10 posts tagged “rambling”

Ever since I was a kid, I've considered the last four months of the year as "the holiday season".   Starting with Labor Day, the holiday season includes Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and ends on New Year's Day.

Despite the fact that the beginning of September also meant the beginning of a new school year, I looked forward to the holiday season every year.  I still do now, especially because the holiday season means the end of hot summer weather, which is yet another reason to celebrate.

Many people lament "rushing the season", but I always cheer up in late summer when I see Halloween items appear in the store, knowing that summer will soon be over.  And, like a little kid, I still like seeing the first Christmas decorations on people's houses, though they appear earlier and earlier every year.

And this year is the earliest yet.  I saw the first house with Christmas lights on September 1st.  That's right, September 1st.   Within a week, I saw a second house similarly lit.   But even though it's amusingly early, I still smiled to see it.  After all, it's my favorite time of year.

Thoughts?

Nowadays, many types of businesses have drive-through services,  There are the ubiquitous fast-food drive-throughs, with some even having double drive-through lanes on both sides of the building.  I’ve seen drive-throughs for banks, pharmacies, various bill-paying venues (water, electric, etc), dry cleaning, and so on.

I’ve even read about drive-through funeral homes!  Call me old fashioned, but I think this is in extreme bad taste.  If you can’t get your lazy ass out of the car to pay your last respects to someone, then you shouldn’t bother coming at all.  When my time comes, I know I don’t want to be propped up in a window like a sideshow attraction.

Similarly, Las Vegas is home to drive-through marriage chapels.   Too bad they don’t have the same convenience for divorces!

When I was a kid , I never saw drive-throughs for anything other than banks and bill paying venues. Maybe dry cleaners, too, but I don’t really remember. Though Wikipedia tells me that In-N-Out Burger in California claims to have had the first fast food drive-throughs in 1948, I didn’t see them in the sixties during my childhood living in New England and the Mid Atlantic states.

There were plenty of drive-ins back then, similar to Sonic, but not drive-throughs. If you went to Mickey D’s, you had to haul your ass out of the car to get it.   The first fast food drive-through I saw was in 1977 when I visited Dallas, Texas for the first time.

Unlike now, there wasn’t one window to pay and another to get the food.  You gave the order at the squawk box to someone who sounded like Charlie Brown’s teacher (wuh WAH, wuh, wah, wuh, wuh, wuh, WAH???), then drove around to one window where one person took your money, then gave you the food.

A recent twist I’ve seen in new fast food joints is that the window are now set higher into the buildings, probably reflecting the fact that so many people drive SUVs and other oversize vehicles nowadays.  I used to reach straight across to hand over my money — now I have to reach up.

Feel free to list any unusual businesses with drive-through service in the comment box below.

Since my earliest childhood, I've instinctively rejected the idea that there is only One Right Way to do various things.  My natural inclination has always been to think in shades of grey, rather than adhere to the simplistic, dualistic limits of black and white thinking.   My instinct has never been to unquestioningly herd with the flock, but rather to ask why, doing my own research if necessary.  And if I don't find the answers to be logical, reasonable, or currently relevant, I reject them.

Humans by nature are ingenious and malleable.  We are able to adjust and adapt to various situations, often finding multiple ways, albeit by different means, to arrive at a workable solution.  Few things in life require a single method of accomplishment, as "All Roads Lead to Rome" tends to be the rule, rather than the exception.

However, humans throughout history tend to have an atavistic fear of difference, however benign.  The desire for uniformity, for mass conformity, probably is at the root of most human conflict.  The idea that all the pieces of a puzzle need not be of universal shape and design in order to fit together in a harmonious whole is nowhere near attaining critical mass at this point in human history, if it ever does.

Nevertheless, there will always be a sizable minority of contrary souls like me to make sure the idea is never extinguished.

Thoughts?

It's amazing how time increasingly flies the older you get.  I remember when I was a kid, it seemed like I had to wait forever for Christmas and my birthday to arrive.   I was fortunate that my birthday and Christmas were at opposite ends of the year, which made the waits somewhat more bearable, as I never had to wait a whole year for something good to arrive.

But now that I'm getting older the birthdays come around again much too quickly for my taste.  I've reached the age where I want to keep on living, but I don't want to have any more birthdays.  I think if I could pick any age to have remained for the rest of my life, 35 would have been a good age.  It's old enough to have some sense, but young enough to still have the energy of youth.

Yes, you guessed it.   This old bastard has gained another year today in the march toward death.

I suppose it's better than the alternative.

Your thoughts?

I always feel let down to some degree right after Christmas, whether or not I had a good holiday. If I had a good Christmas, I want the feelings to go on, but if my Christmas sucked, I feel down because there's no hope left for recovering the holiday for that year and it's another long year before I get another chance. I get depressed to see the colorful lights being taken down and neighborhoods being returned to their former drab darkness.

I'm also bummed because after the long wait for the holiday season through the long endless southern summer, the season is over all too soon and now I can see the return of the next miserable summer looming on the horizon, which usually arrives sooner, rather than later in the south.

People have long complained about the rushing of the holiday season: Halloween decorations in August, Christmas stuff up in September. This has never bothered me, because it signals to me that summer will soon be gone for another year.

But it seems as if the retail industry is now rushing the after-Christmas holidays -- and I don't mean New Year's Day, which is, after all, the last hurrah of the holiday season. No, I mean Valentine's Day. It used to be that one didn't see Valentine's stuff out until after New Year's Day, or, at least not until after Christmas was over. This year, however, I began seeing Valentine's shit in the stores at least two weeks before Christmas. I've decided I hate this shit as much or more than some people hate the rushing of Halloween and Christmas stuff. I've no problem with the crap being put out in January, but no earlier.

What's next? Will we see 4th of July stuff being sold on New Year's Day sometime soon in the future? I'm surprised they don't do it already, as department stores have traditionally started selling bathing suits in their stores directly after Christmas.

Thoughts?

Many people cannot abide silence, for whatever reason. They cannot drive their cars without the radio or some other noise...err...music device operating at all times. Similarly, there are those who have the TV on all the time, even if they are not sitting down actively watching it.

I've found that the older I get, the more I can tolerate silence and even appreciate it at times. Like most teenagers, I used to listen to music nearly all the time, the louder, the better, and I'd do my homework by it. I still like cranking up the music from time to time, but I find myself listening to talk radio more and more, and sometimes, even driving down the road in silence, alone with my thoughts. If I have a passenger in the car, I usually turn the radio off, as I usually prefer to engage in conversation.

But I've never been one who had to have a TV going all the time. I only turn the TV on if I'm going to sit down and actually watch. Otherwise, it stays off, saving me some electricity. I'm baffled by those who don't turn off the TV when they have guests, especially when the purpose of the visit isn't to watch TV together.

Sometimes, I will sit still, close my eyes, and empty my mind of busy thought, and be conscious of the silence. But it's not really silence, as in the total absence of sound, but rather, it's the small daily-life sounds no one notices in the usual cacophony of their typical days. It's the hum of a refrigerator, the whirring of a fan, the whoosh of cars passing in the street, the chirping of birds and crickets, the moan of a train's horn, the roar of a lawn mower, and so on.

I've found that engaging in this periodically will many times inspire me to write, and will even sometimes bring on a feeling of contentment that I can't quite explain.

Thoughts?

While browsing the newspaper online the other day, I read the Dear Abby page where there were several letters in response to an original letter where a man had written to Abby about his dismay in finding that his fiancee was not a virgin.

I've never understood that mentality, why it would be so important to marry a person utterly lacking in practical knowledge about sex, especially when most experts agree that sex is a very important component of a successful marriage.

In the book, The Politics of Lust, author John Ince wrote:

Indeed. Though I've deflowered my share of virgins in my time, a better time is always had when I'm with a woman who is sexually experienced. Those men who want virgin brides, while being sexually experienced themselves betray a certain arrogance in their desire that their wife's only knowledge of sex will come from them.

Much of this valuation of virginity comes from Christianity, originating in the Catholic church. They believe that Mary the mother of Jesus was a perpetual virgin: that she was a virgin before she became pregnant with Jesus and that she remained a virgin after he was born and for the rest of her life.

I don't see why this should be so important to Christian belief. Jesus' importance as a prophet or the son of God, should not be altered in any way by Mary's sexual experience or lack thereof. It's only when one believes that sex itself is a dirty and shameful thing that Mary's virginity would have relevance, as such Christians would want Jesus to be free of any "taint".

But I digress.

To me, virginity has no inherent value, either good or bad. It is an entirely neutral status. To those men hunting virgin brides, I'd advise them first to practice what they preach or, more realistically, to look for other, more important qualities in their prospective mates.

The word of the day is:

IMAGE

In the dictionary, image is defined as both a noun and a verb, with no less than 23 variations of meaning.

There is image in its most basic meaning of a picture or a likeness.  We say that a boy is the spitting image of his father, and to take a photograph is to "capture" a person's image.

Image also refers to perception and reputation.  A person's image is akin to the cover of a book; a thin veneer that does not necessarily accurately correspond who that person really is.  It's a thumbnail sketch, a shortcut that  doesn't always lead down the expected path.

There is an overemphasis on image in today's society, which, to me, is putting the cart before the horse; putting form ahead of function.  This is like buying a car for the spiffy paint job and not looking under the hood.

I've seen job applicants given more advice on what to wear to a job interview, than on their actual hard qualifications and aptitudes to do a job.  It is so that Albert Einstein would likely be passed up for many jobs because of his wild hair and ratty sweaters. 

There is even a vocational category known as image consulting.  Image consultants help people with their personal "window dressing", in order to help them convey a particular impression to a prospective employer, which may or may not bear any relation to their actual selves, aptitudes, or qualifications.  Image consultants are then, in a sense, experts in the arts of deception.

It's unfortunate, but people today often care more about how things look than how they actually function.  I've seen employers concentrate on matters of window dressing, while ignoring nuts and bolts basic concerns, as the business goes to hell in a handbasket.

One even encounters undue concern with image in religion.  Some denominations have long lists of thou shalt nots: drink, dance, see movies, play cards, and so on, ad nauseum.  Most of these same sects have strict appearance requirements for women than run opposite to the equally shallow appearance expectations in the secular business world: no makeup, no pants, dowdy dresses, long, plain hair.  Oddly enough, such denominations do not often require the men to also adopt a visual stigma that immediately identifies them as being part of a particular religious group.   Such religious groups care more about what's on the outside, about others might think, than what's on the inside; a person's actual faith or lack thereof.

To give excessive emphasis to image is misleading, often leading to mistaken impressions.  The old adage, "Don't judge a book by its cover" should be kept uppermost in one's mind when it comes to matters of image.

Thoughts?

On Sunday, my AC conked out on me, even though it's only four years old.  The compressor is running fine, humming like normal, but no air is being blown out.

And the rest of the week hasn't gotten any better.   The next day, my computer was acting slower than normal, so I rebooted it as that usually helps to speed it up a bit.  When I came back online and opened the Firefox browser, I discovered that all my bookmarks had vanished.  Poof!   So, I've been laboriously going around to various sites trying to re-create what I had.  But I had a complicated set of bookmarks and I know I'll never remember what all I had, so I won't get everything back.

The next thing I did was schedule a backup for the computer.  It stopped midway through, informing me I didn't have enough space to perform a full backup.  I was pissed off to find that it had retained what it had been able to back up until that point, however, and had eaten up what space I'd had available.   And I have no fucking clue how to get rid of the partial backup I did so I can get back what space I'd had available before starting the backup.

I had the day off yesterday and though it was raining, I went out to pay some bills.  It was clammy and humid in addition to being wet.  Nevertheless, I was glad to be under my car's cool air conditioning considering I now have none in the house.  As I paid the last bill at a drive up window, a man in the next lane pointed out to me that I had a flat tire.  Fucking great.  It was pouring down rain at this time and I certainly didn't want to be out trying to change a tire in that weather.

However, there was a tire store a block from where I was, so I crept down there carefully.  It was OK, as it wasn't quite to the point of being a flopping flat tire just yet.  I even clung to the vain hope that it was just a leak that could be repaired.   But that was silly of me.  It, of course, needed to be replaced, even though the tire in question was less than a year old.  Money has been tight lately and I really didn't need to be buying another one now.  But as I can't put it off and drive with only three tires, I did what I had to do.

As I sat in the waiting room, the TV was talking about tornado warnings all over my area.   I commented on this to the clerk and he said the tornado sirens in town had gone off two times already that afternoon.

WTF?  That's the first I'd heard of it.  Though I lived a couple of miles from where the tire store was, I'd not heard any sirens at all.   The closest siren to me is about a mile off and with two fans running in my house, there's no way I'd have heard it unless I stepped outside and even then, I'd have to listen carefully to pick it up.

We had several more warnings throughout the evening, though none in my direct area and the rain continued as the remnants of Hurricane Fay slowly made its way through the area.  I'm under a tornado watch even as I type, but I'm guessing it's only a precaution, as I think the bulk of what's left of the storm has moved northward.

I can only hope the rest of my week get better.