We start with this post from the rants group: “Yet Another Example of The Internet Dumbing Us Down. ‘s used for plural rather than possessive…I blame laziness and autofill.”
I think the internet just makes our creative uses of punctuation more publicly visible. Long ago, I was an editor for my high school’s literary magazine, and I can attest that apostrophes have been misplaced for generations. But now all our typographic errors are out there in public where they can be judged by anyone, not just the kid with the thrift store beret.
In boat news, we’re paying a summer surcharge even though we’re still on a two-boat schedule.Some of us have compassion for the ferry system because no one could possibly have predicted the increased demand for sailings caused by a population boom, despite the fact that the population of the Earth has been steadily increasing over the past 10 millenia.
And we get my perennially favorite comment- the guy who riles people up by saying, “A bridge would solve this.” And then we relitigate the feasibility of building a bridge over a mile-wide shipping lane.
Another issue with a 2-boat schedule is that it leaves no room for error in cases of piracy.
This is why we need a bridge- it’s so much harder to steal. As a side-note to the perpetrator- if you’re going to commit an act of pircacy, take down a ship that enriches the monarchy, not a vital piece of public infrastructure.
This week’s rants weren’t especially negative, and we even have this fun prompt:
“Not really a rant…might turn into one tho- but just looking for the cool kids! What are we all putting on our theatre tiles? I went w/movie quotes rather than names. What did everyone else do?”
First, I didn’t realize buying a theater tile was all it took to be cool. I wish I’d known that before I wasted hours of my life smoking cigarettes while leaning against the wall of the gas station.
As for what we wrote on our tiles: One family put their cat’s name on the tile, and another put the name of their late dog. One person doesn’t remember, so it will be a surprise for all of us. Maybe they put my name on a brick? I’ve always wanted popcorn spilled on my name.
Another family chose “Live Long and Prosper,” which I love because I’m a huge nerd who not only joins the school literature magazine staff, but also watches Star Trek and is always thinking about Star Trek. Want to know my favorite thing about Star Trek? (You can say no, but I won’t hear you! You’re along for this ride!) I love how Star Trek shows that being human has very little to do with logic and reason, but rather is all about writing poetry, befriending cats, and dreaming. I also like how they show that we could have a future without money. In the Star Trek future, people will put their names on bricks just for fun, without a financial transaction! Just imagine!
We have this very specific complaint, “I really hate when someone leaves not enough of anything (i.e. jam, milk, butter…etc) in the container so the next person can’t have any, but it looks/feels like enough until it’s opened…… Grrrrr”
All the commenters consider this behavior awful, and one islander even calls it “The Brad Maneuver” because it was their brother’s signature move. But maybe it’s not that bad? It could be that your roommate is playing Zeno’s paradox with the yogurt. First you eat half the tub, then half of what’s left, then half of that, and following that pattern, you never actually run out.
We have this advice about how to use tough love to solve the problem: “Reverse the tables? Don’t think about them. Take the last bit and don’t get more. Don’t replace TP(keep your secret stash), don’t rescue. Don’t do what they can do for themselves or they will always keep letting you.”
I like the idea of keeping a secret repository of canned goods and toilet paper that is only pulled out when someone in the house is in need, and then you flagrantly don’t share. Did you know that if we lived in the Star Trek universe we could just replicate more toilet paper? Hey, do you suppose they have replicators in bathrooms that engage in a little nuclear fusion to manifest a few squares of toilet paper on demand? Or do they have one replicator per house, and you make a Costco-amount of toilet paper once every month and store it in your sonic shower? That’s the great thing about Star Trek- it raises so many philosophical questions.
And speaking of philosophical questions, we all wonder why this is happening:
Author: Anna Shomsky
I'm a former teacher and a data engineer living on Vashon Island. My writing has appeared in Five on the Fifth, Women on Writing and on the Post-Culture Podcast. I wrote and produced the radio show Whispers of Vashon for 101.9 KVSH. I’ve had short stories published in the anthologies Island Stories and Chicken Scratchings, as well as through the Open Space Literary Project.
