12-28-07

Clearance Sale

Just a few dribs and drabs left over to get rid of before starting the new year.  None of these thoughts are rants, really.  Just meaningless bits that have been floating around in my head with no place to go.

I should probably start by apologizing to the pizza guy from last week.  Look, I'm sorry if I seemed disinterested in your health difficulties.  It's not that I don't care about your ongoing struggles with gout, it's just that there's a time and a place for things.  And, honestly, I think most people will agree with me that standing in my yard while the chill December wind whips around my rapidly cooling, over-an-hour-late pizza is probably not the time nor place to give me a detailed accounting of your medical history and allergy medication.  "How're ya doin'!" was merely a courtesy, and was intended to prevent me from shouting, "What the hell?  It took you almost two hours to get a pizza made and carry its five blocks in a car?"  The only proper response to that was, "I'm sorry...I'm physically incapable of reading the clearly-printed numbers on the lighted sign at the very front of your front yard."  So, I'm sorry if my polite-but-curt responses caused you any distress.  I wanted to get my pizza inside and at least partially eaten before the cheese congealed into a solid mass.  It's not that I didn't care about your discomfort, it's...no, wait, I didn't care, and I still don't. 

On a similar, but less irritating note, I have a quick lesson for all you young kids out there cutting your teeth in the employment world:  When a customer says, "Thank you," your response should be a return, "Thank you."  You're not doing the customer a favor by selling him your product.  You and the customer are exchanging goods and services, and courtesy demands that you provide mutual thanks one to another.  "Thank you for my burger."  "Thank you for your money."  See?

I ran into Renata Santoro last month.  Renata is a ridiculopusly talented actress and dancer that I've known since she was twelve.  Technically, I knew her when she was twelve and just ran into her again last month.  That's always weird.  It's odd when you run into someone you used to think you knew after not seeing them in a while.  There are always a few uncomfortable moments when you just sort of avoid each other and the awful gap of time that has passed between your last meeting.  Then someone says something and you realize just how much they've changed, or how much you never really knew about them to begin with.  Sometimes you find you can bridge the gap and be buds again, or at least acquaintances.  But a lot of times, and this was one of them, you realize that no...something was lost.  And you wonder if maybe it was you who changed, or that maybe there was no friendship at all.  In any case you can do nothing but move on.

I keep hearing the phrase, "In a post-911 world."  I often wonder if, during World War two, Americans justified stupidity by saying, "In a post-Pearl-Harbor world you can't be too careful."  Gotta impound those Japanese.  You say some of them are of Chinese descent?  No matter...in a post 12-7 world anyone with almond eyes and sallow skin is a potential saboteur.  I find myself wondering if we'll ever get the chance to regret the excesses of the past few years the way our parents and grandparents regretted the immediate response to the Pearl Harbor attack.

I know we need to be aware of the danger of attacks by terrorists, but do we need to turn our airports into prisons?  I took my daughter to catch her plane back to Minnesota, and I swear there were more TSA agents visible than actual flyers.  I wonder if the Germans watched their rights and liberties slip away in the thirties likes this.  Justifying it to themselves because of the burning of the Reichstag.  Last year, the new Democratic Congress promised widespread changes, but the only thing they did, despite a majority in both houses and a number of sympathetic Republicans, was whine constantly.  I don't have such high hopes for this year.  In an election year nothing gets done, anyway.  No one wants to rock the boat and upset potential voters.  Maybe all this non-boat-rocking is why there are fewer and fewer voters each year.