Driven to distraction
Thelma and Louise. Updated.
It has been too long since I blogged about driving. I must have been distracted. Well, no more. Hang on. I’m putting it in “L” for “Lunge.” (Like dad used to say.)
You want to kill me? I want to kill you? Fine. We’re gonna settle this once and for all the way nature intended. We’re gonna settle it on the streets. Let’s race.
Psst. Hey, buddy. Wanna buy a road-based transportation system? This baby is state-of-the-art. It’s the absolute finest this planet has to offer. And it only kills +32,000 people per year and injures over two million more. And that’s in the United States alone.
Wow. That does sound great. I’ll take it!
Excuse me. I have to take this call. Okay, I’m back. What were we talking about again? Look out! We’re about to hit that … uh oh.
90 percent of drivers rate their own driving skill as “above average.” They can’t all be right, can they? It turns out that 99.9% of the 90% are delusional idiots.
I, however, can successfully claim to be among the best of the best on the road. I am automotive elite. No, I’m not bragging. It’s not bragging when it’s a fact. And what makes me so special? Only I have the arcane knowledge of the ancients that serves me in the field of battle when I’m driving a car.
Because I like you, I’ll tell you what it is. I’m even going to tell you for free even though this simple trick is worth millions. The arcane secret of being the best in a car is … hey, where are you going? I’m unloading guru wisdom here. Eyes on me.
Pay attention!
Continue reading →
Google Spay
I’ve got an idea. Let’s put Google in charge. Of, like, totally Everything. After all, what could possibly go wrong?
My wife and I have perfected the art of screaming at the TV while Google runs a new series of ads promoting something called Google Play. The ads seem tailor made for millennials, those wacky creatures with birthdays in early 1980s to the early 2000s.
Google loves millennials. Also grandmothers using AOL on Windows 95 who only know how to open emailed photos of grandchildren and stalk the entire family on Facebook. But it’s mostly the millennials.
Millennials are the people in your neighborhood who get run over by cars while texting, fall down open manholes when walking down a sidewalk while texting, running over other people while driving and texting, listening to lectures in college and texting, working mundane jobs and texting, and, if the rumors are true, even use their internet-powered smartphones while sitting on the toilet.
Whatever Google poops out millennials soak up like a sponge. How about Google in your wristwatch like George Jetson? Yes, please! How about Google in a computer you strap to your face? I’ll look so cool! How about Google you wear in a ring on your finger? Yes, I do.
These are people living enhanced reality sorts of lives. Why just look at a boring street when you can wear goggles that superimpose text (in the font of your choice) and describe what’s in view so you won’t have to hurt your brain? And it’s free, not counting the 20% of display real estate devoted to blinking advertisements.
Speaking of which, the ad campaign for Google Play is promoting the ability to watch Hollywood blockbuster movies like “Yankee! Look at me! I am the Captain now!”
Of course, with Google involved, it doesn’t quite stop there. In Google’s opinion, while watching the movie, you should be multitasking. Perhaps using some Google Docs to manage your money. Manage tomorrow’s expenditures and consumption. Let’s devote about 20% of the display to that.
Google is known for search (an admittedly archaic service they continue to offer for nostalgic reasons) so of course they recommend that while enjoying movies. In the commercial the clever viewer realizes, “Holy shit! That’s Tom Hanks. Click pause. Let’s google that sum bitch. I bet this isn’t his first movie. What else has this guy been in?”
With proper utilization of the myriad of services offered by Google, it’s possible to give less and less screen to the movie itself. If done properly, the movie can be shrunk to the size of a single twinkling pixel, much like a real star in Google NightSky.
Of course, at that size, the only part of the movie that can actually be enjoyed is the audio, and that is easily overwritten by Google Radio.
A good movie prompts a feeling of suspension of disbelief. It takes you out of the moment. Google doesn’t like people who are present in the moment. That’s why they launched Google Omnipresent Stimuli. Movies should never get your full attention. They should just be a tiny slice of the stimuli spectrum. With advertising, of course.
“Yankee! Look at Google! They are the Captain now.”
Listen Up
I am a stranger in a strange land.
I’ve done something more notable than even Michael Phelps winning eight gold medals. (Yawn.)
I went out in the world and listened. To another person. Hells to the yeah.
It was the most startling experience.
A conversational pause does not mean the person has finished speaking.
–Tom B. TakerInterpreting every single pause since the dawn of time as “my turn to talk” means you are an asshole.
–Tom B. Taker
My wife was speaking to me. I was listening. Wow. I know. It can happen. Okay, okay. Stay calm. Don’t blow it. Keep it together, man. So far so good.
Then she paused.
This was an industrial heavy-duty kind of a pause. A good ten seconds. In today’s world that is literally an eternity. I had my feelers out. Was she done? Was she waiting on me to comment? Was it my turn?
I still don’t know what came over me but I decided to wait. I was in it for the long haul.
Then, simply, she continued. And she expressed an additional thought that added more to what she had just previously said. A thought that, if I had interrupted, I would never have heard for the rest of my life.
This is it, I thought! The land of milk and honey over the rainbow. That land that assholes never get to see.
It was so earth shattering that a few days later I even tried it again.
Continue reading →
A tweet from the wife
Didn’t I just bitch the other day about the misery of forgetting things in the morning?
Earlier today I began to get a feeling of worry regarding my kitty cats. (Don’t worry. This ends up well.) Specifically, I was wondering if I had unplugged the coffee pot. I had no memory of doing it.
I asked my wife if she could swing by and check on the kitties. In my mind I was imagining a big ball of fire and little kitty ghosts that hated my guts. Something like, “Damn you for trapping us in this fire hazard!”
The wife works closer to home, gets an hour lunch, and was going to be driving anyway, so she did me a solid and checked it out.
Yes, the coffee pot was still on. Curse this organic-based vehicle I’m forced to occupy!
This would have made an awesome tweet (hence the title of this post) but there was no way it would fit along with the backstory. But I still wanted to share.
This is what she wrote:
The pot was still plugged and the kitties were sitting at the dining table sipping coffee. I joined them for a cup. They were not amused.
Smart ass!
My cats may be irritated but at least they’re okay! And I think they may be planning a coup. 🙂
I’m on sabbatical
We all make mistakes
Finally, the Sabbath is here. Whew! No A-Z Blogging Challenge today. Yeah!
What day of the week is the Sabbath? I don’t really know, but as far as A-Z is concerned, it’s Sunday. We’ll pick back up with “C” on Monday.
So, I will now strive to emulate God, at least in this one way. According to Genesis, God created heaven and earth, light, firmament, Earth, seas, vegetation, seasons, the sun, moon and stars, moving creatures, fowl, cattle, creeping things, beasts, and humans.
Then, on the seventh day, God “rested.” Woot! I’m gonna do that, too.
Literally, Sabbath is a “ceasing,” a rest from work, or a hiatus. According to the Bible this even applies to the beasts, so I have unharness the cats and have given them the day off.
I’ve established I’m taking a break from the A-Z Challenge. Now what?
For today’s sermon, I wish to delve into something else. Master Yoda once said, “All his life has he looked away… to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was. Hmm? What he was doing. Hmph.”
Yoda was talking about being mindful.
According to Wikipedia, one possible definition is, “Mindfulness refers to a psychological quality that involves bringing one’s complete attention to the present experience on a moment-to-moment basis.”
Ha! How often does anyone really do that?
Have you ever done stuff like driving away with your coffee mug on the top of your car? That’s mindlessness.
Today I offer for your consideration a few examples.
One day I went to a restaurant I knew should be open. I walked up, turned the door knob (yes, they have a door knob) and pulled. The door didn’t open. I looked in the window. There was an “open” sign. “What the hell?” I was livid. I stomped away all the while imagining the nasty note I was going to post on the internet to let them know I didn’t appreciate being treated that way. They’d learn a thing or two from me.
Before getting too far, however, I watched someone else walk up to the restaurant. They turned the knob, pushed on the door, and walked on inside.
WTF!!!
I just got schooled on mindlessness. Quite effectively, I might add. Humbled, I shuffled over to the restaurant and successfully let myself in.
For this next story, I’m going to give you the ending first. It ends with someone sitting on the living room sofa, drinking some milk, then shouting profanities with alarm.
Ah hell. Why be coy? It was my wife.
How did this happen? It started at the grocery store. My wife was craving some milk. She walked to the back of the store, grabbed it, paid for it and brought it home.
Once in the kitchen, she immediately grabbed a glass and poured herself a drink of milk. Savoring the moment, she went to the living room and settled in before, finally, taking a long satisfying drink of delicious milk.
Or so she thought.
It can be quite jarring to take a drink of something expecting it to be one way and then finding out that it’s something else. Quite jarring.
It turns out she didn’t buy milk after all. She bought something from the milk case that was bottled and labeled in similar fashion to milk, but it wasn’t milk. It was some sort of lactose-free beverage that my wife hates.
Yes, she was mindless in the store. She didn’t bother to mindfully look at what she was buying. And it led to quite the surprise.
Okay, only one last example and I’m done.
Last weekend, my wife hired a friend’s kid to help with chores in the garage and around the house. One of the jobs was getting rid of the big umbrella from the table in our backyard. It seems it had been left open during a windstorm and had been broken. I ended up wrestling it down just before the whole thing flew away Wizard of Oz style. And it only cost me one severely pinched hand.
So here she was, paying this kid in cash money to help her take care of the umbrella. She instructed him to break it down and dismantle it for the trip to the dump. He dutifully pulled off all the fabric and crunched it down as much as he could.
When loading the car, however, she noticed something strange. There was the damaged umbrella still sitting in the garage and it was completely untouched. What the hell?
Oh yeah, they had just destroyed our backup umbrella, making us the proud owners of two useless piece of shit umbrellas.
Oops!
Remember that in everything you do, there is a choice. Be mindful and pay attention to what you are doing. Or be mindless and think about anything else and suffer the consequences.
You can expend all the energy you want, but if you do it mindlessly, you’re probably just wasting your effort and time.
Shouts from the Abyss 
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