Confessions of an Anachronism

Call me Anachronism. And why is that? I am an anachronism (albeit a proud anachronism) because:

1. I wear slippers.
2. I wear pajamas.
3. Communal meal times are sacred and should not be marred by one's answering the phone or watching television. (If one is alone, anything goes.)
4. I use the word "one" like an old fuddy-duddy (see above).
   
5. I use the word anachronism.
6. I loathe multitasking.
7. The demands and rigors of quotidian, paid labor do not intercede upon my every waking hour and every thought in my head (except for all-consuming anxiety, paranoia, and neurosis related to same).
8. I read books (fiction even! and poetry!).
9. I read newspapers -- in print.
10. I watch news (worse yet, I listen to news reports on the radio).
11. I have not the slightest idea how to use an iPod or the MP3 player that my satellite radio comes with.
12. I know what a preposition is and understand that in item 11 I ended a sentence with a preposition -- and I'm perfectly okay with that.
13. I have diagrammed sentences on a blackboard.
14. I have to gladly say I have split infinitives.
15. I continue to obsessively rant about something called the serial comma.
16. I was taught by Mrs. Rivers in seventh grade that these words take predicate nominatives: is, am, was, were, have been, has, had, appear, feel, grow, become, look, taste, remain; consequently, "I feel bad" is the preferred form. (Hunh?)
    
17. I used to know the Our Father in Latin (let's see now, how does that go? "Pater noster qui es in caelis...").
18. My car lacks one of those automatic key starters and has manual locks.
19. I am a sinning believer, a member of a religious institution who tries to attend and partake of its services regularly.
    
20. I am an anachronism.

Out of time.

Rarely on time.

What century do I belong to? What era? Victorian perhaps?

What era is your era?

Cutting Remarks

Be forewarned. This post just may be a new nadir among a sea of blogospherical nadirs. (I like that word nadir. It's originally Arabic for opposite, Merriam-Webster tells me. In this case, opposite obviously refers to "opposite to standards of decency and civilization." Speaking civilly, I note that Merriam-Webster gets credit for the illustration.)

While at camp a few weeks ago in the Adirondacks, we were walking Maggie, our German Shepherd-Yellow Labrador Retriever. The dog dutifully performed her duty (how do we know how dutiful? we watched; can't help it; might have to transport the emissions deeper into the woods via the scooper). This observation elicited an item of conversation from one of the members of the walking crew (not me, oddly enough). To phrase matters delicately here, the observer observed that her dog-walking duties in Gotham (with its strict strictures of cleanup) involved a dog who was not always as tidy and naturally fastidious as our Maggie is in the realm of disposal. This particular dog, whose name escapes me, needed human help.

This unseemly phenomenon was dubbed Bad Cut-off.

The observer went on to remark that in her conversations with her counterparts in New York City successful or ruinous cut-off (of the human variety) was deemed a harbinger of the success or failure of one's whole day. Honestly, who could argue with that? (although I argued against a superstitious adherence to cut-off assessment)

Discussion of this anatomical cut-off syndrome became a humorous theme at camp, with shouted public declarations of one's success or failure.

There. I've gotten this off my chest.

I trust the painful lengths I've taken to posit a simulacrum of decency are woefully apparent.

This is what happens when you feel you must post something (anything!) after four days, whether of value or not.

(Speaking of cut-offs, we had a lunar eclipse here the other morning, with the moon cut off from view at 5:30 a.m. or so. I was sleeping. Melloncutter was up, I'm sure.)

(I suppose this gives new meaning to the "cut-off man" in baseball.)

Bloggerexia Nervosa

Some nerve.

I've got some nerve talking about manners, manors, reciprocity, blog-responsive recidivism, or civility.

Given my infrequent or sporadic commenting or replying in the Blogosphere, I've got some blognerve.

Then again, the first of my 217 posts was on solipsism.

And nothing is more ephemeral than this Enterprise we are traveling on. No one really much cares for much beyond today's posts, soon to float away into the ether.

Eh?

Rich.

The Portals of Peccadillo, Redux

Okay, righto, true. Trusted commenters to the last post have a valuable point. I heartily concur, namely:

It is just as rude -- perhaps even more rude -- to fail to extend gratitude, or nod, or in some way acknowledge human kindness, urbanity, and civility, when someone politely holds open a door for others to pass through. Not to do so reeks of entitlement, condescension, and disdain.

Littering?

This seemingly pickiest of peccadilloes (unpickiest -- the failure to pick up) is a symbol of the decline of order and respect; it is a symbol of ruin.

Just like running red lights.

Just like the lack of courtesy.

I sound Victorian (I am; I love those naughty tales of covered-up lasses), but mutual civility equals civilization. In American cities, people are shooting each other over a perceived lack of so-called respect, not having done anything whatsoever to merit the respect in the first place (Michael Vick, anyone?).

The Portals of Peccadillo

Want to know what peccadillo pisses off Pawlie? Solipsistic Portal Syndrome. Picture this. You're in a grocery store, one that does not have automatic doors, or at the entrance to some sleek corporate HQ, or on the way to divorce court, or at the DMV, or the ER, or to a job interview, et cetera ad nauseam. Pick one. Some fat-ass or Twiggy-ass or pear-shaped ass or Ordinary Mortal advances before you. He or she opens the glass panel. He or she opens the door and keeps walking, solipsistically not bothering to acknowledge your human form or its fragrance or stain or aura or perhaps even its mysterious repulsive force field. No. Oh no. Solipsistic Portal Syndrome, or SPS, only admits the self through the doors of life. Said person opens the door, advances, lets said door close, and keeps walking, even though you, dear reader, may be millimeters to the rear of this ogre.

I have sometimes sarcastically said, "Thanks" to such narcissists. (By the way, did you know sarcasm means "flesh-cutting"? Deservedly, in this case.)

I want to shriek at these ingrates, "Can't you pause, turn around, and hold open the feckin door, you feckin feckhead?!"

But I don't.

It's not just the idea of opening a door. Of course, I can open the door on my own. It's the smug solipsistic sarcastic self-absorbed savage lack of courtesy of such twats.

I wonder if Ralphie encounters aspects of this.

And don't get me started on Littering and the End of Civilization.

(There, I feel better already. Incidentally, can anyone give me a better word than "peccadillo"? This, to me, is a quasi-major offense, not a trifling one.)

APB: Missing Matter

While earnestly trying to work today, albeit a Monday, I was jolted awake by the following story racing along the Information Superhighway (remember that oh-so-Nineties term?):

Scientists trying to create a detailed inventory of all the matter and energy in the cosmos run into a curious problem--the vast majority of it is missing.

"I call it the dark side of the universe," said Michael Turner, a cosmologist at the University of Chicago, referring to the great mysteries of dark matter and dark energy.

In fact, only 4 percent of the matter and energy in the universe has been found. The other 96 percent remains elusive. . . .

Now, there's an all-points bulletin (APB), and we mean all points of the cosmos!

I am greatly relieved to hear this (manifested as a high-pitched, tinny voice in my left ear; do you hear those voices, too? really? adjust thy medication).

This explains the Chaos Theory of the Dining-Room Table; my desk at work; the papers piled on the shelf by the window where Nickie the Cat pisses; missing credit-card bills; the seemingly lost autographs of Willie Mays, Woody Allen, and William F. Buckley, Jr.; lost virginity; missing appetite; misplaced ancient family photos, both framed and unframed; dangling participles; the dearth of semicolons; and the plethora of missing serial commas.

Thank you, Mr. and Mrs. Cosmologist, whoever you are (missing or not).

I am so freaking relieved!

Speaking of cosmologists, I want to relate a little story. I have a weird hobby of being fascinated by weird obituaries. Probably goes back to my days as a newspaper copy editor. Well, there are actually people who do that as a hobby. They go to conventions and everything.

Anyway, one odd obituary sticks in my mind from 2000. I have a rather photographic or obsessive memory for minutiae, and I have always remembered the name of Jeffrey Willick.

As you can see, his untimely death was like a comment in and of itself: "Cosmologist Killed Sipping Coffee at Starbucks." See for yourself.

I mean no disrespect or anything like that. I mean, "Sheeesh, when your time is up, it's up, eh?" Or, "When your Maker summons, the bill is due." Something like that.

Carry on.

Back to the cosmological search for all that missing matter.

Dust balls, anyone?

Solitary Refinement

I tend to prize solitude and seek moments being alone. This week forced me to revisit some of my premises about my domestic premises. On Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday nights I was back home, having been required to go back to work (not enough vacation days) while Spousal Unit and Irishstep Daughter cavorted at camp. Especially on the first two nights, I slept poorly. (Well, some of that, at least on Wednesday evening, may've been fueled by the espresso I had while having al fresco desserts with AnimatorSon and BalletDaughter at Frankie's Piccolo Bistro.) I stayed up later than usual, browsing the Double U Times 3 and reading and et cetera. Yeah, especially that et cetera. It's as if, contrary me, missed the friction, had no one to bounce off of, had no one against which solitariness provided a context, a refuge, or a backdrop. Coming into a house absent of the dog or children or wife, seemed, well, empty. (The cats don't count, all right. And only pisscat Nickie was around until Friday morning, when his nemesis Tommy sauntered home.)

So, this afternoon, upon arriving back, upon distributing the capillaried collection of clutter, what do you think I did?

Took a nap in the back room, by myself.

Go figure: the capillaried complications and configurations of self and context and solitude and space and time.

(Already missing BalletDaughter as she soon wings her way eastward across the night sky into the Berliner dawn. God bless.)