Sassy Survey of Spectacles and Scenes

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Added: Fri. Nov 06, 2009 1:12pm
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 Sassy Survey of Spectacles and Scenes
by t.grzenia

My mother can attest to the fact that from the moment I could speak, I was the grand inquisitor. She heard the question, “why?” from me so often, she thought it was the only word I knew. My thirst for knowing why and how things were, are, and will be has always been with me.

This thirst has been relentless, but not especially focused; I simply wanted and want to know a “little bit about a lot of things,” and to understand the working and machinations of humanity, as a way to get to the truth, not a final truth, but a current truth, remembering that the truth is mutable and not finite. 

Therefore, since I want to give my Mom and my spouse a break from my queries, arguments, and debates I will just throw out these questions into the world, questions that have arisen from observation. Spectacles and scenes that puzzle.

If you can provide answers, please chime in. Truly, I would like to hear what you are thinking about any of these minor and major happenings that confound me.

Transportation Conundrums

Recently, a report stated that in bike-car accidents, 90% of the time the driver of the car is at fault. That makes me ponder, what are cyclists thinking who are wearing headsets while riding? They can’t hear a car. They can’t hear other cyclists. They can’t hear emergency vehicles. What are they considering?

And what are cyclists thinking that pass another cyclist on the right, not on the left in traffic on a one-way road? The ones that are cutting corners on the diagonal and swerving into oncoming traffic? The ones that jump on your wheel without letting you know they are drafting? Riding three, even four abreast? What is it that they know about riding I do not?

Of course, accidents between cars and cyclists, and cars and pedestrians will happen, but let’s not blame others before examining our own bad habits first, and don’t even get me started on questioning cyclist riding without helmets.
Lest you think that drivers get off easily in this query of all things vehicular. I have wondered about the fact that car makers, from Acura to Volvo, have neglected to equip their automobiles with turn signals. What do you say? Every car does come with turn signals, left, right blinking lights – really? I guess it has been awhile since we bought a car, and since I have failed to spot much use of turn signals as a way to communicate in traffic, I just thought that turn signals have disappeared, like free luggage check-in with the airlines.  So, if these signaling, these communication devices are standard equipment, why are they so seldom in use? Ah, maybe drivers are text messaging me to impart the fact that a turn on their part is impending, or else have I missed an extrasensory perception being beamed to via my semi-implanted receiving device, the Bluetooth wireless? And I thought those blinking blue lights were people pretending to be extraterrestrials.

Well, at least, there is still the unquestionable transportation of flying the friendly skies, or so I thought, until recent bookings have led to another round of imponderables, at least they are to me. With Rhapsody in Blue as the soundtrack of trip planning, booking a flight was easy, at first. Pick a date, pick a time, pay. Okay, no questions so far, but then, why do I have to pay extra to speak to a person when booking?, why do I have to pay extra to by-pass the other people with tickets in hand and flights to catch?, why do I have to pay to check one suitcase?, why do I have to pay to get 5 inches of legroom extra, why do I have to pay for food, why do I have to pay to have an adult beverage and a movie on a long-haul flight? Then, to boot, why are my flights suddenly changed so that I am no longer flying quickly to my destination, but now have oodles of layover time, which, of course, I can spend in the airline club, a paying privilege. Isn’t that less rhapsody than just the simple blues?

Media Mania

And why are many of my allusion in the last paragraph based on commercials that chirp in my head? Actually, I can answer that one for myself – we have been inundated with advertisements and commercials.

What I cannot answer is this, when did the news media become the purveyor of mania and hysteria? I did think that muck-racking, sensationalism, scandal-mongering and yellow journalism were over or had been given over to the tabloids, but then have they?

For weeks on end, the media frenzy has whipped the H1N1 virus into our first horseman of the apocalypse. What purpose does this serve? Don’t thousands of people die each year from flu, cancer, and heart disease? Why is this illness so different that creates this fever pitch? Now, if you know me, I am the first one to tout hygienic practices given my slight germ-phobic and hypochondriac leanings, but I am dumbfounded, why H1N1, which so far has caused less death than food poisoning or hospital infections, is the cause célèbre of hand-wringing anguish.

And speaking of health, the current feeding frenzy over every deplorable moment of human behavior exhibited in the health care debate, including the alleged cannibalism of one foe’s pointed finger, is contributing very little to the reasonable and factual debate of the real issues. Why is the focus not on the heart of the health care debate? What do the documents actually say? How many people clamoring against, or even for, health care coverage have read the proposals and understand these enough to participate in an intellectual debate?

Doesn’t that seem par for the course though? Hear it, believe it, debate it fervently, and let the facts not confuse. This brings me to another question, what was subversive about a leader giving advice to children that includes goal-setting, staying in school, persevering in times of failure, and encouraging youngsters to become part of the solution for a better world?

I seek enlightenment when a positive message is derided before it is uttered, but fervently believed to be indoctrination, despite evidence to the contrary. How does that person think? What makes them tick? I wish to understand.

No doubt some may think questioning unwise, because it rattles the bars of the cage- whatever the cage may be, but for my part, my intellectual freedom and my overall positive experience of the world, despite my perhaps curmudgeonly tone, gives me freedom to open my mind to the freshness of discovery, and all because of one simple word, “Why?”  

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