noun:
1) familiar talk or conversation
2) a filling in of gaps in memory by fabrication

It’s funny how that one word can mean two things which have such different connotations. Familiar conversation - talking with a friend or co-workers, chatting at the water cooler - is represented by the same word as, basically, lying.

I could comment, “Oh, this language of ours” but it would be inaccurate in this case. The root of “confabulation” is the Latin word fabula which means both story AND conversation. Thus, fable, fabulous, confabulation and fabrication. The portion that means conversation doesn’t appear much, it would seem.

Well, here’s something that I heard from Krys over lunch today. I told her it was going in the rants, and so here goes:

Unfortunately, her uncle passed away a day ago and she’s been talking to her cousin about dealing with it and making funeral arrangements at the parlor their family uses. Krys’ cousin was telling her how he didn’t relish going to the casket “showroom” at the funeral home to pick out an appropriate vessel for his father’s body. He was a little put off by the sort of automotive sales approach - “here’s the Cadillac of caskets… this is just a Ford Focus…”, etc.

Having been to this funeral home herself, having had to deal with this when her father passed away, and knowing the funeral director at the home, Krys asked her cousin, “Did he make you watch the filmstrip?”

Her cousin did a sort of double-take and said, “No. Are you kidding?”

In 1980-something, when her father passed away, Krys and her mother went to the home to make the arrangements. They went down to the showroom and the director showed them an actual filmstrip - elementary school style, with the tones that sound when it’s time to ‘click’ the projector to the next frame - displaying their casket choices. It EVEN featured a Vanna White-esque “hostess” wearing a 1970s style baby blue polyester dress, gesturing and presenting the caskets on each frame of the filmstrip.

During this presentation, Krys had to excuse herself from the room so she wouldn’t burst out laughing while sitting next to her newly widowed mother.

Krys, her cousin and I (upon hearing this story) all agreed that this might be a good way to add some humor to an otherwise VERY somber life event. But only in certain cases and for certain people, so I guess it’s a hard sell.

Still - a casket presentation filmstrip.
It’s the stuff that Wes Anderson films are made of.

I stayed at work until almost 7 p.m. tonight and it was kind of nice. The office is soooo quiet at that point since even the people who stay late regularly are usually gone by 6:00. I got a lot done and won’t feel bad about leaving early tomorrow for the dentist.

In a few minutes I’m going to be watching my newest Netflix arrival, a documentary called, “Born Into Brothels.” It’s about a group of children between the ages of 10 and 14 who live in the red light district in Calcutta. A photographer goes there to teach photography classes to these children, partially to help the children find a positive way to capture their life experiences and partially to give them a sense of the rest of the world and what they might be able to accomplish. While she’s at it, she tries - or has tried in the first few minutes of this documentary - to find boarding schools that are willing to take these children and give them a fighting chance at some sort of life outside of the brothels… an education and the like.

One girl is forced into prostitution when she turns 14 and another 11 year-old has to clean houses with her grandmother starting at 4 in the morning every day since her father is a drug addict and someone needs to pay the rent and buy the food. They translate a portion of the little girl’s conversation as, “I can see why most people hate my father. But I still try to love him a little,” and behind her, he’s leaning back so he can take a deeper drag of whatever he’s smoking.

I’m not going to be able to watch this as attentively as I’d like to tonight, but I will tomorrow. I do that sometimes - watch a movie in a “skimming” fashion to get a general sense of it, and then sit down again later and watch it intently and pick up on all the details, etc. This is especially good for documentaries and foreign or art films that may require more concentration than, say, “Night at the Roxbury” (which I also own, so that’s not a disparaging remark.)

Wow. It’s past ten. I got home at eight. I need to get to sleep.

There was something else I wanted to relate, but I’ll be damned if I can remember what that is.