Disestablishmentarianism

They happen so reliably that most of the time, we don't even notice them. In every sitcom, and most other TV programs, practically every scene is preceded by an establishing shot: A brief, five second image of the location in which the scene takes place, preceding the scene itself.

In film, or if the events take place in an unfamiliar location, that might be excusable. How are we going to know that our hero is in Paris if we don't see a shot of the Eiffel Tower? We're only human. But in most TV sitcoms, the action only ever takes place in half a dozen locations, all of them rigged up in a studio. If we can't recognize Jerry Seinfeld's apartment immediately, there's nothing NBC can do. Stock footage of an ordinary apartment building seems unlikely to help.

Of course, the aggregate time lost to establishing shots in the course of a 22-minute television show is small, almost certainly less than half a minute. Still, that's enough time to air a brief commercial or tell another joke. Are we supposed to believe that a static, repetitious, inane establishing shot is the best possible use of the public airwaves?

The only obvious justification is that an episode aired without establishing shots might have a "bald" quality, disorienting not because the omitted scenes are really helpful, but because, like eyebrows, we only notice them when they're gone. People are easily conditioned to accept the aesthetic necessity of something that, considered more fully, has no merit at all. The networks can feel free to indulge the prejudices of the TV-watching public when nothing is at stake, but valuable ad time is being lost to these establishing shots. And if there was ever a reason for iconoclasm -- or anything else -- on network TV, it's money.

No Cards

As I noted with the advent of Twitter, the number of ways for people to keep in touch with friends, relatives, and acquaintances, and those of every gradation of esteem and regard in between, has mushroomed over the past few years. How to tell when twittering, e-mail, or walkie-talkie-phone-call is most appropriate is the challenge of our age, like knowing which corners of a calling card to fold over was in the nineteenth century.

Naturally, politicians are still getting it wrong, but we wouldn't respect them if they didn't. As representatives of a class that fails half the time at their most important job, running for office, politicians are uniquely suited to let us know, by trial and error, what works and what doesn't. If Twitter isn't bad enough to sink the Republican party of 2009, in other words, how bad can it be?

A much deeper level of mystery adheres to the new CDC e-cards, which allow you to nag somebody about their health by e-mail, while adopting that level of creepy familiarity and official neutrality that can only be summed up in the phrase government e-cards. If you wonder when it's appropriate to use Twitter, then you might well wonder whether it's ever appropriate to send someone wishes for a seizure-free day.

I was turned on to the Center for Disease Control's venture into greeting cards by libertarians, who were enraged that the government would fund a project like this. "Your tax dollars at work," was a common sentiment, although as Kaylen noted, "it can't be that many of them." And while I generally like the government to be useful, I can't deny that the CDC has a pretty stressful job.

Between naming and renaming the swine flu, and the "enhanced interrogation" of the smallpox viruses they have in custody, I'm not going to begrudge CDC employees the opportunity to blow off steam by making a "congratulations on your new fish" e-card, detailing the ways to keep your new pet fish healthy. But even that attempt at levity provides no relief from the death and disease the CDC deals with every day. Browsing over to their section on fish health confirms what those of us with aquariums have known all along: There is no way to keep fish healthy. They drop dead in the blink of an eye, and the best you can do is save yourself from the salmonella they carry. Stressful, indeed.

Update: Coincidentally, the Centers for Disease Control got a new chief today, Thomas R. Friedan. It's just too bad we don't know his e-mail address. If there was ever a good time to offer our congratulations with a government e-card, this would be it. After all, we wouldn't like the head of the CDC to come down with frostbite or syphilis; not when there's so much work to be done, and so many more e-cards to make.

Mob Rules

When it comes to waiting in lines, I'm a gracious person. I follow the rules, and wait my turn like a good boy. (And for what?) Of course, it's easy to be decent when the rules are so simple. Get in the back of the line, and shuffle forward with the person in front of you. Or when walking on the sidewalk, keep right, but pass on the left. At least, those are the rules out in the sticks. In New York City, where the sidewalks are congested and the subways packed, I find it more and more difficult to walk with crowds and keep my virtue.

For instance, when the subway doors open, and a crowd of people head for the surface, they meet a bottleneck at the staircases. As only two or three people can walk abreast on the stairs, everyone else, approaching from every direction, tries to work their way to the front of the human knot that immediately forms.

What's the appropriate etiquette here? Are we supposed to pretend that the crowd in front of the stairs is like a tightly compacted bunch of lines, stand in our "line", and wait for it to advance? Are you allowed to skip between lines? When they're so poorly defined, can you avoid it? However you look at it, there are invariably more lines than can fit on the stairs, so this is an imperfect solution at best.

If you don't think of the situation in terms of queues, it gets even worse. Are you allowed to proceed forward by any means necessary? You're not allowed to elbow people out of your way, I'm sure, but can you step briskly in front of someone, startling them? Can you always account for what will startle people? Can you brush someone's coattails, or are you requested to avoid all physical contact whatsoever? Do you have to yield to old ladies? You don't have to yield to old ladies in a queue; that's why I like queues.

Or on a crowded sidewalk, can you walk between people taking photos of one another? Can you walk between people preparing to shake one another's hand at arm's length? If you can, how much leeway do you need to leave? If you can't, that's almost six feet of sidewalk cordoned off by clueless pedestrians.

I doubt there are any hard-and-fast rules for crowded passageways. The situation is so fluid and manifold that it would be useless to codify anyhow. But in the absence of rules, all I'm left with is an equation plotting my pace against the number of dirty looks I'm prepared to receive. People who walk defensively; yield to all; and are last in and last out of every situation surely win the hearts of those human obstacles who cluster in the middle of the sidewalk, stroll five abreast, or just stand and gawk. Thinking of the bitter sweet of days that were, it was no trouble to be so considerate. But now? I'm adrift on the sidewalks and staircases of the big city.

Instead Of Chewing Gum, Chew Bacon

As part of the fact-finding mission that is my life, I've been watching a lot of TV lately. In between the ads for cable TV and the ads against cable TV, they're now running ads for www.kidney.org, a foundation for kidney health and research.

I was impressed by their logo, and never one to ignore a promising lead, I visited kidney.org. After totally acing the Kidney IQ test and satisfying myself that I don't have chronic kidney disease, I stumbled on their top-secret tip for people with CKD, a subject near and dear to my heart: How to eat more.

Now honestly, their tips boil down to, "just eat more, dummy." And they're even less helpful than that, given that I don't have CKD, and thus I don't need to worry about phosphorus or potassium or protein intake. Still, it's refreshing to read, even in a tentative and inapplicable form, tips like:

• Eat candies such as gum drops, hard candy and lollipops at the end of a meal or as a snack.
• Instead of milk, use half and half, cream, or non-dairy creamer.
• Add sour cream to omelettes, noodles, rice and vegetables.
• Instead of plain water, drink beverages that have calories from sugar.

Aye, aye!

Just Flip 'Em!®

Man was given dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and every living thing that feedeth upon the mud at the bottom of the ocean. But with the advent of the internet, certain creatures have stopped asking what they can do for us, and begun to ask what we can do for them.

A case in point is www.horseshoecrab.org, a website started by the Ecological Research & Development Group, a generic-sounding foundation whose sole mission, as it happens, is horseshoe crab boosterism. You probably think of horseshoe crabs, when you think of them at all, as somewhere between starfish and hermit crabs, living flotsam that washed up from the Cretaceous Era and will probably go back out with the evolutionary tide.

But no! Horseshoe crabs, we learn, are a linchpin of the marine ecosystem. (What isn't?) The ERDG is worried because seagulls depend on horseshoe crabs for a large part of their diet, perhaps unaware that seagulls will survive, if they have to, on cigarette butts and pebbles that considerate children throw at them.

What can we do, concerned citizens ask, to ensure an adequate supply of seagulls screaming at us and stealing our french fries? Well it so happens that horseshoe crabs sometimes get flipped over on their backs, waving their nasty legs and genitals piteously, and becoming easy prey for, um, seagulls. Fully 10% of horseshoe crabs die in this way, a fact that is presented to us straight, without any implication that this is something horseshoe crabs should be ashamed of.

What to do about these shameless sea monsters? Just flip em!® There's a song and everything. Now, I'm not saying that there's any reason not to turn horseshoe crabs over, if you find them foundered on the beach. Heck, turn them over and over, or put them on your sleeping friend's belly. But a foundation? A foundation with sponsors and a mission statement and a "staffing philosophy" that reads:

ERDG has developed an international network of professionals with whom it consults on a wide variety of issues. As each project evolves, ERDG assembles a multi-disciplinary team of individuals whose skill levels and training backgrounds are best suited to solving the current problem. This case-by-case approach assures that the best possible talent is utilized to accomplish a project’s goals. Because each team is assembled on an as-needed basis, the majority of ERDG's financial resources are directed to the project at hand and not expended on maintaining a large full-time staff.

For horseshoe crabs?

Turning a gigantic helpless sea tick right-side up is presented as our duty, fully in keeping with the dignity that we posess as the pinnacle of evolution and stewards of God's creation. As I say, flip a horseshoe crab over if you feel like it. I just have a simple question: Who is to be the master?