CSotD: Random thoughts on various topics
Skip to comments
No need for an update today: Lynn Hsu lays out my life in all the detail anyone needs, several times repeatedly as ordered.
To be honest, it varies greatly from department to department, which I know because I’ve reached the fabled three score and ten years, at which point you spend more time down at the medical center than about anywhere else, and you can fool yourself into thinking you’ve mastered a few shortcuts.
For instance, it makes sense to begin checking in by giving your name and DOB, but that, in turn, assumes anyone expects you to, which they don’t.
Making sense only confuses people who do this stuff over and over, day after day. You can still do it, but it’s amazing how few times anyone chuckles as they ask you your DOB and say, “Oh, right. You just told me.”
There are a few phrases that do seem to work, like “Nothing has changed since I had blood drawn at the lab an hour ago,” and there are people who know they’re being silly when they hand you the damn clipboard to fill out, but none of that changes the system.
It makes me feel like one of those sensible, thoughtful gaffers in the “Becoming Like Your Parents” ads for Progressive Insurance.
Stop trying to make sense and just go with the flow. There’s nothing to gain by confusing people with logic.
Though if you find you are good at playing with people’s heads, it’s possible to make a living at it, as demonstrated in this Barney and Clyde (Counterpoint).
This is wonderfully set up, and my guess is that Clyde is paying for having been entertainingly conned. I’ve certainly been known to.
Pardon My Planet (KFS) offers something that makes me wonder each time I see it, and I see it a whole lot. When did it become not only okay but clever for women to throw drinks on men?
I think I first saw it in “Tootsie,” when Gina Davis’s character throws one on Dustin Hoffman, in his Michael identity, but the joke then was that both of them were sorting through how men (in general) relate to women (in general) and vice-versa. It contained a great deal of nuance and character development and social commentary.
None of which seems to have come through for the average viewer, since the gesture has since become an empty, performative way of showing spunk or some such. At best, it shows that sexism still reigns, since men are estopped from responding with anything more than chagrin.
Trust me: If you throw a drink in the face of someone of your own gender in a bar, you’ll both end up on the sidewalk, if not in the back of a police car.
For some reason, the grapefruit equivalent never quite caught on.
Now comes Joy of Tech with yet another example of how logic ruins everything.
And I suppose another example of my theory that they should have left Batman and Superman to the 10-year-olds and approached older readers will better grounded material, which, by the way, I thought they kind of did. Once Spiderman and his gang hit the comics, we stopped reading the DC stuff.
For that matter, I left Spiderman and his gang behind once I discovered girls who didn’t throw things at me.
It’s a process.
Still on the topic of personal preferences, Adam@Home (AMS) is deep into a thread about rollercoasters which began here.
Not everyone likes thrill rides, and (spoiler) Adam appears to be amongst them. Nothing wrong with that, as long as you lay your cards on the table and the humor in this story arc is that he doesn’t.
I like rollercoasters, but only the rickety wooden kind that make you think they’re about to go off the rails and into oblivion. The swerves and drops are fun, but mostly because you fear it may be your last, even though you know it won’t be.
They build some looseness into the wooden experience, plus often not doing a good paint job so that, while on the ground you know it’s fully inspected, once you’re up there, you’re not so sure.
By contrast, metal coasters are obviously safe, and all you get out of them is a solid thrashing. You might as well pay a bunch of thugs to work you over, which isn’t my idea of a good time.
Juxtaposition of the Day
When Amazon first started, I lived in a town where the only new books were an hour’s drive and a ferry-ride away in Burlington, VT. You could call (long distance) and have them order you a book, but you’d have to go get it when it arrived, which added another ten bucks or so to the price.
Amazon wasn’t much faster, but it came to your doorstep, which mattered out in the sticks, despite all the people predicting failure because the business model couldn’t possibly work. The geniuses who predicted this are silent today, though I suppose that’s because a lot of them are dead. Amazon isn’t.
What is gone is the local store. Grocers, pharmacists, clothiers, even diners have all been supplanted by chains, and now the chains are beginning to feel a competitive pinch.
I suppose folks in the Big City will keep receiving same-day delivery from Bezos Inc., but for those of us among the Great Unwashed, I could readily foresee a time, as Mr Boffo predicts, when small entrepreneurs will decide lean freedom beats fat slavery.
Edison Lee (KFS) mourns the end of summer vacation, but at least he had ambitions for the free time. I can’t stand cartoons and commercials that show relieved parents happy to be rid of their kids. As a kid, I kinda wanted to get back to my friends, if not perhaps to school itself, while, as a parent, I missed those long days together.
Now here’s a chain store from my youth whose back-to-school ads are firmly embedded in my brain:
Comments 6
Comments are closed.