Not My Favorite Things

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens
Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens
Brown paper packages tied up with strings
These are a few of my favorite things

Cream colored ponies and crisp apple streudels
Doorbells and sleigh bells and schnitzel with noodles
Wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings
These are a few of my favorite things

Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes
Snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes
Silver white winters that melt into springs
These are a few of my favorite things

When the dog bites
When the bee stings
When I'm feeling sad
I simply remember my favorite things . . .

Maria's song from "The Sound Of Music" helps us over the hard times, because it lists so poignantly those small 'things' which must bring us small joys and bring a special dimension to our life .

Unfortunately, these are not a common part of our everyday life. What we tend to focus on are the small irritations of day-to-day life, and that is the subject of today's Geek Rant.

Getting up early to go to work, professional frustrations, we have learned to expect these unfavorite things and they don't make us feel bad. In fact, the worst days at work are those in which I don't accomplish as much as I would have hoped. Is it that way with you?

But the niggling little daily irritations started working on my as I got home, and checked my mailbox.

Argh! Circulars, advertisements, and things addressed to "occupant" (or even worse, bulk mailings from Safeway et all with not even a salutation.) These things are an irritation at best, an impediment to my peaceful life at worst. I found myself with a handful of flyers and newsprint-quality advertisements from stores I never shop in. At the trash can, I started to throw them away and somehow caught myself just before I threw them away. Tucked inside the grocery store flyers and bi-monthly Corvallis Disposal newsletters was A Bill. Great for me, that I can toss the junk mail (Snail-Mail's version of SPAAAAAM!) and in so doing fail to pay a bill on time. Great for my credit rating, and more especially great for imposing a late fee because I didn't know I had been billed. Later, I May have wondered why I didn't get a bill for the revolving charge card, but it would probably have been too late to get my payment in before the past-due date.

Do you hate Junk Mail as much as I do?

Later, as I settled into my comfortable computer-desk chair to check my email, the FIRST thing AOL asked me to do was to check my SPAAAAM filer for online junk mail. I had a half-dozen letters asking me to send them money, under one guise or another. Surprisingly, I didn't have a Nigerian Letter variant which suggested that they would share umpteen million dollars in a bank which had been been inundated by the New Orleans flood. However, I was offered some great deals on Viagra, Vitamins, and some stock tips which you gotta see to believe. Good heavens, they must think I am some kind of chump to buy into their trailer park trash. I haven't seen such transparent scams since an Encyclopedia Salesman found my wife's trailer outside the Fort McClellan, Alabama, post limits.



Do you hate online junk mail as much as I do?

After I cleared out THAT trash-pile, I started reading my legitimate email. It was a breath of fresh air when I got to Syd's regular "News From The Sight 1911" email. Syd, I truly enjoy reading what you have to say every couple of weeks, but you were outraged and I am outraged at the news. (Click on the link to see Syd's supporting MSM references.)

Here we have the Mayor of New Orleans confiscating weapons from law-abiding citizens. This is making my scalp crawl. I've tried to find some legal justification for this egregious measure, but it just isn't there. The mayoral dictate is patently illegal, unconstitutional, and the men and women who are required to enforce this measure are as uncomfortable with it as I am. Still, they have been placed under the command of a martinet, and an incompetent one at that. They're banging on doors, and busting heads, and handcuffing solid citizens because those same citizens can't depend on the police to protect them and their property, yet the police are taking away the means to defend the property.

Do you hate Mayor Ray Nagin as much as I do?

Here's what Syd has to say:

News from The Sight M1911

Volume 187, 9/14/05

With the stunning devastation of Katrina receding into sound bite memory for most everyone except those folks who have no homes to go home to, the storm of wind and tidal surges has been replaced by another storm of equal intensity, that of blame, recrimination, and partisan broadsides: The government didn’t do enough. It didn’t do it fast enough. It didn’t move fast enough because the victims were black. It didn’t move fast enough because the victims were poor. The Mayor blew it. The Governor choked up. The FEMA chief was inexperienced. The President was disengaged. Too much of the guard was in Iraq to respond quickly to the disaster. Etc., etc.

I can’t help but wonder if the lion’s share of the emotional voltage of this critique – beyond the obvious, that it provides an arsenal of ammo with which to assail George Bush – comes from the fact that Katrina has laid bare the foundation myth of the nanny state: the government will protect you; the government will fix your problems and heal your wounds. The event showed once again that the government really doesn’t do a very good job of protecting us. Maybe it should, but the reality is that it doesn’t. Those who took responsibility for their own safety and survival came through OK; those who trusted the government’s promise to take care of them were tragically disappointed. The message is clear. The state is not the messiah. When the chips are down, be ready to provide for your own security and survival.

For those of us who care a lot about gun rights, New Orleans is truly “the handwriting on the wall.” When citizens needed their guns the most, the mayor of New Orleans gave an illegal order to his police to confiscate the guns of law abiding citizens. Interestingly, I have yet to hear of a single instance of a law abiding citizen misusing a personal defense firearms to abuse another person, to shoot someone by mistake, or even to resist the illegal orders issued by the mayor. The gun threat from law abiding citizens was purely imaginary, unless, of course, you happened to be a looter. There were enough cops and guard to disarm the victims going into the Superdome, but not enough to protect them from predators once they were inside. We all need to take a few minutes to dig up our states’ emergency powers laws to see just what kind of ugly little surprises might be buried there.

Still, the news from N'Orleans isn't all one-sided. Relief workers are laboring under unusual conditions (no surprise to any of us), and one of the 'unusual conditions' is that they are being shot at (a GREAT surprise to most of us!).

Well, they may not be experiencing combat conditions NOW, but we've all heard/read the news reports of relief workers, helicopters, et al, taking fire while trying to save human lives and relieve human miser.

Man, that really sucks.

Just one more thing that's not among my favorite things.

UPDATE:

There's just one more thing to say.

You know I work at a college. Today, I was walking across campus on my way to lunch, and I saw something I haven't seen for a long, long time.

It was a girl. Long dark hair, brushed and gleaming in the sun. White blouse, emerald green skirt, carrying a handbag and wearing honest-to goodness shoes. No flip-flop shower sandles. No baby-fat pierced-navel tummy hanging out. No slouching, or shuffling, no androgynous indifferent teens-conformist looks. Just a healthy, confident, I-am-what-I-am young woman who obviously enjoys being a girl.

I stopped, and stared, and swore to myself. Look at that, a girl who looks like a GIRL.

By God! As long as there are a few young women who like themselves and have enough self-pride to stride across a college campus with her head held high, there's hope for this old world yet.

Next week, I intend to look for boys who don't have pierced bodyparts and who aren't riding bicycles or skating along on skateboards. I don't have great expectations, but I have high hopes that there is at least one man, and one woman, in this town of thirty thousand. Maybe . . . just maybe . . . they'll meet, and marry, and start a new generation of Americans who have pride of self and dignity to match.

Wouldn't that be something?