Eccentric Flower:199901/splinter of the minds attic
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eighteen january splinter of the mind's attic Random bits and leftovers today, I'm afraid. - - - Jette mentioned Moon Pies this morning. We made sure to bring back two dozen Moon Pies with us from Chattanooga. Two boxes. They sell them in the supermarket there. But they're single-decker. I never had the single-decker ones before this. I like the double-decker ones much better. It's a little bit of a letdown. Nonelvis has discovered that you can heat them and eat them with a knife and fork. I'd always been told this, but she discovered it on her own. I think she read the wrapper. I seem to recall the wrapper says something about it. Maybe I should try that and see. Maybe it will renew my interest. I'd hate to think I'd lost my faith in Moon Pies. - - - A quote from Xeney: "Poor Jeremy. You can't envy his options: either he gets a hyperactive girlfriend who can't focus on one thing long enough to finish a conversation, or he gets an obsessive bitch who doesn't want anyone to talk to her." This is me. This is exactly me. This is why I'm hard to live with. - - - In the Herald the other day, I saw two separate cartoons that overlapped painfully with something I'd been reading (in the Hightower book, but don't worry, I'm not going to throw heavy politics at you again). Sally Forth: Greg: "Hey, Sal, here's an exercise regimen for people planning a vacation ski trip." Baby Blues: Dad: "What was your favorite part of the day today, Zoe?" Hightower, in a book full of politics, pollution, and polemic, devotes a whole section to fun. How we don't have enough of it. How we are underpaid and exploited, and if that's so, why the heck are we so cooperative about it? Why aren't we goofing off every chance we get? The underlying theme of the "fun" section is: They're not paying you enough to make yourself miserable for them. Which is something I tell Nonelvis just about every day. I will have to be a long way up the scale before I am paid enough to work a twelve-hour day. Oh, I do sometimes, but that's usually because I have goofed off so regularly in the course of the project that now I have to do two weeks' worth of work in one go - which is, come to think of it, exactly the way I worked all through school. Anyway: You're not having enough fun. Today is a holiday for me; it might not be for you. If you're at work, do me a favor and do a little goofing off on my behalf. - - - It occurred to me suddenly last night that stirring some of those chopped dates into a bowl of fresh oatmeal would be really good. The problem is that I only eat non-instant oatmeal, the kind you have to cook and cook and cook - I don't like the other kinds - and I don't make it very often because of that. Mayhap I shall have to overcome my inertia. Either that or make date bread. - - - Nonelvis told me a story Eric told her yesterday. Since this is third-hand, I may get the fine points wrong, but the punch line is intact. Eric was at the National Puzzler's League convention, which he goes to every year. Now, the NPL members are diehard puzzle geeks. Not only are they excellent solvers, but they also include many of the people who create the puzzles you see in magazines like Games. This is the real, triple-distilled stuff. So they were on a bus which had been chartered, I dunno, to take them from one convention event to another - a bus full of NPL'ers. Even though it apparently wasn't a tour, the bus driver seemed to be harboring a secret desire to be a tour guide, and kept up a running stream of patter. Eventually they approached San Diego. The driver said, "Now, I don't know what you think of when you think of San Diego -" "Diagnose!" said the entire bus, in unison. If you understand the joke, you work too many puzzles. Stop now while there is still time to save yourself. I'm glad I wasn't there. I'd have had to jump out a bus window. - - - A quote from Shmuel: "I like cats in the abstract." What does that mean, exactly, Shmuel? - - - In Joliet, Illinois (says the Globe), the city fathers are about to enact an "antimonotony ordnance" which will require subdivision builders to vary the looks of houses built near one another by alternating colors, roof heights, window styles, or other cosmetic features. The idea is to prevent a Levittown of identical houses. Robert McCloskey predicted this ages ago. In his children's book Homer Price (c'mon, you remember Homer Price - the doughnut machine? Aroma the pet skunk?) he tells about the creation of Enders Heights - how a new set of prefab, all-modern, all-identical houses is erected on the property surrounding the old, Gothic Enders Homestead. Well, people move in, and Enders Heights is a success, but due to union disputes (Dulcey Dooner, the town drunk and sole member of the Street Sign Putter Uppers Union, wants more money than the Mayor will pay), the street signs aren't up yet. No real problem ... until the Enders Homestead gets moved to its new location and a final house, just like all the rest, is erected overnight in its place. Then chaos ensues. It turns out that the residents had been finding their way to their houses by using the Enders Homestead as their landmark and counting off. Now no one knows how to get home. Eventually Homer figures out which house is on the Enders Homestead lot and the day is saved, but the citizens insist that the Homestead be moved back to its old location. "You see, the worthy tenants," McCloskey concludes, "though up and coming, aren't taking any chances." That story was published in 1943.
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