Tag: TMI
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Universal facts
One of the AFL-CIO booster films sympathizes with unionized postal workers. Carriers got up routinely at 4AM to start their sorting before walking the route. The narrator said “Nobody wants to get up at 4AM!” That was the official universal FACT for many decades as seen on TV and books and movies. People got up…
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Brief fashion, random memory
Noticed this article in an old appliance dealer mag. Central vacuum systems were trendy in the 60s, but never widespread. When we lived at the top of the hill in Manhattan, a rich prof built a new house next to ours. He had Euro connections and owned the first Squareback I’d ever seen, brought directly…
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Who’s realistic?
A typical Spokane News item with comments illustrating a basic difference. Women understand how people work. Men don’t understand. We have romantic ideas or political ideas, not realism. First the news item, then the women, then the men. Facts: Men will take all sorts of shit to get sex. Women will take all sorts of…
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Happy Blogday 20!
This month is the 20th anniversary of Polistra’s Mill. In the earlier years I marked each anniversary. The first entry was dated March 1, 2005. I started writing at Blogspot on March 14, and imported the previous two weeks from a brief attempt at blogging on LiveJournal. The tenth year seems to be the last…
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Nice to know
This year I’m trying to move back into pre-2020 condition as far as possible given aging. Trying to be more open and trusting with real people, pulling out of anxiety and constipation and inertia, getting projects underway again. After finishing federal and state tax, decided to update some internal records that I was skipping during…
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Today is is Proofreading Day!
My kind of day for srue. I’m a natural proofraeder and corrector, always on teh lookout for sutble errors and repepetitions. Not sardonic; editing and proofreading were always my strongest skills. I should have stuck with printing and moved into an editing career. But the official day IS sardonic. Corporate Trainer Judy Beaver created National…
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Self-check for cash codgers
For many years I made grocery trips as early as possible given bus schedule and daylight. Two years ago Safeway limited the hours of real checkout, so I switched to a later storetrip to stay in the real checkout. The later schedule was inconvenient in several ways: more traffic, more crowding on bus, more delays…
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Not a citizen
A couple weeks ago I detailed a Zillow listing in Manhattan that closely resembled the house my family occupied from 1957 to 1962. In bed tonight as a sheep-counting exercise I tried enumerating the neighbors I remember in those two blocks. Somewhat geographically: Adams, fireman. Matthews, city engineer. Danskin, prof of counseling. (Unknown name), Ft…
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No need to interpret this dream.
Unlike the previous one, this morning’s dream was explicit and positive. I was at some kind of party. An older Jewish professor started haranguing me, trying to persuade me to attend Yom Kippur in Virginia Beach (?????) so I would meet a nice Jewish girl and become normal. He got clumsily violent, pushing and prodding…
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One obvious, one mystery
For some reason** I just now noticed two firm social patterns in the 1950s. The first is universal and easily explained. The second is highly particular and unexplained. = = = = = 1. Males always called males by last name. Females called everyone by first name. This applied between teachers and students, and among…
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Raking record
Time to start the roof-raking record for this winter. As always, this should be in my private daily worklog, but I started doing it here, so I’ll continue the tradition. = = = = Last winter started late and needed only one raking. 2/6/2025 First raking of the season. EXTREMELY late; normally most of the…
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Meaningless meandering about dreams
For the last 10 years or so most dreams have signaled time to wake up by catching the bus from downtown Spokane to home. This was the real-life routine during the 90s. After 2001 I’ve been working from home. Dreams always run 20 years late; in the 90s most dreams were still in Oklahoma where…
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Indulging a time capsule
On impulse I looked at Zillow for Manhattan, wondering about the houses my parents owned. Didn’t find any of them, but this one is close. It’s part of the huge Phelps Addition. Phelps built exactly two floor plans during the ’50s, then switched to a slightly larger plan in the ’60s. My parents owned one…
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Belated mystery
Listening to these Postal Service training films brings back a memory of a situation that I didn’t question at the time, but seems puzzling now. In 1978 I worked night shift for a quasi-private part of OU in Norman. This “business” ran two facilities on the OU campus. One was the Conference Center at the…
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Proof of the old rule
After working on a project for a while I develop an internal dialect with some new words to resonate with the newly developed skills. This fits my basic rule: Language is encryption, not communication. Like birdcalls, language is MEANT to be private within a family or tribe or workplace or lodge or church. Language is…
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