IMAGINATION

I wonder if we are slowly losing our imaginations.  Together with S.W.M.B.O., I went to the movies yesterday and as usual we saw a number of trailers for upcoming films.  Many of them were extremely gory and unpleasant.  In fact none of them appealed to the two of us at all.  It made me wonder, not for the first time, if people, and especially young people, are losing their ability to conjure up ideas and thoughts.

If everything is so graphically displayed then there is little need to imagine anything.  It so happened that later on that evening one of my most favorite films came on TV.  The Third Man with Orson Welles and Joseph Cotton.  There was a scene where a well matured man entered a hotel with a much younger woman.  Later on the same couple were portrayed coming down the main stairs.  The situation was pretty obvious, but I wonder if the youth of today would have caught the inference without explicit bedroom scenes.  As the man was played by Wilfred Hyde White, I think we should be grateful for the omission.

Perhaps that is why so many films need over two hours to get their points across - The Third Man took just 104 minutes and will always remain a gem.  It was in black and white too

Loonies

Recently there have been TV adverts encouraging us to be more accepting of mental ill health.  Now, I totally understand that one should not be unkind to people suffering with this type of problem, but there comes a point where such altruism is a hard pill to swallow.  I feel it's instinctive to shy away from extremes in social behavior - perhaps even a defensive mechanism over which we have little control.

The other day, while traveling on a train, a fairly well dressed woman came into the compartment talking in a loud voice.  There was no one with her and I assumed that she must be having a conversation with her secret and invisible friend.  In other words a wacko.  I naturally tried to ignore the behavior, although the volume of her conversation made it quite hard.  This invisible and secret friend seemed to be a man with whom she was very annoyed.  Well, you know how difficult men can be, even the invisible ones!

As she turned around to take her seat I noticed some sort of device screwed into her ear - Ah, she was on the phone.  Now is it just me or does this sort of thing drive you crazy?  Instead of trying to make us more tolerant of wacko behavior, can't we devote our energies to inventing a flashing light to let people know that the wearer is on the phone and not a sufferer of Tourette's syndrome.  I think we'd all feel so much better.

Trains

Perhaps because I began my working life with daily train commutes up to London, I've always enjoyed this form of transit.  It's not easy in S.California to spend much time on trains as they don't seem to go anywhere you want.  But the other day in pursuit of an assignment, I took the Blue Line from Long Beach to downtown  L.A.  I've done it once before and it's quite an easy run.

Blue Line train at Wardlow Station

We were going along quite merrily and everyone was settled in, when horror of horrors an anouncement was made (in both English and Spanish) that we were to vacate the train and journey on in buses - there was construction on the line.  Now I have to admit that I hate buses.  They go in weird directions and keep turning away from where I want to end up.  I confess that in 28 years out here, I have never once traveled on one.  But there was little choice on this occasion as the train had stopped in an "undesirable" area of the city, and I wasn't going to walk!

It was a thoroughly nasty business.  There was a complete trainload crammed into a bus - even though it was one of those odd contraptions that had a back compartment with a bellows connecting the two parts.  An experience I shall not want to repeat - at least for another 28 years.  That would make me... Oh, never mind!

Reparations

On Sunday Oct 3rd, Germany will pay the last of its debt for WWI - yes World War One!  The original total amount of $20 billion was agreed by the victors at the Treaty of Versailles in June 1919.  The terms, and for then, huge amount were almost certainly a major contributor to the Wiemar Republic's financial difficulties in the Depression, and caused the rise of Hitler.

The reparations were originally designed to pay for the rebuilding of many towns and villages in Belgium and France, but today the notes are held by several US financial institutions.  The last payment will be for about $100 million.  You can read about it all here http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1315869/Germany-end-World-War-One-reparations-92-years-59m-final-payment.html

Incidentally England payed her final "Lend Lease" debt to the US on December 31st 2006 - so don't any of you Yanks try and tap me up in the local boozer any more!  It's over!

The Queen

I see that The Pope is visiting The Queen at the moment.  What an interesting thing to witness if you were the proverbial fly-on-the-wall.  Firstly, who bowed to whom?  Did they embrace?  I doubt it very much; after all no-one is supposed to touch Her Majesty, even though a large black lady in New York did manage a pretty big hug a few years back.  That must have caused ructions in the security detail.

Considering the the history going back 500 years to Henry VIII when the King broke with Rome in order to acquire a queen capable of producing an heir (fancying Anne Boleyn) - choose whichever version you like - it's not always been easy being Catholic in the sceptered isle.

Nonetheless when the two heads had a quiet moment, did they use English?  Perhaps German, or even French.  What did they talk about?  They dress alike, so maybe they discussed dress fabrics, and poured over swatches.  Is it me or does it all seem a little anachronistic?

NEWS

A friend emailed me the other day that he was fed up watching TV news because it was so depressing,  I thought that was a little too strong a reaction until I turned on the BBC for an international catch up.

In the 20-minute broadcast they managed to cover a stern talking to from the Pope about the secularisation of the world, then a statement from an obviously well-fed Pakistani politician that his people were not starving - this mixed with pictures of people fighting for food following the recent floods.

An interview with a Rwandan head of state insisted that there wasn't any real genocide in his country came just ahead of a piece on the stabbing assassination in London of a Pakistani politician in hiding there.  It looks like the Israeli/Palestinian talks have broken down again - what is that, the thousandth time in my lifetime?

The UN General Secretary (Ban Ki-Moon is it?), dressed in an immaculate silk suit, shirt and tie, (which I doubt he got off the rack at J.C. Penney) admonished us about the fate of starving people all around the world; he implied it was somehow my fault.  He was followed by an interview of a rather large woman, who was a member of America's new one in seven poor.  All in all an exhilarating roundup of news items.  Turning to the local channel I did see a story where someone had mixed up the DMV's office number with a porn site, which was upsetting callers who wanted to make an appointment to take a test.  So it wasn't all bad I guess!

Facebook

I have to admit I do look at Facebook most mornings.  Often there are some nuggets of interest.  But could I possible appeal to people to cut down on the stupid stuff.  Perhaps it's an age thing, but do you really think anyone cares if you're feeling bad, or happy, or the other stuff that gets on the site.

I've seen horoscopes posted, illnesses misdiagnosed, religious offerings, hangovers talked about, or pregnancy pains dissected.

I know, I know I'm showing my age and my intolerance, but bear with me here; what the heck is getting old worth if you can't complain about stuff from time to time.  I have tried to get into Twitter, but it seems even worse for banality, and I don't understand it.  Any hints?

Catching Up

Occasionally I find I've fallen behind society.  Things and customs move on and there has been the odd time when I was obviously staring out the window of life and not paying attention.

I was driving off the hill the other day and as I often do, I stopped at a filling station for a cup of coffee.  As I got out of the car I realized I had come out without any money.  Now, even though many years of marriage have accustomed me to pretty empty pockets, I normally manage to secrete some small amounts about my person.  But this time nothing - not a cent; I was skint!

My natural reaction was to accept my lot and travel on coffee-less.  But something nagged at me and I went into the shop and asked the clerk if I could pay for a coffee with a credit card.  He looked at me as if I had just climbed out of an alien space ship and told me "Of course!"  I payed $1.49 and his demeanour was such as to put me in my place as people no doubt do this all the time.  I don't think I've ever payed such a small amount on a credit card in my life.  It felt quite odd.

Bureaucracy

Coming back from Japan, we had a wonderful example of bureaucracy and how it helps "improve" our lives. I had gone cheap on the fares and used Air Canada for the journey as it was almost half the price of Singapore Airlines; naturally there had to be some punishment to go along with this decision; apart from the staggeringly bad food on the Canadian flight that is.

We returned via Calgary with about a two-hour lay over - time enough for maybe a little walk around and some light refreshment. It was not to be, the bureaucrats were lying in wait for us.

Firstly, we had to fill in a form for the Canadian customs and immigration. On it I was forced to declare a rather tacky little six-inch ninja I had bought in Narita. We stood in line to be interviewed by an agent - it was rather pathetic considering we were only going to another gate - had these people never heard of a transit lounge? But worse was to follow. In it's wisdom, the US authorities had brought their service to Calgary to avoid long lines at LAX. (Not to avoid long lines - just ones at LAX!)

After filling up another form, we queued up with all the other people to be scrutinized, not by an agent but by a Canadian, who was there to look at our US immigration and customs declaration form. Naturally I had failed to put that day's date on it and I also put the incoming flight, not the outgoing - bad boy!

With passports and forms held high we lined up in the snake to zig-zag our way with the other thousands to the six agents to interview us. There were 12 booths but only half manned. A slightly fraught official lady was trying to jostle some passengers ahead of others so that their flights could leave on time.

We wound around the zig-zag and eventually reached a customs agent who somewhat sneered at my ninja declaration. He also seemed disappointed that we were not carrying any financial instruments over $10,000! Finally, we were through and with twenty minutes to spare - maybe time for a beer!


Oh no! Security; and very long lines before and after our documents were once again checked. Did no one tell these people that we were in the damned computer complete with our grandmothers' maiden names? Not only did we have our boarding cards read by some machine, we had to stand in a booth and be gawked at - I'm told it shows us naked! They really must be bereft of visual stimulation if they get anything out of my aged body!

Back to the line with our bags waiting. Naturally we looked very suspicious so all our luggage was gone over. The ninja was found. Tearing open the nice cardboard box, it was laid bare, complete with its small plastic sword! No way that could get through without someone agreeing. A supervisor was called. He looked at the offending article carefully and decided that it passed - just! We had to repack all our cases and then we had an entire five minutes to get to the plane. A real eye opener for how bureaucrats work. Lots of forms for useless information that is available with a click of the button.