Oh . . . Man . . . I Can’t Believe I Wrote That. . . .

One of the pleasures of doing editing and proofreading for work is getting to see other people’s mistakes before you clean them up . . . and preserve them for all time. Here’s my crop from last year.

Jan. 3:  “My other interests include listening to classic tock….”
You mean, tock radio . . . or do you collect grandfather clocks?

Jan. 14: Adventures of the Sardonic Editor, episode #2,538 . . . 

“I am happy to work personally with every client to ensure they have a financial arrangement that is comfortable while receiving the necessary medical care that is needed.”

As opposed to necessary treatment that is not needed, I suppose.

I understand there may be a lot of that going around.

The Meaning of the Mask

I’ve noted some online confusion about the utility and import of wearing a face mask during this parlous era.

Carole and I have worn one every time we’ve gone out for the past three weeks, at least. (Once or twice, when I’ve taken the dog out for her final walk ’round midnight, I’ve forgotten my mine, but we rarely encounter anyone on the streets then; the selfie at left was taken along SW Taylors Ferry Road on April 6.)

During the day, my wife and I have observed maybe only half the pedestrians (and almost none of the cyclists) in our neighborhood wearing a mask. The ratio has been even lower in other parts of the city where I’ve walked.

In general, older people wear them, and younger ones do not. If anything, it would be preferable if the opposite were the case.

Can This Marriage Be Saved?!

It has been said that humor is one of the essential traits of a successful marriage. Carole and I have been attempting this approach for more than 26 years of wedded blitz  — er, bliss.

Below are some examples from last year. . . . 

Jan. 10:  Me [handing her the Elmore Leonard novel we’ve almost finished reading aloud over dinners the past few weeks]: Let’s go back readin’ about people who are worse off and dumber than we are.

Carole: I thought we weren’t going to discuss the president any more.

Feb. 4:  [While dining out this evening. . . .]

C: That woman [at the next table] kept up a running monologue the entire time, and her husband hardly said a thing. When he left to go to the bathroom, she immediately started texting.
D: She’s so full of verbiage, she has to get it all out. Flense herself.

C: He’s probably committing suicide in the bathroom.

D: No, he’s basking in the blissful silence. Wondering how long he can draw it out.

A Journal of the Plague Year . . . Week 4

I see I’ve gotten a little behind in gathering my thoughts and experiences related to our new reality. Here is Week 4 (I’ll upload Week 5 as well as more Portland Streetcar adventures shortly).

THURSDAY, APRIL 1

12:17 p.m. — I’m reading Milkman by Anna Burns for one of my book discussion groups.

It’s an odd coincidence that we picked this book — a Northern Ireland novel that won the 2018 Man Booker Prize, set in a vaguely authoritarian society (could be the past, could be the future; though there’s an occasional and startlingly specific reference to, say, a song by Alice Cooper that was a hit when I was in high school) . . . 

. . . featuring religious/political enclaves and packs of roving paramilitaries . . . and we picked this book more than a month ago, well before we had any idea we would be sequestered in our homes, and planning to have our next meeting remotely by online e-conference. . . . 

Portland Walking Tour tales, 2019 . . . part 1

In 2019 I led more walking tours than in any other of the seven-plus years I’d worked for the company. By my rough count, I guided 98 tours, and probably a few more, because my records show I went downtown to lead a tour at least eight other times. I didn’t bother to distinguish between tours on which I received zero tips from guests, and scheduled tours when nobody showed up and I didn’t actually do one. (I’d estimate those divide up about 50-50.)

For a number of years, I had settled into a once- or twice-a-week routine — most often, the 10 a.m. Tuesday tour — because I had so many other free-lance jobs to juggle; plus, starting in the summer of 2014, a second part-time job with Portland Streetcar.

But in a massive unforeseen shakeup in February and March last year, the company lost more than two-thirds of its guides. Suddenly, the rest of us had to scramble to fill the schedule. I often led four or five tours a week, occasionally seven or eight . . . and I think there was at least one week I did nine tours (including several daily doubles, obviously).

Covid-19 Stat Watching, Considered as a Fairgrounds Horse Race

Growing up, do you remember an amusement at the annual county or state fair that recreated a horse race in electronic form? 

Among the booths that featured a series of moving metal duck decoys you tried to shoot with a facsimile rifle . . . and the one that contained dozens of goldfish bowls you tried to toss a penny into . . . and the wall of balloons you tried to puncture with darts . . . and the tiny plastic duckies racing along a watercourse, each carrying a number on which you could place a bet to predict the winner . . . was a horse-racing game.

You’d pay money to compete by shooting a steel ball through a miniature pinball table-box that racked up points which translated into the progress of your horse in a race.

A Journal of the Plague Year . . . Week 3

Week 3 of thoughts and comments, lightly edited, from my social media about our new reality.

[Note: the tone varies wildly; longer entries tend to be analytical and sometimes political, short ones tend to be playful and humorous, so feel free to skip whichever doesn’t appeal to you. . . . ]

THURSDAY, MARCH 26

9:13 a.m. — Days, even weeks, are starting to blur together.
But I THINK it was last Thursday or Friday that it was announced that testing in our county (Multnomah) would become more readily available.

The big question — especially since so many positive cases have accumulated in adjacent Washington County in “Silicon Forest” to the west — is whether the relatively low numbers up to now in far denser Multnomah County (downtown Portland, where I live) are more a reflection of lower infection rate, or just insufficient testing?

Has Washington County been looking more dire simply because the earliest cases appeared there, so more tests were conducted?

There's No Getting Away From It . . . Loftus Puns from 2012 and 2013

As I wrote here on Friday, we could all probably use a good chuckle these days. Too bad there are none to be found here. Below is the crop of verbal foolishness that turned up on my Facebook page seven and eight years ago. I should have quit while I was behind. . . . 

2012

Jan. 21:  We were served most of our meal by a waitress, but a man brought my wife her cup of Earl Grey, so I figured he must be the Maître tea.

May 4:  So I was thinking of staging an adaptation of “Angels in America” set in a Tibetan monastery headed by a tyrannical Buddhist monk who secretly has AIDS, by the name of Roy Koan. . . . 

Aug. 4:  Idea for invention: mobile street lamps for gated communities which can be automatically reconfigured to highlight a given property or set of lots for potential sale or block party purposes. It would be known as Tract Lighting.

Sept. 8:  Breaking News . . . Vanna White’s publicist confirmed that the longtime letter-flipper was hospitalized today for Irritable Vowel Syndrome.