The chili incident

It would have been easy to put in some cheese, then some chili, a little more cheese, then top it off with plenty of chili, rendering all signs of the dairy product invisible.

This happened last month, and someone who knows that I blog said, “That’ll show up in your blog.” It had not occurred to me, frankly. But since I do the Ask Roger Anything feature, I’ll give it a go.

There’s a cafeteria in the building where I work in Corporate (frickin’) Woods. The staff is generally friendly, and the food is at least adequate, most of the time. I was not interested in the featured meal, or a sandwich. But I opted for the chili, which they don’t always have, and which I’ve enjoyed in the past. There was some shredded cheese in a bowl next to the vat of chili, and I added a soupcon of it on top.

What I couldn’t find, though, was a lid to put on the container, lest it spill. The friendly woman at the register, seeing my puzzled look, yelled across the room that the lids were by the register, several yards away. Huh?

I purchased my lunch, which seemed higher than I had mentally calculated, then went to the dining room to start eating. Then the woman who thought I ought to blog this, came to me and said: “You know why the tops were by the register? Because the cashier was directed by management to charge extra for the cheese.” This rather cheesed me off, pardon the pun. It seemed petty; if I had gotten an extra ounce of chili, that would have cost more than the ounce of cheese I used? There was no signage that I saw to indicate this, either.

What had occurred to me is what would I do the NEXT time I got chili there. It would have been easy to put in some cheese, then some chili, a little more cheese, then top it off with plenty of chili, rendering all signs of the dairy product invisible. What would YOU do?

As it turned out, the management has been replaced, so the chili lids are by the chili, and so the question is moot. Except that it still serves as an example of bad customer service.

Fans of Andy Warhol: ABC Wednesday, Round 15 is a comin’

This coming round, I will be writing something new for each week only half the time.

abc15Seven years ago, Denise Nesbitt from England created ABC Wednesday. It was brilliant in its simplicity. People, literally from around the world, post an item – pictures, poems, essays – that in some way describe each letter of the alphabet, in turn. I’ve been participating since the letter K in Round 5, my Keating Five post.

Denise recruited a team of her followers to do some of the intro writing and visiting, which eventually included me, because doing it all was too exhausting. Two years ago – that long, already?- she was getting a little burned out. So I became the administrator, assigning who reads which posts, making sure somebody is writing the introductions (and writing them myself, when necessary), and inserting the link that allows everyone to participate. The team is pretty good at noting when someone grossly violates the simple rules.

Read about the significance of this round’s logo by Troy. He’s designed the logos for the last ten rounds, I do believe.

The Netiquette for the site is this:

1. Post something on your non-commercial blog/webpage having something to do with the letter of the week. Use your imagination. Put a link to ABC Wednesday in your post and/or put up the logo.

2. Come to the ABC Wednesday site and link the SPECIFIC link to the Linky thing. It’ll be available around 4 p.m., Greenwich Mean Time each Tuesday, which is 11 a.m. or noon in the Eastern part of the United States.

3. Try and visit at least 5 other participants… and comment on their posts. The more sites you do visit, the more comments you will probably get.

I’m happy to note that SamuraiFrog has been participating in the current round, and Arthur@AmeriNZ has done so in the past.

I am looking for a few good people, not only to participate, but to visit other people each week, and/or to write the occasional intro. Here’s a recent example of an intro by me.

This coming round, I will be writing something new for each week only half the time. For the other half, I’ll be linking to something I already posted in 2014 instead, mostly 70th birthdays. I got the idea from Lisa of Peripheral Perceptions, who saw my Supremes post (I think) and thought it was so detailed that I should have used it for ABCW. So in Round 15, I WILL.

Bloggers, consider giving ABC Wednesday a try, if this sounds interesting. We’ll be starting with A again in a couple weeks. Write to me a rogerogreen (AT) gmail (DOT) com.

The Lydster, Part 123: Reading is Fundamental

Her favorite book is Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo.

One evening when she had no homework, the Daughter complained, “I understand why you’re limiting me watching television. That’s all right! But reading?”

I was so pleased. I was only “limiting” her reading because she had to go to bed, and get up in the morning. In fact, because of my lax parenting, I had to wake her, as she had fallen asleep, reading some Roald Dahl tome.

Often, her bedroom door is closed in the morning, and I used to assume she was still sleeping. More often than not, though, she is lying in bed but reading a book. She was reading Laura Ingalls Wilder for a time and was recently going through Beverly Cleary. She had entered a poster contest at school – came in third place – and she indicated that her favorite book was Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo. She seems to be over the fairy books that dominated her reading a year or two ago.

She took one of those standardized tests last year in third grade and she did better than 96% of people in her grade.

She has the family disease.

Why the 70th birthday; and why did they rig the student election?

“THEY get away with all sorts of crap. Why shouldn’t we?”

Way back in 2012, Uthacleana asked:

What’s this “Turning 70” meme you’re promoting, Roger? Doesn’t anyone just turn 59 anymore?! ;-p

(I should note that he. and I, turned 59 that year.)
madein1944
I started doing the 70th birthday thing because the Beatles (Ringo and John by then; Paul and George followed) were all turning the big seven-oh. Other folks I admired were heading towards a milestone. I noted at the time too that three score and ten was noted in the Bible as well (Psalm 90:10).

But it occurred to me only recently that it is also a way to keep track of what I’ve written. My buddy Greg complained when I noted Joe Cocker’s birthday, mostly because he doesn’t like Cocker’s voice. (BTW, that’s the beauty of a daily blog; if I write something not of interest today, maybe tomorrow will be more to your liking.)

Greg then suggested I should have noted Cher. But Cher only turned 68 in May. If I HAD written about Cher in 2014, what would I do for 2016? And would I have remembered that I had already done so? This way I have a couple more years to muse on what I’ll write about since I DON’T have much of Cher’s music.

Now there are people who turned 70 before I started the blog – Sophia Loren, Smokey Robinson, for two – so I’ll peg 80, which is mentioned in the same Biblical verse. And there are people I just plan missed, so I might do a 75th natal day, from time to time.

The best answer to “Why 70?” is that it is an organizational tool. One gets a 70th birthday only once, so I’m likely not to repeat myself too much.
***
I wrote this post about The crooked student government elections at my undergraduate college, New Paltz in 1974. Dan Van Riper wrote:

Amazing that a college student election would be so blatantly corrupted with repeat voting. This is something you don’t see in real elections, as has become clear with all this rad-righty insistence with voting ID laws and limiting access to voting. So why were the… elections so corrupt, or maybe instead I should ask, why were your fellow students so irresponsible? Any ideas?

A few days later, when I had not replied, he e-mailed me:

Seriously, I want to know why the students at your college voted multiple times. What caused them to do that? You must have heard by now that voter fraud in the real world is virtually non-existent:

“There was not a single identified case of impersonation fraud at the polls – people showing up and pretending to be another voter – meaning that Schultz’s own investigation found no cases at all that would have been prevented with his proposed voter identification law.”

The idea that regular folks the voting process so much that they rarely try to cheat is somewhat counter-intuitive. We have been trained expect our fellow citizens to try and hurt each other selfishly at every opportunity, and here they are not doing so. I’m very interested in your opinion on the matter.

The answer, I’m afraid, is I don’t know, which is why I didn’t respond right away. I do have two competing theories, though:

1) The students really wanted all the parties and concerts that the winning coalition promised. This seems possible, but not likely.

2) The students did it because they could. Understand that there was considerable antipathy towards authority figures after the carnage of the Vietnam war, brought into our homes each night; the slow pace of racial justice, fractured by the deaths of Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy, and others only a few years back; and the government lawlessness that was Watergate, as the House of Representatives considered impeachment of President Nixon.

I think the voter fraud was a statement of nihilism. “THEY get away with all sorts of crap. Why shouldn’t we?” So they messed with The System because The System was corrupt and because they could do it easily.

Oh, I suppose there was a third possibility:

3) They were from Chicago, where the motto was: “Vote early and vote often,” and they were taking the joke seriously.

X is for X; yes, that’s the name of the band

“In 2003, X’s first two studio albums, Los Angeles and Wild Gift, were ranked by Rolling Stone magazine as being among the 500 greatest albums of all time.”

X-Beyond_and_Back-_The_X_AnthologyHello there, ABC Wednesday people.

Sometimes I’ve introduced you to bands I’m surprised you don’t know (The Kinks, Fleetwood Mac). Sometimes, it is groups I doubt you know (the Roches). Today, I’m sharing a band I very much doubt you know. And when better to do so than on the most difficult letter of the round. The name of the band is X. Just the letter X. And yes, I have those first four albums, on vinyl, all of which were produced by The Doors’ keyboard player, Ray Manzarek.

From Wikipedia: “X is an American punk rock band, formed in Los Angeles in 1977. Established among the first wave of American punk, the original members are vocalist Exene Cervenka, vocalist/bassist John Doe, guitarist Billy Zoom, and drummer DJ Bonebrake.” The family band connection: Exene and John were married from 1980 to 1985.

“The band released seven studio albums from 1980 to 1993. After a period of inactivity during the mid to late 1990s, X reunited in the early 2000s, and currently tours.”

“X achieved limited mainstream success but influenced various genres of music, including punk rock and folk-rock. In 2003, X’s first two studio albums, Los Angeles and Wild Gift, were ranked by Rolling Stone magazine as being among the 500 greatest albums of all time.”
Here is Los Angeles.

“1981’s Wild Gift, broadened the band’s profile when it was named “Record of the Year” by Rolling Stone, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, and Village Voice.
Here is Wild Gift.

My long-time friend Karen, who’s in the music business, once told me that John Doe was “like us.” By this, I believe she meant that he was not a pretentious jerk as some of the people she has worked with.

“X then signed to Elektra in 1982 to release Under the Big Black Sun, which marked a slight departure from their trademark sound. While still fast and loud, the album’s country leanings were evolving, and its raw punk sound was channeling raw guitar power chords. The album was heavily influenced by the death of Exene Cervenka’s elder sister Mirielle (Mary) in an automobile accident in 1980.”
Here is Under the Big Black Sun, which is Exene’s favorite album.

“1983 saw the release of the More Fun in the New World album. X slightly redefined their sound with this release, making it somewhat more polished, eclectic and radio-ready than in previous albums. With the sound moving away from punk rock, the band’s rockabilly influence became even more noticeable.”
Here is More Fun in the New World.

“A side project of some of the band members was Poor Little Critter on the Road in 1985, under the name The Knitters: X minus Zoom, plus Dave Alvin (of The Blasters) on guitar and Johnny Ray Bartel (of The Red Devils) on double bass.” Dave Alvin taught Exene how to play guitar, and was briefly in X.
LISTEN to Someone Like You – the Knitters.
Walkin’ Cane – the Knitters
And for good measure: LISTEN to I’m Shakin’ – The Blasters from their eponymous album I also own; in fact, I probably bought the LP for this song.

My collection of X ends here save for Shoot Out the Lights (LISTEN), a cut on a collection of Richard Thompson covers. Though I DO have one John Doe and two Exene solo CDs.

A couple more LISTENS:
Burning House of Love – X
Burning House of Love- Knitters (2005)

I’m going to guess that, of the four albums, most of you may find the last album more accessible, and the first less so. Or not.
***
Exene sells some of her memorabilia.

 

ABC Wednesday – Round 14

Ramblin' with Roger
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