In Brevity: #Technology
It was Sunday morning. I was sitting on the sofa with my wife. She was trying to open an “eCard” and watching a spinning animation instead. I was trying to access a website and getting a spinning animation, too.
It wasn’t the internet connection. It was that technology is shitty.
How sad is this? I thought as we sat there clicking refresh umpteen times. This is the world that technology has promised.
Futuristic togetherness. Watching. Waiting. Together. Forever.
Delta, Science and The Bible
I believe that The Bible is incomplete. Each and every book should have ended with the sentence: “Well played, God. Welllll played.”
I speak from experience since I believe the point of my life has been to add a new chapter. Hint: It’ll be called The Book of Tom and it’ll be inserted right after Job. Howdy, neighbor!
Take today, for example. Seriously. Please take it.
Yesterday I had yakisoba noodles with chicken for lunch. I ate less than I wanted because I was saving it. For today.
I now read from the Book of Tom:
Tom’s Law #42
Look forward to something and you’ll get exactly what you deserve.
I was really looking forward to lunch today. I think we all know this isn’t going to turn out well. Let us prey.
My Blue Pen
Times don’t change. People do.
When I was younger I wrote t-shirts. In 8th grade I wore the Star Wars variety every day for an entire year. Every. Single. Day. Yeah, I was out memeing while most of you were still in your diapers. You might say it was a sign of things to come.
Somewhere on the way to becoming a grumpy grandpa my practice of wearing t-shirts gradually fell to the wayside and was replaced by button-front shirts. Nothing fancy, mind you. I still hate clothes. But if I have to wear them at least give me a pocket and a place to keep my pen.
That’s another thing. Somehow I picked up strange habits involving pens.
At one time or another I must have experienced a traumatic “lost pen” incident. I began to glom on to them. I’d spend a good part of my day concerned about the location and status of my pen. And may the heavens help you if you tried to walk away with it. You would be smited.
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The Family Owned Rest-O-Taunt
The wrong kind of hunger.
Kids in restaurants: What more can possibly be added to the conversation on this grisly topic? What are the chances of any new pithy insights, useful anecdotes or even a side serving of a modicum of wit? Hell if I know, but I’m going to give it my best shot.
Every once a while a restaurant will make the national news because they do something daring like “banning” children under the age of six. That’s old news by now, even though the practice didn’t exactly become the norm.
So, unfortunately, we’re all desensitized to fine dine experiences that include the boorish behavior of other people’s kids. I dare say, bad form. Especially on top of all the other usual nonsense like cell phones, loud mouths, drunks and cigarette smoke.
But there’s a particular variant of this that was recently brought to my attention by the kindly staff at a local eatery the other night: When the kids aren’t just fellow guests but are owned, operated, sponsored and provided by the restaurant itself.
Duh, duh, duh!!!
I guess we could think of them as the amuse-bouche of upgrade comps. Now that’s a hot ticket!
Here Protection
Summer is still weeks away but we’re already beginning to feel the effects.
The local TV news, which consists of 18 minutes weather, 2 minutes news and 10 minutes commercials, has been telling us for months that practically every single day is setting another local weather record. In winter we had the warmest winter days ever. There have been lots of rainfall records along the way, including one just a couple of days ago. And now, finally, record heat days are occurring on a regular basis.
I think we’re setting a record on setting new records. Somebody check the records. This has got to be true.
Living in Portland means, of course, there is no air conditioning in our house circa 1950s. I think they hates them, they do. Maybe things were cooler in the 1950s so people didn’t think they were really needed? Bioswale floors, walls, ceilings and roofs constructed out of organic kale didn’t exist back then, did they?
Whatever the case, when the heat hits our house like an oven on broil, the windows, reluctantly, have to be placed in the “open” position. And that’s when the shit goes sideways.
Hello, neighbors.
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Cramazon Dot Com #drabble #amazon
Cramazon Dot Com
by Tom B. Taker
Half-way through the shift and I was behind schedule. Panting, blisters popping, I paused for a 15-second break.
The urgent alerts from the GPS strapped to my head couldn’t shake the bliss.
Six seconds later the floor manager showed up. “That’s it,” he said. “This is a verbal.”
The GPS parroted the threat. “Verbal! Verbal!”
“Two more and you’re fired!”
Humans weren’t meant to micromanaged to the nanosecond by computers. I snapped. My lightning fast quick draw would have been enough to take out Wyatt Earp himself.
I scanned him right in the face. He screamed. I ran.
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A drabble is a short storm form consisting of exactly 100 words.
Shouts from the Abyss 
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