Monday, May 24, 2010

A Bad Case of Flummoxation, An Olio of Ideas


I often find myself flummoxed these days. Views From the 14th Floor has always been simply an outlet for myself. It was never intended to address any one issue or theme. At times I talk about education because I work in education. At other times I talk about political issues because they affect us all, and I care. At other times I talk about societal issues because things catch my attention, or more likely annoy me. Sometimes I reference the fact that I'm attempting to write a murder mystery, and the troubles that arise when one writes a full-blown novel. I believe this constitutes what some would call "being all over the board." How does one realistically fit all of this into one blog? There are people who read for one reason and others who read for quite another. Switching gears so often runs the risk of alienating potentially regular readers.

Because my ideas for blogging don't just come to me when I sit down, and I have a tendency to forget them if they come to me at times when I'm not blogging, I write notes to myself. I save newspaper clippings. The trouble is that when you go back and read the little notes, they often don't make a lot of sense, and that great idea about what to do about that germ of an idea seems to have just gone away. I'm seriously in the mode of deciding what to do about this "all over the board" stuff and have been cleaning up the notes and looking at the newspaper clippings. It is all quite varied. Let me just share some of this with you.

Sitting here looking at a page of notes that varies from notes on ideas for blogs to notes on real estate in Florida to stuff that needed at some point to be bought at the grocery store, I find this little note to self, "The lake is slush." It got into the low 90's today and that note obviously was written several months ago. What does it mean? I haven't a clue, although I do remember that slushy quality it had in January, and how it sloshed around and made you just a little disoriented from the movement.

Then there is the note "women at Victoria's Secret." I know what that is about but I'm not sure it's worthy of an entire post all by itself. Perhaps that is why it never got crossed off as used. All it's about really is the image that the Victoria's Secret commercials on TV project versus the reality of the women who come out of that store. Whoa! Quite a disconnect there. For the record Victoria's Secret isn't so very secret at this point. The store sells soft porn dreams to a public hooked on sex appeal.

This page of notes is a veritable plethora of ideas, I tell you. Next up is the note to self "What not to buy, CD's, land lines, brown sugar...." I believe this came in a moment of clear thinking as regards marketing in America. There are things that become obsolete. There are things that just aren't needed. As regards CD's, I found myself in the CD section of a large bookstore one day about a year ago and it occurred to me that only old farts buy CD's any more. They are going the way of 8 track tapes and 33 1/3 LPs. Why buy CD's when you can download the music online and ensconce the music on your IPod and it will hold your entire collection. Well for one thing I still don't have satisfactory IPod docking in my car. I need the CD's. Okay? As for land lines, I'm perfectly willing to give mine up and just use the cell, but I am told that sometimes you need a land line because those expensive smart phones drop calls despite having several thousand apps. The brown, unrefined sugar I've changed my mind about. I like it and will continue to buy it even if it doesn't make sense to you. So there.

I dispatched that last page of notes, having exhausted every possible word I could from it, and moving on to the next page I just have to cheer. Let's face it, I'm pretty far to the left politically. I'm an atheist. I have gay friends, African-American friends, Latino friends, and even some who are Muslim. I grew up in the South and didn't fit in with redneck culture, right-wing bigotry, and denial of basic science. My next page of notes begins thusly, "Morons on the Texas Board of Education." Seriously, I don't think I need to say another word about that. That note says it all.

The follow-up note reads "Christopher Hitchens: Opening a can of whup ass on religion." Oh yeah! Whoop! Whoop! Not quite sure which particular op-ed piece inspired that note, but I read Mr. Hitchens on a regular basis and he "opens a can of whup ass on religion" on a regular basis. Truly inspiring. One can get really tired of religion dictating what one can and cannot say, what one can and cannot do, based on social dictates of thousands of years ago, and total denial of the scientific and social progress that has occurred since. For the record, the Catholic Church has finally allowed Copernicus a church burial. The nerve of that guy, to say the Earth went around the sun and was not the center of God's universe. God? If you're out there, would you return my calls? What? You're a Luddite? No voice mail, no e-mail, no personal appearances?Hey, get a Facebook page.

Having cleaned up my list of notes to myself, and run on for paragraph after paragraph after paragraph I suppose it's about time to give it a rest for the day. I've reduced my backlog to one note on education that will, in all likelihood make me a pariah, and a couple of newspaper clippings on guns. Tell you what, I'd seriously like to avoid pariah status for a couple more days so next up will be guns and the NRA. Like that won't make me a pariah in this country. Anyway, enjoy your day. Summer's a coming.

No comments:

Post a Comment