I reintroduced music into the house the other day.
It had been pretty quiet around here for a couple of years, ever since I disconnected the one computer on which I used to download music videos because the computer had the misfortune of being located in the living room, which was then undergoing renovation, and started using this computer, the “play” computer in my office, for working with photos, everyday news-browsing, everyday EVERYthing.
I’d gotten used to the quiet, and in fact mostly enjoyed it. Once in a while I would miss being able to hear, as well as watch, news videos and so forth, but for the most part, it was as easy getting used to quiet as it was getting used to no television. I haven’t watched television in almost 10 years, not so much as a matter of choice, but because of my work schedule and the fact that I’ve lived in places where non-cable TV reception is almost nil. I still watch DVD movies at least a couple of times a week, but obviously have no clue what “Jersey Shore” might be, and wasn’t particularly heartbroken or even much affected by the demise of “All My Children” or “Seinfeld” or whatever. “Out of sight, out of mind.” Or, “Absence makes the heart go yonder.” Or something. And I’ve never gotten out of the habit of blasting music in my car on the way to the grocery store or to my parents’ house or even just on a sightseeing trip up on Pizz Ridge.
For no particular reason, this past weekend I decided that it was TOO quiet around here. It dawned on me that I should go ahead and re-hook up the computer on which I used to watch music videos, etc. THEN it dawned on me that, since the speakers on that computer were built into the monitor, all I really needed to do was swap out the monitors. Duh.
Yeah, I’m slow, but sometimes I get there.
The monitor swap worked, and now I have sound again--and when I pulled up Annie Lennox’s version of “Whiter Shade of Pale,” it hit me how much I’d missed it.
Since Saturday I have been a YouTube fool, seeking out long-”lost” (to me) videos, downloading and playing them. Free-associating took me from Annie Lennox to Bruce Springsteen to Madonna (and back again and again to Madonna) and to Starship and Neil Diamond and . . . The list goes on. Of course.
I didn’t stop with getting the sound back on the computer. THEN I went out and bought a portable radio/CD player. “Whole hog or none,” right?
Maybe I should have consulted my housemates before perpetrating these massive changes, however. The cats definitely are NOT fans of rock and roll, which is a bit surprising considering that at least two of them, as kittens, used to love it when I would plug in a movie with lots of gunfire, explosions and jet planes (think “Iron Eagle” and “Top Gun“), and absolutely despised anything “mushy” (think “chick flicks”).
Cecil the dog is put on instant, baffled alert by anything involving conversation (news clips, etc.), which again is surprising given that throughout his young life he has spent eight hours a day, five days a week in my office as I listen to dictated medical reports on speakers. On the other hand, he seems purely fascinated by anything involving Stevie Nicks (especially “Sara“ and “Gypsy“ and “Landslide“), and absolutely loves “Whiter Shade of Pale,” Madonna’s “Live to Tell,” and the “Jonathan Livingston Seagull” soundtrack.
Guess there’s no accounting for taste.
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Virtuality
Sometimes I wish our corporate bosses knew as much about language as we do. Other times, I suspect that they know a whole lot more about language and its power than we will ever dream of knowing.
Years ago, maybe even now in places where people “go” to work--that is, someplace outside their home--a fashionable term to describe the people doing the jobs was “worker bees.” Think about that one. “Worker bees.” Not human, of no particular value, perfectly expendable, perfectly replaceable. Just so many tools. First time I heard the term in workplace context was in a (useless) meeting, spouted by some chick with an admittedly entertaining bust but not a whole lot else going on, at least “upstairs” (although I did come to admire the way she leaned over the conference table “just so.” On a clear day . . . ).
For the past 10 years I’ve been working at home, quite happily, an off-site “employee” of a medical transcription company. Today I’m in the same job, although the company I started with went through a couple of name changes, then a bankruptcy and acquisition by another, larger company, but still an “employee.”
Or anyway, I was.
Now, I’m a “virtual employee.”
Because I’m a fan of dictionaries and have spent many a glorious hour hopping from word to word in the “real” as well as the “virtual” variety, and even was once accused by an older cousin of reading the dictionary, I went in search of “virtual” in online dictionaries. Here is what I found in one:
Virtual: adj.
1. Existing or resulting in essence or effect though not in actual fact, form or name: the virtual extinction of the buffalo.
2. Existing in the mind, especially as a product of the imagination. Used in literary criticism of a text.
3. Computer science: Created, simulated, or carried on by means of a computer or computer network: virtual conversations in a chatroom.
Obviously, “virtual” has grown in meaning, even taken on a whole different meaning. Words do that sometimes.
So now “virtual” has acquired definition #3, above--“carried on by means of a computer.” Seems innocent enough.
Trouble is, for most of us in the medical transcription business, and maybe anybody over about age 20, the word still carries its original definition and nuance. See definitions #1 and #2, above.
It is no accident that our corporate bosses, all the MBAs of the world, the “bean-counters” and Republicans and so forth, have taken to calling us “virtual” employees. By doing so, they make us “unreal.” They dehumanize us, reduce us to . . . Who the hell knows how their minds work. Upshot of it is, it makes us ever so more easily disposable.
That they now comfortably refer to us as “virtual” means that they’ve already made us disappear, “virtually.” Those of us they cannot replace with computer programs--and computer programs aren’t yet all that good with words, although they are getting better all the time--they will replace with even less fairly paid Indians and Indonesians and I forget who all else. (It is mind-boggling or ironic or something to realize that, before too long, if I want to ply my trade for an American company, I’ll have to move to Asia. Nothing against Asia, but I would rather go to Romania, or Sweden--I know some crazy little women there, and they are HOT.)
Just makes me all proud to be an American.
I‘m really not whining about this. I‘m more Darwinist, I suppose, than anything else, albeit with a strong humanistic streak, and I know that “life is unfair,” blah blah blah. I‘ve never even been ON a turnip truck, much less fallen off of one.
It does strike me, though, that we are about to “telephone-game“ our way into extinction.
Capitalism, free enterprise . . . That worked a century or two ago, when we had lots of space and not a whole lot of people. Capitalism, free enterprise, the “American Creed,” have been passed down from one generation to another over several generations, losing a little something with every passing of the proverbial baton, yet in some important ways never really changing. Its latest transmogrification will impoverish more Americans than it will ever enrich.
What scares me, I think, is the suspicion that America, and Americans, have lost their vision, have lost their dream.
“When you give up your dream, you die,” said a character in a movie, “Flashdance.”
I look at myself and realize that I have become nothing more than a “virtual employee,” and see that I am dead or dying, and by extension, America is dead or dying.
Years ago, maybe even now in places where people “go” to work--that is, someplace outside their home--a fashionable term to describe the people doing the jobs was “worker bees.” Think about that one. “Worker bees.” Not human, of no particular value, perfectly expendable, perfectly replaceable. Just so many tools. First time I heard the term in workplace context was in a (useless) meeting, spouted by some chick with an admittedly entertaining bust but not a whole lot else going on, at least “upstairs” (although I did come to admire the way she leaned over the conference table “just so.” On a clear day . . . ).
For the past 10 years I’ve been working at home, quite happily, an off-site “employee” of a medical transcription company. Today I’m in the same job, although the company I started with went through a couple of name changes, then a bankruptcy and acquisition by another, larger company, but still an “employee.”
Or anyway, I was.
Now, I’m a “virtual employee.”
Because I’m a fan of dictionaries and have spent many a glorious hour hopping from word to word in the “real” as well as the “virtual” variety, and even was once accused by an older cousin of reading the dictionary, I went in search of “virtual” in online dictionaries. Here is what I found in one:
Virtual: adj.
1. Existing or resulting in essence or effect though not in actual fact, form or name: the virtual extinction of the buffalo.
2. Existing in the mind, especially as a product of the imagination. Used in literary criticism of a text.
3. Computer science: Created, simulated, or carried on by means of a computer or computer network: virtual conversations in a chatroom.
Obviously, “virtual” has grown in meaning, even taken on a whole different meaning. Words do that sometimes.
So now “virtual” has acquired definition #3, above--“carried on by means of a computer.” Seems innocent enough.
Trouble is, for most of us in the medical transcription business, and maybe anybody over about age 20, the word still carries its original definition and nuance. See definitions #1 and #2, above.
It is no accident that our corporate bosses, all the MBAs of the world, the “bean-counters” and Republicans and so forth, have taken to calling us “virtual” employees. By doing so, they make us “unreal.” They dehumanize us, reduce us to . . . Who the hell knows how their minds work. Upshot of it is, it makes us ever so more easily disposable.
That they now comfortably refer to us as “virtual” means that they’ve already made us disappear, “virtually.” Those of us they cannot replace with computer programs--and computer programs aren’t yet all that good with words, although they are getting better all the time--they will replace with even less fairly paid Indians and Indonesians and I forget who all else. (It is mind-boggling or ironic or something to realize that, before too long, if I want to ply my trade for an American company, I’ll have to move to Asia. Nothing against Asia, but I would rather go to Romania, or Sweden--I know some crazy little women there, and they are HOT.)
Just makes me all proud to be an American.
I‘m really not whining about this. I‘m more Darwinist, I suppose, than anything else, albeit with a strong humanistic streak, and I know that “life is unfair,” blah blah blah. I‘ve never even been ON a turnip truck, much less fallen off of one.
It does strike me, though, that we are about to “telephone-game“ our way into extinction.
Capitalism, free enterprise . . . That worked a century or two ago, when we had lots of space and not a whole lot of people. Capitalism, free enterprise, the “American Creed,” have been passed down from one generation to another over several generations, losing a little something with every passing of the proverbial baton, yet in some important ways never really changing. Its latest transmogrification will impoverish more Americans than it will ever enrich.
What scares me, I think, is the suspicion that America, and Americans, have lost their vision, have lost their dream.
“When you give up your dream, you die,” said a character in a movie, “Flashdance.”
I look at myself and realize that I have become nothing more than a “virtual employee,” and see that I am dead or dying, and by extension, America is dead or dying.
Monday, January 30, 2012
Learning
Your memory and the way your mind works, combined with a situation, can take you down some odd pathways sometimes. For instance, the other day I was out pointing my camera at frost-covered weeds along a fencerow when it occurred to me that my habit of pointing my camera, with macro lens, at frost-covered or dew-dripping weeds along a fencerow has probably made me better at my job as a medical transcriptionist or medical editor/transcriptionist or “medical language specialist” or whatever title they are conferring on us in lieu of actually fair pay--and conversely; that is, my job has made me better at seeking out subjects for macro photography. In both, attention to detail, looking at the “small” things, is (thinking of various clichés, here: “paramount,” “key,” “the ONLY thing,” etc.).
A little over a decade ago, I left a job in a busy pediatric clinic at a teaching hospital where I had worked for a little over a decade. In many ways I hated leaving--it was a decent enough job, but, more importantly, had transformed me in myriad, mostly unexpected ways. For example, it even made me a better driver. Spend a few years walking rapidly through a clinic with three waiting rooms and a couple dozen exam rooms boiling over with bored and/or hyperactive and/or just plain normal, active kids, and you sharpen your peripheral vision--nobody wants to slam into a 4-year-old who has barreled out of a waiting room into the hallway. That enhanced peripheral vision saved me from barreling into stop sign-ignoring cross traffic on the commute to and from work on at least three occasions that I specifically remember.
In that particular job I worked for 7-10 pediatricians, 4 nurse practitioners, and sort of for 2 social workers, plus had to deal with 50-something residents and every-two-month rotations of medical students, all with their own personalities, obviously. That probably doesn’t seem like much, but to introverted-me, it was a lot, or seemed to be whenever I thought about it (which wasn’t often). One of the nurse practitioners once told me that my job was like being married to a dozen women at a time, which made me laugh because she was so right.
That probably prepared me to handle up to 21 pets (16 cats, 5 dogs) at once--and handling/keeping happy 21 pets at a time probably prepared me for my current job, to some degree. It helped teach me how to pay attention.
Which in turn helped me when I relocated to Natchez, Mississippi--”Deep South”--a few years ago, then when I relocated back up here almost 3 years ago.
I am not a “perfect” photographer, macro or otherwise, was never a perfect office coordinator, will never be a perfect transcriptionist or editor or driver or pet-slave or even neighbor or anything else, but it can be fun to look at how all of those separate “parts” of me have meshed and fed off each other, learned from each other, over the years.
Point is, we all get our “real” education in circuitous and unexpected ways.
This is not news, I know--we all know that we can and do learn from every situation we experience and every person we meet. Sometimes we may need to remind ourselves of that, however.
In that particular job I worked for 7-10 pediatricians, 4 nurse practitioners, and sort of for 2 social workers, plus had to deal with 50-something residents and every-two-month rotations of medical students, all with their own personalities, obviously. That probably doesn’t seem like much, but to introverted-me, it was a lot, or seemed to be whenever I thought about it (which wasn’t often). One of the nurse practitioners once told me that my job was like being married to a dozen women at a time, which made me laugh because she was so right.
That probably prepared me to handle up to 21 pets (16 cats, 5 dogs) at once--and handling/keeping happy 21 pets at a time probably prepared me for my current job, to some degree. It helped teach me how to pay attention.
Which in turn helped me when I relocated to Natchez, Mississippi--”Deep South”--a few years ago, then when I relocated back up here almost 3 years ago.
I am not a “perfect” photographer, macro or otherwise, was never a perfect office coordinator, will never be a perfect transcriptionist or editor or driver or pet-slave or even neighbor or anything else, but it can be fun to look at how all of those separate “parts” of me have meshed and fed off each other, learned from each other, over the years.
Point is, we all get our “real” education in circuitous and unexpected ways.
This is not news, I know--we all know that we can and do learn from every situation we experience and every person we meet. Sometimes we may need to remind ourselves of that, however.
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