Monday, January 27, 2020

Words

Somewhere between 4 and 5 am today, yes--I know there should be periods after the A and M, but I'm not going to bother, I had several thoughts that disturbed my sleep to the point where I couldn't.

One I can't mention as it was not pleasant.
The other, far more pleasant.
I remembered a word used in my house that was silly and probably made up out of nowhere.

Snickelfritz. Or something like that. My mother took German in high school so it might have derived from that somehow. Or it could have been something from a 1930s song that I have never heard before.
Like Ishcabibble. Or Ishkabibble. Turns out that was the name of a character from an old band...a joke character, usually blamed for doing something stupid. I actually caught the character in an old movie...a lovable dork.
Anyway, Snickelfritz was a term of endearment, I hope.

Another word: Googiewommer. This is a noun, for sure. Usually replacement word for the actual thing one can't remember the name of. Hand me that googiewommer, will ya?

There are others. I will write them when they come back into my brain.

Question now is, do you have any funny words that aren't curses, that you remember from your past?
If so, please let me know.

I love increasing my vocabulary.


Monday, January 20, 2020

Martin Luther King, Jr.

He had the right idea.
Too bad, he had to die for it.

Now...let's think of some other people who have had right ideas and died for them.

Jesus.
Kennedy, John and Robert.
Ghandi
King
Tupac

That was the side I agree with.
There is another side. I can't agree with these people, either.

Saddam Hussein
Qaddafi
Hitler
Mussolini
Mao


Now,wait. I observed something about both these lists.
They're all men.


Monday, January 13, 2020

Fire

Last night, a fire raged in the town next to where I grew up. It was the downtown we shopped in. It was where my parents grew up. I spent the first year and a half of my life living there.

It was a huge 7 alarm fire. Firetrucks from neighboring towns came to help put it out, some from pretty far away, to use their ladder trucks because the structures that were burning were multi-story apartment buildings under construction.

Bound Brook, NJ has had its share of disasters. The main street was flooded in 1999 by hurricane Floyd. Twelve foot high water marks wiped out stores and businesses. They rebuilt and the gov't put up water barriers to keep the nearby Raritan River out of the town.

In order to erect these new apartment buildings, several old useless buildings were knocked down.

When I was a child, this area of the downtown had an active business section, a continuation of the main street. There was a fishmonger, a butcher, a bicycle chop, a shoe shop.  People used these stores. Before the supermarkets and chain stores arrived, many years later, this area was viable.

But, things always change.

The houses for the most part remained, along with the people, usually somewhat new to the country, as were  so many families in the 40s-50s.

And it remains that way as the big old houses were converted to apartments.

It had a heart beat.

It is alive and, until last night's fire, it was a safe place to live and raise ones' children.

Now, there are ashes. The new buildings are in ruins. The people who lost their homes wouldn't have been able to live in those luxury high rises....

But, luckily, not too much damage was done to the old neighborhoods. 
The stores and families of my youth are long gone, but there are people, nice, hardworking people still living in that end of town.

Bound Brook will once again rise from the ashes, or flood waters, to shine again.

Thank you to all the first responders who saved so much with their unceasing efforts.

Thursday, January 9, 2020

On Being a Luddite

Those poor Luddites. They existed for a very short time awhile ago, like in the previous two centuries. 
They were famous for eschewing technology...like steel plows, store bought cloth, prepared meals in a box that came to your door...that kind of stuff.

They died out rapidly, though remnants of that kind of thought still exist in limited ways among certain German type religious orders--Amish, Mennonites (not so much) and Hudderites. They are a minority, though, and I think they are maintaining their traditions with breaks when horses and buggies are rather inconvenient in 2020 USA.

Anyway, yesterday I finally got my second child to delete all these files of other peoples' writing from my WORD. I know nothing about where this stuff goes, how it is kept and brought up with a stroke of a few keys and all, but I knew I had a shitload of words that were not my own stored somewhere in the magic box.

I got the feeling these words that were not my own were clogging up my computer so I wanted them out. Of course, I couldn't do it on my own, but the kid stepped in after four months of begging on my part and within 20 minutes max, deleted all those thousands of words. Books worth! Several times over.

That done, to my relief, I decided to do some registering for the writers' conference in April. In the past, although the preferred method of payment was cyber, which I do not trust even though I do have an account but I don't know why, I have paid by check. Yes, paper. Yes, it may have been a royal pain in the ass, but I was allowed on account of everybody loves my wit and general vivacity.

It didn't work.
I had to go through that thing I do not trust and entrust it with my credit card numbers  because I can't remember passwords or even really how to use that thing...though it would allow me to pay by credit card through them. Cost me an additional $3!!!

I am pissed off.
Yes, being a Luddite is difficult and I can hear those little rat bastard millennials shouting OKAY BOOMER, but know what I say to them?

F*ck off, babies.