Wednesday, June 15, 2016

The Ocean is Closed

A quick note: 

It always sort of bothers me when a blogger opens up a post with, "Sorry it has been so long since I have posted..." but I find myself in that position. I have been a three-a-week poster for years and, lately, over the course of this year, I have slowed a bit. Part of the reason for this is that things have been rather crazy in my everyday and professional life -- not tragic, not sad, just...crazy. The other reason is that my writer's brain (my composer's brain has never interfeared with Hats and Rabbits) has shifted back into fiction ideas and plans for a novel that I have high (artistic) hopes for. 

That said, I will not be abandoning this blog -- as I have sort of done over the last few months, but I will be shifting into posting only on Wednesdays... Here's the first one...

Karen and I took a last-minute (post-funeral [may my 92-year-old great aunt rest in peace]) trip to the Jersey shore yesterday. A couple of slices of pizza...some ice cream...a walk on the beach and back home before the boys were home from school. A nice day. Not a thing happened to shake my writerly tree, until...



On one level, this is pretty funny. They are going to close the ocean? The whole of the Atlantic, apparently, will be shut down for lack of lifeguards. This is going to wreak havoc on shipping and trade. How are the fish to react to this? I picture entire schools of aquatic creatures leaning up against underwater poles, flipping yo-yos and absently biting their non-existent fingernails from 5:30PM to 10AM. (FIN-gernails?)

On another level, this is symptomatic, as most things are, of deeper sociological issues. Can you imagine the casual sense of Big Brotherness it takes to approve a sign that purports to close the ocean? -- not the beach, but the ocean?

Some professor of sociology or anthropology ought to spend this summer on the boardwalk and watch people read that sign. The ones who either laugh at its absurdity or who are angered by its absurd grandiosity; by its outrageous sense of municipal importance, can be weighed against those who simply say, "Ah, well. We can't go in; the ocean is closed; rules are rules."

The ratio of one group to the other will be a reliable indication as to whether we have any chance of avoiding becoming an enslaved, governmentally-controlled society.



2 comments:

  1. even more bizarre is that the hours are posted also... cuffs on that water!!!

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    1. Very true! Might as well arrest the water as close the ocean...

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