Tuesday, June 12, 2018

Follow the Leader: Episode 77: Memorable Odors and Lost Teachings!




Martinex1: Tuesday, Tuesday, Tuesday!  Follow the Leader!

7 comments:

Charlie Horse 47 said...

OK… 2 questions NOT comic related but inspired by Red’s BitBA blog yesterday. Answer as many as you wish!


1) I was driving to work behind a foul truck yesterday. The odor of diesel exhaust invoked a strong memory of my time in the military. Which odors immediately invoke memories for you?


2) Times have changed. What did we learn growing up that we no longer teach our kids? Red’s blog on BBQ yesterday reminded me of a local tragedy involving 12 good kids sitting by a bonfire last month. One boy decided to inspire the fire by dousing it with lighter fluid from the container. Boom. The results are truly beyond horrific. Anyhow, all the BBQs I go to now, the source is propane gas, not charcoal and fluid. So how do kids learn not to shoot lighter fluid on to fires? I learned it from my dad at the charcoal grill.
What aren't kids / folks in genral being taught today due to lack of exposure?

Cheers!

William said...

1. The smell of diesel always reminds me of my time in the military as well. I was in the Coast Guard and stationed on a medium sized cutter that ran on diesel. The smell of that engine exhaust will forever be ingrained in my memory.

2. From what I understand, they no longer teach cursive writing in schools. I guess the kids today are going to grow up signing their names with an "X" written in crayon.

Martinex1 said...

1. The smell of lilacs always brings me to my grandparent’s backyard. They had a couple of lilac trees and I associate the smell with them. And a slight mildew smell reminds me of Christmas (ha). For years, we stored our Christmas ornaments in a damp basement and it always had a twinge of that odor.

2. A) Pluto will forever be the 9th planet for me. Now they teach it is some sub-category and no longer a planet!
B) Hardly anybody (in the city) knows how to drive a stick shift anymore. In the future, with self driving cars the automatic will probably be forgotten too!
C) I had to take a typing class in high school. Long gone. Now they take “keyboarding” in third grade but the kids far surpass the teachers’ speeds.
D) On that note, I doubt anybody learns Basic anymore:
10 Go to 20
20 Print “Martinex is old!”
30 Go to 10


Charlie Horse 47 said...

William our town stopped teaching cursive for a few years but they started again! The better educated parents threw a fit once they learned cursive had been stopped LOL.


Marti- too funny!


OMg - the smell of my grandparents cigarettes wherewithal was exposed to comics via my cousin. Cigs and comic paper smell - paradise!!!

Mike Wilson said...

Yeah, cigarette smoke brings back childhood memories for me; so does apple pie (something about that cinnamon smell ...)

I'm not sure about the "no longer taught" stuff; I remember ten or fifteen years ago, my friends' kids didn't know how to read an analog clock ... I know they grew up with digital, but you'd think they'd still teach kids how to tell time in school. I guess what strikes me the most is that younger people today have no idea what tape recorders, answering machines, or rotary phones are ... there are videos where they examine them like they're artifacts from another planet! Makes me feel my age.

In that vein, there's a show premiering on TV in Canada called Back in Time for Dinner (based on a British series), where a family lives in households from different eras (1940s, 1950s, etc.) and is immersed in all the trappings of the time; could make for quite the culture shock!

Redartz said...

1. Afraid I'm at a loss on this one- I have no sense of smell. Always wondered what that 'old comic book smell' could be like...

2. I'd guess that movie history would be lacking, especially silent films and black/white classics. Not seen much in the public arena...

Humanbelly said...

1. I've also lost probably 90% of my sense of smell over the last 8 years or so-- (also impacted my sense of test heavily)-- which honestly sucks. "Comic Book smell" was a very distinct one in my memory. Also-- every Theater that I'd spent more than a passing amount of time in in my youth had its own very distinct smell-- which was very cool.

The smell of the snack-bar/grill at the little ski area in Michigan I used to frequent--- it had it's own greasy, wonderful aroma that would hit you at the top of three central slopes.

And-- McDonald's on a snowy day when doing Christmas shopping. . . a smell I ALWAYS associated with the holidays (even though I don't eat at McD's anymore. . . )

2. This one effects me directly, and causes no end of aggravation. Hand-drafting doesn't exist anymore, for all practical purposes. It's all computer drafting programs-- CAD; autoCAD; etc. And while these are truly brilliant as tools and for speeding up the overall drafting process, they have a created a huge invisible disconnect between the designer and their sense of HOW their design is being physically created. Drawing a box by hand is essentially building a box-- with a sense of materials, thickness, etc. Manipulating lines on a computer screen to fall into the shape of a box takes that tactile aspect away, making it more like. . . a computer game, maybe? And the computer does nearly all of the work of figuring out projections and 3d renderings and so on. It very rarely has to be thought through be the person doing the drafting.

HB

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