Red, white, blue

As a veteran government contractor, I am highly fluent in Beltway acronym. But every time I think I've heard them all, a new one comes along. Three different times last week, I heard people describe a plan or a project as "OBE" (technically an initialism and not an acronym, because it's pronounced "O B E" and not "obe" as in rhyming with "lobe"). It didn't really register the first two times, but when I heard it a third time, I had to investigate.

"OBE" does not mean "Order of the British Empire," at least not in this context. It means "overcome by events," which is now my favorite-ever government insider slang term. I'm going to find at least 10 reasons a week to describe something (or someone, even) as "OBE."

And now, you might be thinking to yourself, as you contemplate the minute of your life that you spent reading this, a minute that you will never regain, that this blog is or should be OBE. You would not be the first person to think this. The author beat you to it.

*****

It's the 4th of July. Normally, I'd write "fourth" rather than "4th," but the ordinal number is acceptable in references to Independence Day. My sons are looking forward to their favorite 4th of July dessert: Yellow sponge cake dessert shells filled with strawberries, blueberries, and Cool Whip. Not whipped cream, but Cool Whip. My Korean mother-in-law introduced them to this mid-century Americana treat, and now, they consider the holiday incomplete without it. Apparently, my mother-in-law's friend, also Korean-born, told her that this red, white, and blue dessert is an American tradition, and she or my sister-in-law have made it for every 4th of July gathering since.

Having married into an immigrant family, I've learned that most immigrants are eager to understand what is uniquely American, and to adopt it as their own. For some immigrants, this means observing and imitating American ways of dress and speech. For others, like my neighbor from Vietnam, it means growing and cultivating the greenest and most American of front lawns, complete with garden gnomes and American flags and barn-shaped mailboxes. For my mother-in-law, it's food. She cooks, and eats, mostly Korean food, but she always insists on traditional American fare for American holidays. Turkey for Thanksgiving and ham for Christmas; and of course, strawberries, blueberries, and Cool Whip in a little cake shell for 4th of July. Sons and grandsons of immigrants, my children have the most American of families. 

*****
So between one thing and another, my week has gone off the rails. Last week at this time, I was ahead of or at least on top of every task and chore on my list. This week, a combination of a midweek holiday and other unexpected occurrences has thrown the whole operation into chaos. Overcome by events, I will end here. Until next week...

Seasonal

As I mentioned last week, I was thinking about buying a Surface. But I didn't want to spend so much money, so I decided to just stick with writing notes by hand or on my phone. I still wanted a smaller computer, though. Then I thought, a-ha! Chromebook! Much cheaper, and it will do everything I want it to do.

I came this close to buying one, and then I remembered that I have a 7-inch tablet that I hardly ever use.  It didn't seem right to buy another piece of technology when I already have something that's only a few years old. I bought the tablet in 2014, but it already feels like a relic of the Obama years. If I pulled it out of my bag at at meeting, someone would probably tell me that 2010 called, and it wants its technology back. Seven years feels like a long time ago; and it's a generation, in terms of popular culture and technology. So maybe I'll just be the quirky person who likes antique technology, like a Polaroid camera or an IBM Selectric. 

Or maybe not. I'm typing on this little on-screen keyboard, which I have to look at, because I can't touch-type without actual keys. I looked away just long enough to watch the Capitals score against the Pittsburgh Penguins. Anyway, it's not the best solution. The tablet, I mean. The Capitals beating the Penguins is always the best solution. The on-screen keyboard, though the predictive text feature is excellent, is still way too slow for me. I type pretty fast. The technology has to keep up. 

Enough of that. I'm back on the PC now, typing fast, but thinking not quite so fast. I found a 10-inch Chromebook that's not the prettiest device, but it might be small enough to carry and large enough to actually be useful, so it's a possibility.  The Capitals beat the Penguins 4-1.

*****
It's winter-cold now, after weeks of unseasonable warmth. I dread cold the way that other people dread root canal or an income tax audit. As a matter of fact, I've had a root canal, and it's not as bad as winter. But I had to do several outdoor things today, and it wasn't as bad as I expected.  So maybe I'm getting tougher with age.

*****
After a short beta test, Twitter has officially doubled its character limit from 140 to 280. Obvious twice-as-long-Trump-tweet jokes aside, this is bad news for an entirely different reason. I'm very good at expressing an idea in 140 or fewer characters. Very good. This isn't a boast as much as an acknowledgement that I have very few real skills; this is one of them, and now it's no longer relevant. Spelling, total recall of useless facts, and snappy comebacks are all I have left.

*****
Despite the cold, I took an early-morning walk this morning, because I get so little outdoor time during the winter work week. The air was cold and still, and it smelled like snow. Now it's 3:45 on Sunday afternoon and the pale sunlight is already waning. I couldn't live in one of those Scandinavian towns that gets four hours of sunlight a day. Winter has its charms, though. The sunlight looks pretty, filtered through the almost-bare trees, and it's kind of cozy in here. I'll write my next post on the Chromebook that I just bought.

Witness for the prosecution

As soon as someone says "Not to be rude, but...," then what follows is guaranteed to be rude. Likewise, someone who says "This is going to sound terrible, but..." is almost certainly going to say something terrible.

Newsflash to the European lady in the room full of Americans, who complained at length about Americans who don't travel, don't speak languages other than English, and don't seem interested in cultures other than their own: The "not to be rude" qualifier was wasted on us, because we still think you're rude.  Bonus irony points, considering the setting, which was a lecture on Anne Frank's legacy and the relevance of Holocaust literature in the world today, thus begging the question: "Holocaust--Did that happen THERE or HERE?"

*****

I was sitting in front of this computer on Sunday, thinking at least I’m typing something.  At least I opened the file.  I seem to have a little time on Sunday afternoons, so that will be writing time.  And maybe sometimes I can write for a little while on a weeknight, or on Saturday, though Saturdays are busy. 

Right now, I don’t know what to do next with the novel that I've been pounding away at for almost a year.  I think that what I’ll do now is take all of the parts that I like best, and then resave them as something else.  Another novel maybe, or a story.  I feel sure that I shouldn’t give up, so I won’t, but it’s hard to keep going.  I guess it’s supposed to be hard.  If it wasn’t hard,  as Jimmy Dugan said, then everyone would do it. 

*****

I have mentioned before that I hate to abandon a book that I'm reading, even if I've lost interest in it.  And surprisingly enough, Rebecca West is the culprit again.  I'm reading A Train of Powder, which is, or I thought it was, a first-hand account of the Nuremberg Trials.  Actually, only the first chapter covered Nuremberg, and I was all agog as I read that chapter.  The part I'm reading now, though, covers a famous murder case of the early 1950s, and the exhaustive forensic detail is causing my eyes to glaze over.  I have no interest in true-crime stories, even as told by Rebecca West.

In a far more gripping earlier chapter, about the postwar Allied occupation of Germany and the Berlin Airlift, West sympathizes with the women of Berlin, many of whom were widowed or left behind by husbands who were still missing (or imprisoned in Russia.)   She describes the lot of women who are compelled to work all day in an office or a factory; and then to come home to clean, cook, and care for children, as "penal servitude."  Absurd hyperbole, I thought for a moment, or the hothouse flower perspective of the upper middle class daughter of intellectuals and artists. Then I thought about it a little more.

The women West was writing about were living and working in a war-ravaged city, with bombed-out streets and buildings, frequent blackouts, limited and erratic water supply, and shortages of everything, including food, clothing, and medicine.  They didn't have cars; and buses and trains, when they were running, were dirty and overcrowded.  Even walking the often long distances to their workplaces was made hard by bomb-damaged roadways and worn-out shoes.  Home wasn't much better.   Even under the best of circumstances, cleaning and cooking and caring for children can be hard. If you're trying to cook with practically no food or fuel, however; or you're trying to clean a partially bombed-out hovel without water or cleaning materials, then it's brutally hard.

But who cares, right? They got what they deserved, those Germans.  They started a war, causing untold suffering for millions of victims, so why should anyone worry about their suffering?  Rebecca West hated Soviet Communism, unlike many other writers and artists at the time, and she was often criticized for having what was perceived as a reactionary outlook.  I'm sure that this relatively sympathetic portrayal of postwar Germans didn't earn her any additional fans among the intelligentsia.  One part of me thinks that maybe they would have had a point.  As I read West's description of the brave and pragmatic German women of Berlin, I wondered why on earth her sympathy didn't seem to extend to the Germans' many victims, including the Soviets, who suffered badly at the hands of the Nazis.  

*****
Rebecca West never ceases to surprise me.  Just when I thought that I really couldn't stand to read one more word about the corpse of Mr. Setty, and whether or not Mr. Hume had murdered and dismembered him, the chapter opens way up and becomes an examination of life and death and truth and falsehood, and I'm all agog again.  Now we're back at Nuremberg. The Germans, apparently, were upset to learn that the Nuremberg defendants would be jailed for the duration of the trial.  Their judicial system, pre- and post-Nazi, of course, treated criminal defendants as truly innocent until convicted, which meant that they lived at home and enjoyed total freedom during their trials.  More irony. Germans, whose country had just emerged from the most lawless period of its history and all of European history, were now so attached to the rule of law and the rights of the accused, that they seemed more civilized than the Americans and English and French and Russians who sat in judgement.

*****

From Rebecca West, another note to the European lady: Europeans are extremely civilized, except when they're not--exactly like Americans.  Exactly like every other group of people, ever.

Technological advances

I have a new computer, and it's beautiful.  I might have to start blogging again.  It takes so little.

Quotidian, Part 75

I was supposed to write today, wasn’t I?  I made a commitment to write daily, but “daily” is looking alarmingly frequent now.  What was I thinking?  

Well, there’s a four-word autobiography if I ever saw one, but that’s a story for another day.  Time to make dinner. "Daily" is a harsh and insistent taskmaster. 

IPO

I might start tweeting again.  I so seldom have anything to say that can't be contained in 140 or fewer characters.  Online taciturnity. It's the new thing.

The Bilge is Back

Where to even begin?

I'm sitting on my couch, watching "As Good as it Gets"; rather, I'm half-watching it while I start some preliminary reading for a class that starts on Monday. Jack Nicholson is yelling at Greg Kinnear: "I'm drowning here, and you're describing the water!"

That, I think, would make a funny post title. And that quickly, the bilge is back.

I started blogging six years ago, and continued more or less regularly for 3 1/2 years or so, before dropping off the face of the Internet sometime in 2010.  No particular reason, really, other than that something had to give.  And as far as that's concerned, this isn't any better time than any other to try to start blogging regularly again.  I'm still (still. STILL. STILL!) in school, God help me. I'm almost done, but "almost" means at least two, possibly three classes and one more CLEP exam between me and my diploma.  It's possible (likely) that I'll either post so infrequently that I'll forget that I even have a blog, or that I'll just abruptly stop one day.

***

It's two days later now.  The class that starts next week is a history class on the Renaissance and the Reformation.  I wanted a class on the Middle Ages, but none were offered and I wanted to take my last (last!!!) elective this semester, so it's the Renaissance and the Reformation for me.  I know pitifully little about either, and I'm all agog so far.  It won't last though.  Four weeks from now, I'll be up to my neck in Henry's wives and Martin Luther's theses  and Chicago style and I'll be cursing the day that I was born.   More likely, I'll be blogging about writing a paper, rather than actually writing it-drowning, in fact, and describing the water. 

***

Blogging has changed so much since I've been away.  I feel like Zelig. I did used to have a Twitter feed on my sidebar (I was an early adopter with Twitter, in fact), but I haven't yet learned how to smoothly integrate writing with audio-visual content with social media with syndication/feed services.  So I'm blogging for the Stone Age. No sidebar, no links to anything, no social networking, and no Redditing, Stumbling, or Pinning.  I'll get around to all of that later, maybe.  Right now, it's nice to be back.