Blogging Phenomenon

projection of
The Blogging Phenomenon:
An Overview and Theoretical Consideration by James M. Branum

What Are You Trying to Say?

Some of the best inventions of 2002 had to do with translating. The Braille Glove turns sign language into text for deaf people, the Dog Translator lets people know what dogs mean in English when they bark, and the Infoscope helps in translating signs and posters in other languages into their equivalents in English. These may only be prototypes at the moment, but technology is improving all the time despite fears that we may meet with the wrath of God for overstepping our bounds.

The One After the 8:12

Overweight, balding, a bearded father is standing at the bus stop with two young daughters, perhaps seven- and eight-year-olds, both extremely thin and waiflike, blond. The seven-year old stares unmovingly at a woman who is shabbily dressed, looking homeless, who is wiping a window on the lobby door of an apartment building. The child stares and stares at the woman while the other sister is oblivious to her surroundings, skipping in place while holding daddy’s hand. As the bus pulls in to the stop, the seven-year old lightly punches her father in his big soft stomach and then hugs his waist. He disentangles himself from them as he leads them to the bus doors. The girl looks back for the woman, but does not see her.
On the bus, there are five other parents taking their five children to school. The windows having been left opened, allow bits of conversation to be heard on the street. The parents have kid names such as Jody and Buffy. The kids have adult names like Laura and Fergus. Also their conversations reflect their names. The parents’ interests seem innocuous, while the children appear to be speaking of serious subjects. And these children seem younger than both the girls who just boarded.
As the bus finally pulls away, the woman, belying her appearance, stands with a container of steaming coffee from Starbuck's. Holding the container with both hands, she watches the bus take off on its uptown route. The school is off of Third Avenue in the thirties. She used to take her own child on the next bus after this one when she was working in midtown a number of years ago. Some situations never change or do but only imperceptively.
Her bus should be coming shortly. More parents and children are gathering, though less than regularly wait for the 8:12.
The coffee has cooled enough to drink but it leaves a terrible aftertaste and so the woman never finishes it. It’s that way with many things. She finds she rarely finishes anything.

Her Turn

Now Eileen gives English lessons to a young couple from Mexico. They both come for the lessons, but only he seems to be improving his English and that only marginally. He’s taking the class to please the wife and keep her occupied. For every fourth or fifth question, she says, “Your turn,” to him, but she pronounces it, joor toorn, with what sounds like a French inflection. Otherwise, she blurts out answers as if oblivious to his presence. They are an attractive couple and would be more so if she would let him get a word in edgewise.
Eileen wonders if the husband, who introduced himself as Paco, but whom his wife insists on calling Francisco Javier, was so quiet before they moved to New York. She is fairly sure she knows whose idea the move was.
The oversized tennis racket-shaped brooch studded with what appears to be diamond chips that the wife frequently wears was instrumental in Eileen's decision to move to Mexico. She has told them she is about to go, any day now.
The wife tells her she "is being, how do you say, improbable?"

The Perfect Game

Eileen's boss was a tennis buff who used to demo every new racket he learned of. He never bought any. He was seeking the perfect 4 ¼ handle. He said he was looking for the perfect game. When he would send her to the tennis store to pick up the new models, he would ask, “Can the person demo-ing designate the tension of the strings?” She always felt a little foolish bringing back the rackets a couple of days later and having to tell the salesman that her boss wasn’t buying them. In the four years she worked for him, she must have repeated these little treks a hundred times and the day she left the company he was not in. He was away on a retreat, probably playing tennis with his old unreliable racket.

Paco and Anilla

His mother says, “Mi amor,” and “Precioso,” on the telephone. At home, she solicited his affection with food and nouns. His father was more likely to ask Paco to fix him a drink and used adjectives such as chingada and de mierda. His brother and sister were differently affected by their parents’ vocalizations. Now with Anilla, he just lets her do all the talking. Much of it is in French or her halting English so none of it stays with him so much as the nouns and adjectives he heard at home.

San Cristobal