ATMs

I have very little reason to go into banks these days, what with ATM machines, depositing checks with my phone, and whatnot.

Yet here in the odd land of New Jersey, banks in our small downtown villages all have parking lots while restaurants don't. It's a real puzzler.

However, today's topic is the safety of ATMs. Although out here in the suburbs we did have a proud curmudgeon complain once about having an ATM installed near his house (concerns of attracting the criminal element to their quiet neighborhood and such), it is happily not much of a problem.

Nonetheless, it is clear that this young lady's grandmother has things well in hand.

View to a Sunrise

Believe it or not, here in our picturesque corner of NJ we are surrounded by trees. I live at the top of a hill and we've never seen a sunrise or sunset from here because of dense, tall trees. There are so many that when Hurricane Sandy gleefully blew down like every other tree (each making it a personal mission to take out electrical wires on the way down), things look hardly any different here.

Recently, our neighbors were having some trees taken down for an addition. These aren't the kid climbing-friendly sort either - we're talking 60 foot oaks. Huge. These tree guys CLIMB TO THE TOP and lower the tree chunk by chunk, chain saw dangling from their belt. Then the final 12-15 feet of trunk is felled all at once; my Sainted wife and I fair bounce out of our comfy couch seats.

$8,000 to take down a tree suddenly doesn't seem like too much, except when I consider how many trees are between me and a good view of sunrise and/or sunset. Way too expensive for curmudgeons.

Housecleaning

My Sainted wife and I happen to use a house cleaning service. We tried Mabel down the street AND Esmerelda across town, but service companies seem to be more reliable. Plus we're very happy with their work.

Before they show up, I sort of clear the decks so they can dust, hiding the sex toys, off-color DVDs and such.

My wife? She pre-cleans the whole damn house. I don't get it - the CLEANING people are coming for god's sake. But she'll rinse out sinks, make beds and all manner of nonsense. She's not alone! I personally know of others who also engage in this extraordinarily bizarre practice.

Curmudgeons are the sort who unselfishly give "the help" meaningful work that they can sink their teeth into. Hence, if you're the cleaners, there's stuff for you to clean. And as we're the paying customer, we let you.

Simple.

Sandals

As the weather warms, people and things ooze out of dark crevices where they have been happily hidden during the winter. Sandals on men are some of the things that inevitably appear.

Sadly, they should not. Unless accompanied by a toga, they really have no place on men's feet in public in this day and age. They may have looked good on Steve Reeves in Hercules movies from the 50s, but they don't look good on ANY guy in the 21st century.

Try as guys might, the above picture captures the dilemma: no sandal design makes it OK.

The American Section

This one sort of blew my mind, then I realized "Oh, of course". Outside the US, grocery stores have "American" food sections just like we have "Asian" and "Mexican" sections.

The real insight comes from what this particular British store stocked the "American" section with. I see maple syrup, marshmallows, marshmallow Fluff, ridiculously sweet cereals, Pop-Tarts, and mucho candy amply represented, along with an odd assortment of drinks (bottled, flavored, sweetened iced teas it seems). There are even Twinkies (RIP).

Pretty much the only non-sweet thing there is the A1 steak sauce.

I don't think I care for our portrayal.

Bad Wordplay

When Twittering, messaging and whatnot, kids have apparently moved beyond the Internet shorthand we're still not familiar with. Now they write subordinate clauses without the normally expected sentence bit that completes the thought. They expect YOU to complete the thought.

I realize that written history is filled with overly complete thoughts. For example, old books with chapter headings that go on and on: "Chapter 2: In which our hero finds that disagreeable occurrences will take place on a Cruise."  I grant you this is overdone, but at least it is a sentence with a subject in it.

The Internet and early mobile phones spawned those awful shortcuts ("LOL" and such) and emoticons (😃, etc.). Now they are messing with syntax. They're making you figure out what they are writing about (e.g., "When you cross the street, but your friend waits for the oncoming car".)  Neither a sentence nor a complete thought. You have to figure those bits out.

Sheesh. Curmudgeons have enough to complain about. Just write in plain old English. Works for me.

Turning Left

I can't emphasize this enough: New Jersey has been, and is, run by idiots.

You're here in one of the most crowded states in the union and you're at a red light wanting to turn left. Turns out, it is a driving "sport" to try to beat oncoming traffic attempting to go straight when the light turns green. This is just stupid...and entirely legal.

As I've mentioned in the past, we have old winding roads sized inappropriately for today's traffic. Turning lanes? No room. Timed turning lights? Hey, paying for them might cut into our graft. A law that forbids it, as in California? Apparently our dear leaders don't have the brains for it.

And so the "sport" goes on.

Key Fobs

Many cars don't come with keys anymore - they have key fobs, a thingie with buttons to lock/unlock your car, open the tailgate, start it, etc. Very handy. And easy to misuse.

As a curmudgeon, I open the local paper to the "police blotter" every week to see what evildoers are up to. Apparently of late, they are up to stealing cars where idiots have left their key fobs IN the car.

Apparently some car owners have decided it was quite convenient to leave the fob in the car when at home - one less thing to worry about remembering when they go out. Well, they're idiots. The criminal element has got ahold of simple devices that can detect when a car is "talking" to its fob, which shouts "jump in and steal me - I'm for the taking!"

And so, they do.

Crack Awareness

Curmudgeons are not big on transportation by bus, and we certainly don't need to see this sort of public awareness program to remind us why.

If you're over 10 years old, you have no doubt seen the Dan Ackroyd skit on Saturday Night Live when a crack was first exposed on TV. But unless you're 50-plus, you may be missing the context. Stuff like that just didn't appear on TV in those days. Hell, the censors had only just permitted married people to be in the same bed at night.

So it was a monumental moment for TV. Funny and surprising. However, seeing these things repeatedly in public is neither funny nor enjoyable in any sense. And it is all too common.

Something is very wrong with such people.

The Approaching Singularity

Curmudgeons don't spend all their time in the past - we try to look ahead as well.

You've all heard about the approaching singularity - when computers start thinking for themselves. They will, of course, think much faster than we do, and may do things we don't expect and can no longer control.

I'm sure you've already thought about this. The perfect statement on this topic that I've seen is:

"The talents that distinguish humans from machines might not be what we had hoped."

We may not end up the dreamers, the inventors, the idea creators that we thought we would be when machines did all those little things for us because after the singularity they may very well run the show and WE'LL be the blivits doing the menial stuff.

Just ask Steven Hawkings.

Mimes

I am struggling to figure out how mimes came about and how they are still a thing. It doesn't come as any surprise that they still haunt the streets of Paris - the French have proved over and over again that their sense of entertainment is quite bizarre  - hell, they liked Jerry Lewis for goodness sakes.

According to Wikipedia, mimes have enjoyed an even longer history than those awful Punch & Judy shows I mentioned a couple weeks ago, and despite being silent, are every bit as annoying.

But this fellow has tweeted the perfect mime act: fantastically entertaining and we get to do away with a mime. Sort of a win-win in this curmudgeon's view.

Doors

We are, of course, all familiar with doors. We never give them a second thought. We wonder at the 10 foot tall ones in old homes that were built by millionaires "back in the day".  At least we do around here, where millionaires "in the day" took their private rail cars out here to their country estates to escape the NY city heat.

On the other end of the scale, we more normal folk live with doors squeezed in where needed. I first encountered this sort of clipped door in my penthouse suite high atop Cranford, NJ. They couldn't fit a real door under the roof line for the bathroom. So they cut the top corner of the door off. No real problem - just a quaint little quirk. Also an indicator of the luxuriousness of my "suite."

Well, as evidenced from spending the entire month of February binge-watching Midsomer Murders, these clipped doors appear to be in cottages all over England. Outside of country estates, virtually every cottage has a clipped door somewhere upstairs. Who knew?

My penthouse suite had a proud history.

Trooper vs. Trouper

Are you a trooper or a trouper?

The English language is rife with vast confusion when it comes to its, well, words. I was recently trying to categorize Tiger, the Wonder cat as a "real trooper" and had to pause and look up both words to see if I got it right.

The operating principle in this particular case seems to be that if you're trying to describe courage and the like, you're a trooper (origin 1500s and war stuff). If you're trying to describe cooperation, dependability, "the show must go on" it's trouper (origin 1800s show business).

So with regard to Tiger, both happen to work.

We need to clean up this damn language.

State Lotteries

Many states in our delightful Union have hatched lotteries for their more clueless residents. These states have decided to prey on their constituents by getting them to buy into a casino that lays out worse odds than you or I getting attacked by a shark whilst being struck by lightning.

So, in essence, your elected representatives are asking you to throw your money away. More precisely, throw it AT THEM, and we all know what happens to it after they get their grubby hands on it.

We curmudgeons watch you enthusiastically piss your money away. We weep. (Actually, we fume because you hold up the line at the Quicky Mart). Your elected representatives are literally hoping you are idiots. There is no way around it: who else would just throw money away? They even mount advertisements that essentially lie to you by suggesting a return is likely.

Gamble away! Bear in mind, your government is encouraging you to be foolish with your money.

Think about it.

Senior Drivers

Lets face it. The older we get, the lazier we drive. We curmudgeons have been driving since the 1960s, so our basic driving mode is "get the hell out of my way." We cruise along at whatever speed the mood strikes.

Turning signals require actually doing something in addition to steering. This can be quite the challenge. As it turns out, this is ALWAYS a challenge, so we just skip the turn signal bit.

Oh, people honk and use a variety of hand gestures, but we make our turn, return home and the trip is deemed a success.

Get over it: we're old, cranky and turn whenever we damned well please.

Slovenly

Why is it that people tend towards the slovenly? They don't shave, they think T-shirts are proper shirts, and worse.

It wasn't that long ago that putting on a real shirt, tie, and jacket was perfectly normal. Why in a small town near here (and remember, New Jersey is overflowing with small towns) a seedy bar/restaurant (as close to an English pub the US could get) required a jacket. A bar!

Upscale restaurants had the courage to put up signs like "no shoes, no collar, no service". So even if you weren't good-looking, you looked good.

Not anymore - you have money? Come on in! Sure, leave that stupid baseball cap on. Wear your sweat pants. Collars? Who cares?

Your nearby dining curmudgeon with his tie and jacket does. And doesn't like it one single bit.

The Oxford Comma

Any curmudgeon of English descent is a serious user of the Oxford comma. As you, being smart enough to read this blog, no doubt do as well.

Using the Oxford comma is no trivial thing.

When I write a list of this, that, and the other thing, I use the Oxford comma. It is the last comma in the series clarifying just what your list is. Many omit that last comma and their lists become unintentionally confusing. To wit:

No Oxford comma: We invited the strippers, Bill Clinton and his wife. This, clearly suggests that the Clintons are the strippers. Ick.

With Oxford comma:  We invited the strippers, Bill Clinton, and his wife. Still ick as a social occasion, but much clearer.

Also known as the serial comma since the more commas, the better.

The Oxford comma rules.