Tag: psychologist

In Praise of Good Weather

I was thinking of dropping the top as I drove to work today. I only decided against that because I was heading to the car wash.

I should have dropped the top.

Car washing seemed Connecticut’s most popular avocation today. The line was as long as I’d ever seen.

I’m no psychologist, but my amateur sense of sanity says human behavior is heavily influenced by the weather. Keep it cloudy for a week… keep it extra cool for a month… people get surly. And they have been more than a little surly recently.

Luckily, all it takes is a day or two of sunshine and cooler heads prevail.

Getting back to the car wash for a moment: A few years ago I stopped at another car wash on a bright, sunny day. The girl behind the counter said her dad, a large and somewhat threatening presence, was upset with me.

I’m used to hearing that, and it’s usually a joke from someone who wants to complain to me about the weather – as if I had something to do with what was going to happen.

I walked toward the office and this guy was really pissed! Then he started to let me have it about the extended forecast (5 days worth back then).

“There’s always rain in the forecast,” he complained. And, of course, he was right. It’s tough to go five days in Connecticut without at least some shower activity.

“If there’s rain,” he continued “no one gets their car washed.” Then he told me, I shouldn’t have an extended forecast. This was not a gentle man.

As I said, he was a physically imposing presence. I got out of there and have never been back. But I think about him whenever the Sopranos are on!

As I was saying, the weather will sparkle over the next few days. The car wash man will be very pleased, I’m sure… though I won’t ask him personally.

Memo to Dan Abrams, MSNBC

On Slashdot, the tech/geek site I frequent, there is an abbreviation used when someone makes a comment without knowing what is being discussed. It’s ‘RTFA’ for… well, I can’t say what it’s for, except the ‘r’ is for read and the ‘a’ stands for article.

Please keep this in mind, because I have an RTFA story.

It’s late at night… I’ve been playing poker on the computer and surfing the TV. Friday night after midnight is not prime time. There’s virtually nothing on. I’m the guy who watched “The Secret Life of Air Freight” last night, so when I say nothing, I mean it.

After a while I ended up watching MSNBC and Dan Abrams. I enjoy the show if they’re discussing an interesting case and the panelists aren’t ridiculously defending indefensible points.

In this segment Abrams had a psychologist on discussing the fascination of some women to murder suspect Scott Peterson. I was about to tune away when Dan said he had Googled the subject and actually found a woman who had written a blog entry about how hot Scott Peterson was.

Hey, I’m a blogger too. So I Googled a few of the words Abrams had quoted and found the entry. Only it looks like Dan Abrams didn’t RTFA!

Dan,

After seeing your quote from the blogger who found Scott Peterson hot, I too Googled it. Unlike you, I read a little farther in the blog. Dan… that was a man, not a woman, who wrote that entry.

Geoff Fox

The moral of our story – always RTFA