Make Of It What You Wish

Three stories...generalize as you like.

This morning, after searching in every possible place, I had to admit that the little coin purse which had my free subway pass was lost. The purse didn't have much money, but that wasn't my concern. The problem was that I had just replaced my subway pass last Friday after having lost my original one, and there was no way I wanted to go back three or four days later  and sign a "declaration of a lost ticket" again.


I went to SESC (I'm not going to explain SESC; see earlier posts if you want to know.) like I do about four times per week and, with nothing to lose, I went to the lost and found area and asked if a coin purse had been turned in yesterday.  It had been, with everything intact.


Back in the early 1980s I was working as a temp at General Mills Headquarters, in the Building Services Department, which included the lost and found department.  I had just finished complaining to a co-worker one day that I was missing a $20 bill, that it must have fallen out of my pocket at the company store when I bought my daily newspaper. Thirty minutes later, somebody came in to report that they had found a $20 bill in the company store.  I can't even imagine being so trusting as to turn in cash.


Finally, in 2003 (I think), I had arranged my vacation in Thailand so that I had a 3 or 4-day stop in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on the way out, and about an 18-hour stop there on the way back to California. Things went really wrong on the way back and I arrived in KL sometime after midnight, several hours late, and really, really tired. I made a quick phone call and then caught the train into the city. Just as the train was leaving, I realized I had left a bag on the floor next to the phone. I checked the next day to see if it had been turned in to lost and found, but it wasn't there. About three months later, the bag was returned to me in California. It turns out it had been turned in at the airport in KL and, because a copy of my flight information was in the bag, it had been sent to LA, probably on the same flight that I took.  The delay was in getting it from LA to Tulare, California.


Again, generalize as you wish, but one possibility is that people the world over are basically honest.

Uncle Drew

Thanks to my brother-in-law, Conrad, for this.  I laughed till I cried.

Boy Scouts Reaffirm Discrimination

The Boy Scouts of America have reaffirmed their policy of excluding openly gay boys as member and gay or lesbian adults as leaders.  And of course they have the Supreme Court-affirmed right to do this because of a 5-4 ruling in 2000.

The Supremes, in their wisdom, said the BSA, as a private organization, can decide "what values it wants to inculcate."  By this logic, why can't a private business refuse to sell to blacks or gays or, in Arizona, those damn Mexicans?

Here's the trouble with that kind of legalistic thinking, or at least one of the troubles. It ignores the fact that, in daily life (and these decisions always involve real lives, remember) the distinction between what is private and  what is public is blurred. Obviously that bigoted store owner who might like to decide who he sells to, ignoring the financial stupidity of such a policy, can't do so because his private store doesn't exist in some geographical or social vacuum.

And neither to the Boy Scouts.  Imagine this scenario.  The Boy Scouts in Anytown USA get free use of some public space, perhaps the school, perhaps a city recreation area, perhaps a campground.  Any gay teenage in that town who is denied his desire to join the scouts, or parent of such a gay teenager, knows that the city is probably violating one of its own ordinances, or a state ordinance, about providing public aid to organizations that discriminate.

But because of the five Supremes in 2000, who live in some imaginary world of abstractions, or who try to imagine how many homophobic founding fathers could have danced on the head of a pin, that boy and his family will have no good options.  They could just sigh and accept the discrimination, which they're probably already familiar with, or they could spend time and money suing their city, with no guarantee of winning short of somewhere at the appellate level.  And when, after all this time and effort, they finally win their lawsuit, the city may have to stop supporting the scouts, but the scouts are still allowed to discriminate and the boy still can't join.  Because the scouts are a "private" organization.

"Five Obamacare Myths"

From today's Bill Keller Op-Ed piece "Five Obamacare Myths"...to commemorate the House Republicans' recent "33rd theatrical vote" to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

If the Obama campaign needs a snappy one-liner, it could borrow this one from David Cutler: “Never before in history has a candidate run for president with the idea that too many people have insurance coverage.”

Fair and Balanced

Seems about right to me.

Having Fun on the Job

For some reason I can no longer remember, but continuing the theme of having fun at work, I was thinking recently of how much I used to enjoy the punning headlines in the Minneapolis Star Tribune when I lived there in the 1980s and 1990s.  I decided to see if they still do it.  Actually, I don't know if these are puns per se, but they are at least clever and make you groan in the way puns do.

"Oakland batters Duensing, Twins.
"To Boost Tourism, Cities Want to Make Lake Minnetonka Liquid Asset."
"New Force in Anti-Bullying Joins Front Line in Anoka-Hennepin."

The LA Times is pretty good sometimes too:

"A New Dawn for Sunset Boulevard."
"Abuzz About Bee Keeping in Los Angeles"
(with a subtitle of "Give Bees a Chance")

And even the very proper NY Times couldn't resist this one:

At Comic-Con, You Can't Defy Gravitas

If you have a boring job, bring your sense of humor to work with you.

The following is from the first page of an ebook I recently downloaded.  Read it to the end.

A Strange Disappearance
First published in 1880
ISBN 978-1-775450-38-2
© 2010 The Floating Press

While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike.

Visit www.thefloatingpress.com