TubaOrNotTuba

I wonder if other fairy tales leave as much collateral damage in their wakes. Today is C-Day, and the C may stand for Cinderella, or Caligula, or Celine, according to your interpretation. The whole city has been “stood on its ear”, which might be a tribute to the quality of the musical talent, or a tongue in cheek reference to the way that this oversized village handles fame and fortune (as reflected in the flow of traffic).

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This afternoon, after making THE arrangement for the next place we will live, we headed over to the shops to see what might have been invented in the world of technology since the start of the summer. Not much. However, the enticement of an extra 10% removed from any purchase at one store, because we muddle in the world of education, was too good to let slip away.

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Advertisers (aka the conscience-free) forget that some of those who are in the larger audience are a) older than 25 and/or b) have a memory span that is longer than the proverbial fifteen minutes. When a detergent company started misusing the piano music from Charlie Brown, I was able to grit my teeth and mute the TV. Pig-Pen was only a bit player in that study of life. The ability of the automotive industry to recycle is legendary; they, too are forgiven, for they know not what they do. The cell phone industry doesn’t escape my spleen ventilation quite so easily.

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If I had to create a lexicon for the workplace, I think I’d try to apply foods as metaphors. For example; to describe an occupation that was “predictable”, as in “I know what’s going to happen next”, then the food would be porridge. Porridge from the hand of the holy grandmother. An acquired taste, which I never acquired. One that can be modified with brown sugar and fresh milk, but that remains bland.

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Somewhere in the Bible, I am exhorted to “suffer fools gladly“. I shall, but only because you’ve asked me nicely. Imagine the chef who is presented with a rich garden, full of succulent plants, all ready for harvest, of an amazing variety. When that same chef manages to prepare a meal of KD, I suffer, and perhaps not so gladly.

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In summation, a life between parentheses. The premise offered this afternoon by my friends over at Thalassa, during a series of short documentaries dealing with the world as seen from a container ship. Often, while my bus does its short detour beside the river, I see heavily laden freighters, inbound and outbound, with carefully corded containers. This was a chance to see vignettes from the life of those that move “all our stuff” around the globe.

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No thanks, I’m fine right where I am. I’ve finished another great book by Paul Theroux, and it comes at the moment where the closest I’m likely to approach to the border of my country is, well, irrelevant. I’m not intending to travel any time soon.

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I know why I don’t like shopping on “big days”; the crowds, the problems with parking, the errors at the cash register. It turns out that the negative aspects continue even when I don’t go along for the experience. All the details here are hearsay, but the parties involved are fine upstanding citizens of my household so I have no doubt concerning the veracity.

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Well produced television programs take on a life of their own. The syndicated world transcends the boundaries of politics and language, and if you were to suddenly find yourself in a different city, a world away, the set in your hotel room just might offer up a slice of your earlier life. After all, not being renewed isn’t the end of the road for certain programs. There’s a whole world out there, and they just might be watching.

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My morning started out with a complete validation of what I’ve been doing for the last two decades. My professional duties have had, as a focus, the evangelization of the computer as a useful tool in education. Today, I did the setup for a meeting involving administrators, teachers and representatives of the minister of education. Nothing too showy; a laptop and a projector, some video footage, the usual. The difference is that this audience expected the tools to be there, and they welcomed the media content. Stuff that had been recommended by someone to someone else via a link in email, which they all can’t live without. A conference room where the laptop was ordinary. Working wireless.

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