Shiny Bright

Hello World, Happy Jewish New Year! The time has come to wish "L'Shana Tovah!" to one and all, as Rosh Hashanah arrives at sundown on Sunday, with Yom Kippur hard on its heels the following Tuesday, the 11th. This being a movable feast, you never know where they might show up from one year to the next, and are often much earlier in September, sometimes coinciding with the opening of the new school year, right after Labor Day. So it does seem like they are on the tardy side this time around, but none the less welcome for all that, and sure to bring with them all the trappings and traditions of the season that everyone has come to expect, I dare say. In other chronological news, it's nothing short of amazing that September could be folding up its tents and spiriting away in the dead of night, and we could suddenly find ourselves confronted with October, of all things, and woefully unprepared for the prospect, by the looks of it, and I ought to know. Or as one wag put it so eloquently on my Twitter feed last week: "Add 'breathe' and 'swallow' to your To Do List, so at least you have something to cross off at the end of the day." Amen to that, brother! And while we're on the subject of social media, we all realize that brevity is the hallmark of electronic communications these days, heaven knows, and just about everyone except for the most backward Troglodytes would recognize familiar shortcuts such as LOL, FYI, BTW, ASAP, or IMHO showing up regularly enough as to be commonplace everywhere you turn. (They've even managed to migrate across species already, so you're just as likely to encounter BOL for your pooch or MOL for your kitty, and probably a whole menagerie of others, specific to birds, reptiles, fish, or even our old friends the dinosaurs, I shouldn't wonder.) So I was understandably caught up short when presented with "ADSO" in an email, which was unknown to me up until that point, and I mentioned to Bill that in spite of giving it a lot of thought, I could come up with nothing that it would stand for. I had the feeling that I was on the wrong side of the digital divide, and being left in the dust as the modern world tramped forever onward, with me relegated to the scrap heap of history with the cast-offs of outmoded gadgets and gizmos of yesteryear, and out of touch with the rest of society. Of course, Bill is our technology maven around the old homestead, and he was happy to provide the answer to my conundrum: ================================== Sorry, this is a memory thing, not a touch thing. I think it was Jay who first passed it along -- "Attention Deficit Shiny Object". =================================== Ah yes, it all makes perfect sense now. In fact, it's so pervasive in our hectic culture that time management experts refer to it as "Shiny Object Syndrome," and decry its harmful effects on productivity. (Spoilsports!) The rest of us can use it to excuse any variety of faux pas, mental lapses, mistakes, mishaps, or just plain out-and-out wool-gathering, and now have a fancy new moniker to rationalize it with. So the next time you spot ADSO anywhere in your travels through cyberspace, now at least you'll be able to ..... OH LOOK, DONUTS!!! Where was I? Of course, it's all too easy to get distracted nowadays, that goes without saying, but the time to guard most zealously against that is when you're driving, not only for your own sake, but the safety of everyone else around you. On the other hand, all too often it's the other guy who's the problem, and precious little you can do to keep from becoming just another statistic out there on the mean streets, where anything can happen and usually does. Last week as I was tooling around town, I noticed that the car behind me was so close that the driver could easily put on make-up using my rearview mirror, thanks not. I was glad to reach an intersection where I turned and they went straight, although I had to wonder if they left their bronzer in my back seat while they were at it. And speaking of driving around town, I recently found myself behind a truck from our friends at Thunder Fuel Oil, whose logo is apparently two crossed lightning bolts - and while this may be someone's idea of an appropriate representation of thunder, it's actually rather incongruous in terms of the technical definition of thunder as compared with lightning, after all. Which is not to say that you could really come up with a good visual representation of thunder in the first place, in fact I can't think of anything that would fit the bill on that score, but hey, they needed to think of that before they called themselves Thunder Fuel Oil to begin with, and not just go ahead and pick up two lightning bolts out of a hat for no reason. Although truth to tell, I'm not sure that Lightning Fuel Oil would have been much of an improvement, as the concept of lightning combined with fuel oil might be just a little too inflammatory for my tastes, and thank you so much not. Meanwhile on the home front, we have a ceiling fixture in our kitchen with a very pretty Tiffany-style shade, that has served us well in a functional and decorative way since just about forever. It takes a standard 60-watt bulb, and provides plenty of light in all directions, which is just what we need it to do. Of course, regular old incandescent bulbs are a social pariah nowadays, and (apparently having nothing better to do) the federal government has stepped in to regulate them out of existence, or know the reason why, so trying to get your hands on one now (especially the 100-watt, which you pretty much have to scavenge through the black market by way of Mexico) is often way more trouble than it's worth, even for us cantankerous old dinosaurs, roaming the vast unformed land masses in the primordial ooze. So that was how we found ourselves at the supermarket recently and picking up one of those newfangled bulbs that they have now, and vowing to make the best of it, come what may. Unfortunately, the new light was so icy blue and so glaring that it was impossible to live with, and I say that as someone whose admiration of the legendary Thomas Alva Edison knows no bounds. Now, it's true that during the daytime, you only had to wear sunglasses in the kitchen to cut down on the brightness somewhat, but I turned it on at night and was immediately contacted by the Intergalactic Federation Council, who demanded that we turn it off at once, or they would be forced to deploy their Imperial Storm Troopers our way, in order to prevent alien spaceships distracted by its blazing pyrotechnics from crashing into each other in the infinite blackness of outer space. Frankly, I can't say that I blamed them one bit, but to be fair, our friends at General Electric refer to this product (perhaps ironically) as their General Purpose LED Daylight 42-watt bulb, and we felt perfectly safe when we originally picked it out - although honestly, the only place I can think that this would replicate daylight in any way would have been on the planet Krypton, which famously had two suns, and this bulb would probably have fit right in. On the plus side, if you need something with this kind of firepower, you can pick it right up in your neighborhood grocery store, and be an interstellar sensation in one fell swoop, and Thomas Alva Edison right along with you, by golly. Anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking to it, or my name isn't ..... OH LOOK, DONUTS!!!