Three in Sweltering Summer Month

Prompt from a friend.

write about something that annoys you-that really shouldn’t.

You know, I used to be a lot more annoyed by what others did. Nowadays, I have trouble finding the fuck I’m not giving. (partial credit to Ke$ha on that one.....and I’m comfortable enough to admit that.....)

I guess what really irks me lately is what I’ve previously called Captain Queeg Syndrome.

For those of you unfamiliar with Captain queeg, he was one of the main characters in Herman Wouk’s The Caine Mutiny. While the book is certainly not Wouk’s best-known, it did get made into a movie with Humphrey Bogart.

“Don’t Bogart, bro.”

One of Queeg’s exploits was also cited in a Supreme Court decision (By Anthony Kennedy, who, IMO, is the best justice on the court....)

(Aside #2: I just Googled “Herman Wouk” to make sure I was spelling his name correctly. He’s still alive?! And a hundred years old. Crazy.)

One of the key things Queeg tried to do is recreate his single moment of adequacy, even when it didn’t fit. So much lately I see is people just trying to recreate past “successes,” ignorant of the fact that the environments are completely different.

So, reinflate the real estate market. (That $400K/unit condo complex in Fort Norfolk is a swell idea!!1!)
There can’t be a second dotcom bubble. (And if you disagree, please bitch about me on Yelp....)

I get frustrated hearing older people, Boomers, especially, just ignore the fact that the old tricks really didn’t work in the first place. But they totes will if you try them again.

Hashtag ReadyForHillary.

Stop it. Do somehting new. It might be something you’re completely unaccustomed to. It might not work.

But it also might work.

There is no neat package of shit you buy and do that’ll make your life turn out perfect. Sorry, HGTV. Sorry, Bill O’Reilly. Sorry, Mark “Nextel” Warner.

Do the analysis.

Yes, it might be tedious.
Yes, it might tell you what you already “know.”

But it also might tell you some things you don’t know, and show you some things you didn’t expect.

Once you have that knowledge, react to it. You might make a mistake. You probably won’t end up dead because of it. Broke, maybe, but probably not.

No, it’s not as fast as just trying to replicate what somebody else once did.

Oh well.

Speaking of HGTV, another thing that really annoys me is this authoritative sense of style some people in design seem to have.

My mother had this renovation show she was watching; an island in the kitchen fixed everything

Why? Why does a kitchen need an island? There’s things about my flat’s galley that I don’t like. An island would fix none of them.

I see the same sort of thing when my wife is watching her girly fashion TV things. What makes that good, other than your own personal taste? Can you even cite one authoritative thing that’d point to its adequacy?

Even the worst cook can probably find a technique that reinforces whatever slop he/she is producing. Can the same be said of the woman who says that the wagon wheel really sets off the yard?

Well, that’s just, like, your opinion, man.

So, maybe I can still complain.

I also want to know what the fuck I did to my CV. I used to get no attention at all, but the past few weeks, it’s been nonstop. Some of those pings are from places I never could have thought of.

I’d include an image of Tommy From Quinzee here, but that might reveal too much about the latest query.

(I also saw something yesterday that was looking for someone to write SQL/Access Quires.)

Last updated August 03, 2015