Saturday Grousings
I knew this day was going to bring misery the minute I saw 15 across in Will Shortz's New York Times crossword puzzle. Crossword puzzle creators are so sneaky and sometimes evil. You start out Monday with a puzzle that virtually anyone who has not spent the last ten years of their lives playing video games and watching American Idol and has otherwise not become brain dead can answer in record time. Then, day by day, the puzzles get sneakier and more vicious until, as the Curmudgeonly Professor has written before, the Saturday puzzle becomes the crossword puzzle from hell. So the 15 across clue is "song sung by Mehitabel in Broadway's Shinbone Alley." I had to Google that one to get Rex Parker's answer. If it were not for Rex Parker, I would never be able to complete the Saturday puzzle. And then the puzzle just goes from bad to worse to intolerable: 24 across: Rijksmuseum subject. Sure, I know that one right of the bat. 52 across: language in which "k" and "v" are the words for "to" and "in". Right. My vast knowledge of foreign languages nailed that one immediately. And that's just the beginning. But I never, never give up on the Saturday puzzle. I admit I Google a few reference points to get started, but I assume everyone else does also except for a few geniuses who dwell in penthouses in New York City drinking fine wine and finishing the Saturday crossword in 20 minutes. I'll be lucky if I get it done in two or three days, and even then, I'll likely have to ask my wife who is a better puzzle finisher than I am to get the last two or three tricky words.
Aside from that, my neighbor wanted me to comment on my blog about his experience with getting a recall announcement for his car. So he gets the announcement, calls the garage for an appointment, makes an appointment, goes down to the garage, and, guess what, is told "We don't know anything about it", and, besides, "We don't have the part anyway." What percentage of people who have jobs who are supposed to take care of details actually take care of details let alone act like they know anything at all? As I mentioned before, we are beginning the twice-annual battle of getting our mailers to change our addresses back to Salt Lake, even though some of them during the past six months haven't yet bothered to change our addresses to St. George, no matter how many times we have asked them. What do people do when they get these requests? Are they reading blogs? Are they eating caffeine-powered Snickers bars? Are they playing video games? Are they drinking $6 lattes from Starbucks? I wish I knew. The few people who actually pay attention to details and take care of things on time deserve some kind of meritorious recognition. The rest of them need to be confined to a Dilbert-style cubicle for life.
After a long conversation with my sister Judy this morning, we decided that it was pointless to try and fix up what other people need fixed up, even though we clearly know better about how they should be fixed up than they do. So we got that issue out of the way. For wives, however, hope springs eternal that their dear ones will show some semblance of improvement, even in their golden years. I ask my wife daily if she sees the evidence of results from my twelve-step self improvement program but so far the answers have been negative. All of those efforts for nothing. Discouraging as heck.
Other than that, NBA playoff games are on the rest of the day and night, and my mood tonight and tomorrow depends on whether the Utah Jazz can beat the Houston Rockets. I never really believed all that stuff about "it matters not who won or lost, and etc." People say that, but we all know the only thing that matters is who had the highest score at the end, how many missed and unfair calls the refs made, and how much rotten stuff the other team got by with, since we know our guys all play fair and square but have to survive the dirty play of the opposing team.
But this afternoon my wife and I are going downtown to see all the new sculptures placed in St. George's enviable "Art Around the Corner" program. So maybe I won't run out of photos to post before we go to Salt Lake. At least I had the other cold hot dog in the fridge this noon that I bought from the ninety-year old hot dog lady at Lin's Marketplace yesterday, so life is good after all, even if the hot dog kills me.
COMMENTS
Speaking of childhood reads! Archie was a typing roach and mehitabel a cat who believed she was a reincarnation of an egyptian queen. she frequently sang "t'jours gai", I think. She lived for the moment.
Posted by: molly | April 20, 2008 at 08:06 AM
Comment from the Professor
Oh lordy mollie, what would we do without you! My childhood reading was limited to getting through 28 volumes of Billy Whiskers, and then the "Twins" series; after that, I worked through ten editions of Samuelson's Economics text. I never would have known. Here is the link so readers can become illuminated on the subject of mehitibel and archie. By the way, in case you are anxious to know the answers to the other two obnoxious clues, the language in question is Czech, the language of my grandmother Louise's family, and the museum subject is "Rembrandt." After a few toughies, the rest of Saturday's puzzle was a breeze, so to speak. Wasn't there a poem about mehitibel that showed up in 10th grade English?
