Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
Macfloofnation (floofinition) – a housepet’s scheming or crafty action or artful design to accomplish something it knows it’s not allowed to do; a group of animal lovers who also identify as Apple Mac users; (slang) housepets who enjoy eating food from McDonald’s restaurants.
In use: “As part of his macfloofations to get food off the plate, he put on his cutest face, holding it in place as he edged his paw forward.”
I received a Costco paper thingy in the mail yesterday, one of those things with thin but glossy pages stapled together that show, “Here’s what you can buy!”
I leafed through the leafs because I’m always looking for things to buy, when what do you think caught my eye?
Yes, that’s right, a smart toilet.
Offered by Ove, the description was pithy. They mentioned that it had memory and a remote control. I thought, WTH? Why would your toilet remember you? Does it say, this guy again, and turn on some air freshener? Or is it a matter of adjusting the toilet height and angle to suit your body for the best experience evacuating bowels? And what the heck was the remote control for?
These questions pushed me to search the net for answers. I found a promotional video so that I can share all of those things with you.
The smart toilet disappointed me in the end. While it was impressive on the surface and intrigued me about what it could do, I thought, what about a phone app for it, and voice control? Does it not interface with Siri or Alexa? I don’t know why you’d want to do any of that, but then, I’m not really sold on a remote control for my toilet.
Of course, I shouldn’t be surprised that the smart toilet has arrived. Smart dildos, smart thermostats, smart phones, and smart toothbrushes have been around for some time. Other smart inventions are arriving every day, like smart sex dolls and smart showers. Naturally, with all this smart stuff, concerns are raised about your smarts being hacked, resulting in unexpected problems. Besides someone else taking control of it, these smart devices are calling back home, reporting on what you’re doing.
It’s another reason to not get a smart appliance. Sooner or later, they’re gonna turn on you.
I presented my Festivus list of grievances to my beer buddies the other night. Although the grievances are supposed to be personal and about the people present, I had a general list, and I took a humorous, provocative approach.
One of my items that generated much discussion was the hacked butt plug. I know that I’m not part of the demographics of people that use butt plugs, so I don’t know much about them. I also didn’t know that they could be hacked, or why others would want to do that. Still, it’s part of a larger world that I don’t get, not because I’m over sixty, but because the shit people do is alien to what I think of as fun. Besides hacking butt plugs and other smart sex toys, a term called screwdriving (hah!), I don’t get people doxxing others, or eating Tide pods, or catfishing. Yes, I understand the intellectual reasons behind people doing things, just like people doing weird shit when I was a kid, but those things didn’t appeal to me then, either. Being a writer, though, is about trying to understand, looking into people, thinking about their motivation and the impact of what they do has on them and their lives. So, I explore…
While mentioning the butt plugs the other night, over half present reacted, “Why would you want to know more about butt plugs?” But others were like me, saying, “How can you not want to know more?”
You see there the sprawl of human differences. Some invent butt plugs. Others use them. Another group hacks them. Someone else shies away from knowing about them. Someone else writes about them, and others read and talk about them.
It’s a wild, wild life that’s teeming with diversity. It makes it a much more interesting world.
At least, to me.
Hey writers, hope you’re all doing well as this calendar year slides to the final days. Hope you remember that no matter what happened this year, you can go on and on and on, even when the days drag you down, people bury you for dead, and the routines become too much to endure. Have a mug of coffee, a cup of tea, a sip of wine, a quaff of beer, a piece of chocolate, meditate, read, exercise, walk, take deep breaths, do whatever you’ve found that helps you pick your ass up and put it down in a chair or bed or wherever you write, so you can stare down the blank space one more time, and let the words out. However you do it, you must do it, you must find the way to keep going, to keep trying, to write like crazy at least one more day. But whatever you do, and however you do it, always remember, if you’re using a computer, ensure you back up your work.
Saw a headline slug, “Driverless Cars Return”.
An imagined television news report about a driverless car getting lost and living on the streets by itself for years climbed into my head, and then came the happy reunion, when the driverless car returned to its family for a happy reunion.
“We thought our car was gone forever,” Patty McLaren said about the brown four-door Ford sedan. “We looked for it for everywhere for weeks. We never gave up, really. Every time a driverless car went by, we looked to see if it was our car. Though I never stopped hoping, I never really believed it would come back, though. It’s like a dream come true.”
The car is a little older and rustier, with bald tires and faded paint. Its radio and speakers are gone, apparently torn out by thieves, and the engine smokes.
“Who knows what it went through?” Mrs. McLaren said, stroking the car’s front fender. “I’m amazed it’s still runnin’. I’m just so happy it’s back.”
Mrs. McLaren said that they were going to get the car a new coat of paint and tires. “Then we’re just going to put it in the garage and keep it there, and pamper it.”
Her daughter expressed disappointment that she wouldn’t be allowed to take the car to college with her.
Perhaps, if you’re old enough, you remember having thirty-three and forty-five RPM records that you played on your phonograph.
Maybe you had eight-track or cassette tapes. Perhaps you had a VCR later, playing VHS tapes. Maybe you went with Beta.
Then you switched to Laser Discs, Blue Ray, CDs and DVDs before you started streaming.
You may have used a Walkman a couple decades ago, before changing to an iPod Shuffle. Maybe you use your phone now, downloading your songs from the Cloud.
It’s fun living through these changes. Now we’re embracing more changes. Ford and GM have both announced moves to curtail selling cars in the United States this year. The profit margins on manufacturing cars is small, and sales are down. People are buying more SUVs and pick-ups, if they’re buying a motor vehicle at all, because motor vehicles overall have declined. Young people aren’t buying cars as often.
Just curious, but do you remember talking about SUVs in your youth? I didn’t; we had utility vehicles then. The sports came later.
Do you remember the mini-van craze, or are you too young to remember that?
Young people are marrying less these days. The median age for a man in America to marry was twenty-nine point five years old, up from twenty-three in the early 1970s.
Young people are also dating less. They struggle with interpersonal relationships of romantic and sexual natures if they’re engaged face to face. It’s easier for them if there’s a cell phone involved.
Did you know what a Tinderella is?
Fun fact. My friend the professor struggles initiating class discussions in her class of twenty-somethings. Then she started posting texts, and the discourse began.
Ah, cell phones. Remember princess phones and wall phones, cordless phones? Remember pagers? Remember car phones?
Do you remember Instamatic cameras?
Meanwhile, NASCAR paid attendance is declining. Less people are watching the races on television, as well. That’s parallel to a trend of declining NFL paid attendance and television ratings.
Remember playing video games? Are you old enough to recall Pong? Did you ever think about playing a game on your phone? Did you ever believe that you would enjoy playing games on phones so much that you needed data plans to enable your habit?
Beer sales in America are declining. More people are drinking wine.
Over in the Olympics, snowboarding was a big draw in 2018 while the slalom was dropped. Word came out last week that the IOC is not planning to have boxing in the 2020 Olympics.
Went to the movies the other day. When I was young, over fifty years ago, we had a cartoon or short film before the feature. That’s been replaced with ads, trailers, and previews.
The movies cost thirteen dollars for two of us the other day, cheaper than many places, but do you remember paying less than a dollar for the movies? Mom remembers paying a nickel, but she’s over twenty years older than me.
A nickel to get into the movies was a long time ago, wasn’t it?
Shall we talk about the price of gasoline? How ’bout a quart of milk, a loaf of bread, or a cup of coffee?
Say, do you remember when you first thought about buying organic?
These times, they are a’changin’.
Brace yourself. It’s time for another first world rant. This time it’s about my car.
It’s a lovely SUV, a Mazda CX-5 that I’ve had three plus years. One of its many features is that it reminds me when maintenance is required. This vehicle requires more maintenance than any car I’ve ever owned, which includes Porsches, BMWs, Audis, Mercedes, Chevys, Nissan, other Mazdas, and Fords. Although the car is comfortable and reliable, this constant maintenance thing pisses me off.
So that’s number one. But here comes the reminder. Once it decides that maintenance is required, the message in orange is displayed whenever the car is started.
Here is what pisses me off. That thing is so inaccurate. The good Mazda people put a little sticker on the windshield, too, so I know exactly when it’s supposed to be returned for maintenance. According to it, my car should go back for maintenance by January 10, 2019, or by 33,000 miles, whichever is comes first.
My car has 30,000 miles. According to MY calendar, it’s not yet December, let alone January of 2019.
Yeah, it’s a nice feature. Too bad it doesn’t work. Makes you wonder about the rest, doesn’t it?
Well, to elaborate on the last first, you probably read that and thought, I don’t know. How much are you starting to hate it?
I expect a learning curve with any change. But when I follow the process and it doesn’t come out as expected, forcing me to begin trouble-shooting, only to discover there isn’t any trouble-shooting to do, leaving me unable to post what I want when I want to post it, then I begin to hate the application.
Like, that whole thing with blocking a paragraph to work on it is irritating. So is the inability to use MS Word commands that I’m used to having.
Yes, I’m getting old and cranky. So what’s your point.
All this leads me to my real question: how do I return to the previous editor? That’ll be this weekend’s project.
Well, they’ve done it, they’ve changed their clocks, setting the time back an hour, “Falling back,” as they like to say in America.
It’s an easy task that he does before going to bed. He has five clocks to change. It’s amazing that the house has five clocks. One is mechanical and battery operated. The rest, on the thermostat, bedroom clock-radio, microwave, and stove, are electronic. Strange that they must be changed manually, but there you go. He confirms, while doing his task, that the guest room clock radio is unplugged. That’s to save energy. He smiles at that.
The household has four televisions. It’s a ridiculous number for a couple who spends a few hours with the TV at night, and always watch together. But there’s been a progression, so the older flat screen digital televisions find homes in the master and guest bedrooms. Neither room had a television before. Each television has time built into its systems. Software manages falling back for him. Same with the Fitbits, computers, tablets, VCR, and phones, but not the cars.
Time is everywhere. For days after going through the change, he thinks, “What is the real time? It’s actually really seven now.” He thinks about how this change affects the daylight, and the temperatures he endures, which affects how he dresses, and his daily plans. He likes the light arriving earlier but he misses the late day light.
He wonders, in the end, what the real time is. His body isn’t certain. One thing he notes: the cats admirably adjusted to the change.
This is such a maudlin, sloppy song. It started streaming apropos of nothing that I can recall, but as I streamed it from memory, I thought about how meaningless the words might be for a younger listener.
“Sealed With A Kiss” came out in 1962, when I was six. It was a hit, so it was on the radios often, but I’m more familiar with the Bobbie Vinton version released when I was a teenager. This song is all about being morose because they’re missing their love, so they’ll send all their love, every day in a letter, sealed in a kiss.
I thought, well, these days, they probably wouldn’t be sending a letter. I imagined youth saying, why didn’t they just send them a text or a selfie? Why didn’t they just Skype?
I decided that, “I’ll send you all my love, every hour in a selfie, clicked with a kiss.”
WTH.
Michael Seidel, writer 