John's Blog

(Ramble, rant, and reminisce.)
I continue to monitor the progress of the construction across the street from the comfort of my chair by the office window. I'm amazed at how quickly the new structure is coming together. In another day or so, they will probably have most of the exterior work done, and I'll be denied the pleasure of watching the process continue on the inside. I'll just have to find some other way to be entertained.

A funny observation that I just made, that will amuse nobody other than me, but I'll share it anyway. As I was looking out the window at the contractors, I noticed that there is a transformer on a pole. An unremarkable thing, but what makes this weird is that it was made by a now defunct company in a factory that was located behind the house where I grew up. I remember looking at the trucks pulling out of their warehouse loaded with transformers, and wondering where they would wind up. Guess that mystery is resolved.

And from another dark corner of my childhood comes this elementary school film nightmare about the Danger Of Blasting Caps. "Don't Touch It! It'll put out an eye!" This was drilled into my head as a child with repeated viewings at school of this propaganda film, and a related TV ad campaign hammered home the message as well. I lived in terror of these things, which in retrospect was a stupid fear to have since we lived in the city and I had about 0% chance of ever finding one of these. You can't expect kids' fears to be rational, although my anxiety about the possibility of nuclear war might have been a more reasonable concern. At the risk of ripping off Lewis Black, even as a kid you knew that hiding under your desk wasn't going to make a rat's ass bit of difference if we ever got attacked.

One more childhood memory has been dredged up and spit upon recently. I was channel surfing and I saw a commercial featuring Smokey Bear. Guess he doesn't use his middle name (The) anymore. The tag line at the end was "Only YOU can prevent wildfires". When did that change from "Only YOU can prevent FOREST FIRES"? A subtle change, for sure, but why mess with the classics?