Semantics

Martin: Whole grain pancakes and an egg-white omelette, please.
Waitress: What would you like in your omelette?
Martin: Nothing in the omelette. Nothing at all.
Waitress: Well, that's not technically an omelette.
Martin: Look, I don't want to get into a semantic argument about it, I just want the protein, all right?
- From one of the best movies of all time, EVER...Grosse Pointe Blank
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Had occasions over the weekend, to think about semantics.

Semantics... they're fun.

Hell, the definition of semantics even sounds important and profound.


se·man·tics
[si-man-tiks]

-noun ( used with a singular verb )
1. Linguistics .
a. The Study of Meaning.
b. the study of linguistic development by classifying and examining changes in meaning and form.
2. Also called significs. the branch of semiotics dealing with the relations between signs and what they denote.
3. the meaning, or an interpretation of the meaning, of a word, sign, sentence, etc.: Let's not argue about semantics.


"The Study of Meaning".... Impressive!

Yet, generally speaking, when we use "Semantics" in conversation, it's generally as a prop, a set up for humor, perhaps, or a (hopefully) good spirited argument. I lump it in with words and phrases like "oxymoron" and " contradiction in terms" and "that's redundant".

"Wow, he's... very staunch in his convictions."
"He's an ass-clown."
"I guess it's just a matter of semantics..."



So, in the study of meaning and context...

My best friend, a guy I've known since first grade, came to see me on Saturday. He, his pregnant wife and almost one year old son were in town for the afternoon. Only non-negotiable point - real Chicago-style pizza.

We had lots of fun breaking down the semantics of this. Ordering chicago-style pizza in...Chicago.
"I, uh... I don't think they call it that, here."

Chicago-Style Pizza. You order this at pizza joints NOT in or around Chicago. Here, it's simply listed as "pizza" on the menu.
Noone advertises it.

Like Chicago-style hotdogs.
they're just hot dogs, here.

Does this mean, if you just want a hotdog with, say... catsup and a slice of american cheese on it, you'd walk into the Plush Pup, around the corner from my office and order a... Kalamazoo dog?

(Oh, and as an aside - Good luck with the whole "Catsup on a hot dog" thing around here. "You want WHAT?" is the apparently only correct response to that request, at every mom and pop place within a 25 mile radius...)

"Look, I don't want to get into a semantic argument about it, I just want the protein, all right?"

It'd be like looking for a good Chinese restaurant, in China. It's not chinese food there, it's... food.

See?
Semantics! meaning and context.


There's a winter storm advisory for W. Michigan today.
But... it's Spring.

Wait, let me retype that with proper emphasis...
But... but...it's SPRING... (followed by quiet sobbing...)

It's been Spring for almost a month.

How can they call it a WINTER storm, if it's no longer winter?

I just had my exit interview for my soon to be ex-job. I kept it largely professional, because...I'm a pretty professional guy.
Yet, there were some points that REALLY needed to be made...

Semantics, my friends. Meaning and context.....

The day that Santa died.

Was trying to transfer some old files from a mostly worthless old laptop, prior to recycling it, and came across some stuff I had written years ago. I completely forgot this existed.... perhaps I'll clean up some of the other ones, and post them, too.


The day that Santa died.

As is often the case, the story begins before I had a chance to sit down with my first cup of coffee. I was actually on my way to my sister’s house for coffee, and early morning pandemonium courtesy of her boys, my nephews, to whom I am a large wonderful toy. You’ve all seen the scratching post /perch/ carpeted thing to climb that are the joy of so many house cat’s existence? I am this toy, for my nephews. Which I wholeheartedly approve of, until they get big enough to be a real challenge to my superior might and intellect. Which will be 3 or 4 more years on the might part, and 6 weeks or so on the intellect.
But I digress.

Early and often.

I was driving down the street, listening to Ike Reilly on the CD player, when I spotted him, crumpled in someone’s front yard.
“Jesus Christ, that’s Santa.”
Santa looked like he had fallen from his sleigh at some great height, and came to an abrupt and permanent halt at terminal velocity in the slushy front yard of a brick Georgian, in a southwest suburb of Chicago. What an anti-climatic end for such an august personage. This guy had made millions happy over the years, brought a sense of wonder and whimsy to generations of people, hung out with cats like the Mizer brothers, Burghermeister Meisterburger and the Winter Warlock, and had a well documented obsession with the undersized. But, like it is for all of us, at some point in time, it’s your time. The siren song of Mr. Coffee interrupted my thoughts, and I kept driving.
A couple of blocks further on, and goddamn but there was Santa again, in the same sad state I had just witnessed him to be in. And this time he had company. It looked for all the world like Frosty the snowman had broken the big guy’s fall. This act of selflessness did neither of them any good.
I listened close for Jimmy Durante’s voice, explaining to all of us what had happened, but heard nothing.

While I never cease to amuse myself, thinking like this, I was questioning whether or not it would amuse others in the re-telling, as I pulled up in front of my sister’s house.
Not everyone has the penchant for dark flights of fancy, as do I.

Of course I had not actually observed the tragic evidence of some mid-air collision earlier, but a number of those gawd-awful inflatable lawn ornaments with which so many have gone to so much trouble to ugly up my neighborhood during this most sacred of seasons.
They’re ugly enough when wasting valuable natural resources to power the engine that powers the fans that keep them inflated, but they look like nothing but colorful piles of refuse when the plug is pulled.
Or, perhaps, the result of a really bad accident...

Routine.

Fiona mentioned to me yesterday that there’s a new girl in her class.

“Is she nice?” seemed like a good question to ask my 3.5 year old daughter.
A simpler form of “Does she play well with others?”, if you will.

Because that would probably be what registers and is important at that age, right?
You want the other kids to be nice to you- kind, you want the other kids to play well with you.
At this point in my daughter’s life, she’s probably not looking much past these basics.

It would be a simple verbal transaction.

I ask “Is she nice?”
Fiona answers “Yes.” Or “She took my pink crayon” in lieu of “No”.


Or so I thought.

“She doesn’t have the routine down yet.” was her vaguely critical reply.
“But she’s nice.”

Alarming visions flashed through my head as I waited for the light to turn green on our way home from her school.
Brief flashes of The Shawshank Redemption… various boarding school movies… “What we have here is a failure to communicate”……. Flew through my brain, all in an instant.

“Doesn’t have the routine down yet?” from my 3 year old?
WTF???

“Ummm… Do YOU have the routine down?”

“Yes!” was her prompt and matter-of-fact reply.

“What IS the routine?”

(Please don’t let it be that they’re making athletic shoes in a sweat shop atmosphere, please don’t let it be that they’re making athletic shoes in a sweat shop…)

“Doing things you don’t want to do, because the teachers tell you to.”

My relief that her pre-school is apparently NOT treating their students as cheap labor, quickly morphed into something less upbeat.

She’s already figuring out what a large chunk of her life is going to be all about. 14+ more years of school, and then college, hopefully grad school if she wants it.

And jobs. There’s little chance that she’ll go through life without having to work jobs to make ends meet.

Thanks for making me think about this sweetheart, after just leaving a particularly difficult day at the office behind. No, really. Keep up the good work...

That IS, and will continue to be the routine, for most of your life, darlin’.

That’s why we all embrace what’s OUTSIDE of the routine, with such vigor.

Fishing weekends, family getaways, live music, dinner with friends, the odd night out….
playtime.

Never, EVER take playtime for granted, darlin'.
Because the rest… Is routine.

That moment, between sleep and waking....

You know that moment.
The brief time when you're no longer asleep, but you're not yet awake.
When your dreamworld and the real world briefly overlap, until you fully orient yourself to the reality of your morning.

Odd things populate that moment.

For me, it's usually sounds.

A siren might be my daughter, crying.
Or vice versa.
My neighbor wheeling his trash can to the curb early on a Monday morning, might be the sound of a far off train, or perhaps thunder.

Rain is radio static, radio static is rain...

But only for a moment, that moment that's populated by odd things.

I've never been a real deep sleeper, but have become even less of one, since my daughter was born. It got a bit worse, when she became mobile; as she regularly would pad into our room in the middle of the night. It got so I'd be listening for footsteps in my sleep.

This morning... well. Let me tell you about this morning.

I've had the place to myself the last few days, while Wendy and Fiona visited Wendy's mom. I woke up well before the alarm clock, convinced myself that I was awake for the day, and promptly fell back asleep.

We've a large dog, and wood floors. Not even realizing that I had fallen back to sleep, I heard the sound of footsteps entering my room, and opened my eyes.

Odd things populate that moment between sleep and awake....

This morning, it was an extremely tall...something.

I opened my eyes to a fleeting vision of an extremely tall woman, in a white wrap, staring down at me.

"Gah!" I shout aloud and incoherently in that moment.

The giantess disappeared, replaced by the reality of shadows and a white bath towel draped over the bedroom door.
Eventually, my heart stopped racing.
I thought about the giantess, and... was kinda sad she had disappeared so quickly.
I would have liked to have had a better look at her.

Was it really just a towel and a trick of the light?
Or was it something else?

I would have preferred the answer to be "something else", be it an apparition, or proof, perhaps, that someone DOES watch over you.


But in the time it took me to register what I saw, and holler aloud, it was over, and I'm left only with a vague longing for more,and the reminder that:

Odd things populate that moment, that moment when sleep and awake overlap.

Things I don’t want to ever hear myself saying to my daughter - Thoughts on “character building”.

Growing up, I built a LOT of character.

Bucket Loads.
Newspaper delivery bags full.
250,000 snow shovels worth.

Because, you see, every menial task, every roll-up-the-sleeves chore… built character.

Why do I have to hold the wedge against the log while my brother tries to hit it with the blunt side of an ax?
Why do I have to clean out the garage? I don’t use it for anything, except keeping my bike out of the rain.

Because “It builds character”.

“It builds character” was usually accompanied by laughter.

I was too young to understand the concept of “character”, when I first started building it.
I wasn’t sure WHAT it was, but if I got it by, say…picking up wagons full of walnuts, I was pretty sure I didn’t want it.

We never went to the beach to build character, we just went to the beach.
I never played “Asteroids” at my buddy Rick’s house, to build character.
I never rode my bike to the park with my fishing pole, to build character.

“Can I go to the city pool with Allen and his mom?”
“Sure, it’ll build character.”

Nope, “character” never entered into these discussions.

So, following this logic, one’s character is defined by….unpleasantness.

That doesn’t sound very promising.

I’d like to think that the music I played, the friends I’ve made, the camping, the fishing, the acts of love, both emotional and physical…. Had way more to do with my character, than, say… organizing my dad’s random tool room detrius.

To that, mix in professional experiences, fatherhood, college and many wonderful random adventures.

These things HAVE to be responsible for my “character”, don’t they?

Jesus, I hope so.

And I hope the same for my daughter, which is why she’ll never hear “Because it builds character” from me, when she wonders why she has to help shovel the driveway, weed the garden, and clean the basement.

Oh, she’s gonna do all of those things, but she won’t ever be led to think it’s what defines who she is.

random winter storm and ensuing panic thoughts -Part 1.

Lines out into the street at all the gas stations yesterday afternoon and evening.

REALLY?
Because…. Everyone’s gonna be doing a lot of driving over the next couple of days as we get 12-20 inches of snow? Seems counter-intuitive…

Both of my cars have full tanks.
But they both NEEDED filling up.
Honest.

Co-worker told me his wife had to drive to ½ dozen different places yesterday before she could find ice melt. And when she DID find some, she bought every bag in the store.
He tells tall tales, but claims that his wife was approached by other shoppers, offering HER money for the salt in her cart, that she hadn’t even paid for yet.

On the count of three, everyone panic. Ready????
1….. 2……3……FREAK OUT!!!!

Yeah, this storm’s gonna be a monster, but not sure what a bag of salt’s gonna do to combat that.

random thought: Seems lots of people made sure to stock up on booze and junk food for the impending blizzard and forced stay-at-home time. I've ridden through hurricanes, people. Drunk's really not the way to approach crisis. Just sayin'.
At least they won't be on the road...

I’m working from home today. Because I don’t want to wait for the storm to arrive before being told I can leave early. Compound with fact that all the decision makers, and aprox. ½ my coworkers are all at our big market event in Florida.
Where they will remain, as they were likely scheduled to fly home either tonite or sometime tomorrow.

Hopefully, there will still be hotel rooms for them, if they are, indeed, stranded.

Headed out to Target last night, it was as busy as I remember it being just before Christmas. With all the hoopla, I was surprised to still see plenty of milk and other staples, like chocolate chips, available.

Decided to get Fiona a sled, so was checking out the sporting good aisles. Hmm…. Pool toys, beach paraphernalia, scooters, skateboards….. Excuse me, where are your sleds?

Seems they pulled all the winter stuff off the shelves just a couple of days ago, to make room for beach umbrellas and kiddie pools.

HA-ha (In best Nelson from the Simpsons voice)! Good planning! Don’t you folks watch TV?

The drug store around the corner’s a little slower on the trigger, and had plenty of sleds.

Fiona climbs into bed with us at 5:45 this morning.

“Let’s go sledding!!!!!”
It’s still nighttime, darlin’.
“Oh! ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ”

Nice.

A not so near miss

Monday night.

Got home from errands, and light snow was juuuuuuuuust starting to fall as I unloaded the car.
Five minutes later, I’m walking out the front door, leash in hand, dog on other end.
And…it was icing.

Not the yummy kind, but the kind that usually flies sideways in a strong wind, and makes pretty little tinkly noises as it smacks against the ground, houses, my coat…. It’s pelts my face in silence, however.

I’m not diggin’ it.

But it’s supposed to be a dead on blizzard by walk time tomorrow night, so can’t shirk now.

We do the loop, and are back at our 4 way stop. I begin to cross and… the car headed toward us brakes, and everything works out like it’s supposed to, EXCEPT…. The car does not stop. 10 minutes of icing has made the road slippery.

The car slid past the stop sign and I…. was not in front of it, knowing that it was likely slippery, I hung back.

I’m learning….