So, according to today's Bug Martini, here's another thing Adam Huber and I have in common.
I not only can't figure out even the labeled buttons but, once I have, I can't remember what I figured out. Was it that they were both supposed to be up, or both supposed to be down?
I'd like to think that it is linked to my lack of symmetry, which has meant that, since I was old enough that it mattered, I have had to think about writing in order to remember which is my right and which is my left.
At least I've outgrown having to pantomime it.
Lack of any sense of symmetry was useful in high school because I can read upside down as well as upside up, and also mirror-image, though teachers rarely write out their reports in mirror-image for you to surreptitiously read on the principal's desk while you are being chewed out.
The best of those came in college when, at my first meeting with the Dean of Freshman Year, I saw, upside down on the desk before him, that my permanent record began with the notation "Could be a wavemaker if he gets bored."
Well, okay then! No need to waste a lot of time feigning interest!
And you can imagine what a boon it was to me as a reporter to be able to sit across the desk from someone and scan the papers on their desk without having to stare or even pause in the conversation.
You'd be amazed at the sensitive information that powerful people hampered by a sense of symmetry leave out there.
Didn't help much in radio, however, and the year I was in talk, they had to bring in an engineer when I was on the air just to keep me on the air. I'm smiling in this picture because I have no idea what listeners are going through at the other end.
In fact, I had a radio show in college for about six weeks, and my friends would laugh about trying to listen to it, because it would go really low and they'd have to crank up the volume, and then it would suddenly get really loud and they'd be leaping across the room to turn it down.
Thank god they were the only people listening.
I think the FM station was the practice station where they put the rookies to see how they did, and then, if you were even marginally competent, they offered you a show over on the AM, which had an actual audience.
No kidding. I came in to do my show one night and found that the jock before me, assuming I'd show up half an hour early to pull records, had put on a classical LP and left me a note saying he had to leave early.
We were nearly 20 minutes into the simulcast news and had been broadcasting the thwi-tuf-thwi-tuf of a needle on empty vinyl for god knows how long.
And I mean "only God knows" because there was no indication of any phone calls, nor was it ever mentioned by management.
There are advantages to obscurity: You can screw up as much as you like with no fallout.
Which I guess makes today's "Cornered" something of a Juxtaposition, then, doesn't it?
Gearing up for Thursday
The kids in Grand Avenue sent me scrambling for Google this morning, and she's right, but only to the extent that Franklin wasn't serious.
That is, he did, indeed, say all the things he is said to have said on the topic, but only in jest. People in the public eye need to remember how easy it is to be taken seriously, unless they are employing that as a strategy.
So here's an explanation of the "myth" -- which is really simply a mythunderthtanding -- and it doesn't help that the expert debunker here describes a turkey as an "overstuffed, flightless bird."
But then it's Smithsonian Magazine, which comes from inside the Beltway, and I doubt there are a lot of wild turkeys on that bank of the Potomac, nor have we got any expectations of anyone being able to see clearly beyond that boundary any longer, do we?
Which brings us to ...
Clay Jones files his mandatory Thanksgiving cartoon, commenting on the fact that, yeah, people want something to mark the holiday. Perhaps his reluctance made him search harder for something beyond the usual, but this made me smile because, boy, there is going to be a Giant Avoided Topic in a lot of homes this Thursday.
Until the third round has been served, and then it's gonna get interesting.
Juxtaposition of the Day
I read Baby Blues today and was struck by the fact that there had apparently been no family discussion of how Thanksgiving was going to go, and it also struck me that a nice thing about email is that it allows you to invite yourself to your kid's holiday in a way that, unlike a phone call, gives them a chance to figure out a polite reply before they have to answer.
(And here's a hint, Darryl: If there are bigger pillows in the house, you should hide them before you wake up with one being pushed down over your face.)
Then I came to the Lockhorns and realized it was basically the same thing -- an unsolicited self-invitation -- and this one by email, with the chief difference being that LinkedIn not only pesters your friends with invitations to your house, but insists that you are going to be throwing a party even if you had no such plans.
And, like family, you can't simply ignore LinkedIn and hope it goes away. In fact, even if you tell it to go away, it won't.
You have to grab it by the collar and belt and heave it out the door, and then it will probably cheerfully return like a cat jumping back on the bed moments after being dropped onto the floor.
Or like this guy:
I spent most of my life believing turkeys couldn't fly (thanks, WKRP) until a flock of wild ones rampaged through my neighborhood, fluttering up and down from rooftops like damn runny-pooping pterodactyls. I was embarrassingly old when I learned that. See also: peacocks.
Failing in obscurity is a great gift. If I'd grown up in the Internet Age, I'd've probably left a trail of humiliating viral videos and truly awful writing and drawing. Fear of failure is a huge artistic crippler, and there are fewer places to fail safely these days. Kids don't appreciate what they're missing.
But mostly I wanted to comment to compliment you on "thwi-tuf-thwi-tuf." That's a mighty fine onomatopoeia.
Posted by: Brian Fies | 11/21/2016 at 11:32 AM
Worse. The videos wouldn't have gone viral and you'd have ended up in a garrett somewhere with a horribly abused cat, trying again and again and again to make it be more than just cute, dammit.
Agreed on the writing -- I give thanks regularly that my novels were confined to paper. Even without going viral, just their being up there would be humiliating enough.
Wonder if a video of my mouthing the sound of a needle on empty vinyl would go viral? Hmmmm.
Posted by: Mike Peterson | 11/21/2016 at 12:11 PM