Almost no actual computer time, due to real-life chores, but I was able to work on the chores near the computer and get lots of videos listened to, at least.
Animals
Having mentioned the dog athletic clubs that are popping up to help keep clever suburban pets from becoming bored, this web site owes you a few video links.
This rescue dog's performance did not make his human very happy.
Meanwhile these dogs may be mistaken in their belief that they can sing, but they do know the "song" that goes with an ambulance...
Education
Another factor to consider when counting the cost of education: the extent to which educational programs have been complicated JUST to keep people paying more tuition. In a local newspaper I read that a local student won a state scholarship in "nail care." I'm glad for the student, of course. The student clearly demonstrated the ability to take simple course material seriously. When I was studying my mother's old cosmetology book, nail care was a chapter in the book, a few weeks out of a two-year trade school program. Manicurists used to be the most junior "cosmetologists," nearly always girls who had practiced cutting and styling hair and doing color consultations in school but were still considered apprentices to the full-fledged hair stylists. It's hard to picture that as a whole separate certificate. Bleep are they doing with all those hours...learning how to use computers to print those miniatures of book covers on people's nails?
Then on a different day the same paper described a student who laughed when Secretary Kennedy said that parents of an autistic child might "know that their child will never write poems." For our generation, you remember, behavior might still have been "autistic"--writing poems no one else is allowed to read might have been considered "autistic play"--but to label a child who could speak and write "autistic" was unimaginable. The word had not yet become a catchall term for all brainquirks of every kind, apparently including talent: "Her parents suspected she may [sic] have autism when she had memorized a favorite book by age 2."
Yes, Gentle Readers, if we the technorati were children today we'd be in baaaad trouble, with the greedheads at today's public schools shoving antidepressants at us to help us cope with the agony of being called "autistic" when, apart from learning language skills a bit faster and perhaps being able to perceive a little more efficiently than other people, we perceived the world the same way everyone else did. How many books did you memorize before you learned to read? Did anyone ever suggest that that was a symptom of brain damage, or did everyone recognize it as an indication that people read to you and you paid attention? I'm told I'd memorized several books. Definitely not typical autism, but somebody's probably thought of a label for it that can be misidentified as "a type of autism." The teen poet is labelled "autistic" and although there are a few people with specific brain disabilities who may write poems that rhyme and scan but still have trouble potty-training by age fifteen, my guess is that Secretary Kennedy and I would describe her as talented, probably shy, possibly having some more limited form of brain damage, probably not "autistic" at all.
How many legs has a dog if you call the tail a leg? Four; calling the tail a leg doesn't make it a leg. If shy poets and awkward math-heads are called "autistic," then "autistic" does not mean "having a major disability that qualifies anyone for a lifelong pension." We need to stop this overuse of "autistic" now. If children learn to speak and can communicate with ordinary people outside the immediate family, we need a clear rule--THEY ARE NOT "AUTISTIC." They may have other types of brain damage, but they don't have that one. "Autistic" means confined to the self, unable to communicate with others. If people mean "different from that hypothetical average child" parents need to be insisting that they say that. Not only can shy poets and clumsy math geeks do jobs--the world needs the work they do.
Hallmark Holiday Alert
From the inimitable Roy Blount, whose work, if you've not read, you probably want to start reading:
Fathers vary. If I'd called mine to say "Happy Fathers Day," would I ever have got an earful. He didn't believe in Hallmark Holidays, and if I was in town already I should stop at -- and -- on the way in to clean the flat, and if not I shouldn't be wasting money on long-distance calls...Fathers who were impossible to behave nicely toward in the 1980s have probably either mellowed out or died of cardiovascular disease by now, but if someone out there has that kind, consider this blog post your encouragement to try to show kindness to the old something-or-other anyway. You never know. He might mellow. If he has a consistent reason to discourage something, try listening.
Music
Dave Edmunds. "Here comes the weekend"? Here it came, and there it went.
Nick Lowe.
Pianomaniacs.
David Bay.
Guy Clark.
Jared Bentley, of Elizabethton, Tennessee.
Landon Camper, of Bristol.
Cameron Payne, of Johnson City, Tennessee.
Sippie Wallace.
Robert Palmer.
Bonnie Raitt. This web site does not endorse the opinion expressed in the song, but this web site does understand it. I found the music link at another site where somebody had posted a "vlog" post where some male was trying to blame women for divorce. Sorry, guys, that line just does not work any more. We have all heard of cases where the wife ran off with some other man, but more often, either the husband runs off with another woman, or the wife just takes whatever she can carry and gets out while she can. I mean to say...my Professional Bad Neighbor, after his recklessly endangered wife and child died, married a woman who had lost her husband earlier in the same year. Such a sad little apple was this woman that the only way she could start a conversation with a man was to lurk in grocery stores asking every man she saw shopping alone, "Are you married?" and telling the ones who admitted being single, "I'm a widow! The Bible says widows should remarry!" So, they say women mourn and men replace...they were married before Christmas. Then she began to feel ill and connect it with being recklessly endangered, began to get some idea what kind of snake she'd kissed by mistake, and she bolted. Never mind what the Bible says about divorce; she wanted one. And you can usually tell about these things...no other man in evidence, focus on fighting for money...This was not a woman men fought over when she was fifty years old and she's not become one as she's come closer to seventy years old. But what's the lousy creep telling other men in town? She was cheating! Oh right. Like thunder.
Anyway, given the way some men behave and the way many women aren't interested in a man until we see how he pursues us, it would make sense for all wives to have a few beaux on the string, the whole time they're married. It would not be Christian. Also it would not interest most of us. In high school we may have bored everyone by chattering for hours about how Al was cute and nice for most purposes but on the clumsy side for a prom date, whereas Bob was guaranteed to step on somebody in the course of the prom but might feel sorry enough to let one drive his car, etc. etc. etc., but by the time we get close enough for marriage we tend to feel that one man is more than enough of an emotional burden.
Jazz Cat Club (digitally manipulated kitten pictures seem to be playing real music).
NRBQ.
Todd Rundgren.
No comments:
Post a Comment