Earlier, we covered the fact that school's out for summer and kids and skateboards need a place.
Later we went moving right along with a little juxtaposition of cognitive dissonance of single moms in poverty (PDF) and suburban singles bars and why I don't date, but dance as if I do.
When I dare to go out, that is.
And I left with a brief interlude, a link to some great music from a band named with a word I have learned to fear and to despise: FOCUS.
The Astute Reader may have noticed that despite the occasional typographic error -- or errors in construction which might best be attributed to being a bit tired after typing all day, and being less than perfectly attentive in pre-post editing -- I can and do write at a level which is best characterized as "deeply literate".
The National Endowment for the Arts -- a bastion of literacy if ever there was one -- bewails the status of literacy (PDF) in America, following on the heels of their eariler reports which indicated that only about one third of college graduates are "deeply literate". That means that only about one third of college graduates are capable of actually grasping the totality of what I'm trying to say here, and that regards only their capacity to decode the grammar, and be sufficiently familiar with vocabulary so as to not have to spend all day using wikipedia as a codex to decipher my rather plain, if occasionally circumlocutory English.
People with an interest in literate communication may wish to read this critique and analysis of education theory in early-level college English composition courses.
Back in the 1980s, I worked downtown for an agency of the Federal government. I was an underpaid clerk and technician, but still made enough money to be issued a credit card by a major national carrier, something I would later regret. Sometimes I would use that credit card to buy dinner and/or drinks.
Ordinarily I did my drinking at various downtown neighborhood bars where I was known and had been known for a fairly long time. Or, it being legal back in the day to drink in public parks, I hung out and drank with a fascinating diversity of locals and carpetbaggers, fellow citizens and foreigners.
One night I decided to head off down another way to try out some bars that were new to me. Heading in the general direction of George Washington Circle, I pulled up a table at a bar which as it turns out was not far from GW University, and started drinking and chatting with other patrons, most of whom were barely old enough to legally drink in a bar.
The next morning I woke with a splitting headache at home back in Rockville, and called into work to take sick leave. I felt as if I'd been beaten with a baseball bat and then kicked up and down the block a few times.
And over the next few days, something came to me as if the recollection of a dream.
In the dream, a rather nice lady rode with me up an elevator to a strange rooftop, and we crossed a strange little bridge between that rooftop and another. And through another elevator door was a very nice apartment, and she plopped me in a chair and said something like "I have to make some phone calls", and I fell asleep and woke up in Rockville with a splitting headache.
Years later, I saw an obituary in the Washington Post. The face looked incredibly familiar, and the next time I was downtown, I spotted that unique double-towered roof structure, and remembered my dream, but also remembering that obituary, the dream made sense, my memories made sense, and that night made sense.
It seems that I had walked into a bar right across the street from both a major hospital, and a major psychiatric inpatient and outpatient upscale and private service-provider.
And evidently, after talking shop about the pending introduction of a new class of mobile communications services, and how this would likely drive entire new industries, some of the students called some of their friends on the staff of the hospital, and convinced the bartender to slip me a "mickey finn" to keep me mellow until an actual professional could be asked to drop in from across the street to decide whether or not I was one of her (or someone else's) escaped patients.
I wasn't. As a professional, she had enough sense to ask what I had been talking about, and to ask me where I worked. I have no idea what sort of words she had for the bar staff or for the students who decided that I was a crazy man babbling lunatic nonsense. She knew the difference between someone speaking technical -- and regulatory -- jargon, and the babblings of the untreated insane.
And I woke up in Rockville with a splitting headache, dreamlike memories that I understood only years later, and I never again will drink at any bar in the vicinity of 23rd and Pennsylvania NW.
The difference between sanity and insanity is not to be decided by students in a bar, nor by bartenders. They may have their opinion, but dosing people is beyond the pale. These assessments are to be made by professionals in the field, and perhaps by the professional peers in the field of the person in question.
If, for example, someone overheard me in a bar, and I was holding forth on the relative merits of realtime single-core task prioritization versus non-preemptive multi-core task prioritization with adaptive resource allocation, they'd almost certainly think I was crazy... unless they were another internetworking engineer with some knowledge of chip hardware.
And unfortunately for me, the majority of people reading this blog may not even have heard of -- or have only the slightest concept of -- internetworking, engineering, or any of the things that make their 'puter do that online thing. So to them, it's just meaningless. To them, meaningless somehow equates with "crazy".
Then again, I hardly know the difference between a knucklehead and a panhead, but I know that when I hear people talking about that and related subjects, the people might be oddly dressed and not groomed to the standards of Young Urban Professionals or college students, or they might be... the point is, I don't assume that they are crazy, when actually what they are is mechanics.
Noted in passing: I got dosed into a near-death coma for predicting that in the future, even people in the deep rural areas of the USA would be able to access massive global information resources via wireless devices that would be small enough to fit in a pocket.
And when I recovered from my near-death coma, suffered at the hands of pompous college graduates and overzealous bartenders, I went back to work at my job in the Land Mobile Common Carrier section of the Federal Communications Commission, and started entering applications for the predecessor services that became Rural Cellular and Text Message Service.
And so to whomever it is out there in Smoot, Wyoming, who reads this blog on their iPhone, I hope you appreciate the price I paid so you can do that. You've got coverage no matter where you are, and I collect a disability.
Considering what happened to me for talking tech in a bar, about 20 years ago, I'm probably lucky I never brought up the subject of Meteor Scatter. Or maybe I did.
And ever since, I've been really fixated and observant over the issue of people fucking with my goddamn drinks in bars.
I also don't have much to say to people in them.
God knows what can happen when I try to talk about any of the things that interest me, or even talk to other people using the level of English in which I do all of my thinking.
I cannot believe that I'm incredibly intelligent. After all, I do not have a college degree. Then again, I am deeply literate, which can be said of only about one third of college graduates, according to no less an authority than the National Endowment for the Arts, which draws its statistics from comparable laudable and qualified institutions.
Yet the vast majority, even of college graduates, can't understand this:
It was scarcely possible that the eyes of contemporaries should discover in the public felicity the latent causes of decay and corruption. This long peace, and the uniform government of the Romans, introduced a slow and secret poison into the vitals of the empire. The minds of men were gradually reduced to the same level, the fire of genius was extinguished, and even the military spirit evaporated. The natives of Europe were brave and robust. Spain, Gaul, Britain, and Illyricum supplied the legions with excellent soldiers, and constituted the real strength of the monarchy. Their personal valor remained, but they no longer possessed that public courage which is nourished by the love of independence, the sense of national honor, the presence of danger, and the habit of command. They received laws and governors from the will of their sovereign, and trusted for their defence to a mercenary army. The posterity of
their boldest leaders was contented with the rank of citizens and subjects. The most aspiring spirits resorted to the court or standard of the emperors; and the deserted provinces, deprived of political strength or union, insensibly sunk into the languid indifference of private life.
Or, perhaps more to the point (if you're deeply literate, that is):
Civil governments, in their first institution, are voluntary associations for mutual defence. To obtain the desired end, it is absolutely necessary that each individual should conceive himself obliged to submit his private opinions and actions to the judgment of the greater number of his associates. The German tribes were contented with this rude but liberal outline of political society. As soon as a youth, born of free parents, had attained the age of manhood, he was introduced into the general council of his countrymen, solemnly invested with a shield and spear, and adopted as an equal and worthy member of the military commonwealth. The assembly of the warriors of the tribe was convened at stated seasons, or on sudden emergencies. The trial of public offences, the election of magistrates, and the great business of peace and war, were determined by its independent voice. Sometimes indeed, these important questions were previously considered and prepared in a more select council of the principal chieftains. The magistrates might deliberate and persuade, the people only could resolve and execute; and the resolutions of the Germans were for the most part hasty and violent. Barbarians accustomed to place their freedom in gratifying the present passion, and their courage in overlooking all future consequences, turned away with indignant contempt from the remonstrances of justice and policy, and it was the practice to signify by a hollow murmur their dislike of such timid counsels. But whenever a more popular orator proposed to vindicate the meanest citizen from either foreign or domestic injury, whenever he called upon his fellow-countrymen to assert the national honor, or to pursue some enterprise full of danger and glory, a loud clashing of shields and spears expressed the eager applause of the assembly. For the Germans always met in arms, and it was constantly to be dreaded, lest an irregular multitude, inflamed with faction and strong liquors, should use those arms to enforce, as well as to declare, their furious resolves. We may recollect how often the diets of Poland have been polluted with blood, and the more numerous party has been compelled to yield to the more violent and seditious.
Everyone reading this should instantly recognize the style, and the content, and furthmore be able to critique it. This all used to be required reading in high-school, generally as a sophomore and junior class course. Almost every American over the age of 50 has read this. Under the age of 50, probably almost none have.
These quotes used to be considered the standard of literacy.
The modern standard of literacy seems to be more along the lines of "watup dawg, r u go see dj sho, ma boy bad a$$".
I keep asking "how did we, as a society, get to be so fucking crazy".
I personally think that it happened about the time when it started to be a hospitalizable offense, in the minds of apparently a lot of people, to talk like you had a broadbased education and a critical mind and were willing to hone it in a bar.
I think it started when we started enforcing stupidity as the common standard.
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