What is this decade, anyway?

The Twenty-Teens decade is spinning to a cultural entropy point in so many ways.  Go home, Twenty-Teens -- you're inebriated with your virtual self.

• Clothes that Pinterest better than they last through launderings.
• Recipes that Instagram better than they taste.
• Vacation destinations that photoshop on Tumblr better than real life.
• Witticisms to SnapChat because I can't get a word in edgewise IRL.
• Wii Fit, but  not, you know -- fit.
• Facebook friends not IRL friends.
• Etc.

Things at Work

CO-WORKER:  You got any super glue? That last stuff you gave me went all hard.

ME (handing him a new package of super glue):  Okay.  Here you go.

[time passes . . . ]

CO-WORKER: I used it, but that super glue you gave me ain't no good too.  It's like all jellied up or something. 

ME: [Pointing at package, where it says, "Loctite® Super Glue Gel, No Drip / No Mess"]

CO-WORKER: Oh.  Well, that don't work as good as the runny stuff.  I like the runny stuff better. 

- - -
Some days, it's enough to make one lose one's faith in humanity. 

Some reasons I should have died by now

Unlimited salt intake
Rode bike with no helmet
Slept on the shelf behind the back seat on long trips
No car seats in cars when I was a kid
No booster seats in cars when I was a kid
No seat belts in cars when I was a kid
Walked / bicycled to school
Played in street
Playground without adult supervision
Barbecue food
Kool Aid
Movie popcorn
Fireworks
Played with matches
Played Scientist with old household and garden chemicals
Bacon
Tree climbing
Sibling fights
Playground fights
Baseball
Dodge Ball
Keep-Away
Red Rover
Parade Magazine quiz 1974: "Headed for trouble"
Drove too fast for the rating of the tires
Drove too fast in the fog
Drove so fast stopping distance > headlight beam
Got knocked upside the head by Dad (more than once)
Childhood diseases before all those vaccines
"Hydration" was not a thing -- drinking out of the garden hose was a thing
"Electrolytes" was not a thing -- potato chips was a thing
Ate the green potato chips
Got a "D" in math in third grade
Wouldn't eat Mom's overcooked beef liver
Went trick-or-treating on Halloween without adult supervision
Ate the Halloween candy we got

 . . . And that's just a start!

Default Response to Complexity: Become Vague

My employer's normal response to any situation is inversely proportional to the complexity of the stimulus. 

If the situation is perfectly simple and everybody involved is already perfectly clear about everything, he will speak at length and in detail.  If the situation is a huge rat's nest of intricate odds and ends, his response is likely to be a bland smile as he hands over some accumulated notes: "Here, deal with this."  -- After the fact, and with no briefing on the history of the whole thing. 

Remember:

WHEN IN DOUBT, BE VAGUE.

Barack the Barmy will now teach trolls to dance.

ISIL [sic] is not "Islamic".  No religion condones the killing of innocents…

Transcript of Obama’s speech (10 Sept 2014) on Islamic State strategy in Mideast - Middle East - Stars and Stripes

 "I declared Iraq a success.  This will only take a minute.  I'm going golfing." 

I wonder if there is a Las Vegas betting line on which will come first: Global Conflagration or Civil War?

Be "Careful"

Do not "open" over lava pit.

Take no unnecessary "risks".

Exercise "Caution" in your daily affairs.

"Learn" how to "use" quotation marks.  And apostrophe's. 

Not going gentle into the 21st Century

Some companies I do business with are only lately being dragged kicking and screaming into the information age. 

On a vendor web site, I'm trying to figure out this product matches what we need at the shop.  Don't bother trying to telephone the vendor -- all you'll get is, at best, a very courteous and sincere young person who has access to exactly the same web page that I have. 

But look!  They have a helpful explanatory video! 

Only not: 

"This video does not exist." 

It was a trap.  And I walked right into it with both feet, and my hands in my pockets. 

Disappointed cat is disappointed.

Calls for tighter screening for mental illness make me nervous.

The legacy news media loves to focus its spotlights on instances of violence that tickle their socio-mythic Gräfenberg spot.  When what they term a "mass murder" has occurred, the bass beat booms out, the disco lights start to flash, and the spotlights converge, and the blood dancing begins.  That's sick, really.  Probably mentally ill. 

Immediate conjecture about the Motive of the perpetrator ensues.  My bet is that Motive is something the media types learned from cop shows on TV, and that most of them could not define Motive, nor come up with a story about what Motive has to do with the etiology of a crime event.  As I understand it, Motive is irrelevant as to the fact of guilt in a court of law.  If the facts are substantiated, you will be found guilty of vandalizing your neighbor's car with no regard to why you did it.  Yet Motive continues to be a sparkly bauble to the media magpies. 

Then, eventually, we hear those magpies accuse the perpetrator of insanity.  He's crazy.  Mentally ill.  Those who seek Safety Above All call for gun control, knife control, insanity control. 

"We need better ways to screen out those who pose a danger to society."

Oh, really?  Listen to what you're saying.  Do you really want to go there?

Calling a spoiled liberal-gone-wrong "mentally ill" is an affront to our millions of mentally ill who suffer and function, more or less, every day all around us, and who even in their darkest moments of depression or self-harm, would never cross the line into homicide.

Look at the history of the 20th Century.  Who were the greatest mass murderers?  Governments -- far and away, more than all the wars, hugely and in a wholesale manner that would be unimaginable and unbelievable were it not for the gut-wrenching  fact of the number of those culled by socialist regimes during that bloody century -- the seekers of the perfect society, destroyed their own. 

You're more likely to go on vacation somewhere and get killed by a falling coconut than walk around America and get killed by a kid with a grudge.  But you're far more likely to be killed by a powerful socialist state.  So I for one do not want to give my progressively more socialist government any more information about myself than necessary.  And my health records are not necessary, except in specific cases of competency at law, and similar situations.  And mental health records are health records.  No one's visit to a psychologist should be subject to a review by some Safety Bureau. 

If we value the life part of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," then access to the means of defending life is a necessary condition of a free society.  A free society entails some risk.  Sorry, no promise that All is Safe Here.  Regardless of FDR's rhetoric, you don't have a right to feel safe.  You have a right to pursue your own happiness by making yourself safe as you care to -- without running over my right to pursuit of happiness. 

When the Safety Bureau, by whatever name it comes to be called, begins to screen out the rights of the mentally ill, it's only a tiny baby step to screening out the lives of the odd, the weak, the undesirable.  The perfect (and perfectly safe) society always ends with people being thrown into the ovens and the killing fields.

Don't go there. 

Plato - Not.

I see stuff like this.  Oh, you kids.  I don't know who would have said this, but probably somebody after, you know, BOOKS!

I like books as much as the next person, but ... Plato?!

Mom

The Hallmark holidays are not my thing.  Mothers' Day, Fathers' Day, Administrative Professionals' Day, Fill-In-The-Blank Day -- not my thing.

One of the things about Mothers' Day that chafes, galls, and burns is the marketing that implies/assumes the grudging nature of the male's compliance with the whole thing. 

"Yeah," the ad goes, "It's that time again and you're gonna hafta take the old Battle-axe out to brunch, so you might as well get it over with at So-'n'-So's Shrimp-Flavored Deep-Fried-Batter Emporium, where we have a special going and you can wash it all down with carbonated wine in Mothers' Day style!"

You MUST do this or there will BE NO PEACE.  I think that's the message.

Pajamagrams?  Seriously?

Brunch?  As opposed to just getting drunk at home?  Seriously?

Chocolate Dipped Berries?  Notice they don't even say "strawberries" this year?  Just "berries."  Could be DINGLE- !

 * * *

My mother passed away almost fourteen years ago.  I love her and miss her every day.  I still have the certain knowledge that her love surrounds me.  That's why the marketing pains me so much. 

Be vague. Be very vague.

People respond to stressful situations at their level of basic training.

They do not rise to the occasion.  What appears to be "rising to the occasion" is how the untrained view the well-trained when the poop hits the air circulator and it turns out that Mr. Well-Trained has been operating at a power-conservation level all this time.

This goes for emergency situations.  Firearms training.  It also goes for basic moral fiber, as revealed in the everyday work world.

I work with people whose response to stress (which turns out to be anything that they did not initiate knowing they could control it) is to become vague.

As a purchasing agent, I know what this look like:  department heads give me the least meaningful information and make the most egregious assumptions.

I don't work in your department.  I don't work with your equipment.  I don't know the operating parameters.  I did not engineer this project for the last eight months.  So when you bring me a little slip of paper (oh yes -- the paper size is in direct proportion to the quantity of hard information and in reciprocal relation to the degree of requester's stress) that says,
             'Price on CBN stones & holder DBL length (2x4") 5.709" ID' 
I have no idea (as I am pretty sure you haven't either, dear reader) what you are talking about.

So I basically have to both psychoanalyze the requester, and re-engineer the whole thing, and come up with a recommendation for something that's way out of my area of expertise.

See?  If anything goes wrong, blame Purchasing!

Being bad at coming up with information is balanced by being really good at casting blame in the after-action reports.

Time to wave the flag.  (Not the flag of surrender.)

Saint John the Nice

Finally, a saint for the theology of our population of aging Directors of Religious Education, et al.

First, let me say that I do not belong to any organized religion.  I'm a Roman Catholic.  Actually, Mrs. Crowndot says I'm an Irish Catholic infiltrating the Roman Catholic Church.  Let me assure you, the organization that appears as Catholic is surface organization.  Not far underneath is not so much popes as populi.  Authors of best-selling novels of mystery-conspiracy-romantic-politics may be expert in drawing the organizational chart from the Vatican on down.  But to simplify, here's the real Catholic organizational chart: 

At the top:  the triune God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Underneath:  Everybody, "Catholic" or not.  Sorry, that's just the way it is. 

Anyway, the reason I'm more an Irish as opposed to Roman Catholic is my frequent lack of respect for the workings past and present of other parts of the organizational chart that are theologically on the same level as me. 

Today, 27 April 2014, there is a certain hubbub taking place in Rome.  About nine time zones ahead of me.  They canonized Pope John XXIII and Pope John Paul II.  To speak with greater precision: "828  By canonizing some of the faithful, i.e., by solemnly proclaiming that they practiced
heroic virtue and lived in fidelity to God's grace, the Church recognizes the power of the
Spirit of holiness within her and sustains the hope of believers by proposing the saints to
them as models and intercessors." (Catechism of the Catholic Church)  The Church doesn't "make saints" -- God by grace actualizes the life of faith.  So today the Church didn't make two popes into saints; the Church publicly recognizes their sanctity. 

Why bother to make a big public ceremony about it?  Why not leave it to the populi?  I think the reason is that Jesus didn't call us sheep for no reason.  The people benefit from some direction indicating that we'd be better off having a devotion to a holy man like JPII than a "holy man" like Rasputin or some such.  In other words, the title of Saint means the Church is not going to stand in the way of your particular devotion.  But neither is the Church really in the business of promoting particular devotions. 

But that's background.  What I came to talk about is Pope Saint John XXIII. 

Specifically, WTF, Holy Spirit?  Seriously.  We're watering down the canonization of Pope Saint John Paul II The Great by working in on the same day a guy whose claim to fame was that a.) he opened a can of worms (Second Vatican Council) and b.) he was nice?

This is like the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame deciding they were going to induct a Henry Aaron (no steroids in those home runs, dude) and Bill "Between-the-Legs" Buckner on the same day.  I mean, yes, technically Aaron and Buckner were in the same league.  But they weren't really "In the Same League" -- and neither are JPII and JXXIII.  Compare the scope of encyclicals from the one to the other, just as a for-instance. 

But here's what I wanted to say:  squishy theology always loved John XXIII because he opened through Vatican II an opportunity for communist-inspired social justice, ecumenism, etc., the gist of which is that we don't need forgiveness as much as we need to just be nice to each other and feel good about ourselves.  I do not believe John XXIII would ever have agreed with most of the icky revisionists -- but neither was he known for stolid defense of the truth, unfortunately. 

This is being written hastily on Sunday morning 27 April 2014.  This is of course not intended to be definitive as much as personally revelatory.  Perhaps to my shame.  There goes my cause for canonization! 

Like you need to know one more thing that bugs me...

Buttons on web sites that say "Login" or even "Log-In" (and then, when you're leaving, they say "Logout").

There may be a noun "login" as in, "Jeez, I forgot my login for Yahoo."  Whether spell check likes it or not. 

I'm pretty sure there is no correct context for a hyphenated version.

And I can't think of a single plausible excuse for nouning "logout".  Since, like, they don't ask you for a personal verifier to get out of their system, do they?  (Unless... a prison web site? -- "One bad decision may have brought you here, but it is much, much more difficult to leave, bwa-ha-ha-ha!!!")

So, HTML geeks, listen up!  Make your buttons two words:  "Log In" and "Log Out".

Thank you.  Like you'd listen to me anyway... 

You gottta walk it by yourself

28 January 2014:  American folk singer Pete Seeger dead at 94.

I remember the energy of Pete Seeger in an outdoor concert on a summer afternoon in San Francisco in the 1980s. 

Some folks say that John was a Baptist
Some folks say he was a Jew
But the Holy Bible tells us
That he was a preacher too 

You got to walk that lonesome valley
You got to walk it by yourself
Nobody else can do it for you
You got to walk it by yourself

Oh I don't think those words meant what Mr. Seeger thought they meant. 

He thought it was something about putting on a kind of liberal uniform and joining a movement to stick it to The Man, man. 

When he sang, there was a life force that made thousands join in song.  When he wanted to "be a preacher too"  -- God, what a commie asshole. 

Pete Seeger.  Rest in peace.  May God have mercy on his soul. 

I'll only be here a few minutes...

I am sure that's what Mr. Stretch-Cab Pickup-With-Trailer said to himself when he blocked -- BLOCKED! -- the municipal parking lot here in my town on Tuesday 7 January 2014. 

Hey, Jerk:  I realize the downtown area is not very friendly toward long trucks with long trailers.  But you know what?  You're just going to have to find a spot someplace, away from the metered parking spaces, and you may have to walk a few blocks.  Life is hard.  Man up. 

But no!  You decided that YOUR convenience trumped EVERYBODY else.  I'm willing to bet that is a kind of a habit with you. 

Your time is important to you.  And it's just for a few minutes.  You deserve special treatment.  You're an entrepre-freakin-neur, after all. 

Asshole. 

Through the magic of the intertubes, it is possible to fly over strange and interesting places in the documented Googlesphere.  Imagine my state of agitated astonishment when I caught a glimpse of this bit of futurist suburban planning in Denmark:

I'm sure the futurist that came up with that brilliant idea firmly believed that "by 2014, we'll all be living in communities like this!"

Okay.  My first thought was:  Fire.  Followed closely by:  Medical Emergency.  Imagine the amount of spitting and swearing and delay if you're trying to explain to the 911 operator that yes, you can hear the sirens, but no you don't see the fire truck, so that means they must be in one of the adjacent doughnuts. 

Then I tried to think about all the advantages to this kind of planning map.  Like how wonderful it must be to be able to hear like a personal megaphone exactly what time each of your neighbors goes to work each morning.  All 15 to 23 of them, as near as I can tell.  And don't think they don't keep tabs on when you leave in the morning too.  And when you get back.  Cozy like family.  Only maybe everybody rides around on a recumbent bicycle, because Denmark.

What were they thinking?!  Perhaps the plan was based on this: "We don't know what we are for, but we know what we are against.  We're against personal freedom, privacy, and the USA.  So let's make something as not those as we can!"

The whole thing is near a golf course.  Anything that has to do with golf gets infected by a kind of anti-evolutionary derpitude.  Even when the golf is only nearby. 

I must face facts.  The little Dutch prairie dog people who live in these colonies would probably say they are happy, and that they count themselves lucky that at least they don't have to live in a Minecraft-on-LSD nightmare like MVRDV's "Stackable Sky Village" in Copenhagen.  And yet...

And yet.  The Stackable Sky Village apartments are an example of extreme architecture that nevertheless tries to create a space that fits the humans.  I can't think of a context in which you could truthfully say that about the attempt to make the humans fit the spaces in Brøndby.

Temporal elasticity

Some year I should take a week off in February.  And make no plans.  Then it might actually seem like a week away from work.  A nice lo-o-ong week.  But do I do that?  No.

I decide to take This Week off.  And it turns out that, so close to solstice and all, the astronomical and gravitational vectors are all pulling the time axis of our dimensionality out of whack.  There are severe time-compression forces acting right now.

Sometimes the atmospheric pressure changes so quickly my ears just about explode.  It's like that, but this week it's time that's coming down like crashing surf.  At this writing, it is Tuesday, 24 December.  Christmas Eve.  I am not sure I remember how I got here from Sunday afternoon.  Yes my memory is that poor, but also:  time compression.

In the long run, scientists are able to go on treating time as if it were a perfectly even number line.  That is because it all evens out.  You see, once I get back to work, time will be stre-e-etched out again.

It all evens out.  Just not the way you would wish.

Oh, merry Christmas. 

I am the one who is unreasonable?

• Cover your mouth when you sneeze. Especially in the produce section.
• I don't object to your chewing gum.  I object to your doing it with your mouth open.
• You swing your car to the left, then hit your brakes and veer off into a right turn.  It's like signalling, in a way.  But you could try using your turn signal -- you know, those blinky light things.
• Yes, I know I am going too slow for you.  That's because this is an off ramp!  There's a 30 MPH curve coming up in less than an eighth of a mile.  Oh, I see you didn't want to exit here!  Bye!
• If you pick something up in the store and then decide not to buy it, put it back where you got it. Don't just put it up on a random shelf.  Especially if it's perishable!  Or give it to the checkout clerk -- really, they would rather you did.  
• When you ask me the price and I tell you the price, I am not open to giving you a wholesale price unless you want to talk wholesale quantities.  I don't dicker.  The more you try, the more the price is going to go up.  Where do you think you are, Casablanca?
• Spray painting other people's property is not art.  It is not Urban Art.  It is not Street Art.  It is vandalism.
• Politicians:  Leave me the hell alone.  
• No I don't want to hear about your Libertarian candidate.  
• No I don't want to hear about your fad diet.
• No I don't want to hear about how your friend knew somebody who beat cancer with fad diet.
• If you ask me about work I'm just going to say, "It's work. If it was Fun, they wouldn't call it Work."
• No I don't want to hear about your TV show.
• No I don't want to hear about your [some sport that involves pushing an object over or through a thing] team. 
• Rest assured that if your retired buddy emailed you a Really Funny Thing, I have already seen it on tumblr a few weeks ago.  
• I only say I want to accept  the things I cannot change.  I never said I would like  them. 

Speaking of annoying things

You weren't? 

Oh.  I will, anyway. 

One annoying thing is that my industrial vendors' web sites are still all gaga over social media.  Somebody in a Dilbert-style world steps out of a manager meeting and says, "Our competition is on FaceTweet!  We need some of that FaceTweet social stuff too!  Get to work on that, Snodgrass!  I want to see World Wide Wickets on FaceTweet by end of month!  While you're at it, see if you can get some of our product videos on SelfTube!  Then use that new electronic mail thing to send it to all our prospects, you hear me?"

But, alas!  The annoyance, it grows.  As the earth ages, and hopes darken, the sources of annoyance, like evening shadows, only grow.

Perfectly nice e-commerce sites that already contain all I require now have annoying (disturbingly annoying) floating boxes letting me know that a live person is online to chat if I have any questions.  Holy weeping Madonna... Even the UPS online shipping that I have been using for many years now has the annoying floating box of chat-invitation.  Just get out of my way already!  Stop! Don't follow my cursor down the screen!  That's annoying! 

Let me clue you in, Chat Invite Box Site Designer:  had I wanted to talk to a live person, I could have gone to a "store" or even picked up a "phone" or used a "link" on your "site" go send an email through your "contacts"!  Please just let me relish the anonymity and privacy of wandering through your e-commerce areas unmolested.  Please. 

Please?

I know they are not listening.

No, I don't want to talk on your phone.

Am I the only one creeped out by some stranger wanting me to hold their phone up to my face? 

I have customers come in to the parts counter who are not the decision makers.  Sometimes, indeed, they are not very good communicators -- their Spanglish doesn't even seem to include very good Spanish.  Finally I ask, "¿Hay alguien ahí que habla Inglés más?"  (Is there anybody there who speaks more English?)  

They fish for their phone.  The phone emerges from a grimy pocket, is manipulated by fingers uncontaminated by soap.  "Here, talk to my boss."  They thrust a petri dish smart phone at me.

But for the past six weeks, I have had a new policy:  I don't talk on your phone.  If your boss wants to talk to me, he can call my land line.  Here's my card.  We're done here.  You can communicate and make decisions yourself, or you can have el jefe  call me on MY phone.  

Because, face it:  the pockets those phones have been lounging in are too close to some icky sweaty parts.  That's majorly creepy right there.  In addition, you've had it up against your face -- YOUR FACE!  Eeeeew.  Lastly, there's those hands that are handing that phone toward me, with their fingernails that remind me of the black moldy grout in the corners of poorly maintained gymnasium shower rooms?  No, I don't want to talk on your phone.  

Is this unreasonable?  No, it is not unreasonable.  It is the rational policy of sound public health.  

Now go home and dunk that thing in Clorox.