Ranting, redux.

After taking a couple of days to think it over, I've realized my anger over the Broccoli Test isn't from the idea of measuring how well a pairing can communicate without words - it's the application of that measurement. The Broccoli Test is something that's applied to a situation where nonverbal communication flat-out isn't needed, so a lot of my confusion and frustration came from trying to understand that. If one member of a couple can't think to walk over to the other and ask them about the broccoli, that's actually kind of pathetic. If the test applied to a situation where verbal communication can't be employed, like during a long sit-down dinner with family members or being held hostage at gunpoint, that'd make more sense. But if someone can't think to walk over and put the broccoli in the shopping basket on their own, well, I've got no sympathy.

Communicating "I love you and all that you are but if your mother doesn't stop talking about her cyst I'm going to walk outside and throw myself in front of a bus" or "I love you and you need to trust me and throw yourself out the window, grab onto the fire escape, and shimmy down the drainpipe and call the cops while I make a distraction for you" through eye contact and subtle facial expressions is much more understandable. Heck, look at the example in this little sketch - communicating that look takes genuine skill.

I guess changing the phrase to "The Reference Desk Test" wouldn't go over so well.

Flip side.

After last night, and thanks to a very late start to the morning, I decided to play the day as low-key and not leave the neighborhood.

I didn't leave the house early enough for the first showing of the movie I wanted to see, so I walked around the area for a bit, going in and out of shops, two of which had free coffee. The thrift store was a bit of a disappointment the way it always is - I want to like it, I really do, and it always seems to have such nice things, but I'm so particular about clothes and don't have a body most modern styles and sizes want to fit, I'm nearly always at a loss. And even if I do find something I like, it's easy for me to talk myself out of buying it when I could get a nifty t-shirt online for the same price. Maybe I should take someone along next time in case they have ankle-length skirts again. I did find one I liked, but because I didn't have any outside data on how it looked I felt nervous enough about buying it to put it back.

The movie was Date Night, which sustained its action and plot over the whole of the running time. I admit I have a weakness for the plot where most of it can be summed up as "it got worse" where it's supposed to be funny instead of tragic, so it hit my buttons quite a bit. That it had a married couple genuinely in love with each other and let the characters' interaction provide most of the humor helped quite a bit. After that I went to a nearby coffee shop, where I saw someone spill tea so I got her napkins, and then read some Wallace Stevens and thoroughly enjoyed being inside with a warm drink on a drizzly day.

Then I went and explored a house that probably won't be there on Monday. For context, there's five houses along the main street in the neighborhood - gorgeous turn-of-the-twentieth-century houses with huge porches - that are being knocked down to make room for some apartments. I'm torn, because I know infill is good and people will move into the new places and it's better to put them in a high-traffic neighborhood instead of somewhere on the edge of the city where people will have to drive huge distances to get anywhere, and at the same time I'd rather see families living in big houses with huge porches. They've been torn down one at a time during the week, and there's one left. I crossed the street to check, and even though the chain-link fence went around the whole area, there was a small gap at the back where I pushed my way through some bushes to get over to the construction site, where I took enough photos to finally wear out the camera's battery. I'll have to post them tomorrow.

In the meantime, I'm going to be glad Stephen Moffat's making adults afraid of the dark again, and try not to leave the lights on when I go to bed.