Month: March 2020

Why Holden Caulfield Thinks Social Media Jobs are Phony

Portent is a content generation tool that helps creators come up with unique ideas. While it is not a good idea for a writer to plagiarize the work of others, as the writer’s reputation can easily become sullied by that kind of dishonesty, using the Portent Generator site can occasionally light a brilliant idea. This specific title was devised with the help of Portent.

The story I’m telling is is true, that the girl I befriended handwrote a Salinger quotation in her second or third letter to me. I thought I was lucky to get such a nice letter, because in the Y2K era, the 2000s, snail mail was already rare.

I’m the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It’s awful. If I’m on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I’m going, I’m liable to say I’m going to the opera. It’s terrible.

J. D. Salinger The Catcher in the Rye

Perhaps Holden Caulfield in Chapter 3, in the wake of deceiving, might have a little like me.

    When I was in my early twenties, I paid a return visit to Kingston, Ontario, where I noticed one cold winter evening a girl dressed like a punk rocker, sitting on the sidewalk, asking pedestrians coming near to spare their change.  She was pretty, if I do say so myself, her hair dyed bright blue the way a girl raving might wear her way, the colour that matching the fishnets tights not doing a whole lot to keep her legs warm in the winter night, a petite little thing, and completely on her own.

    I thought I would say hi to her.  Kingston is a college town, and there are bright young girls everywhere.  I think this particular girl was a singer in a band, or would be soon.

    We began to chat, we watched the street, we had some laughs.  I would have liked to get off the street, but where were we going to go?  I’d just met her and I didn’t know her style.

    It took every ounce of confidence I had to keep passing off charm, given the circumstances, but not too demanding on my part.  It became a sort of a nice time.

    By morning I got from her an address, for her mom, in Scarborough, from where she had run away from, and I think it was probably the second one from her to me where she inked the above quotation from The Catcher in the Rye.  Almost everybody lies.

    Since The Catcher in the Rye, Salinger’s character Holden Caulfield has become a symbol for insubordination, and tension, and now has become identified among the most significant characters of twentieth-century American writing, The Catcher in the Rye a powerhouse of a book.  The excellent TV character Jughead, in the Archie comics’ adaptation Riverdale, gives the line in Season 4, Episode 8 The Catcher in the Rye, to Mrs. Burble.  Jughead hasn’t applied to any schools, and when he stops by Riverdale High to get his transcript, he gets a meeting with Mrs. Burble, regardless of what he tell her is his “Holden Caulfield stance on phony small talk.”

The CW Network

    I wonder how Holden would feel about Facebook if The Catcher in the Rye were set in the year 2020.  Well, actually, I guess I know–he would hate it.

    Millennials are an astute lot, and they’ve been on the internet since right back when they were youngsters.  Would Holden hate the specific act of asking a girl about the suffering that young girls go through when they run away, for an economic system necessitating young girls to go on the run, for the fact of a college town such as Kingston even existing… given that the tools of education are extensively available?

     It didn’t appear to get her down.  She had good karma.

    I believe being a runaway was what she needed to be.  I finally cried when I returned home the following day.  Nothing was wrong, though.

    I’d had a comforter in my backpack.  When I noticed the cold, I let her wrap it around her shoulders.

    We went into a Burger King fast food joint.  There were muddy tracks on it from the slush on the floor when we left.  Those mud stains came out in the wash.

    In the nineteen-nineties, we didn’t have Facebook.  However, I wish I’d learned more when I got around to signing in my last time in a study hall.  It took me years beyond the nineties to cross that finish line, by the way.

    Years later, while it was appalling that the confidence everybody had, to flex on Facebook and evaluate business page metrics, kind of ended with what happened between the White House and Cambridge Analytica, I think the popularity of Facebook will remain a victor. The David Fincher film The Social Network is one of my favourite films.  The Wall Street Journal ran an idiosyncratic feature for its tech segment the third week of March, 2020.

Joanna Stern

    Here an American journalist is trying to rekindle the enjoyment we had getting on Facebook before the Trump administration in the White House made it seem so senseless.  Personally, I am a modest Canadian.

One Christmas Eve during the Trump administration

The family business where I’ve been working has a Facebook page:  https://www.facebook.com/LouthUnited

FOWC–Collaborate

I follow a blog called Fandango, which keeps the custom of single-word prompts bursting at the seams, with the single word prompts WordPress once presented, having reached a conclusion around the time I began composing these.  Tonight I looked in thinking I might benefit from such a suggestion, and I saw that Fandango’s word tonight is the word “collaborate.”

    The word means work jointly, or, alternatively, cooperate traitorously.

    I was taught both connotations to cooperate when I was in college.  In the sense of collaboration with a distinguished painter, I learned that in Film 101, and in the sense of collaboration with the colonizers, I studied that in business law.

    Film 101 identified for me a few ideas which had interested me since I was a child, like why did names of people run up the screen at the end of a movie.

    That film professor was a young, tall, handsome man, who explained that those end credits identified that the film was the collaboration of those people’s work.  He told us in the school auditorium that the film wouldn’t have been finished without the help of all of those people.  I’d once inaccurately assumed that the most renowned people with their names on a film were the ones who chiefly ran the show.

    Until college, I don’t think I’d considered that all of those people were important, not just the ones with star power.  It was an advantageous exercise.

Photographer:
One Idea LLC

    It is too bad that schools everywhere have closed their doors at present.  Although I personally was only an average student, I think of the problems in the future created simply by making school unavailable at the present time.  I have heard of school debunked, of course–Gary Vee, for one, I’ve heard on video overlooking school in favour of an entrepreneur getting started making a living.  I’ve heard him say on camera, as he says so many things, that if a young person’s parents do pay for that individual to go to post-secondary, that person had certainly better make the most of it if it is at the expense of the parents.

    In fact, I wouldn’t mind hearing what Gary is saying about the present catastrophe.  I have seen GaryVee video titles on YouTube recommending that business enterprise on the Internet is as yet a practical road for what’s to come.  Good luck to the young people of today, then–they need it.

    My college business law class took some of the wind out of my sails at the time.  There were a lot of definitions run past us that seemed important yet awfully complicated for beginning young people.

    In a day in the classroom, the gentleman who taught us gave us a TV recommendation, of all things.  “Watch Law & Order,” he said to us.  For a long time I did, not having had such a title dropped on me in a setting like that previous to the day he did.

Photographer:
Leeroy

    He was joking about the difficulty he was imposing on us.  Thanks for that, I think now.  Although for a while I was a fan of the show, you know you don’t get the time back.

    There was just so much of it–when did I ever find time to work?

    The synonyms for collaborating, both join forces and fraternize, were thus equally handled by the well-meaning but slightly eccentric business law teacher.  Some business education is important.

    I appreciate Fandango’s prompt tonight.  Good luck with staying safe.

You’re welcome to follow or to comment.  Remember to respect the space of everybody in it.  A lot is counting on it!

https://fivedotoh.com/2020/03/20/fowc-with-fandango-collaborate/ #FOWC

A Difficult St. Patrick’s Day

It’s the end of March and two weeks ago was St. Patrick’s Day for 2020. The weather in Southern Ontario was reasonable in light of expectations. I found myself spending less time on Facebook. My sister telephoned me a couple of times.

A cousin of my mother, Cathie, along other lovely people, with a hobby of genealogy, ending with a nice account of the Irish my mother’s side of the family has. It looks like this St. Patrick’s Day, 2020, I’ll be a little less Irish.  It looks grim.

Photographer:
Tiago Almeida

change

the act or instance of making or becoming different.

I wish a lot of things were different, but I never would have chalked up the possibility of experiencing our pandemic catastrophe in my own life.  I read of environmental warnings, like that there could be, say, eight years until the damage to the planet caused by humans becomes irreversible, or that global warming will cause sea levels to rise, however active God is on the picture at large. I don’t know how human beings will fare.

To consider attacks between warring groups the world over, hellbent on decreasing each other to iotas, to very small pieces, I think also police and military unfairly treat peaceable citizens, because the police loathe the skin colour or addiction, behaviour that doesn’t toe the line for the safety of the public.  I think about these now and again, yet I hadn’t thought of what really descended three months ago. It is hard to contextualize that.

I always do my best to enjoy St. Patrick’s Day, as so many do with aplomb and style.  I welcome the end of winter. We are all called on to be, not so much Godfearing, as instead socially distant from one another.

Good on us all the same, that we can find solidarity in separating from one another, in a fashion that, like the lot of the unlucky addict, is no fault of our own.

Photographer:
Peter Hershey

We will have to come up with new measures to survive, and we have to do it at a time when I am sure many of us would be happier celebrating St. Patty’s in the usual fashion, wearing the colour green, and staying out late.  We’re told to stay out of bars and restaurants and nightclubs and still young people want to go to those kinds of haunts. I want to be young myself, but not to the extent I want to risk sacrificing growing old.

I wanted to think about a superb St. Patrick’s Day, and although I recall it every year, I don’t know I could say that any specific March festivity was better than some other.  A number of them were beautiful and left me feeling blessed. I am grateful to The Lord.

1998 occurs to me, becoming 21 years of age.  However, against how this spring is going, I don’t think the excitement of taking a visit back in time is going to especially cause me to feel better. I like to enjoy speaking a kind word at certain times, because a little kindness sprinkled in the mix, while not reversing the uncertainty that we’re facing, does help temper the darkness.

I would like to wish you a happy St. Patrick’s Day, dreadful or not.

St. Patrick’s Day isn’t to be overlooked, obviously.  Go with the luck of the Irish! Let’s have a safe spring!

You’re of course welcome to comment and to follow.  All the best to you, and to your loved ones.

Find us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/LouthUnited

We’re also on Twitter https://twitter.com/findingenvirons

I enjoy social media.

#lifelesson A Monkey on Your Back

I’m looking forward to the weekend, as Sunday is the Ides of March, a day I’ve before celebrated, and to get serenity I needed to utilize a little ingenuity. Many individuals like this season. Of course, this year is upsetting for reasons I am sure that you know, from the news, but my father pointed out something to me, and coming to an understanding about this, I found myself wanting to add the idea.

I tuned in to what he said, two or three weeks prior, in his truck as we drove up the road, and I had a morning doughnut. In the next few days, I thought to compose this essay. This is how I would represent his idea–it isn’t all that much work. You’re welcome to make of it what you will.

My dad Peter is typically a calm man. The nature of our business is a cemetery, which we’ve operated together for eight or nine years. My dad managed a municipal cemetery for many years before he retired from there.

He decided he loved Maple Lawn when he learned its board of trustees no longer desired to maintain it. A week and a half ago, Dad unexpectedly gave me a life lesson, something that had moved him during his career with the city. He said a business speaker ignited a connection for him, a long time previously, something I didn’t think about him.

The speaker discussed a monkey, an issue, which I deduced implied a method for dealing with stress.

The speaker had said that another individual might bring you a monkey on the back. That person already has his or her monkey on the back, and sharing that load with you is reduced in intensity for the person being unburdened, but the problem remains, now shared with you. Now there are troubles for you, for you to bear yourself.

My dad said the message stayed with him. The story reminded me of the late Wayne Dyer, the writer of numerous books about otherworldly thinking, spiritual issues, that is, like negativity, to which I am occasionally subject. My father was venturing to propose I compose this essay, which I figured I could do, keeping in mind Dad’s convictions.

The disbanded church at our cemetery

Dad cautioned me not to let the burden, of letting a monkey take hold on my back, ruin what I have, for myself, in my life. I felt for an instant pity wash, like bathwater, all through me, and I needed to take a quick glance out the window not to surrender to tears. I feel like that when I take a gander at myself in a light that I will never again find sensible.

It’s March now, and spring will break in about seven days. My birthday is on the Ides of March. This year it follows two days after Friday the 13th, today’s date, seldom real lucky in anyone’s book.

I will check whether I can slip this on. I unquestionably want to.

When my Uncle Rick’s brother, the artist, was alive, he hung a toy monkey on a store mannequin. The man who thought of that was a craftsman, and dress store administrator. My grip doesn’t quite coordinate the same energy.

Craig’s mannequin, with a monkey on its back

Be that as it may, I discovered his craft intriguing, after his passing. My father said I should refer to the non-literal monkey. I tried to value the proposal.

Don’t let a monkey hang off of your back. I am a flawed human being, but I believe that you need to take care of yourself before you can do much for anyone else.

http://maplelawncemeteryorg.ipage.com/oldchurchcemetery/24701.html

https://www.facebook.com/LouthUnited