know how to cook, but I can spot a bogus number when I see one, by golly.

Speaking of new technology, I'm sure that everyone will be glad to hear that the fast-food behemoth, McDonald's, has jumped aboard the information superhighway bandwagon, as it were, and opened its golden arches at Twitter, presumably where food, folks and fun can meet and greet, in 140 characters or less. They actually describe it this way: "We're excited about joining the community and look forward to getting to know you too. Follow us for the latest McDonald's news, promotions and a few surprises along the way from our Communications teams." Of course, you can feel free to go right ahead and visit their web site at [ http://www.aboutmcdonalds.com/mcd/media_center/mcdnlds_twttr_cntcts_092509.html ] and see for yourself. The Media Center page is entitled "Meet the Tweeps: @McDonalds Twitter Team," and introduces us to a cadre of fresh young faces and their ideas for using the power of Twitter to enhance our appreciation of everyone's favorite happy meal haven. (Personally, I would have to say that being called a "Tweep" would tend to have a dampening effect on my enthusiasm for the whole project, but that's just me, and I'm well known as a Luddite, and not even a McLuddite, at that.) So if you've had enough of burgers and fries, you can jump right in and check your Twitter account for the latest McTweets, with all of the up-to-the-minute details of the famous franchise's happenings. Tell them the Hamburglar sent you.

In other pop culture news, we have a blast from the past resurfacing to claim our attention, after a year out of the spotlight, at least for most of us, even though it was right where we left it. The 136th Kentucky Derby was last Saturday, and once again, the big story was the media darling of last year's quasi Triple Crown, veteran jockey Calvin Borel, this time aboard Super Saver, whose 8-1 odds made it the second favorite of the field. After the favorite Eskendereya was scratched with a leg injury, Lookin At Lucky's 6-1 odds tied it for the longest odds with only one other horse in the entire history of the Run for the Roses, so there was no runaway shoo-in for the top spot, like Rachel Alexandra last year. In spite of the conditions, Borel won his third Derby in four years, thanks to Super Saver putting it away handily with a 2-1/2 length lead over Ice Box, on a soggy track that might have been more suited to bikini models mud wrestling than thoroughbreds trying to run a horse race. Of course, that might have scandalized the traditionalists at historic Churchill Downs, but no doubt would have been a big hit with the ad sponsors, I'm thinking.

Anyone who knows me can tell you that I have historically had my ups and downs as far as wearing watches over the years, where not only my funky novelty watches, but even sensible sturdy watches would work well for a while and then just stop, with no rhyme or reason, or accidents like being dropped or getting wet. Even worse, they would often develop a maddening inconsistency so that they would sometimes work and sometimes not, which is a decided drawback in watches, where you depend on them unequivocally to be the right time, all the time, and every time, and no excuses. So I would have to say that it came as no surprise when I took my watch out of my bag Friday morning at work to put it on, and found that it was not only the wrong time, but stopped as well, thanks not. Hoping for the best, I reset the time and tapped on it, but it wouldn't start, which I could tell by the sweep second hand not moving. I shook it and pushed the stem in and out trying to coax it back to life, but it was no dice on all counts, and I finally gave it up as a lost cause and figured that it must need a new battery. Fortunately, I had another watch with me, which is the kind of thing you do when you have this sort of pernicious effect on watches, so I was able to wear that one all day and at least keep in step with the rest of humanity, instead of wandering around lost in my own little "no-time" zone of oblivion. When I came home, I decided to take the stopped watch out of my bag, until I could get a new battery for it, only to find that it was running fine and had exactly the right time, which you would think would be impossible, except that I saw it with my own eyes. I know it's just toying with me, but by golly, two can play that game. Next time it tries that, I'm going to see what it thinks about mud wrestling, and believe me, I've got the bikini and I'm not afraid to use it.

Elle

Over The Gate

Hello World,

Happy May Day! Saturday would be the day to get your Bolshevik on, dance around the Maypole, or in England, jump off low bridges into shallow water, which is an idea that probably sounds a lot better if you're a college student and totally drunk, although even at that, I would think it would still lack a certain appeal. Apparently, May Day is another one of those times when there is no wrong way to celebrate the holiday, and according to our friends at wikipedia, you would have a wide range of options open to you, all around the world, from the political to the fanciful and everything in between. Here's just a sampling:

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Due to its status as a celebration of the efforts of workers and the socialist movement, May Day is an important official holiday in Communist countries such as the People's Republic of China, Cuba, and the former Soviet Union. May Day celebrations typically feature elaborate popular and military parades in these countries.
In countries other than the United States and Canada, resident working classes sought to make May Day an official holiday and their efforts largely succeeded. For this reason, in most of the world today, May Day is marked by massive street rallies led by workers, their trade unions, anarchists and various communist and socialist parties.
Now, May Day is a very important celebration in Italy. Very popular is the Concerto del Primo Maggio ("1 May's Concert"), organized by Italian Labour Unions in Rome in Piazza San Giovanni. It is attended by more than 300,000 people every year, and involves participation of many famous bands and songwriters. The concert is usually broadcasted live by Rai Tre. In a separate May Day-related proclamation, the Roman Catholic Church added another Saint Joseph's Day in 1955 that Christianized May 1 as the day of "Saint Joseph, the Worker". Saint Joseph is the only patron saint of "people fighting communism."
In Sweden, Finland, Norway and Iceland, Labour Day is a public holiday, celebrated by many different socialist parties and groups with political demonstrations and speeches. In recent years, non-socialist parties have also held meetings and speeches along with the socialist parties. In Sweden and Finland, however, it merges with Walpurgis Night, a carnival-type festivity.
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So there you have it, holiday fans. As you can see, May first is basically an international free-for-all, celebrated in countless ways, all through the ages, and across the cultural divide, from pole to pole. Maypole, that is.

In other seasonal news, we recently received the BOCES Southern Westchester brochure of their Adult Education offerings for Spring & Summer 2010, which they have loftily entitled: Unlimited Horizons, thank you very much. Frankly, I wasn't expecting too much in the way of entertainment from our friends at BOCES, because I already know they don't offer goofy Adult Ed courses like belly dancing and basket weaving, like you get in regular schools. They're much too serious for that at BOCES, and instead they offer a variety of practical classes on no-nonsense topics like Auto Mechanics, National Electric Code, Pharmacy Technician, Carpentry and House Inspection. But in their section that announces: "Harness the Power of the Sun at SW BOCES Solar Energy Program," I admit that I was not prepared for a course that I simply had no idea what it was for - NABCEP PV Entry Level Exam Prep. Now, this is the entry level, mind you, and I don't even have a clue as to what they're talking about, so you can imagine what it looks like when they get to the more advanced levels, gadzooks. So I'm obviously not signing up for that, especially the part where it says to bring your own tools, and I would be at a loss in terms of what to bring: screwdriver, flashlight, dilithium crystals, particle accelerator? I simply wouldn't know where to begin. They also offer three separate courses on welding, including Arc Welding I and Arc Welding II, which are fine by me, and I even understand what that means, so I'm on board with that in a big way. But also available is something called Mig & Tig Welding, and here again, I wouldn't expect the welding situation to have gotten so far afield that they had invented some new version of it that I had never even heard of. I mean, it's one thing when the new technology passes us old-timers by, and I guess that's only to be expected, but heck, this is the OLD technology passing us by, and frankly, I have to draw the line at that.

We get the following from Bill, courtesy of his friends at Survey Spot, where they had asked him to complete one of their online surveys about commuting -

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Which one of the following would you most value to help reduce your travel stress?
(Select as many as apply.)
[ ] Increased stress
[ ] Respiratory problems
[ ] Anger
[ ] Traffic accident
[ ] Reduced sleep
[ ] Other {_________________________}
[ ] None / Roadway traffic does not affect my health
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Bill has the impression that these answers were not the most appropriate ones for this particular question, and I think he may be on to something there. In fact, if I was the folks at Survey Spot, I might want to send that whole section back to the drawing board and start all over again.

Also not saying what they mean (one hopes!) was a recent heart-warming story that had been forwarded to me about a venerable 92-year-old minister, who when asked to address the congregation with some words of wisdom, approached the pulpit with what they described as "a halting gate." Gee, I sure hope not! Here I'm thinking, on top of everything else this wizened old man has to contend with, they certainly shouldn't make him drag a gate along with him besides, heaven knows. Or in the immortal words of Jerry Colonna: "Greetings, Gate - let's syncopate!"

And what may be new and interesting on the local crime scene, you may be wondering, and well may you wonder, indeed. We recently had a call from a former member of our church who was in the neighborhood, and complained that the property was looking unkempt and shopworn, and very much in need of some sprucing up, not to mention, sooner rather than later. So last week, a few of us walked around outside and made notes of the most obvious areas that required attention, such as overgrown bushes, loose debris, broken garden furniture and the like. Also drawing unwanted attention was an old derelict lawnmower that had been abandoned in the backyard, which apparently was no longer working and was not worth repairing. (Although in its defense, I feel obligated to point out that we only have that information anecdotally from someone who was told by another person, and as we all know from TV police shows by now, third-party hearsay would never stand up in a court of law.) In any case, the church had already gotten a new lawnmower, so the old one was extraneous as well as being an eyesore. I asked my mechanic about it, and they agreed to take it off our hands, so earlier in the week, I wrestled the old battle-axe out of the yard, and rolled it down the block to my mechanic, for however they might make use of it, perhaps for parts or for scrap. I told them the story of our purloined railing, and said that I was surprised that no one had filched the old broken lawnmower out of the yard and sold it for scrap already. At that, my mechanic told me the story of a transmission that he had removed from a car in order to replace the rings, and he had no qualms about leaving the car outside overnight on the apron, knowing that it couldn't be moved without the transmission. In the morning when he returned with the replacement rings, sure enough, the transmission had been stolen right off the property, lock, stock and barrel. Now he says, he even has to lock his scrap metal up at night, or it's gone by morning, which actually exhibits a refreshing spirit of initiative in today's lackadaisical culture that ought to be encouraged, although perhaps re-channeled in a direction that was somewhat less larcenous. After all, something like this can all too easily get completely out of hand, and the next thing you know, they'd be stealing the 92-year-old minister's halting gate, and then where would the poor man be?

Elle