Pundemonium: Coloring Outside the Box

On the way to the elevator (no direct flight of stairs to the parking deck), I'll ordinarily pass the cubicle of semi-boss, coworker, attorney, and IT whiz Ben. I stopped at his cube-entrance this afternoon after I'd shut down my computer, locked up the essentials, and donned my briefcase. 

"I'm going to make like a shepherd," I announced to him, then stood by, patient and silent. 

Ben pinched up his face, laid a hand across his mouth, and began tapping his finger on his cheek as he leaned back to think. I could nearly hear the gears, though in his case they run pretty smoothly. Let's see; "Make like a drum" = "…and beat it"; "Make like a banana" = "…and split". (There's even the tasteless "Make like a baby and head out".) But a shepherd? Finally he raised his eyebrows in annoyance. 

I continued, "…and get the flock out of here." And turned and began to walk down the hall. Behind me, I heard (faintly), "You'd better run while you still can." 

Ben may have been ticked off due to another exchange maybe half an hour earlier. I was looking over some checks that had come in from a few of our indebted employees. One check appeared to be someone's entire (US) tax-refund check – it had "US Treasury" on it, the Statue of Liberty, and so on. The signature was rubber-stamped (anyone remember Pink Floyd's "When the Tigers Broke Free"? No?), and I looked closely at the name signed. "Oh, NO!" I gasped, and leapt out of my chair and headed over to Ben's cubicle. 

I showed him the check, and pointed at the stamped signature. "What name is that?" I asked. 

Ben peered at it, and began spelling the last name out: "M, A, N, G… E?" 

"I thought it was an A." 

"Could be." 

"Do you know what that spells? 'Manga'. Do you know what that is?" I knew he did. Ben nodded. 

"But do you know what this means?" I went on, excitement building in my voice. 

Ben shook his head in cluelessness. 

"It means," I explained as I took the check from his hands and began walking back to my desk, "that he's an anime of the state." 

Most of a minute of horrified silence. Then, from Ben: "I can't hear you."

 

A Good Hearing, or Another Red Herring?

More certainly goes on at work than passing out flowers and cooler-bags, of course. 

Priscilla (who now has to explain to her husband the embarrassing bald spot in her garden) and another coworker, Fannie, were in Priscilla's cubicle, diagonal from mine, talking about something. Usually I shut my ears to ongoing conversations – the appropriately padded walls of our cubicles don't shut them out completely. But sometimes, exchanges just lodge in my ears… and with no context to frame them, either: 

Priscilla: I don't mean to be an ingrate, but ― 

Fannie: No, be an ingrate; I like that about you! 

And just to prove that Ben doesn't restrict his comments to puns, he's good with rhetorical questions. In fact, the other day I foolishly asked him, "What if there were no rhetorical questions?" 

He smiled with interest and leaned his elbows on the chest-high shelf that marks the top of my cubicle. "You know," he began, "since you ask that…", stopping when he noticed I'd recognized I'd been stung again. 

A while back, Hugo and Ben literally had a loud, afternoon-long debate on whether one's sense of honor toward other people should, and could, diminish over time. At some point Ben mentioned to Hugo the concept of verbal conundra, though he didn't take that concept much further. Later, I asked Ben: "Some time you've got to tell Hugo the story of the Paradox of Zeno." 

Ben looked apologetic. "I know, but every time I try, I never get to finish it." 

Anyway, he came up to my desk on Monday and asked me, "What is the German word for 'auditorium'?" 

I thought a second. "Uh, I believe it's 'Hörsaal '." 

"Which means?" 

This was obviously an etymological question. "It's a large room – Saal – where you can, well, listen to stuff: hören. Just like in Latin" (Ben's an attorney, so he does ow-knay ome-say Atin-lay); "audīre means 'to hear' or 'to listen' – so you've got 'audio' in English." 

"Right," said Ben in too-ready agreement. "So…" (uh-oh) "can you show a silent movie in an auditorium?" He walked away. 

My pupils must have gotten tiny as I turned my gaze up to the ceiling, and began stroking my chin contemplatively. I've yet to find a good answer.

 

Pundemonium: Keeping Your Cool at Work

Today was Administrative Professionals' Day, formerly named Secretaries' Day. Yours truly, as is likely obvious from other postings here, is an Administrative Assistant (Senior) to a corporate director (and staff of nearly twenty) for a major, world-spanning firm headquartered not far from the Washington DC / Baltimore / Philadelphia megalopolis.

Traditionally in the office, the department gets together and presents their admin with a small gift, a card, maybe flowers. Previous years (with various firms) have seen me receiving various nice little pieces of office gear, and so on – more than once I've been the recipient of a nice, logo-bearing coffee cup… which I turn over to my mother (or to brother Sarge, who works as an engineer for directly competing firm), who is a coffee drinker. And this gives me to opportunity to say in mock outrage: "On this day of all days, I got mugged!"

Naïve me… I'd forgotten today was that day, so was puzzled (though delighted) to see one of our tête-à-tête tables set up with a platter of sliced fruit, box of "donut holes", another box (yes) of fresh-brewed coffee (which I still don't drink). I snagged a hole on the way to my desk… and was surrounded by most of the department at my next pass by the table.

Besides a thoughtful card and some beautiful flowers (mostly deep burgundy tulips) direct from Priscilla's garden, they also presented me with a nice insulated canvas bag, obviously designed both to keep a six pack (of soda, beer being a no-no in the office) cold, and show prominently our corporate logo.

"Thanks, all of you," I said sincerely, and then pointed at my face. "And all this red is sunburn from Sunday's 5K, not a blush," I added, blushing.

Aurelio, my Italian coworker, asked unwisely whether I might have a pun for the occasion. "Well… I just have to say" – and I waved the insulated bag over my head – "that I couldn't work for a cooler group of people."

The Mouse, the Crow, and the Cockroach

Lest anyone think I've mercilessly leapt up and down on poor conservative friend Anon E. Mouse in hobnailed boots, ruining a bee-youtiful friendship… I opened up a lighthearted exchange with her just to ensure I hadn't, plus I figured her conservative friends might get a kick out of circulating among themselves a story of flaky liberal ideas… 

-----Original Message-----
Sent: Wednesday, April 25, 2007 2:03 PM
Subject: Wiping Out Global Warming

Thought you might get a chuckle out of this approach/idea: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070423/od_afp/entertainmentus_070423163424 

Be great to have the worry behind us, huh? 

AgingChild 

Here's the article, in case the link gives out at some point: 

Give Global Warming the Bum's Rush: Sheryl Crow

Mon Apr 23, 1:23 PM ET

Sheryl Crow is suggesting a bottom-up solution to wipe away global warming: limit each trip to the bathroom to one piece of toilet paper, according to a statement on the US rocker's website.

Crow said she had spent most of an environmental tour of US college campuses thinking of easy ways for people to battle climate change.

"Although my ideas are in the earliest stages of development, they are, in my mind, worth investigating. One of my favorites is in the area of conserving trees, which we heavily rely on for oxygen," the signed statement said.

"I propose a limitation be put on how many squares of toilet paper can be used in any one sitting," she explained.

"I think we are an industrious enough people that we can make it work with only one square per restroom visit, except, of course, on those pesky occasions where two to three could be required."

Other plans she has included not using paper napkins.

"I have designed a clothing line that has what's called a 'dining sleeve.' The sleeve is detachable and can be replaced with another 'dining sleeve,' after usage," she explained in the increasingly bizarre posting.

"The design will offer the 'diner' the convenience of wiping his mouth on his sleeve rather than throwing out yet another barely used paper product... this idea could also translate quite well to those suffering with an annoying head cold."

Her third idea was for a television reality show in which the winner would be the contestant who lives the most environmentally-friendly life. The prize would be a recording contract.

Crow's spokesman was not immediately available to elaborate on the singer's proposals.

Copyright © 2007 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AFP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Agence France Presse.  

So Anon wrote back: 

-----Original Message-----
Sent: Wednesday, April 25, 2007 2:09 PM
Subject: RE: Wiping Out Global Warming 

Wonder what size the square would be.  Better yet we could all use, can’t think of the word, that the French had in most bathrooms, that washes you.  No paper. 

Regards,
Anon E. Mouse

"that [thing] the French had in most bathrooms"? She doesn't know what a – ? 

-----Original Message-----
Sent: Wednesday, April 25, 2007 2:20 PM
Subject: RE: Let Us Spray 

Ah! You're thinking of a bidet (And warm water, no less!): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bidet 

Of course, then the contention will be that we're using too much water… 

PS: There was one in "Crocodile Dundee"; the Aussie bloke discovered he had one in his NYC hotel room, and concluded it was a water fountain! 

AgingChild 

Heh-heh… 

-----Original Message-----
Sent: Wednesday, April 25, 2007 2:24 PM

You got it.  Yea, knew it would then turn into a water issue, but at least the trees would be saved. 

Regards,
Anon  

I managed to get serious a moment (and hint at an area of recent contention between us); no response as of close of business today: 

-----Original Message-----
Sent: Wednesday, April 25, 2007 2:45 PM
Subject: RE: Let Us Be Cool

Ah… but will they make it through the ensuing drought? 

Grand-scale issues can't be resolved by a simple, single approach: global warming, racism, economy, culture-clash, pollution. Speaking of Australia, the Aussies discovered this when they imported rabbits in the 1800s (IIRC) to deal with weeds. Trouble is, rabbits will be rabbits; thus… population explosion of rabbits in the Outback: no natural predators, either! 

Another solution would be to suggest we revert to our grandparents' method of using pages from the Sears Catalog. Whoops; they merged with KMart. Or is that Wal-Mart? 

Actually, one tongue-in-cheek – but really intriguing – suggestion I've heard to conquer global warming is to set off a bunch of nukes, and bring on a nuclear winter. Further suggestion is to test the idea in downtown Teheran… 

Look who's downwind of Iran, by the way, where the radioactives would fall: Afghanistan, China… 

AgingChild 

I suggested Teheran only as a polite concession to her conservative stance on world (and domestic) issues; I do not advocate flattening, or irradiating, that city… nor indeed using a nuclear option to address climatology. This is much like the classic (but true!) urban legend of a man getting rid of his cockroaches by setting off a bunch of bug-bombs in his house… only to have his gas-stove's pilot light ignite the fumes, and level the house. The cockroaches are said to have survived.

 

Mouse's Tarbrush

While I was sleeping soundly in the wee hours this morning, having done a little carbo-loading in advance of today's 5K-trot, Spartacus was keying out a response to Mouse's "Proud to Be White" email. As I mentioned not too long ago, Sparks cuts through most BS like… well, like a plow cuts through a line of BS and turns it into fertilizer for something much more tasty and far less objectionable. 

I'm not going to pass it along to Mouse (and Spart doesn't request it) for the very reason he gives in his first paragraph. Spartacus, you've got the soapbox: 

I also received that same POS white pride thingy you got from your mousey friend. I got it from an old(er) dear friend of mine, and I knew from past experience that getting into it with him would serve no useful purpose, so I just quietly trashed it. 

Re Mousy's use of her grandparents as an example--I love how many times that always gets trotted out to justify one's racism. Hey guess what--my grandparents (on both sides) were immigrants too. In spite of all the hardships they had to endure, they enjoyed the key and supreme advantage of being WHITE in a white society!!! They also had an intact (extended) family structure to help ease the transition (to a certain extent), and they came from a culture which was basically similar to the one they found in America. 

Let's contrast that with the blacks, whose families were torn apart by slavery, dragged here involuntarily to an entirely alien environment and culture from what they had known--and no matter how many generations they remain in this country they will always and forever be recognized immediately as DIFFERENT solely because of the color of their skin. Unfortunately nothing will really change until ALL people of all colors wake up to truly believe in their hearts, as MLK used to say, that what is important is not the color of a person's skin, but the "content of their character". 

The white master race has ghettoized blacks, demonized, marginalized, and humiliated them; cheated them at every turn, spat on them despite their every effort to assimilate (anyone remember the black volunteers from the Revolution, the Civil War, WWI, WWII. etc? How about the Tuskegee Airmen?). Were their efforts appreciated? Were white minds changed? No, instead they were segregated, lynched and exploited. 

Millions of blacks, starting from even before this country became the USA and continuing right on through today, managed to live productive, crime free lives, many enduring the most grinding and hopeless poverty imaginable (through no fault of their own other than having a dark skin color), and yet it is so easy for even supposedly educated intelligent white people to characterize the entire race as lazy, shiftless, amoral criminals--and they do it with a straight face!!! And they defend themselves!!!!! 

Is the white race really so morally perfect? Weren't some of the greatest murderers of all time white? Hitler and Stalin come immediately to mind--between just the 2 of them we are talking somewhere on the order of 40 MILLION or more dead! Any comparable black mass murderers? Well, there was Idi Amin, some other two-bit African dictators, Duvalier & son in Haiti, and some lesser known tribal elements including the Hutus of Rwanda--collectively, their scores come nowhere near our two paragons of white pride, der Fuehrer and good ol' Uncle Joe! 

Some may say, "Hey, that's not fair, you're talking about nationwide events and war!". OK, how about individual murderers? Let's see, virtually all American serial killers have been white. I can only recall one black serial killer, though I can't remember his name, he was convicted for a bunch of child murders in Atlanta back in the '70s or '80s. Anyway, he was strictly penny-ante compared to that shining example of white patriotism, Timothy McVeigh, let alone the legions of other sick, white, mass murdering bastards. 

Moving on from murder, how about robbery, and/or murder committed during robbery? All the famous vicious robber/murderers of the Great Depression were white--Baby Face Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd, Machine Gun Kelly, Ma Barker and her family, Bonnie and Clyde, John Dillinger. I thought whites had a work ethic and knew how to hunker down and thrive during economic adversity…? 

The white race doesn't have to take a back seat to anyone when it comes to criminality. There was also the virtual genocide of the so-called "Indians" (the indigenous people of America) at the hands of white folk, and the Ku Klux Klan, the Mafia--do I really have to go on?! When will racists see how ridiculous their prejudices are--just as the "white race" did not commit all the above listed crimes, but rather white individuals and groups, so it is with the "black race"--condemn the individual who is guilty of the crime, not an entire race for the crimes of the individual. Why is that such a hard concept to understand? 

I also find it paradoxical that white American culture, which has so universally condemned the black race, has also almost equally universally embraced (and co-opted) other elements of black culture. For instance, virtually the entire past 100 years of popular music in America is the history of black-originated music--blues, ragtime, jazz, gospel, R&B, soul, even rock & roll (don't believe that one--go listen to some Big Joe Turner and then tell me otherwise--let alone Jimi Hendrix being the greatest electric rock guitarist who ever lived!). 

There's no more I can add here. For those who feel similarly, there's no need to say more. And for those who don't, there's nothing I (or Spartacus, or the ghosts of Martin, Booker, or Jimi) could possibly go on with that would make the least part of difference. It might help to buy a copy of "Crash", and watch it… though I doubt even that would be much of step in turning the shameful numbers around. 

Let me close with Spartacus's final word; he generally signs off his email with a great (and generally previously unknown) quote; this one's by Amos Bronson Alcott: "Civilization degrades the many to exalt the few." 

Amen, brother. Let me hear you say Yeah!

 

48:02

Yes, that was my time for today's 5K: forty-eight minutes and two seconds – and I overheard one of the record-keepers saying that the clock was four seconds fast. Well, I'll take that oh-two anyway. I'm not embarrassed or ashamed of the time – I finished. Oh, I'd certainly like to improve it; a few years back, my time was under forty minutes. But a few years before that, I wasn't running at all. I will improve my time, which I can do by running more on these courses, and walking/trudging them less… plus more practice.

Older brother Sarge ran a 15K that started an hour after ours, and his time was ninety-something minutes (and he looked beat afterward… but he, too, had completed his run). Although I won't normally post pictures of myself or/and of other people mentioned here, I'm adding here a photo of Sarge (left, of course) and me (right) as we're about to cross the finish line.

Sarge's regular companion, Chonggun-nunim, my sister-in-law-in-law, joined me for the 5K, though once we passed the first mile-marker, I began my jogs/sprints, and she finished several minutes behind me. Now, this evening has my face and arms quite red – this early in April, there was no leaf-cover over the trail we ran, a former railroad-track now torn out and replaced with a fine gravel. I'll slather on the aloe today and the next couple days, and be fine – though I should have used the sunblock I'd brought.

I called Spartacus as we were starting out, and again when I finished, since the town where we did this is the same town where he and I attended a couple years of elementary school together, mumble years ago. On the phone, I cautioned him, "Look, just because I called you panting, doesn't mean it's a compliment!" He laughed it off. I offered him to join us sometime (we're of similar circumference), maybe even head up to his seaside state for a run; he declined for now, and insisted there'd have to be an ambulance. "Okay," I said cheerily, "you can drive the ambulance, and I'll ride in back – just keep the paddles warm and greased up, okay?"

This being lovely, bucolic, rural southern-central northeast US, it wasn't surprising that in the 5K there was a farm-figured Mennonite woman in homespun, prayer cap, and sturdy black walking shoes – and, amazingly, she pulled the event's bright orange tee shirt down over her green, feedsack-pattern dress. Here she is as she nears the finish line:

At a couple points before and after the race, we also saw some of this area's regular horse-and-sulkies (though no buggies this time). The air, too, was rather obviously that of horse- and farm-country… not extremely so, however.

Chonggun-nunim and I started out at the back, with maybe three to six people behind us, all walking (though briskly at times), and I did pass some more as the event progressed, but this wasn't an objective. I didn't quite catch up to the nun in crutches, the guy walking on his hands, and the trio of one-legged runners. Maybe next time.

Just kidding! Some folks had brought li'l ones in strollers, and ran or walked with them, others their larger dogs. In fact, even while trudging along, I managed to toss out a pun at a woman headed back the other way (we were running out just over a mile and a half, turning around, and heading back, to get the full 3.2 miles). She was running with a light-colored, sleek-looking greyhoundish dog. I greeted her with a cheery "Now, that's one way to set a target, and whippet!"

We stopped by our dad's grave, and were pleased to see a beautiful little purple-blossomed forsythia growing near his marker. This had been planted by our sister Mew on her visit a month or so ago. The cemetery asks that we not plant flowers, so eventually the mower will claim this pretty sight… but it was still sweet to see, especially with purple being Dad's favorite color. Sarge got a couple photos (I may post them later), and then got an additional photo of the steeple of Dad's church, which can be seen from his grave – which was the prime reason we chose that particular spot. And Dad loved his church (and denomination) very much, so this is just right. Here's a photo of it that Mew took last Fall:

Nearby is also visible the tall Victorian tower of the main building at the university where he taught nearly forty years. This, too, must please him. The official name of that building is Old Main (as you'll find at many universities and larger colleges); typical of him, he deliberately twisted the name – in a process he called Mangled Saxon – into "Old Pain".

Likely he's delighted by his neighbors. A nineteenth-century marker close to his commemorates a Jonathan Sebastian (Dad loved Bach); the immediate neighbor to his left is a woman with the odd name of Ditty Delilah (which I pronounce as "Dirty Delilah"), and to his right a – no kidding – David Butts… might be Seymour's brother?

Pundemonium: Someday Our Prints Will Come

…and now let's wash out our eyes with something slightly lighter-hearted. 

The usual goings-on go on at work, even while here on the blog I'm unwrapping a chocolate Jesus – and tearing into, let us say, the anti-chocolate faction. 

Earlier this week, one of my bosses – have I mentioned Kendra before? – was patiently looking over a long, impromptu demo that Ben was presenting for her in his office. It involved some pretty elaborate manipulations, via Microsoft Excel, of ways of converting various world currencies while calculating ranges of costs of living in different regions of various world countries. 

Ben's quite the wiz with Excel… and if I can make that program fetch and roll over, he can get it to fly without a cape, bark a sonnet, and draw nothing but aces from an unstacked deck. Anyway, I was just slightly auditing his demonstration and explanation to a very patient Kendra (I'm in the next cubicle over)… and hurriedly covered my mouth before I could laugh at her comment to wrap the demonstration up: "Well, I say it's fuzzy math – not because I don't understand it, but because I need glasses." 

And today Ben walked past my desk, grumbling, to the corner printer (his own must have been down). "Boy, this printer sucks!" he growled. 

I snorted as a kind of audible, nonverbal eye-rolling, and explained, "That's why it keeps pulling in paper, Ben."