Friday Musings 2/3/2006

By lex

Posted on February 3, 2006

 

A dog would never crawl its way behind the desk in my office. A dog would never intertwine itself among the profusion of wires and perch itself atop the surge protector. Once seated there, a dog would not, with apparent and implacable malignancy, step its little furry feet atop the power off button, thereby sending into the never-sphere 45 minutes worth of work on a Friday afternoon. And if, by chance, it did? A dog would feel guilty. It would not stare at you in insolence and contempt.

This is only one of the reasons why I like dogs so very much more than cats, gentle reader. There are more reasons. This is only one.

Save your work, often. I know. But still.

We now have three cats, although I am supposed not to notice. The third one is not actually ours, you see. We are only holding it for some other person. Who is only waiting until they can get rid of their dog, in order to claim the new cat, which is in fact nothing but a kitten and therefore irresistible, apparently. It is only for a little while. I am not to worry.

I am not deceived.

Was a day when I’d have had to do a six month deployment to be greeted with a surprise cat. I put it down to punishment of a sort, conceived that perhaps I somehow deserved it, being as it must have been a kind of karmic recompense for the received joy of months on end floating in monastic seclusion from the finer things in life, and in close proximity to thousands of men I might not ordinarily have chosen to associate with.

Go on cruise? Come home to a cat. Serves you right.

Now I am at a loss.

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Flew back from the east coast yesterday, as the more alert among you may have intuited. Parenthetically, despite my many years of living here in California, I have not yet learned to call everything east of Barstow “Back East.” So, despite the fact that I call US HWY 5 “The Five,” rather than “Highway 5,” I am not yet assimilated. Just so you know.

(Speaking again parenthetically, and using actual parens this time for emphasis: Is this a good time to ask ourselves what dark and sinister Paramount Pictures marketer could have conceived painting that kind of a costume on Jerry Ryan, and casting her in the role of an emotionless cyborg? What target audience segment was he going after? And since we’re on the topic, shall we walk boldly where angels fear to tread?

No. No, I don’t think so.)

The gentleman in the seat next to me but one (the Hobbit interposing) was a rather eccentric Canadian mushroom farmer. Now, if you were to say to me, “Lex, ‘Rather eccentric’ is tacitly implicit to the term, ‘Canadian mushroom farmer,’ ” I might not argue you the point. But anyway. The Hobbit and himself held up a merry conversation on the merits of mushrooms large and small, herself being a great fan as opposed to your correspondent, whom, the very best that could be said on the topic is: Not so much. After all, they are like division officers dealing with the CPO’s mess: They are kept in the dark, and fed a crock of…

Fewmets.

It also has something to do with their unfortunate association in my imagination with toadstools. Even before one separates the component pieces of the compound word “toadstool” (to say nothing of another vague association with witchcraft) these fungi have a rather shocking reputation, when growing in the wild, of bringing blindness and even horrible death to the unfed, unwary and unwise. This was all brought to my shrieking comprehension one day in my long lost, oft lamented youth – I was then at an impressionable age – when my dear, wonderful, sainted moms came exploding out the back porch of grandpa’s place in Richmond one memorable day, her red hair flying behind her, and having found me turning over a toadstool in my inquisitive and experimental hands, proceeded to give me a tongue-lashing Irish lullaby of rather epic proportions.

Was I mad? Did I care to die instantly? Had I no thought for her feelings, left behind all broken hearted and weeping over my cold, dead corpse?

No, not at all and I didn’t think so. Which were strange, hasty and insufficient answers, of a type and nature guaranteed to hoist me forcefully to the wash basin for the wire brush and yellow soap routine, a ritual as familiar to the obsessive/compulsive set today as it was to my own upbringing. Because I’d touched the filthy thing, present, horrible death that it was, and now I needed a scrubbing, so I did.

Parenthetically once again – have you any memory of cod liver oil, at all?

No? You’re lucky. Loathsome doesn’t begin to do it justice.

But my point is that I’ve a rather jaded viewpoint on the article of mushrooms. And you cannot blame me for it.

I am a victim, gentle reader.

So the eccentric Canadian farmer guy, noticing that I was reading the latest issue of the Economist (which is a lovely magazine [even if it does insist on calling itself a “newspaper”] and if you’ve no time for anything else I can highly recommend it), leaned over and said,

“I can’t help noticing that you’re reading the Economist.” To which I could only nod is agreement, nothing more being obviously required of me. After a moment he continued, “You are aware that it’s written in Great Britain?” and again I nodded, agreeably. This had not escaped my observation.

Seeming puzzled he continued, “And you must have noticed that the editorial board often takes a point of view somewhat at odds with the foreign policy of the United States government?”

Ah.

Here is where the assumptions all fall smartly into place: I was an American! A serviceman even! How could I read the Economist and not understand that there were people in the world – smart people! – who disagreed with the policies of the United States government? Was I not amazed?

I was not.

I was, however, rather amused.

I leaned back over towards him, winked and whispered conspiratorially, “I know. I think it’s important to keep apprised of what passes for thinking among those from whom nothing else is required.”

Which put a stopper in his gob, at least for a while. At last, he went back to talking mushrooms.

< –>

Yes, yes! Rhythms, I know! And yet, my muse: She sleeps. Plus it’s coming close to the end, and I do so want to get it right. And it takes time, duddn’t it? Which is the fire we all burn in, and life so very full besides. So you must be patient with me, gentle reader. By and by I come.

< –>

Headline: US jobs growth less than forecast!

Text:

However, the US unemployment rate unexpectedly dropped to a four-and-a-half year low of 4.7%, the Department of Labor reported.

Response: Sigh.

It used to be thought that you could never get anywhere near 4% unemployment, that number being “structural,” meaning that there were always at least that many folks between jobs, moving from coast to coast – maybe even Back East! Still, 4.7% percent unemployment is for all intents and purposes “full employment,” and yet inflation remains low (apart, of course, from the volatile energy sector). And still, somehow, it’s bad news.

Can’t get a break.

< –>

Watched the SOTU, t’other night. Because I had to. Don’t know why, talk about preaching to the choir. That is of course, if the choir consists of majorities of both the House of Representatives and the Senate, while everyone else who could get a seat represented “resistant skeptics, yet to be converted.”

Like judicial confirmations, the whole thing is becoming something very close to kabuki theatre, a kind of ritualized exercise, as this freeze frame of Senator Clinton (D-NY) seems to confirm.

< –>

Yeah. I know. That’s not even her.

But still.

Update: Hee-hee.

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Have a great weekend!

 

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