My husband and I are a little bit of Anglophiles.  We love British films and television shows.  Some of our favorites are on PBS and we discover new ones every year. 

               The only glitch in this shared delight is that occasionally we find British actors difficult to understand.  Even with the volume cranked enough for the neighbors to hear, we find ourselves saying, “What did he say?” and backing up the tape to listen again. 

               I do take some responsibility for this.  My hearing is terrible and my husband’s is not exactly improving with age.  That said, British folk tend to speak softly (i.e. mumble) and quickly (so that whole sentences often sound like “fluff fluff fluff and stuff”).  [Try that out loud, fast, and quietly and you’ll feel like you’re speaking British English.]

               Of course, it doesn’t help that that is exactly what they are speaking – British English.  That language only faintly resembles American English, in that it is more precise, more grammatically correct, and uses quaint terms like “flats,” “biscuits,” and “lifts” when they mean “apartments,” “cookies,” and “elevators.”

               So one rainy evening when we could find nothing exciting to do, we popped in our copy of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel to watch.  Filled with wonderful British and Indian actors, we enjoyed the film at the theater but had not seen it in several years.

               Right away, we were having trouble understanding the spoken word.  My technological-savvy hubby immediately grabbed the remote (well “grabbed” is a stretch, since it rarely leaves his hand) and adjusted the film to allow for closed captioning.

               Marvelous!  We now could see the film, listen at an appropriate volume level, and also read along with the actors as they spoke. 

               Something odd began to happen.  Both of us sat up and began to scan between the captioning and the actors’ mouths.  Because the words they were saying were there, but additional information was being related audibly.

               There was a narrator, saying things like “woman rolls her eyes,” “man looks down at the floor,” and “another man enters the room.”

               We had closed captioning and narration.  This was distracting.  So my husband began scrolling through the options and clicked on the next item.  Relief!  The narration went away.  But so did the British accents and words.

               Now we had closed captioning in English, but the actors were speaking in Spanish!  This was disconcerting and pretty hilarious.

               The next click got rid of the Spanish-speaking Brits.  Instead, they were speaking in French, with English captions.  Narration came back on, also in English.

               We were rolling around in our chairs laughing.  Who, exactly, were these options designed to help?  People with vision problems and hearing problems who understand spoken French but read only English?  For people trying out for a Mensa club?

               Finally, he stopped the whole mess and started over.  We got our closed captioning in English and our actors speaking English and no narration.

               It turned an otherwise mundane evening into a great adventure, though!

               The expression “thinking outside the box” used to trouble me.  In the field in which I worked, we were bound by an incredible number of regulations – state and federal laws, as well as a number of requirements from fire, health, food service, and other regulatory agencies.  So I spent years believing that it was more important to think creatively inside the box, rather than coming up with ideas that wouldn’t satisfy all those rules.

               Lately, I have realized that thinking outside the box means something different to other folks. For example, the picture below clearly shows someone who thinks outside the corral.  I guess it’s sufficient to get your cart pretty close, rather than actually in, the cart corral.

               Of course, there are those folks who follow the request to put carts into the corral, but I guess – as the following picture illustrates – they are thinking creatively inside the corral.  Let’s just not worry about which side to put them on, just get those puppies in those lines!

Some of the creative thinking I’ve observed of late has really puzzled me.  These folks aren’t just thinking outside the box, they simply aren’t thinking.  You decide – is the road work really over?  Or is it just beginning?

               The creative thinking that really threw me for a loop was the one that thought outside the can. Thanks to my friend and long-time reader, Betty, for sharing this photo of a soup maker who thought we needed a little more adventure and uncertainty in our lives.  Try dipping your grilled cheese in this!

               Hats off to all of you folks who keep us on our toes with your imagination and creative thinking.  But really, let’s keep the right things in the right cans, shall we?

               There’s an old horror movie from the ’60s in which a concert pianist has the hands of a killer attached to his arms (after losing his own in a car accident).  The hands take over his life and he starts killing people willy-nilly.

               Foolish you say? I’m not so sure….my hands have, on occasion, overridden my brain with disastrous (though not murderous) results.

               For example, many years ago I took a job in a city an hour’s drive away.  For three years, I drove to the end of my road in the morning and turned right onto the state highway taking me east.  Our town was to the west.  Every day I drove that route, Monday through Friday.

               It surprised but didn’t shock me when, after those three years and I took a job in a closer town, my hands steered that car eastward every morning.

               My new job would require me to continue straight on at the end of our road, crossing the state highway and proceeding south.  But several times in that first month, my hands would turn the wheel to the east, and off we’d go.  I live in the country, so finding a place to “turn around” cost me precious minutes.  Of course, I could just turn on the next road going south and weave my way through the country.  But…

               I had forgotten about this trick of my hands –overriding my brain – until last week.  I bought some special facial cleanser from my Avon lady.  I intended to use it in the shower and see if it, indeed, made my skin “feel softer and cleaner than ever before.”               

               My showering routine hasn’t changed in the past five or six decades – get wet, shampoo and lather, rinse, condition, rinse, wash body.  Shampoo, rinse, condition, rinse, wash.  Shampoo, condition, wash.  That’s it.

               I was excited to try this facial cleanser, so the first day, I hopped in the shower and immediately my hands took over my brain.  I shampooed, rinsed, conditioned, rinsed, and then remembered the facial cleanser. Oh well, I put it on and it felt very luxurious.  Almost pudding texture!  I rubbed it all over my face and noticed that it got in my hairline.  I wasn’t sure that was a great idea, as it took a while to rinse out and I vowed to use it first the next day.

               The next day, I got in the shower, got wet, shampooed, and rinsed –oh, drat!  I forgot the cleanser.  I grabbed the tube, squirted some in my hand, and applied it to….my hair!  All over my hair was this pudding-esque substance that wasn’t rinsing out well.  Naturally, I had to shampoo a second time to get it out.  I forgot the facial cleanser that time, too and just skipped it entirely.

               On the third day, I used the facial cleanser first.  It was easy.  I just spent the whole morning before my shower repeating “face first, face first,” like a mantra.

               My hands got the message, but gosh they are willful.  Leaves me wondering what they’ll do next!

Recently, I read an article that said Wendy’s (an Ohio-based fast food company) was partnering with Google to bring customers “Wendy’s FreshAI.”  This is short for “Wendy’s Fresh Artificial Intelligence.”

The first thing that struck me was the interesting oxymoron of “fresh” with “artificial.” Then I realized there were many more ramifications to this than a funny grammatical issue.  According to the article – in the Wall Street Journal, by the way, so not some fly-by-night internet site – there will be a “chatbot” (another new word combining “chat” with “robot,” I presume) that will take verbal orders for customers who line up at drive-thru windows.  The purpose, they say, is to reduce “long wait times.”

               First of all, HA!  These geniuses have clearly never called a company and tried to get a real human on the line, saying the word “representative” over and over until you want to scream, without success.  Or pressed the number for “representative” to be told, “no such number exists.”

               Secondly, these incredibly smart folks say that there will be “a restaurant team member” who will be present to monitor the chatbot.  So, if there’s going to be a human monitoring the chatbot, why doesn’t the human just take the order?  How does this speed anything up?

               The team at Google acknowledged that they have to program this chatbot for a number of extraneous factors, including (but not limited to):  knowing the lingo (“milkshake” means “frosty” and “JBC” means “junior bacon cheeseburger”), adapting to accents, ignoring people talking in the backseat – or children screaming, vehicle noises on the street, radios, construction, and passersby talking.  Oh, yes, this seems like an easy thing to do. There won’t be any problems with that!

               Finally, what about those of us who can’t hear well and depend on lip reading?  When the chatbot records our “double cheese with a side of fries” as “double fries with a side of cheese,” just how are we to correct it?  We can’t hear them repeat it, so….I’m guessing I’ll just eat what they give me?

               Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian acknowledged that these problems are some of the hardest to combat in creating this chatbot.  And – good news – if the chatbot isn’t getting it right, the customer will “have the option” of speaking with a human.

               Why are we changing this again?  To speed things up?  I’m not seeing how it’s going to speed anything up except our frustration.  Wendy’s spokespeople stressed that there is “no plan to replace existing workers with technology.”  They just want to “enhance the customer and crew experience by taking the complexity out of the ordering process so employees can focus on serving food and building relationships.”

I’m not sure that ordering fast food at a drive-thru is “complex.”  At least, it never has been for me.  But I’m not worried about job loss for humans – I bet the existing workers will be busy with their new roles as customer complaint representatives.