Category: Short Subjects

First Apple loves Intel.

Now Pink Floyd reunites.

Can anything and everything happen in this topsy-turvy world?

I’m a coffee wimp. My coffee has to be flavored, sweeter than rock candy, and lighter than a glass of milk. But still, there are things I cannot abide by. For instance, Blueberry Creme flavored coffee. I mean, ugh!

(Aside: Creme as a label on food or drink means there is no milk or milk product involved. This is true. Compare and contrast to cream.)

So I accidently found myself drinking Blueberry Creme coffee, after an inept 7-11 employee found he couldn’t read the word “Hazelnut.” Yes, I like hazelnut flavored coffee. As I said, I am a coffee wimp.

But the perfume of the Blueberry Creme should have given it away. I failed to notice this. The coffee, itself, tasted like I lightened it with the left over milk from my BooBerry cereal. This might sound tasty to some of you, but I can assure you, it was as disgusting as most of us believe.

I happened to find myself in Lawrence, today. Lawrence is a busy little hamlet tucked away in between Rockville Center, Valley Stream, and Long Beach, not too far from where Nassau County turns into Queens. This area reminds me of a couple of my college suitemates, who, being from Queens, were pretty disdainful toward Long Islanders. And though Queens is physically part of Long Island, they insisted that they were not in anyway shape or form, Long Islanders. They called us FLIDs. Since this is a family show, I can’t tell you what the F stands for. Or for that matter the D. Rest assured, the LI in FLIDs stood for Long Island. And while they may have had a point about what suburbia does to young person, fresh out of high school and attending a local college on Long Island, I still think that they were understating the fact that the line between Queens and Nassau can be very blurry.

So whenever I am out in Lawrence, or any place west of Baldwin, let’s say, I am reminded of my Queens suitemates, because I begin to believe that I am actually in Queens, except we can still turn right on red. But everything is closer together, the shops, the cars on the roads, the insane amount of traffic lights, and the neighborhoods, themselves. I mention the neighborhoods, because I think I was in Lawrence, but I may have been in Hewett, or Hewett Park, or Hewett Place, or Hewett Packard. (I’m only making one of those up.)

At any rate, I stopped for gas, and ran into the convenience store attached to the station in Lawrence or Hewitt, or whatever, and got a cup of coffee and the absolute best prepackaged-bagel-that-had-been-sitting-there-for-hours ever. (You knew I’d be talking about food or some-such eventually, right?) The everything bagel was soft and moist, with just the right snap on the outside, and it had an onion and oil spread in the middle that was savory and complemented the bagel perfectly. I knew I was getting something good because it was wrapped with a seal that said, “Important Notice: Not responsible for Kashrus if packaging is not intact.”

I assumed, rightly it turned out after I checked on Google, that Kashrus was some sort of Kosher terminology. Well, actually, Kashrus is the actual state of being Kosher. But I was still impressed that they were so worried about someone sneaking a shrimp into the bagel as it was sitting in the gas station, they’d seal it with this warning.

And I did mention it was delicious, right? Damned gas stations in Suffolk don’t have anywhere near that quality of quick food. Stupid FLIDs.

What follows is a self-typed transcript from the 03 Nov 2004 Talk of the Nation radio program on NPR. This segment was titled “Election Over, Debate over Morals Persist.” The host is Neal Conan. Neal is speaking to George Lakoff, Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at UC Berkeley. They took a call from a listener, Grace from Louisiana. This transcript starts at about 5:48 on the stream from NPR. The emphasis below is mine to highlight something I felt was beyond belief, and the grammar is theirs, but the spelling is mine.

Grace: Hello?

Neal Conan: Hi, you’re on the air, Grace.

Grace: Yes. Thank you. Ah, I am a first time voter, for the first time in 30 years. Uh. In Louisiana we had the, uh, the amendment for, for, uh, towards marriage that we had, uh, in September. And I registered to vote to vote specifically for that issue. And, uh, as you may know, uh, 79% of the population voted for it, and an activist, uh, judge, uh, has, um, is in the courts right now, he said that it was unconstitutional. And that really goes to the, the grassroots of why you have seen the results in this election, is that we, uh, as a Christian most Christians in this nation trust that God chooses the king, and that means the president. And we have enjoyed the luxury of religious freedom in this nation, which is what this nation was the basis of its founding. And we have seen, in recent years, that an oligarchy is forming in this country where activist judges are using preference over principle in their interpretation of the Constitution, uh, assuming that this church, that the Constitution has a separation of church and state. The only constitution in this, in this world that had that clause in it was the Soviet Union. In the United States Constitution, they do not have a separation of church and state. So we have seen the Ten Commandments taken out of the state capital in Alabama, and we have seen, uh uh a uh an increasing attempt to take away the Christian heritage from this country. And, and we are for everyone having their basic freedoms, but we have been seeing our freedoms to express our beliefs threatened increasingly more.

George Lakoff: (interrupts) Free, freedoms are not threatened, but in effect we do have a separation of church and state in our Constitution.

Grace: (interrupts) It’s not in…

George Lakoff: If you read that Constitution very carefully, there is going to be no established religion in this country.

Grace: (interrupts) And the reason for that…

(Crosstalk)

Neal Conan: (speaking over crosstalk) Uh, Grace, if…

(Crosstalk. Grace’s voice fades out)

George Lakoff: In particular, (garbled) wrong about the, the, um uh you know, uh, the way that, uh, your freedoms have not been impugned. In fact, it’s the reverse. The oligarchy in this country, uh, is the Right, the Radical Right, and Bush is part of the Radical Right. This is a radical issue. Uh, he wants to impose a hierarchy in this country, and, uh, this is not, uh, this is supposed to be a democratic country. That hierarchy is a hierarchy of, among other things, financial success, uh, for one thing. Secondly, a particular view, not only of Christianity, but of religion in general, a “strict father” version of Christianity, not a “nurturing” version of Christianity. And most Christians in this country follow the “nurturing,” not the “strict father” model of Christianity. Ah, your model of Christianity is not that of most Christians in this country. And most Christians in this country want a separation of church and state as is given in the Constitution.

Neal Conan: Well, ah, I think we, uh, saw the divide illustrated…

Kathy and I are taking another trip to Boston. This time, we’re bringing the digital camera (we forgot to last year), which means that some time in the next five years, I’ll post some pictures from there. Catch up with you soon!

This CNN article notes that the City of Los Angeles has decided that the terms, “Master” and “Slave,” are inappropriate and insensitive labels on computer and electronic equipment. For those of you unskilled in Geek-speak, a master drive in a computer is the primary drive, while a slave drive is secondary. It doesn’t really mean anything other than the master drive is where your computer will first look for booting instructions.

But we are now too sensitive to use the word “slave” anymore, unless you’re into bondage, in which case you’ve got a lot more to hide from polite society anyway. I’m not a big fan of this type of soft censorship. It leads rise to charges of racism when someone uses perfectly appropriate words that sound a bit like the verboten words. It changes the way language is used, and it makes people believe that Liberals have run amok.

Except Political Correctness is not a liberal disease. Even though many people on the left blanch at insulting words, the idea that we shouldn’t offend anyone ever is a very conservative trait. I try not to use words that are offensive or insulting because, as a writer, I want to get my thoughts across to the reader, and throwing a big, bad word in the middle of something is like a traffic light on the Autobahn. I use any word as a tool, and most of the time a racial or sexual incentive isn’t needed… you jerk.

Back to the issue. Calling a computer peripheral “slave” doesn’t diminish or make light of the horrible history that America had with slavery. It isn’t a racial slur. It isn’t even meant to be provocative. It is simply one more sexual euphemism that computer scientists labeled every part of the computer with. Do you want your disk hard or floppy? How much RAM do you have? Have you upgraded your firmware? Attach that dongle or the software will not load. Please, show me the racist engineer that decided that a slave drive was a sneaky way of sticking it to African-Americans, and I’ll show you a thousand engineers that snicker every time the computer prompts them to insert their disk into any drive.

I am sometimes surprised at what society picks next to be the dread word. English is loaded with words that don’t have the noblest roots. So we still “hysterical,” despite its extremely sexist origins. If “slave” is indeed going to be a false target for White guilt, what will we call that group of people in our history books? The shackled class? It’s too silly to even joke about it. But it is one more example of how we can’t seem to focus our attention on the things that make racism and sexism prevalent in any society.

A couple of weeks ago, I saw a kid on bike get hit by a car on Sunrise Highway. I thought for sure the kid was going to be seriously, seriously injured, but he actually got up and limped to the median before anyone could reach him and tell him not to move. The impact sounded bad… horn, screech, dull thud, shattered glass; although, that was just the headlight smashed by the petal of the bike. It was a sporty car with a low front, so he slid right up the hood. I was in a parking lot when I heard the horn and screeching. I saw the actual impact, and dialed 911 after shouting “Holy Shit!” about four times.

Another guy, who apparently saw the car run a red light, had also called the police and reached an ambulance dispatcher before me, so, by the time I had hung up with the police, we could hear an ambulance siren down the road. I told the police what I saw, which was just the accident itself, not the causes, and they told me they didn’t need my statement. The other guy, meanwhile, filled out a form. The kid who got hit was obviously dazed, possibly in shock, but didn’t seem seriously wounded. As I left, they were checking out his legs, which has some abrasions, but that was about it. He was very lucky.

It bothered the hell out of me, though, for the next couple of hours. My empathy was not only for the kid, but for the driver of the car, who did pull over, did the right thing, and waited for the police to arrive. But she was getting yelled at by people as soon as she got out of the car, and she broke down crying as soon as a cop went over to talk to her. She was just a kid, too. It would not be something I would want to have in my memory, the day I hit someone.

The witness guy said to me, “Man, when I was that young,” gesturing over to the young driver of the car, “I did things that I’m ashamed of now. But I never hurt anyone but myself. You don’t realize that running a red light can kill someone.”

Baseball’s post-season, especially when the Yankees are involved, always gets the oxygen flowing in my red-blooded American lungs. Autumn nights in the ballpark evoke the same emotions in me as summer nights watching fireworks while listening to some Aaron Copland; I get all patriotic and proud of my country and our freedoms and our pastimes.

And then there is the election of Arnold the Barbarian in California. As little as it affects me as a New Yorker, whenever I think about it, I get a sour taste in the back of my throat. I imagine that several Italians had the same feeling when the granddaughter of Mussolini was elected to their parliament a decade ago. It isn’t so much that Guv’ner Arnie won’t be a good politician, or that any damage has been done to the system, but I have to wonder where this might take us ten or twenty years.

So yesterday had me both proud about and embarrassed by my country. I’d like to think that is uniquely American, too, but it may just be me equivocating, again.