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July 31, 2008

In my office we’ve been asked to cut back on our power usage lately. We’ve mostly been turning off lights. I’ve also tried working with my monitor turned off but that mrfl skrg qbm lpn. But I bdjpwzdd. In the hallways the maintenance guys have unscrewed one fluorescent bulb in each of the overhead lights so we only have half the light, but they leave the lights on. I can’t help wondering whether there isn’t still some electricity being used. Someone once told me that his grandmother would go through the house each evening tightening the light bulbs in their socket because she was afraid electricity would leak out during the night. This was back in the day when telephones didn’t have buttons but had a handle on the side that you’d crank. Logically I know there isn’t any electricity leaking out because there’s only electricity being used if the circuit is completed, like the time I stuck a key in a light socket to see what would happen. Now, you’re probably thinking, "He stuck a key in a light socket? What an idiot!" but I can prove I’m not an idiot. I used a pair of pliers with rubber handles to stick the key in the light socket, perfectly insulating myself from electric shock. If I were an idiot I wouldn’t have used the pliers. And I learned two very important things from that experiment. The first is, if you stick a key in a light socket you’ll get a lot of cool sparks and the lights in the school gym will go dim for about thirty seconds. The second is, once you’ve stuck your key in a light socket you won’t be able to get your locker open again because the key will be partially melted.

But I digress. Thinking about the old days when people had to crank their telephones reminded me that I have an emergency flashlight that has a hand-crank on it. This is a very ingenious thing that gives you something to do when you’re sitting in a completely dark office or maybe even out in the middle of a dark forest waiting to be mauled by a bear. If they really want to save electricity maybe they should put hand cranks on all the office lights, and maybe on our monitors too. Maybe they could give us exercise bikes and hook them up to generators. Wouldn’t that give a whole new meaning to the term "rat race"? The biggest office bonuses could go to the person who generates the most electricity. And while they’re looking for ways to curtail energy use, maybe they could also get the maintenance guys to stop propping the doors open. That’s just letting all the cold air out, which is almost as bad as letting all the electricity leak out.

July 24, 2008

There seem to be a lot of commercials lately promoting the ease with which people can now access everything from their bank account to their home security system to the latest sports news to their medical information from anywhere with just a few clicks of their cell phone, and an extra $300 charge a month. What a great time it is to be alive! I remember just a few short years ago when I first saw someone using a completely hands-free cell phone. For about twenty minutes I thought she was completely crazy because she seemed to be carrying on a conversation with no one and spending a lot of time jabbing at the air with her fingers. Now that I think about it she probably was completely crazy. The person on the other end of the line probably thought so too because, whoever they were, they couldn’t have gotten a word in. She wouldn’t shut up. But I digress. It’s just wonderful to me to think that I could be at an amusement park riding a rollercoaster eating a big wad of cotton candy with one hand and tapping buttons on my cell phone to make sure I have enough money in my checking account with the other. There was a time when I would have thought it would be a good idea to make sure I had enough money in my checking account before I went on vacation to an amusement park, but now I no longer need to worry about little trivialities like being prepared. I’m glad to know I could take a long island vacation and sit on the beach with a Mai Tai in my hand and, instead of doing something stupid like watch the sunset or go for a swim, keep up with how major league lacrosse teams are going. And is there anything cooler than being able to hike up Mt. McKinley and, in the middle of a blizzard, still be able to get that reminder call from my dentist that I have an appointment next month? Wait a minute. Don’t we go on vacation to get away from crap like that? I don’t want to be like the girl in the commercial who complains about how she doesn’t have time to shop because her incredible cell phone coverage means she has to take her work with everywhere. You know who else is watching that commercial? Your boss. And he’s taking notes and thinking you’re a slacker because you take time off for little things like having your own life. The next step is being like the guy in the bathroom stall next to m who insists on answering his cell phone before he’s flushed, which really disturbs me. Now I think I’ve figured out why those commercials for the cell phone company that doesn’t just give you a cell phone but delivers three-thousand complete strangers to follow you around all the time give me the creeps. I don’t want a bunch of people following me wherever I go. It was bad enough when I was a child and my grandmother told me my dead relatives were watching me whenever I did anything bad. I couldn’t help wondering if they were watching me constantly, and had a really hard time getting undressed after that. And then I started wondering if my Uncle Sid was one of the dead relatives watching me, because he was the type who’d be pushing me to do something bad. "Go on," I could just hear him saying. "Take a newspaper. No one’s gonna notice. And could you grab me a Chunky while you’re at it?"

July 17, 2008

So the other night I opened my back door and there were raccoons on my patio. I immediately screamed, slammed the door, and freaked out my wife all at the same time, a hat trick I haven’t pulled off since I mixed cough medicines and was convinced I was riding a flying spoon. With the raccoons safely shut out of the house (I also propped a bookshelf against the door just in case they decided to pick the lock) I started trying to decide whether I should call someone from animal control or, preferably, call on my Mafia connections to perform a "whack". I’m sure you’re thinking that raccoons are sweet, cute little animals with funny bandit faces, but cute is in the eye of the beholder. Just because you put a Lone Ranger mask and a fluffy striped tail on a rat doesn’t make it any less of a rat. Actually that’s unfair to rats which are, I admit, pretty cute with their long noses that give them an inquisitive look. Raccoons are more like badgers, and nobody likes badgers. Trust me. Ask anybody on the street what they think of badgers and they’ll say, "Badgers? We don’t need no stinking badgers!"

But I digress. What were the raccoons doing on the patio anyway? Maybe they were there to eat the citronella candles, and for that I would have been grateful. Citronella candles are marketed as being mosquito repellent, but I think it’s a conspiracy to sell surplus citronella which, during World War I, was used to make nylon stockings. I’m pretty sure the industry wouldn’t want this to get out, but citronella is manufactured from the stuff that isn’t even considered acceptable for hot dogs. And it actually attracts mosquitoes. Light up a citronella candle and the mosquitoes immediately know there’s at least idiotic human who wants to relax outside in the glow of a nice candle and not be eaten alive. Citronella candles come in all kinds of shapes, but to mosquitoes they all say the same thing: "All you can eat buffet!" After all the term "citronella" is derived from the car brand "Citroen", which is French for "explodes ten minutes after leaving the dealer’s lot". But I digress. I’ve got a pretty good idea why the raccoons were sniffing around my patio, though, and it has to do with an even lower form of rodent, the land developer. There used to be some wooded areas near my home that were large enough that I’m pretty sure I heard "Dueling Banjos" being played there once. Now they’ve cut it all down and put up warehouse stores and fast food restaurants and they’re currently planning to turn the entire area into an exact replica of the Las Vegas strip. So even though I don’t like them I feel bad for the raccoons. And, next to the land developers, I have to admit they do look kinda cute.

July 10, 2008

Every time an election comes around, at least in the United States, it seems like there’s always a statistic that comes about about how the number of registered voters who bothered to show up and actually vote only amounts to about 0.038%, meaning, basically, that six people made a decision we’ll all be complaining about for the next few years. There’s been a lot of talk about how to prevent this, but I think the biggest problem may be voting fatigue. I’ve got nothing against democracy, but it seems like every other day I’m encouraged to vote for something that doesn’t really make that much difference, like the best Indian restaurant in the city, or my favorite episode from the last season of a TV show I never really watched, or whether I wear boxers or briefs–a question that always makes me ask, "Is there a third candidate?" But I digress. There have even been votes for the new color of M&M’s, asking people whether they prefer puce or chartreuse. Aren’t yellow, green, blue, red, brown, aubergine, sangria, asparagus, periwinkle, and plaid enough? And, more importantly, will I be sued for not putting ™ after M&M’s even though everybody knows I’m talking about the candy that, in spite of their insistence to the contrary, will melt in your hand, especially on a really hot day?

But I digress. I’m all for democracy, but it seems like we have so many choices already it’s hard sometimes to make a choice when trying to decide who’s the best person to represent me, especially in the small local elections where it can be almost impossible to get accurate information about the candidate, beyond the fact that all their advertising has been spray painted on the sides of cars in the mall parking lot. And even when I get the information sometimes it can be even more confusing because I feel like I don’t have enough choices. I might look at a particular candidate for, say, the school board, and think, well, I disagree with her on zoning issues, but her plan to pay some Dutchman to set fire to Lord Snowden intrigues me. I think this is why Winston Churchill said democracy is the worst form of government–with the exception of all other forms of government. At least I’ve been told he said that, but I’ve never found the exact quote. If it’s a true sentiment, though, it doesn’t matter if it was some guy two cubicles down from me who actually said it and not Winston Churchill. Things like that just tend to get attributed to Churchill because he was a smart guy who knew a thing or two about democracy, and I’m pretty sure, unlike the guy two cubicles down from me, I’m pretty sure Winston Churchill never spent an hour and a half looking for his pen only to realize he’d tucked it behind his ear.

June 26, 2008

Lately it seems like I’ve been seeing a lot more bumper stickers that say things like, “Share the road with motorcycles” and “Watch For Motorcycles”. I thought it was weird that they were all on cars until I remembered that motorcycles don’t have bumpers. Am I missing something, though? I know it’s an election year, and maybe I just haven’t been keeping up with the news about Proposition 22832-A, which states, “Drivers of vehicles with three or more wheels shall not henceforth and such anon no longer be not required to provide safe passage or berth for vehicles which consist of two or fewer wheels.” I was planning to vote for it because I was certain it was about getting commies out of the State Department, but maybe I’m mistaken. If I’m wrong I’m sorry, but I’ve always considered motorcycle riders to be people, and I’ve always tried to watch for motorcycles and share the road with them. If all this time I was supposed to be swerving to run them off the road I’m sorry—and now that I think about it that may have been one of the questions I got wrong on my driving test. What’s wrong with motorcycles? I know a nurse who drives a motorcycle, and I can tell you I’ve never had anyone stick a seven-inch needle into my arm with more care and consideration, maybe because, as a motorcyclist, she knows a thing or two about pain. And where would our culture be without motorcycles? If Jack Kerouac had traveled across the country in a Buick rather than on a motorcycle, his book On The Road would have been called Ripping Good Travels, Eh What? Actually there was a book like that. It was written by Nabokov and it was called Lolita. Think about it. Then there was the film Easy Rider. If, instead of riding really cool choppers across the country Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper had driven a Dodge Dart, the film’s climax would not have been a massive drug-induced freakout in a cemetery in New Orleans, but would have been them fixing a photocopier in Yakama, and having a round of martinis while Jack Nicholson sat on it and made pictures of his butt. Let’s face it: if you’re driving a Gremlin, you can’t drive up to a group, spin in a half-circle, and say, “Hey you kids, never suck all the juice out of a tractor!” Well, you could, but it wouldn’t look nearly as cool.

But I digress. Do we really need these bumper stickers? And, if they do, couldn’t they at least include some cool pictures of smoking wreckage? I just don’t see enough twisted wreckage out on the road, and it’s unethical and time-consuming to cause it myself. And while I’m on the subject of bumper stickers, or, actually, because I just wanted to get back to the subject of bumper stickers and didn’t feel like trying to make a logical leap back to it, what’s with the ones that say, “I Brake For” this or that? Are these people saying they don’t brake for things like stoplights? I saw one that said, “I Brake For Unicorns”, which is fine. I brake for any equine animal regardless of whether it has horns, but did the driver of that car not brake for nixies, dryads, or homunculi? That last one I could understand. Seriously, when I see homunculi I hit the accelerator. Those things are vicious. They’ll go straight for your gastroenterologist. It’s true. At least that’s what a guy on a motorcycle told me.

June 19, 2008

You know what kind of people you never see any more? Organ grinders. Do you ever get a feeling of nostalgia for the good old days when you couldn’t walk down the street and either run into an organ grinder with his monkey or slip on a banana peel? I don’t, mainly because the only place I see those things are in old films and cartoons. I never even saw organ grinders when I was a kid, but I thought it looked like a great job going around with a monkey. Actually I never could figure out why the monkey was necessary. Maybe because the organ grinder was holding the organ with one hand and turning the crank with the other, but if he used a strap to hang it around his neck he could always get rid of the monkey, unless people just have an aversion to giving money directly to men with handlebar moustaches and would rather hand it to a small flea-ridden simian. But I digress. Organ grinders seem to have gone the way of men named Aloysius, women named Bertha, and telephone operators. Not that anyone ever saw telephone operators, but we knew they were there. Sometimes I’d like to be able to pick up my phone and, instead of dialing a bunch of numbers, just say, "Sarah, could you get me the Chinese restaurant in Mount Pilot?" And some guy named Mark in Mumbai would say, "I’m sorry sir, how does this relate to your credit card bill?" There are a few things that make me feel nostalgic. I remember when fins on cars disappeared. Well, not exactly, but it’s strange. It’s as though one day I saw cars with fins and then the next day they were all gone. It’s almost like the big computer monitors, which seemed to disappear with about the same level of speed. It’s as though suddenly everyone in the world got a flat-screen monitor delivered at once. Sometimes I wonder what will disappear next. What will make people, in twenty or fifty years, say, "Hey, you know what I never see anymore?" It’ll probably be something we take for granted. "You know what I never see anymore? Light bulbs. Not since they made glow-in-the-dark wallpaper." I get a strange feeling whenever I think about what the future will bring, and what may also disappear in its wake. It’s not exactly nostalgia. It’s like the feeling is the opposite of nostalgia. The worst thing is, whenever I try to explain this to someone they just look at me like I’ve got a handlebar moustache.

June 12, 2008

A couple of days ago I had to clean out the garbage can. And it was the outdoor one that I had to clean, which is weird. Cleaning the indoor garbage can, the one that sits in the kitchen, isn’t unusual. We all have to do that occasionally, usually after we’ve thrown away a couple of pounds of beef fat and even after we’ve taken the garbage out the garbage can still has that peculiar odor that most of us describe as "funky", or, perhaps, "like Uncle Wally". Cleaning the outdoor garbage can would seem to be contrary to the laws of nature. It’s supposed to smell. The problem is it smelled like Uncle Wally crawled in there and died. Actually I found something dead under the house and put it in there, and even though the garbage men took it away the smell had the audacity to stay behind so I had to put bleach in the can and spray it out with a hose. Excuse me, I forgot they’re no longer "garbage men" but "sanitation workers". And that’s okay. I think sanitation workers are among the unsung heroes of our time. They’re up there with firemen or doctors, who are also unsung because, even if you hear them described as heroes, they’re not usually sung about. Honestly, I can’t remember the last time I heard a song about firemen or even sanitation workers. Mostly when I turn on the radio I hear some guy singing about the girl who left him, which is one of the reasons I hardly listen to the radio anymore. Now if he were to sing about how his girl left him and he moved in with a fireman, that would be something. In the seventies that sort of thing could be the basis for an entire album, and I’m pretty sure that’s how The Village People got started. Nowadays such a subject would be considered too tasteless for a song and would only be appropriate for a major blockbuster Hollywood comedy.

But I digress. As a kid I used to think it would be cool to be a sanitation worker. It looked like fun getting to ride around on the back of a big truck, lifting up those cans and dumping them in the back, and getting to discover a whole universe of new and interesting smells. Plus I’d finally get to see what happened to the stuff after they put it in the back of the truck, and I’d find out where, among other things, my Lincoln Logs disappeared to. Now of course being a sanitation worker isn’t nearly so romantic, at least in my neighborhood, where they don’t even get out of the truck anymore. The truck is equipped with a big mechanical arm that lifts the can up to the top and shakes it. It’s all part of the advance of technology. Someday, perhaps even someday soon, our garbage will be entirely digital, and when my computer starts to smell like Uncle Wally I’ll have to take it outside, put bleach in it, and spray it out with the hose.

June 5, 2008

Is there anything more miraculous than the change of seasons? Honestly, with the Earth is spinning at a thousand miles an hour it’s no wonder it only takes about a minute for temperatures to go from slightly chilly to make-you-want-to-stick-your-head-in-the-freezer hot. This time of year always makes me wonder what people did in the old days. For reasons I’ve never quite understood, up until some time in the 1960’s, when people, driven by a combination of various drugs and the sudden discovery of color, decided to get naked and start swaying around in mud pits, men always wore three-piece suits made with a flannel-wool-camel hair blend, and women wore dresses consisting of approximately three-thousand layers of velvet. The revolution of the 1960’s was followed by everyone deciding to put on new clothes, but they were so hung over it wasn’t until the 1980’s that they realized that not only do lime green bell-bottoms look horrible, polyester should never be worn next to the skin. How did people survive before the invention of casual wear? And, more importantly, why for several centuries did they insist on wearing powdered wigs? It’s bad enough that they walked around in the summer with twelve layers of clothing on, but they made the problem even worse by wearing wigs on their heads which trapped all the heat, and then, for reasons no one has ever been able to explain, they powdered those wigs. The powder was probably there to soak up the blood that seeped out of their pores once they died of dehydration. Dressing like that in the winter, when everyone’s main occupation was standing around next to open windows, wasn’t a problem, but why weren’t shorts invented until some time in the last thirty years? And why weren’t casual Fridays invented until some time in the early 1990’s? Not that I’m complaining about office dress codes. I used to work next to a guy who’d come in wearing hot pants and cowboy boots. And that was during the week. For casual Fridays he’d break out his lime green bell-bottoms.

May 29, 2008

It’s almost vacation time, at least for those of us who are in the Northern Hemisphere. In the Southern Hemisphere, which geographers call “down under” of course it’s approaching winter. This is one of the disadvantages of living “down under”: all the blood is constantly pooling in your head and you can’t keep the seasons straight. The advantages include the fact that your entire culture can be summed up by yeast extract, an amusing accent, and pictures of the Sydney Opera House. But I digress. For members of Congress of course vacation time comes around approximately every sixteen hours, which is probably why for the rest of us it comes around approximately every sixteen months. Before the glut of travel shows vacation used to be a fun thing, at least for men. Women, of course, would have to worry about losing ten to fifteen pounds so they could fit into a swimsuit that they’d immediately cover up with a shirt. And because that wasn’t enough they’d also put on sunglasses and a big floppy hat, to make sure no one recognized them. For men it was always easier: we just put on whatever made us feel comfortable, which, disturbingly, would always be guaranteed to make everyone else uncomfortable. For some reason a man’s weight and the size of what he wears to the beach are inversely proportional. Fortunately those days are over now because even men know that, if they wear a thong, there’s going to be some travel show camera crew following them around, and sooner or later their relatives will see them on television with a hack comedian saying, “This man’s back was the inspiration for shag carpeting.” Even for those of us who dress decently the beach has become intimidating. We can’t do something simple and enjoyable like build a sand castle because we know somewhere down the beach someone’s not building a sand castle—they’re building an exact replica of Michelangelo’s David, but wearing board shorts, on a surfboard being attacked by a great white shark and crashing into the Titanic. And even if we’re not into building sand castles, vacations aren’t just about taking time to stroll up and down the one street designated as Tourist Lane, buying postcards and t-shirts that say, “I Got Lucky In [Insert Name of City/Town/Village/County/Shire/Region/Down Under]!” or maybe "Tornado Alley Blows!"

Travel shows have taught us that we have to seek out and embrace the exotic. Well, do we really have to embrace it? Personally I love watching that guy who goes to interesting places, meets friendly people, and dines on gelatinized salamander eyes and deep-fried llama pancreas, and I’m all for embracing the exotic, but I don’t want it embracing me all the way to the emergency room. I think I may try something daring for my vacation, though, something like roughing it. My plan is to get a cheap hotel room. Between the interesting flora and fauna in the bathroom and the unusual dishes in the hotel restaurant—such as a green liquid the menu which the natives have charmingly laminated calls “broccoli”—I think a cheap hotel room is about as exotic as it gets.

May 22, 2008

The other day I saw a guy riding a Segway, which seemed like a pretty good way to get around. With the price of gasoline going up, I’m always looking for alternatives. Gasoline comes in five basic prices: low, normal, high, ridiculous, and European. We’re rapidly approaching the point that everybody regrets buying those monster vehicles that you need a ladder just to reach the brake in and that get approximately 1.7 miles per gallon (on the highway). Bicycles seem like a pretty good idea, but I live in a place with hills, and what goes down must eventually go up. It doesn’t help that I can glide downhill for half a mile and then, after spending a week in the hospital, have to roll my wheelchair uphill. Then there are rollerskates, which would be fine if all the roads were paved with lacquered wood. That wouldn’t be such a bad idea, though, especially if they could put up some disco balls around intersections so people wouldn’t just stop, they’d get out and do The Hustle. But I digress. My only problem with rollerskates is I have no sense of balance. I was always the guy out on the roller rink floor inching along while kids half my height zipped by. That also rules out skateboards. And don’t even get me started on unicycles. Actually I’m not sure how to get started on a unicycle. Does somebody have to hold it for you until you get on and get going? And, let’s face, it, unicycles are a gateway ride. You get started on a unicycle and the next thing you know you’re juggling, and from there it’s just a matter of time before you’re dressed in polka-dotted bellbottoms and a fluffy blouse and fighting mimes for a good spot on the sidewalk.

But I digress. I’ve thought about skiing as a good way to get around, but that would only work in places where there’s snow. Water skiing is out of the question, at least until we can figure out a good way to tilt the surface of a body of water. And snow skiing is out of the question for me anyway because of that whole balance issue. I tried snow skiing once and spent most of the day with both my legs trying to go in completely different directions, except on those rare occasions when I got to the bottom of the hill and could lie down for a few minutes and put my pelvis back in place. And I couldn’t even go on the slope with the cool ski lift, which I thought maybe I could just ride and get a nice view of the area. I had to grab on to a rope attached to a wheel that was designed so it would pull me back to the top of the hill with my butt in the air and my head scraping the ground. Finally the ski instructor told me, "You’re just going to have to learn to stand on your own two feet." Actually what he meant was I was going to have to stand on a couple of strips of rented fiberglass that my feet were locked to. Who came up with the expression "learn to stand on your own two feet" anyway? Who else’s feet am I going to stand on? What I should have done was gotten a surgical saw and said to the ski instructor, "How about I try yours?" Maybe I could just borrow one of his, and then I’d have three feet, which would make a yard. Or I could get twenty-seven feet together and have the whole nine yards. Surely one of them would have a good sense of balance.