Wednesday, March 15, 2006

Things CC thinks about at odd moments

1. Wouldn't it be cool if Weird Al made a song about civil war re-enactors called "Preoccupied with 1865."

2. The phrase "go postal" facinates me. It dates back to 1994, a year when something like three disgruntled postal workers opened fire on their workplaces. Whatever program the postal service put in to combat this problem worked. I don't believe anything like that has happened since. Mostly, my sixteen-year-old SAT students don't know the origin of the phrase. But they still use it.

I saw an episode of "Star Trek:The Next Generation" once with something about a society that had a language made up of references to things that had happened in their social history. Neat stuff.

3. Linguist Friend likes to hear stories about what CC was like as a little kid. Tonight, I thought about something I got in a lot of trouble for. When I was ten years old or so, I had an idea that I thought might help with America's solid waste problem. I figured landfills should be big tanks of water. I thought waste would decompose faster under water. So for weeks I would hide away food scraps from dinner. After my meal, I would divide the scraps in half. Half went into the jar full of water, half into my control jar. I hid the jars on my windowsill behind the drapes.

I was right. The scraps floated around and especially with the light refraction on the water, the garbage underwater did decompose much faster. Unfortunately, before I could document my findings and revolutionize the landfill industry, my father found the jars. The only phrase I can recall of the conversation that followed is "DO you have ANY idea the sort of DISEASE that is FESTERED in something like that?"

I told the story intending to get across what a bratty kid I was, but Linguist Friend sounded pleased and pointed out that there was a certian amount of intelligence and creative thinking involved in that project.

I still remember what those jars looked like. They were a disgusting kind of beautiful.

CC

3 comments:

Psyton said...

Wow, so you are basically living the life of Lisa Simpson.

You had the scientific methods down as a precocious overacheiver... and you tested a hypothesis (stuff decomposes faster underwater) with a controlled experiment.

Then you got yelled at by your dad... the phrase "WE OBEY THE LAWS OF THERMODYNAMICS IN THIS HOUSE, YOUNG LADY" comes to mind.

Anonymous said...

My first reaction was "how clever!" I think your Dad was off a bit.

LaReinaCobre said...

In January of 2006 an ex-postal employee entered her former place of employment and killed about half a dozen folks (plus a neighbor). It was very unususual because the postal worker was female (she committed suicide).

See article here. But it had been quite some time since a postal employee committed a crime like that. It sounds like maybe this woman was mentally disturbed, but firing her or putting her on leave didn't seem to help. I wonder if she could have been helped with medical treatment?