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Friday, November 11, 2022

How Embarrassing...?

One of the first writing assignments I was ever given in High School was to write about my most embarrassing moment.  I just wrote down something along the likes of, “Having to write this stupid infantile meaningless (etc.)... essay.”  It was a litany of double-spaced synonyms stretching down the page, and after handing it in, I was told to redo it properly.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to write up something personally embarrassing to me.  It was that I couldn’t remember one.  To me, being unable to think up anything was embarrassing in itself.

I couldn’t remember anything that could be considered embarrassing, so I made something up that could be considered embarrassing to other people. That essay was accepted and praised for being more honest.  But I can’t recall a word I wrote.

I’ve never been accustomed to feeling embarrassed.  Being self-conscious about being seen doing something in public, sure.  Being uncomfortable about reading / watching something that makes me emotionally insecure, sure.  But, not typical things that would normally embarrass other people.  I didn’t mind when my Mom showed up at school to give presentations and help out.  She was looking out and supporting me.

As a kid, I would be late for when the school bus came to pick me up, being more preoccupied with the TV.  At first, Mom had me go to school in my pyjamas, *certain* that the shame would shake me out of my complacency.  It didn’t.

I only changed my habits when I went to school without having lunch prepared, and then wasn’t allowed to have any food.  The teachers had been warned beforehand, and were told not to share their lunches with me, no matter how much I complained, even as they agonized over my reactions, but my Mom said it was necessary.  When I came home that day, I was practically starving, and my Mom said something along the likes of, “If you had been prepared before the bus came, you would’ve had lunch.”

Since then, I’ve always made it a point to be on time for anything.

It might’ve seemed borderline abusive at the time, but she was just applying Logical Consequences, which are different from Natural Consequences, where a child learns things after making silly mistakes and figuring things out, which is pretty much the mainstay of children’s TV episodes.  Once the child realizes that certain actions result in certain consequences, they’ll be better prepared to avoid doing that again.  But other times, there are moments when simply learning the lesson afterwards doesn’t work, or won’t stick without outside intervention. 

My main problem was that I never learned these potentially reputation-saving lessons until long after the fact.

When most other students would have been embarrassed at the concept of sex ed, I just engaged the lessons with the same clinical detachment as any other class, having been familiar with the source material, thanks to books like Where Did I Come From? and What’s Happening to Me?, which explained body functions like the most normal thing in the world with silly drawings.

That in turn led to me being called the 12-letter ‘M’ word.  (No, the other one)

One time in class, the teacher gave a question.  I don’t remember the question, let alone what subject we were talking about.  It could’ve been ‘things that were once thought to be harmful’, but I remember the answer I piped up with, which was, “Like Masturbating?” which elicited tons of laughs from all the students around me.  I had no idea what was so funny, and it had to be explained that even though the text said the act wasn’t something to be ashamed of, what I said wasn’t the kind of thing normally said in public conversation.  For about a year, I was paired up with a lab partner who disparagingly nickednamed me ‘Masturbation’.

Even though the act was on my mind, having it continuously pointed out and reminded really rankled on me.  I couldn’t understand why these High School teens were so utterly infantile about basic sexuality.  (Looking back on my thoughts and actions now, that should’ve been a big honking clue)

To this day, I have reoccurring dreams of being naked at school, but in these scenarios, I’m more concerned about completing my 3-month project due in 2 weeks that I haven’t even started and didn’t even know about.

I also never understood what was supposed to be so funny about men wearing women’s clothes.

If it was okay for women to wear men’s clothes, then shouldn’t the reverse be true?  Just wear whatever’s comfortable!  If the clothes you want to wear are on the other side of the rack, that shouldn’t be a deterrent, just as long as it fits.  

I don’t really care about fashion or style, just function.  My choices are fairly basic.  I prefer to wear soft clothes with seamless seams, little social commentary (allegiance to specific sports teams or cartoons are visually distracting) I’ve often had to have the holes in my clothes pointed out, since I’m so used to feeling comfortable, and don’t really care about how I’m perceived.

When I started getting more invested in comics that weren’t of the Newspaper variety, I was quite enthusiastic about reading digest collections of Richie Rich and Archie.  (Don’t sneer - they were extremely popular and cheap) But the more I read them, the more I noticed that there was an element in these comics that kept cropping up that annoyed me.  It wasn’t the repetitive plots, the page limitations or the corny jokes.  It was that the sentences invariably ended with exclamation points, and there were very few instances where periods were put in place, and that put me off.  (Question marks didn’t count)

When I become overexposed to media, I become hyper-aware of the limitations of the form, and once notice something that keeps showing up, it becomes impossible to ignore, especially when certain themes start to show up.

I don’t know when it started (probably around Twilight & the Hunger Games), but I got annoyed when dystopian stories struggling under suppression started shoehorning in romance plots which only served to distract, particularly love triangles that hardly elevated the story, and would’ve benefited from their absence.  Why did EVERY story need a forced romance subplot?  Being more interested in creating artificial drama than authentic chemistry.

I got so annoyed by this that I even parodied this outlook early on in my WebNovel:

Monday, July 18, 2022

More Mangled Poirotisms

I’ve been cleaning out my excess reams of notes, trying to slim down the excess piles of organized mess that’s been lying around for months, years now.  They’ve been accumulating to such an excess that I’ve been ritually moving these stacks of papers from my computer desk to my bed, with the intent that I’ll look at them later.  Only, because these stacks of paper are behind me, I never look at them long enough before fatigue overtakes me, and I switch them back, and repeat the Sisyphusean process all over again next morning.

Now, the mess has become something that’s become unavoidable to overlook much longer, and I need some way of jotting these observations down, otherwise they’ll become lost.  Some time ago, I made a blog entry showing several instances of how the French language could be mangled, even by someone competent in verse.

Before I jump ahead to the main course, it would be remiss of me not to include this bit of mangled Christmas song from Farscape:

Hark!  The hee rawld angles seen guh

Glowry to the nude bored keen guh

Peach on Erp and Murky mill ed

Gode and signers reek n silled

And now, the most notable Poirot Malaphors:

  • It’s just a turned ankle (twisted ankle)
  • The pain already passes (has passed)
  • Has he the tenderesse for her? (affection?)
  • Your friend’s life has been attempted.  (An attempt on her life.)
  • I am desolated (devastated)
  • The extreme prudence is what is needed (extreme prejudice)

  • If I mistake not (If I’m not mistaken)
  • Does not hold the water (Doesn’t hold water)
  • Frying his important fish (Has more important fish to fry)
  • The fat is in the flames (The fat is in the fire)
  • Get off Scottish free (Scott free)

  • My train of reasoning (train of thought)
  • We have killed both the birds with one shot (2 birds with one stone)
  • It may come in useful (come in handy)
  • The matter of greatest import (great importance)
  • Poirot does not pull the legs (pulling my leg)
  • Throws a hammer in the works (wrench in the works)
  • Rest calm (calm down)
  • What is the use? (What’s the use?)

  • I comprehend perfectly (understand perfectly)
  • That will not exist for long (last for long)
  • Candle grease (Candle wax)
  • Keep to myself at the present (Keep to myself for now) or (Not at the present)
  • A good grip of the affair (A keen grasp)

  • Make great steps (great strides)
  • A fall back on (safety cushion)
  • The peak of condition (tiptop shape)
  • Making the hills out of the mole mounts (mountains out of molehills)
  • Wild gooseberry hunt (Wild goose chase)

  • Slept like a top (log)
  • Not a moment to waste (to lose)
  • Head him off the scent (Throw him off the scent)
  • Strike while the metal is warm (iron is hot)
  • Not keep waiting a lady (keep a lady waiting)
  • You are up with the bird (lark)
  • Grey cells they grow the rust (getting rusty)
  • One grips at the straws (grasps at straws)

Sunday, July 10, 2022

Blondie's Catering Move

I've been gradually making my way through the archives of my newspapers, filling in the holes in my collective memories, that was under indefinite hiatus due to the pandemic.  As far as I'm concerned, my main interest in newspaper comics ended the day Calvin & Hobbes did.  I continued collecting as long as Doonesbury and For Better or for Worse continued, but my diehard obsession was on the wane as the quality of remaining comics continued to decline, their heyday having plateaued long ago.

Still, while scouring through the remaining months of 1995, I came across an unexpected story arc, which gave one last gasp of creativity.  With Bill Watterson's impending retirement, it passed completely unnoticed, but looking back at it now, I wondered if it was paying tribute in terms of ambition.

It started off perfectly innocuously enough with a one-off strip that had no follow-up the next day.

So, after the first week of drama of trying to get used to the idea of Blondie moving out, the decision is made to go see a marriage counselor.

Here's an example of the dailies not acting in concert with each other.  On Wednesday, Julius makes the implicit presumption that Dagwood's job takes priority, but the very next day, says that he needs to focus on his family instead.

By now, a certain rhythm starts to settle in.  Each week tackles a single dominating topic that is then concluded on the Sunday page.  For anyone whose papers only held one and not the other, there would be the general sense that some story was happening when they weren't looking.

With the threat of Blondie moving her business elsewhere no longer looming as large, effort goes into actually finding a place to conduct said business.

This is a not-so-subtle allusion to the brief window when Dagwood quit his job to help out his wife's Catering, but apart from fanatical long-term readers, who would remember?

So, having found a nice fixer-upper, Blondie is faced with her biggest hurdle yet... Bureaucracy.

To get an idea of how intimidating a hurdle this is, this seemingly simple conflict isn't resolved this week.

As much fun as it would be to continuously navigate the perplexing navigational highway of a Kafka Komedy, that's not what Blondie is about.  The matter is soon settled, and Blondie can move on to the next obstacle... reconstruction and endangered species.

Well, that's one way to solve a problem - just have Krazy Kat do an uncharacteristic cameo for you.  Somehow, I suspect this wasn't very popular with the ASPCA.  There's also a note in the margins for meeting the comic creators, Dean Young on America Online, with the keyword, "comic strip".  If anyone happens to have this specific video recording stashed somewhere in their VHS collection, feel free to share.

One unorthodox tradition that was unknown to me was that after teenagers help with a moving, it's customary to serve all who participated with celebratory pizza.  I've never seen this celebrated, either in media or otherwise, but this comic which occurred on November 23rd may be the closest thing to representation.

And that's how Blondie went from being a home catering service to a Deli and Catering Service.  After this, the next two days are filled with filler, and there's no further mention of Blondie's, until the arrival of Friday's strip, which gives a fairly solid conclusion overall:

Well, Dagwood shouldn't really complain.  Who is the strip named after?