CSotD: Thinking about nothing
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That's probably it, Tina.
This isn't the day, this isn't the time, I'm just not in the mood.
And it's not going anywhere, so let it sit. Don't think of it.
If only it were that easy.
Worst part of trying to take a mental day off is that I work pretty much like Kim in Between Friends, so I'll be peeking into my email and Facebook even when I really ought to be doing something else, and even when I've sworn to do something else.
Which wouldn't be so bad if we were just prattling on about our dogs and our kids and grandkids and the autumn leaves, but we're still three weeks from Armageddon and the conversation has devolved into statements of such dogmatic foolishness that …
… and it really makes me wonder, when it's over, if we'll ever have conversations again?
Never mind. Back to work. Better to be distracted by stuff like this:
My guess is that Randall Munroe was driving around listening to AM Radio, because local radio commercial producers are obsessed with record-scratch sound effects, and it's probably okay because their primary audience knows exactly what they are.
When I was writing questions for a Quiz Bowl, I asked to what technological device the numbers 78, 45 and 33 1/3 applied. The question was asked of two teams of four students in six contests and got two correct answers.
That was a dozen years ago, and the kids were mostly juniors and seniors, which means that, today, they're closing in on 30.
This Brevity is a cheat, because it ran yesterday, but I'm resurrecting it because I am very, very old and remember my mother darning socks, using a lightbulb rather than the wooden thingie you might otherwise use to stretch out the sock into shape.
You might as well launder Kleenex as darn socks these days, and I could go into a rant about the disposable world we've built. I remember TV repairman, which is a lot more of a significant shift than whether you patch up the hole in a sock or throw the thing out.
Yes, children: We repaired our television sets rather than just buying new ones. Baby Blues is currently in an arc in which the TV stopped working so they're getting a new one. The word "fix" never came up because it doesn't anymore.
And if you were any younger, I'd have to explain what that "lightbulb" was that I mentioned earlier. Your own children will not know, except that it will continue to pop up whenever cartoon characters have thoughts.
Tolstoy and his brother had a secret club for which the initiation was to sit in a corner for an hour and not think of a large white bear.
There are days it seems like a comparatively easy club to get into.
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