Dear You,
When my email has the subject heading RE: I am on guard. Usually it's just a REPLY from a correspondent about something I've sent, but too often it's one of those dreary FORWARDS.
You know what I mean, I'm sure. Opened, the message contains block after block of email addresses of others who have received the thing, and when I finally get to the actual contents, it is something (a) I've probably been sent before, (b) really stupid, (c) really sappy, (d) really obnoxious, or (e) all of those. It's getting so that I feel about the people sending me this stuff the way I once felt for people who said "between my brother and I" or couldn't pronounce "dour" or "err" the proper way. Superior. (Okay, snobbishly and arrogantly so.)
The worse are those emails clearly wrong. I just got the one about the photographs taken at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. These were from negatives found in "a Kodak box camera found recently in a sailor's locker and still in amazing condition." This gifted photographer was, it seems, everywhere in that area, including in a plane, judging from some of the shots. Also in the future, since one of the ships he recorded wasn't built until a few years after that event.
How did I know this was another hoax, begun by someone with wayyyy too much time on his (probably) hands and forwarded by dozens of unthinking (okay, perhaps well-meaning . . .) people before it reached me? Well, Postman wrote that an education is supposed to give people a "built-in crap detector." When I get stuff like this, mine goes off. Loudly. And I open Snopes.com and type a few of the words from the message into the search box. Voila!
It's crap. As I thought. And my next action is to delete it. I don't think it does much good. It won't be long before someone else forwards it to me for my enjoyment.
In Cyberspace what goes around gets around and around and around. Endlessly.
Monday, September 14, 2009
Friday, September 11, 2009
The Things I Carry
Dear You,
Do other men like cargo pants? I live in them and have several pairs, both long and short. I'm wearing shorts at the moment, and my pockets are stuffed like a chipmunk's cheeks.
In my back pocket is my wallet, of course, with more plastic rectangles than I can possibly remember. Last week the fellow in the ticket kiosk asked if I were a member of the Crown Regal Club. Who knew? After a search through the wallet, I came up with the card, and if I go to the movies a few more times I'll get in for free. Or is it a free small popcorn?
A constant companion is my Leatherman micra. It's in the top side pocket, and with it I can adjust my glasses (the right lens is forever falling out), tweeze a hair, open a beer, scissors a lock of milady's hair and/or file my fingernail. And more, if I'm creative. Aaron gave it to me for Christmas years ago, and every so often it goes missing. Generally I find it in a pocket of a pair of cargo pants I've hung back in the closet.
In that same pocket is a cloth handkerchief. Men of a certain age, I'm told, have these things. I never blow my nose with it (it's for wiping the lens after I re-install it in the glasses), and I am ever vigilant for the possibility of presenting it to a weeping damsel. So far no luck on that one!
My new iTouch rides in the lower left pocket, and I reach for it at every excuse. I like to think it makes me au courant. The grandchildren love it -- I have some games on the thing. What I like is that it holds several novels and a handy reader. Also the most up-to-date weather reports. And I can keep up with the latest musings on Facebook.
What else? Oh, yes, my keys, some receipts, a pen (can't go anywhere without something to write with, even with the little Notepad function on the iTouch), the grocery list, my tiny bottle of nitroglycerin tablets . . . Tim O'Brien wrote a book about what the soldiers in Vietnam carried. Should I be uncomfortable making this association with the contents of my pants?
Do other men like cargo pants? I live in them and have several pairs, both long and short. I'm wearing shorts at the moment, and my pockets are stuffed like a chipmunk's cheeks.
In my back pocket is my wallet, of course, with more plastic rectangles than I can possibly remember. Last week the fellow in the ticket kiosk asked if I were a member of the Crown Regal Club. Who knew? After a search through the wallet, I came up with the card, and if I go to the movies a few more times I'll get in for free. Or is it a free small popcorn?
A constant companion is my Leatherman micra. It's in the top side pocket, and with it I can adjust my glasses (the right lens is forever falling out), tweeze a hair, open a beer, scissors a lock of milady's hair and/or file my fingernail. And more, if I'm creative. Aaron gave it to me for Christmas years ago, and every so often it goes missing. Generally I find it in a pocket of a pair of cargo pants I've hung back in the closet.
In that same pocket is a cloth handkerchief. Men of a certain age, I'm told, have these things. I never blow my nose with it (it's for wiping the lens after I re-install it in the glasses), and I am ever vigilant for the possibility of presenting it to a weeping damsel. So far no luck on that one!
My new iTouch rides in the lower left pocket, and I reach for it at every excuse. I like to think it makes me au courant. The grandchildren love it -- I have some games on the thing. What I like is that it holds several novels and a handy reader. Also the most up-to-date weather reports. And I can keep up with the latest musings on Facebook.
What else? Oh, yes, my keys, some receipts, a pen (can't go anywhere without something to write with, even with the little Notepad function on the iTouch), the grocery list, my tiny bottle of nitroglycerin tablets . . . Tim O'Brien wrote a book about what the soldiers in Vietnam carried. Should I be uncomfortable making this association with the contents of my pants?
Friday, September 4, 2009
It's always greener
Dear You,
So there I was, walking back and forth behind my mower, wondering why I love cutting the grass so much. So much, in fact, that annually I watch from my Winter perspective in Florida for news that the snow is melting and revealing the new Spring crop, and I hasten back to the North to begin the harvest, well ahead of many of my Snowbird neighbors.
Perhaps it's because it is by far the most pleasurable of my To-Do Things Around The House. Does anyone really enjoy cleaning the basement or the garage? Paying the bills or shampooing a carpet? Each swath shows accomplishment and progress toward completion. And that smell!
I've even considered the act to be an ancient echo of my agrarian roots. I won't plant a garden -- not so long as a grocery story is within a day's drive! No tilling and toiling for me, nosiree. Still, the urge to keep that grass at croquet-playing level is truly primal.
In addition, I rather like that throbbing that goes up my arms, along with the motorcycle-level of sound that lingers in my ears even after I've come back inside. I like waving at my neighbors on both sides of my line, and I feel smug because they're perched on their riding machines . . . the wimps!
Maybe I'll never really understand it. What I know is how I feel at this moment, showered and in fresh clothes after an hour out there. As I type this, I'm wondering if it will rain this weekend, enough to make it necessary to get back behind my mower in a couple of days. I hope so.
So there I was, walking back and forth behind my mower, wondering why I love cutting the grass so much. So much, in fact, that annually I watch from my Winter perspective in Florida for news that the snow is melting and revealing the new Spring crop, and I hasten back to the North to begin the harvest, well ahead of many of my Snowbird neighbors.
Perhaps it's because it is by far the most pleasurable of my To-Do Things Around The House. Does anyone really enjoy cleaning the basement or the garage? Paying the bills or shampooing a carpet? Each swath shows accomplishment and progress toward completion. And that smell!
I've even considered the act to be an ancient echo of my agrarian roots. I won't plant a garden -- not so long as a grocery story is within a day's drive! No tilling and toiling for me, nosiree. Still, the urge to keep that grass at croquet-playing level is truly primal.
In addition, I rather like that throbbing that goes up my arms, along with the motorcycle-level of sound that lingers in my ears even after I've come back inside. I like waving at my neighbors on both sides of my line, and I feel smug because they're perched on their riding machines . . . the wimps!
Maybe I'll never really understand it. What I know is how I feel at this moment, showered and in fresh clothes after an hour out there. As I type this, I'm wondering if it will rain this weekend, enough to make it necessary to get back behind my mower in a couple of days. I hope so.
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