From Table Talk

Have you lived abroad?

Wanderlust | DJC NYC – 11:22am Apr 28, 1999 PDT (# 33 of 33)

I lived in Krakow, Poland for two years, November 94 until November 96. I
also agree that your first priorities should be to learn the language and
to use it. Also, when you have trouble finding something, forget your
assumptions of where it would be. For instance, in Poland the stores seem
to be organized in terms of materials. I can remember explaining to new
arrivals the existence of the “Red Plastic Department” where you could find
a number of things, many of such seemed entirely unrelated except that they
were or could be made of red plastic. There was always trouble with tampons
and toilet paper. The place you were guaranteed to find them was in the
stationary store. Also, if there are plastic baskets just inside the
entrance to a store, take one. Never mind if you are only there for one
tiny item. If you don’t take a basket, all the clerks will frown at you and
follow you about. You are assumed to be a shop-lifter. Some things may not
exist. After about three weeks, the new foreigner would have run out of
time to simply come upon a laudromat and be reduced to asking where the
heck were they. They weren’t, though by the time I left, there were two
used almost exclusively by foreigners. It seems the Poles are squeamish
about putting their clothes in the same machine that has been used by who
knows who. Oh, I could go on and on, and do at the least opportunity. I’ll
never forget it and never regret it, and actually intend to take my social
security and go live where it will support me well. There’s nothing like
moving across an ocean and back again to clarify exactly what you value
most. I also now have absolute total admiration for and openness to
immigrants. Anyone who has the gumption to leave everything he or she knows
and go to a new country with no intention of coming back has the kind of
courage and strength any country can do with more of.

Are Suburbs “Hell on Earth?”

Social Issures | Dan Icolari – 03:42pm Apr 24, 1999 PDT (# 2 of
80)

…I know Littleton–not well, but well enough, since I visit my
brother-in-law there from time to time. On one visit, I was alone in the
house and decided to go out walking. Block after empty block of perfect
lawns, manicured shrubs, and tasteful facades. The occasional strip mall.
Utterly interchangeable with countless places just like it everywhere.

I remember feeling not just excruciating boredom but almost panic about
getting the hell out of there and back to a city (in this case, Denver)
with some diversity in architecture and options and people.

I’m not proposing a direct connection between suburban life and violence,
but I wonder about the effect on kids who grow up in these unrelentingly
bland environments, where there is little if any experience of the
diversity and excitement that have always characterized cities–even a
second-tier city like Denver.

Many of the latter classes are treated poorly, too, you know. Why is there
a movement to single out some classes of people in preference for others?
What is the real motive behind hate crimes laws? It is certainly not a
moral motive. It is not a motive based in love or sympathy. Such a motive
would not distinguish between people on the basis of their class.

People who support hate crimes laws are saying that some motives for
non-self-defense murder are worse than others. That is wrong. No motive
aggravates the criminality of a murder. The idea that a non-self-defense
murder can be considered more or less bad, depending on the motive, is
garbage. Some examples of this politically/religiously motivated (as
opposed to morally motivated) thinking are:

1) Some people think that what the Nazis did to the Jews around World War
II was bad, or extra bad, because the Nazis killed people for their
ethnic/religious attributes. Wrong. What the Nazis did to the Jews around
World War II was bad because it was killing for no good reason.

2) Some people think that what John William King did to James Byrd, Jr.,
in Jasper, Texas (dragging him behind a pickup truck until he was dead)
was bad, or extra bad, because he killed Byrd because of his race. Wrong.
What King did to Byrd was bad because it was killing for no good reason….

Meaning of myth

Mind and spirit| Paul Scott – 03:20am Jul 16, 1999 PDT (# 113 of 117)

One of the many fascinations of mythology is the convulated interplay of
the universal and the specific. Just as a child toys with their identity
with horoscopes, so too do peoples play in a serious way with their myths.
As some scholars look for human nature, so too do other scholars look for
human differences. We find what we seek in such an infinite labyrinth.

Women’s World Cup — 1999

Sports | Saivan Lujan – 09:42am Jul 16, 1999 PDT (# 171 of 188)

I was very fortunate that despite being born in America, I was raised
abroad. That way, I can attest to the difficulty of relating to sports you
were not raised with.

Even though I played about a dozen baseball games, and half a dozen
American football games as a kid (in the many American schools abroad). I
can’t stand even watching the highlights of either sport in the news. I
can’t think of two more boring sports than those.

I played a lot more basketball games. And I find a lot of enjoyment in
watching THE FOURTH QUARTER of a playoff game (if it involves the Knicks or
the Heat). But that’s it.

Of soccer, like most of the world, I can’t get enough. Of course there are
some slow games, but for those of us who know the sport, is like watching
live chess (a war game after all, which is exactly the spirit on the
stands). Teams spend all game trying different things, with different
twists until it clicks (and while you are watching you are actively
studying the possibilities of this or such move).

Soccer has made tremendous progress in this country. We have 18 million
registered players. This is a fact that has never happened before. You
can’t refute today’s claim by speaking of a time where we only had a couple
of million registered players.

But even that is not that important, for the importance of that (and now
those numbers will increase even more) grow up and raise children in soccer
families. Not like now, where the child is the one educating the parent
about soccer. Knowledgeable parents and the closing of the gap between the
pay of American top athletes and soccer players in Europe (no athletes have
seen their pay increase more in the last five years than soccer players,
although they still have some way to go) will be crucial to capture the
imagination of kids to keep playing soccer for life.

I don’t care if Salinger’s writing is the best ever seen in the world, to
me that should have no bearing AT ALL on how we judge his private behavior
and its consequences. Just as his being a great writer excuses exactly
nothing, Maynard’s being a lesser one does not automatically make her
behavior worse.

I can’t help finding it amusing and ironic that others are profiting from
the scandal in one way or another, too, even as they denounce Maynard for
daring to profit from it. It’s simply delicious to watch.

————

Put Your Original Poetry Here

Arts & Leisure
Susan Janson – 11:22am Jul 2, 1999 PDT (# 96 of 97)

Foreign Tongues

If I know how you listen,
I will know how to speak.

Without words scattering like pool balls,
after the break
Without marbling thoughts into rainbow taffy

Sticking to my teeth.

————

Wiggers, Oreos and Twinkies

Social Issues
Erin Corrigan Martin – 01:07pm Jun 30, 1999 PDT (# 11 of 112)

Folks who get off on labeling members of their own ethnic groups as
sellouts have some issues of their own. They may have a mindset that says
speaking standard English, being conscientious about schoolwork, etc.,
means that a person really wants to be white. But I know who I am, and I’m
happier defining myself, rather than feeling bad about how others attempt
to define me.

Quoting Auden:

If equal affection cannot be, Let the more loving one be me.

I STINK! and other tales of terror

Mothers | Charlotte Johnson – 04:57pm Jun 18, 1999 PDT (# 28 of 54)

…When I was about five months pregnant, I had terrible allergies during
my pregnancy and was sneezing all the time. This particular morning I
hadn’t even gotten out of bed yet and I had sneezed about five time in a
row..hard. I looked up at my husband, who was getting ready for work, and I
said “Honey, I’ve pissed the bed.”

“Huh?”

“I’ve pissed the bed. I sneezed, and I pissed the bed.”

He walks over and helps me out of bed (a waterbed goddamn whoever invented
the things), looks at the sheets and says, “Why, so you have.”

He never said another word on it, just changed the sheets. Every time after
that that I announced that my bladder had failed me he would look at the
sheets and mummble “Why, so you have.”

To this day is makes me hysterical to hear him say that.

Travel Boo Boos

Wanderlust | DJC NYC – 01:37pm Jun 17, 1999 PDT (# 7 of 9)

Several years ago, I was invited to spend three months in Copenhagen. That
year, my parents retired, and we 3 children decided to send them on a trip
to Europe. I was their “travel agent” and made all the reservations. I had
just arranged for their tickets out of JFK to London a few days earlier,
when I headed out to the taxi which would take me to my own flight to
Copenhagen…out of Newark. Unfortunately, I had forgotten that, until we
pulled up to what used to be that airline’s terminal at JFK and faced signs
saying all their flights were going out of Newark. The taxi driver, a
classic NY taxi driver if there ever was one, asked what time my flight
was, and even though it was now the height of rush hour, said “Don’t worry,
I can do it!” And he did. We whipped in and out of traffic, going so fast I
was afraid to look at the speedometer. We passed trucks on the right WHILE
CROSSING A BRIDGE! After that, I just closed my eyes and prayed. And I made
it. But I hope never, NEVER, to take such a taxi ride again!

The specimen cup runneth over–drug testing

Mothers Who Think | Erin McGinty – 08:09pm Jun 6, 1999 PDT (# 25 of 124)

I have administered and witnessed very many urinalyses for drugs. Some of
these were OnTrak tests with cards, reagents, and droppers; most were sent
by courier or mail to a lab. Some comments:

I believe the poster who cited $25 per test for 50% results is incorrect.
At one job, we sent specimens to a local lab for about $13 per test. When a
client protested a positive result vociferously, or if the test was
positive for amphetamines when that was not the drug of choice, we ordered
a gas chromotography. None of those re-tests that I was involved in
revealed a false positive. (Re: amphetamines: depending on the type of test
used, some drugs, most notably antihistamines, decongestants, and ephedra
can throw false positives.)

Drug tests can screen for alcohol. They cannot prove anything illegal
happened. They also have a very small window – you have to have been
drinking the night before, for the most part, to show up positive.

Pre-employment drug tests are primarily going to catch marijuana users.
Cocaine, opiates, amphetamines, and methamphetamines leave the system in
about 72 hours. I think the same is true for benzodiazepines (Valium) and
tranquilizers. There is no reliable test that I know of for psychedelics.
(I heard one pitchman say there was – with a four-hour window. This means
if we UA’d the person in the 4 hours after he ingested the drug, it would
show up. I’m thinking, “Thanks, pal, but the HUGELY DILATED PUPILS would
probably tip me off at that point.”) THC stays in the urine for 30 days or
more, in the case of a frequent smoker. Thus, the least harmful and most
common illegal drug is the most targeted.

Drug tests are not that difficult to beat. Treatment and criminal justice
professionals typically witness the sample collection (i.e., watch the
testee pee), and even that is not foolproof, especially when getting a
sample from a woman. When the test is not witnessed, any self respecting
addict can find a way to smuggle urine into the collection bathroom (and
even have it at body temperature). This means the ones caught in the web
are the casual users to whom such subterfuge does not occur.

I do not favor pre-employment or school drug testing. IMO, it is a huge
infringement on one’s rights with very little potential positive effect.

Family Phrases

Books | Serin McDaniel – 09:09am Jun 9, 1999 PDT (# 113 of 160)

People who lived in my dorm in college used “sell their stock” as a
euphemism for having sex. Seems someone’s economics professor had used the
familar slap-the-back-of-one-hand-into-the-palm-of-the-other gesture while
saying the words “sell their stock,” so the words took on the gesture’s
meaning.

The spouse and I have a tendency to give things names. So a local
supermarket called Thompson’s, which looks like a church from the 1960s, is
“St. Thompson’s.” The dishes my husband leaves in the sink when he thinks
he’s finished washing are “dishtails.”

We used to have a black-and-white cat named Alice, so anything with
black-and-white spots is an Alice whatever. (“the Alice dog” is a
neighborhood dog, and the children of that family are “the Alice dog’s
children.”)

Any car that drives by with the bass thumping so loud we can hear it in the
house is “the Crack Man” (like the Ice Cream Man; the full sentence is,
“Mommy! Daddy! It’s the Crack Man! Can I have ten thousand dollars?”)

Some of our fellow church members are “The Shy Mouse People with their Shy
Mouse Baby”; for some reason we go to a church with lots of tall people,
who are, en masse, “the Tall Greyhound People.” (Hey, maybe this is why we
can’t remember anybody’s name.)

We used to eat a lot at a restaurant called Cheddar’s, which tended to go
to far in its recipes. (Cheesecake … with gingersnap crust … and
raspberry topping … and white-chocolate sprinkles …) So anything that
goes too far is said to have “Cheddar’s disease.”

I don’t feel very good about standards. I work in the training field, and I
am new to it. I used to wonder why some of the technical classes I took
were so shallow. Now I understand that the instructors were “teaching to
tests,” specifically Microsoft and other certification tests that are so
trendy. The tests (and I’m talking about user-level tests, not technical
MSCE or CNE tests) seem to test for a broad understanding of the software,
touching on many of the features but not requiring in-depth understanding
of them (in my opinion, anyway). Everyone benefits by the system: Microsoft
and other vendors who rake in licensing and certification fees, content
developers who sell “certified” books and software, “certified” trainers,
who hold the key to the tests, and employers, who have a measurement to use
when hiring.

I’m not sure that it is a bad measurement, either. You would have to have
decent knowledge of the software to pass the tests. The thing that saddens
me is that so much time is spent on the shallow accumulation of rote
knowledge that, in class anyway, there is little time left for exploration
or real learning.

I wonder if primary and secondary classes are finding the same effect when
standards tests become important. I recently read that in the Chicago
Public Schools, teachers and students are starting to rebel against the
number of tests they have to take (and the amount of time that is taken
away from their classes)

And I’d like to know more about how the test are developed. I’m not saying
that academic achievement can’t be measured, but I wish I felt better about
the guidelines being used. In my experience, people will grasp at anything
in order to get quantifiable results. That’s understandable, but it tends
to establish a standard that may be of questionable value but is very
difficult to replace with anything else.

What’s Harvey Weinstein’s story?

Movies | Patrick Hudson – 11:52am Jun 2, 1999 PDT (# 4 of 9)

Weinstein reminds me of Gap CEO Mickey Drexler, who has demonstrated
near-perfect merchandising touch and good taste where before there was no
clear strategic vision. Now America is ‘blessed’ with very nice movies and
very nice casual clothing, but we all feel a sense of having lost
something. We’ve lost the sense of uniqueness that used to come from liking
certain little movies; how can you feel unique when the film you like is
selling out at the shopping mall multiplex? These tastemakers are largely
responsible for our collective sense of fin-de-siecle ennui; it feels like
the ‘end of history.’ Something about all the pictures of all these
near-billionaires wearing sloppy casual clothes makes me long for a time
when the U.S. didn’t feel so middle-aged and complacent. Maybe the new
generation of children born to the baby boomers (about 4MM births a year
for about a decade now) will liven things up.

A Family Values Question

Social Issues | John James – 08:46am Jun 4, 1999 PDT (# 28 of 37)

I have no answers but a case study or two.

My mother left my father soon after my younger brother was off to college.
She literally, consciously held it together for the kids. I don’t know for
how long-10 years, maybe-she stayed after having decided that the marriage
was empty.

There was no blatant abuse or alcoholism or financial calamity. I have to
resort to psychobabble to describe their problems. They were
“dysfunctional.” My father “has issues,” with control and with anger. But
their staying together in itself didn’t help him with those things. Was it
my mother’s job to force him to confront his problems?

I suppose I feel guilty, as if my brother and I were to blame for Mom
enduring an unhappy marriage for so long. And I wonder what the benefit
was. I know one big cost: a 10-year delay before they could move on to try
and find better partners. Might it have been more honest, less
hypocritical, and better for everybody all around for the split to have
occurred sooner? I feel sure they would have worked hard at their parental
obligations, even if they had lived apart.

I’ve been married eight years now, with some bumps along the way. I’m
committed to making my marriage last, and I’m committed to being a good
father to my two kids, and the two sentiments are related, but they’re not
identical.

A relative on my wife’s side got his girlfriend pregnant, and they
hurriedly married. He’s 21, she’s 19. Clearly, they’re too young or
immature or ill-matched or whatever, and I’m sure marriage would not have
been in the picture had the pregnancy not occurred. Anyway, the marriage
has been filled with strife from Day 1, and two days after delivering a
beautiful baby girl, the mother has moved out. My wife’s family suspects
some scheming on the girl’s part-that she stayed until the baby was born in
order to strengthen her claim to child support. But assuming that everyone
is acting in good faith: What do you make of their situation? A related
question: What is the value in legitimacy, in “giving the child a name,”
even if the odds of a long-term marriage seem poor?