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James Gillray – “Matrimonial Harmonics” (1805). Just as applicable to the office setting.
One of ol’ Robbo’s ironclad rules of office etiquette is never to discuss politics.
Would that everyone in my little professional community felt the same way. I’ve just had to listen to an excruciatingly enthusiastic and brayingly loud description of the latest presidential candidate kerfluffle report to come out of the pages of Pravda on the Potomac, emanating from a pair of colleagues up the hall.
This time around, I was merely a collateral auditor. Four years ago, one of these same persons actually tried to rope me into a debate on the comparative worth of the candidates. I simply fixed her with a frozen stare and a very thin smile. It shut her up for a while, but I’m not so sure whether the burnt fool’s bandaged finger may not go wabbling back to the fire.
At any rate, I’ve an idea it’s gonna be a looooong summah and fall.
Greetings, my fellow port swillers!
Ol’ Robbo has been thinking lately of one of his very favorite lines in literature, that said by Gandalf when he reveals himself resurrected to Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli in The Two Towers:
“Be merry! We meet again. At the turn of the tide. The great storm is coming, but the tide has turned.”
It’s just a feeling, and you can take it for what it’s worth, but……Be merry!
Greetings, my fellow port swillers!
Over at NPR today we find an article about a new book entitled Quiet: The Power of Introverts In A World That Can’t Stop Talking, by Susan Cain. The book appears to be (at least in part) about cultural, economic and technological shifts of the 20th Century that encouraged the rise of extroversion and, as a consequence, have caused the country to become a very noisy place.
I don’t really have an opinion about the sociology of it all, but I was tremendously amused by the following Are You An Introvert Test that accompanies the article. Talk about memes falling into one’s lap! Apparently, the more of these that are applicable to you, the more of an introvert you are. Shall we play?
1. I prefer one-on-one conversations to group activities. True. At a group table in a restaurant or at a party, half the time I can’t even understand what’s being said.
2. I often prefer to express myself in writing. True. You wouldn’t guess it from the amount of posting I do here, but most people consider Real Life Robbo to be rayther quiet and tight-lipped.
3. I enjoy solitude. True. Not that I get much of it. It’s an absolutely critical part of my day to stay up late by myself to do a little reading, listening to musick or watching a moovie.
4. I seem to care about wealth, fame, and status less than my peers. True, ol’ Robbo loathes the cult of celebrity. On the other hand, I honestly wouldn’t mind if somebody handed me a large wodge of dosh.
5. I dislike small talk, but I enjoy talking in depth about topics that matter to me. True, if by “small talk” one means the kind of nattering that goes on at parties, meetings and the like. On the other hand, people who can only talk “in depth” about topics that matter to them in that breathless, hyper-earnest way give me the willies. There must be room for fluff and banter as well.
6. People tell me that I’m a good listener. True. In my professional capacity, I do a lot of investigatory interviews and I seem to be pretty good about getting past people’s guard. It sometimes occurs to me that I might have been a pretty good psychiatrist.
7. I’m not a big risk-taker. Well, I suppose that depends. I’m not one for jumping out of airplanes or off bungee towers, nor do I have any desire to throw everything away in pursuit of some Big Business Idea. On the other hand, I don’t think it unreasonable to describe my journey to Holy Mother Church as a pretty big leap of faith.
8. I enjoy work that allows me to “dive in” with few interruptions. Interruptions by other people, that is. On the other hand, I find I can’t function as well without being able to interrupt myself, if that makes sense.
9. I like to celebrate birthdays on a small scale, with only one or two close friends or family members. True, much to the chagrin of the gels.
10. People describe me as “soft-spoken” or “mellow.” Actually, “reserved” and “aloof” are probably closer to the mark.
11. I prefer not to show or discuss my work with others until it’s finished. True.
12. I dislike conflict. I’ll certainly stand my ground when needs be, but I’m no “Happy Warrior”.
13. I do my best work on my own. See 11 above.
14. I tend to think before I speak. I actually remember a very distinct point when I was about 14 or 15 when I realized that I was shooting my mouth off without thinking first and, as a result, often hitting myself in the foot. From that point forward, I went out of my way to engage the braims first. I don’t think I really perfected this practice until some time in my mid-20′s.
15. I feel drained after being out and about, even if I’ve enjoyed myself. Heck, I feel drained at the mere thought of going out and about.
16. I often let calls go through to voice mail. Caller ID is one of the most wonderful inventions of the late 20th Century.
17. If you had to choose, I’d prefer a weekend with absolutely nothing to do to one with too many things scheduled. True, although again, I often don’t have much choice in the matter.
18. I don’t enjoy multitasking. False. I’ve mentioned here before the fact that I get bored very, very easily. When I’ve got a job to do that bores me, it’s absolutely critical that I have one or more other tasks at hand in order to provide some distraction.
19. I can concentrate easily. False. See 18 above. As regular port swillers may know, I have a scatter-shot brain. I can concentrate easily enough when the subject engages me, but at the slightest whiff of boredom, my mind goes whizzing off in all kinds of directions.
20. In classroom situations, I prefer lectures to seminars. Well, this one’s a toss-up. I think that if the class involves something that really interests me, I prefer the seminar setting. (See #5 above.) On the other hand, if it’s the sort of dreary training courses that I have to endure from time to time these days, I prefer lectures because at least then one can generally tune out.
So there you go. Ol’ Robbo scores 17 for 20 on the Introvert Scale, which ought to be of no surprise to those who know him in real life.
So remember if you ever see me that I’m not scowling, I’m introverting.
Well, my fellow port-swillers, in the fairly likely event that ol’ Robbo cannot get his mitts on Mrs. R’s laptop over the weekend, this’ll be it for posties for a bit. I’ll be on biznay travel all next week out in the Heartland, fetching up in the end, as mentioned below, at Chez Peperium. Fortunately, it looks very much as if I’m not going to get caught in a blizzard this time – my first winter travel out there when that hasn’t been the case in three years. Thank yew, Global Warming!
Once back, I have the endoscopy the following Monday. In the meantime, we have a pair of at home birthday parties (the middle and youngest gels turn, respectively, twelve and ten next week), the beginning of the middle gel’s choir boot camp, the SSAT’s, softball registration, swim meets, CYO basketball……and somebody is going to have to get the Christmas Tree down, too.
So there it is. One-armed paper hangers with the hives ain’t in it.
However, I promise to tell you all about my adventures, including whether Mrs. P tries to make me eat cabbage, when I get back.
In the meantime, as usual, the port stands at your elbow, the walnuts are in the bowl and the Stilton is over on the sideboard. Feel free to linger over them as much as you like.
Toodle-pip!
Robbo
Apparently, the Monkees (sans Mike Nesmith) are reuniting.
Lest some regular port-swillers such as Vic might think I don’t know anything about classic rock, I should point out that I was a regular viewer of Teh Monkees tee-vee show on Saturday mornings in my misspent yoot.
Indeed, we even developed a little family game based on the show: Instead of singing, “Hey, Hey, We’re the Monkees” the idea was to substitute some other species of animal, with style points for funniest-sounding names.
So, we would get endless rounds of “Hey, Hey, we’re the…..“
- Gibbons
- Tree-sloths
-Duck-billed platypuses
-Wombats
-Rhinoceri
…and so on.
Good times.
I’ll probably go to the hot place for saying so, but “Joy To The World” is actually a pretty weak carol. Don’t blame Isaac Watts, who published the words in 1719. Instead, blame Lowell Mason, who set them to their musick in 1839. That second verse about the “fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains” in particular goes clang! clang! clang! across my soul every time I hear it.
I was braced for it, and so was not terribly put out that we got a helping of John Rutter at last Sunday’s Carols & Lessons. This year it was the “Shepherd’s Pipe Carol“. Am I just being unreasonable, or is there something a might creepifying about the combination of the repeated address to the “shepherd boy piping merrily” and such a squishy setting? Ceci n’est pas nice.
UPDATE: One or two walnuts were chucked across the table at my head, as there seems to be some feeling that ol’ Robbo is being a bit unfair to Mr. Rutter. Well, meb. But the fact of the matter is that this damned tune has got itself thoroughly lodged in my ear – it and that old German carol with the refrain that starts “Ideo -o -o” – and like the neeker-breakers of Midgewater Marsh, they’re beginning to make me a bit frantic.
The physics of Fluffy’s milk bowl manners explained:
Dr Roman Stocker, a biophysicist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, US, was inspired to investigate the physics of cat laps after watching his own pet Cutta Cutta as it drank.
“I realised there was an interesting biomechanics problem hidden behind that very simple action. The project then snowballed from there,” he said.
Working with researchers from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and Princeton University, Dr Stocker trained a high-speed camera on his cat.
While humans and animals such as sheep or horses use suction to draw liquid upwards, and dogs curl their tongue into a cup-like shape to ladle liquid in, the footage revealed that cats use a more subtle mechanism to drink.
The study was inspired by Cutta Cutta the cat
The scientists found that the tip of the cat’s tongue curls backwards, not forwards, as it darts down towards its bowl.
Then, instead of penetrating the surface of the liquid, the tongue just lightly touches it.
Dr Stocker explains: “The fluid comes in contact with the tongue and sticks to it, then the action of the tongue being drawn upwards very rapidly creates a liquid column.
“Then, by closing its jaw, the cat captures part of that liquid.”
This strikes me as just the sort of smug, supercilious stunt one would expect from a cat.
But they’re not fooling anybody with their faux superiority: Our pair get canned, wet food these days and they do a pretty thorough job splashing the stuff about and making a mess. Sophisticated? Gawd!
Heights and snakes are my worst phobias, but spiders aren’t very far behind. Which is why this gives me the heebie-jeebies:
A study of 20 people with a medium to low fear of spiders found the human brain responds to threats based on proximity, trajectory and expectations.
Dr Dean Mobbs, a neuroscientist from Cambridge University, said: “There are several regions of the brain that are triggered when we see a tarantula – particularly the panic area which is situated in the centre.
“The UK has one of the highest rates for phobias about spiders and snakes because we don’t come across them very much.”
Dr Mobbs hopes to develop an aversion therapy to prevent the “cascade of events in in the brain” which causes spider-induced terror.
During the study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, participants placed their foot into a box and rated their level of fear as they watched via a video link as a tarantula was placed closer and closer to them.
Brrrr. I can’t think of anything that would increase my fear of tarantulas better than sticking my foot in a box with one. Furthermore, I don’t much see the point in developing an “aversion therapy” for arachnophobia if there simply isn’t a spider problem in G.B.
No, it strikes me that this whole “study” is nothing more than thinly-veiled sadism. Stay away from me, Dr. Mobbs!
Over the weekend I got the ol’ port-swiller thatch hacked back.
I get my hair cut on average about once every couple months. This is in part because I am fairly lazy and also in part because I actually go to a salon to have it done and it’s pretty damned expensive. (In my defense, the gal – who I’ve been with for years -knows what she’s doing. Also, this is just about my only real personal indulgence.)
What with the long intervals, my appearance tends to transmogrify. Mrs. Robbo says that after I get my cut I look about thirty. By the time I bestir myself to go again, I’ve got something approaching ducktails and look like a vaguely disreputable, early-middle-aged academic.
Anyhoo, I’m not completely sure why I am even posting about this, except that I was brooding this morning that my hair is likely to turn all white and/or fall out if the eldest gel doesn’t get past this outburst of adolescent temper soon.
This morning on the way to St. Rita of the Misunderstood Adolescence, the eldest gel asked me if non-Catholics are allowed to go to Confession. (The school celebrates Mass every Friday morning and also offers Confession immediately afterwards – which seems to me to be backwards, but what do I know.)
So far as I know, I told her, there is no reason why she couldn’t. In fact, I said, I thought it would be rayther good for her.¹ However, I warned her that it wasn’t something to do half-cocked and that if she was serious about exploring the matter, she really ought to talk to the Headmaster (who is also the religion teacher) about the forms, proper preparation and the like. I got the impression that she just might do that.
(I may say that the introduction of the parochial school element is making the rayther peculiar religious situation of the Family Robbo even more, well, interesting. Who knows where it all may lead? But as the Wicked Witch of the West said, “These things must be handled…..delicately.”)
¹ The theological question of whether a priest can absolve sins aside, surely the examination of one’s conscience and the articulation of one’s transgressions is a beneficial character exercise in and of itself.
UPDATE: My mistake. (Again, what do I know?) The gel did speak to folks at school and was informed that only club members are permitted, ah, box seats. Her response? “Dad, I want to become a C-……” This is where Robbo stands very, very still. Stand by.
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