Category: Uncategorized

Bot-tender

I followed my robot vacuum around today. Using it for spot-cleaning, I’d move it, turn it on, and then stand over it like a football coach on OTAs. “Move left,” I’d tell it. “Get that fur. Come on, pick it up, pick it up. That’s it. Good job.”

Doing this presented me with a feeling that I was cleaning, but I also felt empowered. I controlled the bot.

Maybe, too, I was seeing the future. Robots and automation are taking over more jobs each day, with plans for greater shifts on the near-horizon. But bots and automation might require intervention and guidance, as my Roomba does. We may have a new job category opening, bot-tender.

It could be the hot new thing, but I don’t think it’ll pay much.

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Bless You

Where does everyone stand on blessing people when they sneeze? I mean, I say, “Excuse me,” when I sneeze. I notice many people don’t. I tell others, “Bless you,” when I’m near someone who sneezes, even though I’m agnostic, with tendencies that slide toward being an atheist. It’s something mom taught me to do. It was considered polite. That training, though, was almost sixty years ago. She could have been conning me, for all that I know. I was young and just learning the language.

Also, if someone is wearing headphones and can’t hear you, should you still say, “Bless you?”

Should I just drop the whole thing because it’s an outdated custom?

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Flooflop

Flooflop (catfinition) – a gallop cats employ while racing around the house; a stop, stretch and roll motion cats use to get humans to pet them.

In use: “The thundering noise was like a herd of miniature buffalo stampeding through the house, instead of an eight-pound cat flooflopping about.”

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The Story Left Behind

I’d been watching him because of his motionless manner of waiting. Dressed in jeans and a long sleeved gingham shirt, he stood straight, feet apart, clutching his box. Others fiddled, fidgeted, looked around, and shifted. Some checked phones. Besides that, the other eight people in the post office line were women. He and I were the only men.

He looked about my age, and had short grey hair, but I didn’t know him. Equal parts of bewilderment and resignation seemed poured into the man.

“Next,” the clerk said.

The man walked up to the counter and put his large box onto it. The box didn’t seem to weigh much.  As the clerk slid the box onto the scale, the man said in a loud voice, “There are eleven items in this box. Nine of them are glass bottles or jars. There are jams and jellies, pancake syrup, blueberry infused balsamic vinegar, and olive oil. All of those can break. I think the only things that can’t break are the Branson Chocolates and the pancake mix. It’s a thank you gift for my brother. We stayed at his house last week. My wife picked everything out. She said he’d like them. I guess I believe her.”

The postal clerk said, “Is there any alcohol, flammable materials, lithium batteries, or hazardous materials?”

“No.”

“Do you want it insured?”

“Yes, I was told to insure it and get a tracking number.”

“How much do you want to insure it for?”

“Fifty dollars.”

The clerk pressed buttons and applied labels. “Thirty-one ninety-five.”

The man paid.

“Have a good weekend,” the men said to each other as the postal clerk handed the other a receipt.

Nodding, the man folded the receipt, slipped it into a pocket, and walked out with equal parts of bewilderment and resignation, leaving me to wonder about the story he was leaving behind.

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Conversation

Do you ever have an imaginary conversation with someone else, and their imagined responses convince you that they’re right, so you do something different than what you planned?

Yes, this includes imaginary conversations with animals.

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Habit

Have you ever reached up with a finger to shove your eye-glasses back, only to find that you’re not wearing them, and almost poke yourself in the eye? Then you look around to see if anyone witnessed this behavior.

Not that I’ve ever done it. Just wondering.

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Simplest

After all his travels and experiences around the world, and the many things he’d eaten, drank, and sampled, he realized his favorite activity was to fall asleep reading a book with a cat as his company.

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A Dream So Real

Do you ever have a dream so real that you’re certain it happened?

I had one of these last night. My eyes were extremely bloodshot in the dream. Looking at my eyes in the mirror in the dream, I thought, wow, what the hell is going on? What caused my eyes to be so bloodshot?

But when I brushed my teeth and saw my eyes this morning, they weren’t bloodshot. I was damn sure that they would be, and shocked and amused when they weren’t. I wonder from that, what other things did I dream that I was certain was real?

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Monthly Darkness

I passed through the monthly darkness this week. Darkness strikes me every month. I became aware of it a few decades ago, when I was in my thirties, but I can’t confess to understanding it.

I can’t predict it, either, except it’s a monthly thing. I ended up comparing it to volcanoes this week, because volcanoes are in the news. Like volcanoes, you’re not positive about what’s going on underneath. Yes, a few fissures and tremors can provide clues. But mostly, awareness that something is there is about all that’s accomplished.

Then boom, eruptions clarify the moment.

I expect this every damn month, yet, it’s such a dark, stealthy flow, that it overtakes me and has me in its grip before I recognize it. Everything is touched; nothing is spared. Those areas where I think myself weakness are savaged the greatest. It strikes hard at my self-esteem, self-image, and self-confidence, debilitating my belief I can write fiction and my determination to do so. Thoughts like, “What’s the fucking use?” multiply like mosquitoes in a warming tundra. “Just quit. Walk away. Live a normal life of….” Complete the sentence.

Partway through it, I gathered awareness that I was in it. Awareness is probably the most comprehensive tool I have in my set. Knowing that I’m going through the monthly darkness lets me endure the rest, knowing it’ll past.

I must admit, it was a very dark one. I think the stresses of traveling, personal relationships, and visiting with family contributed to the depths. Those activities also limited my writing time. Writing is my primary therapy.

The darkness is gone now. I’m fortunate in that regard. I know my spectrum of moods. I feel for those without that self-awareness, or those whose moods take them more deeply and lovingly into the darkness, holding them down until they can’t breath. I’ve had such darknesses from time to time.

It’s not a fun place to exist.

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My Dirty List

Time for a small vanity project (as if every post made on this blog isn’t a vanity project, right?).

I think everyone has certain movies that they love to watch regardless of others’ ratings and reviews. It’s our dirty secret.

Here is my dirty list. I’ve seen each of these movies at least a dozen times, and have a few of them on DVDs, but I still watch them when they come on. Some of them don’t come on much any more, because they’re old, and in black and white, and a few of them depressed people.

The list isn’t in any order. Each movie has several particularly favorite scenes. Thinking about those, I realize they usually come at the movie’s end. IMDB helped me with the quotes because my memory isn’t that good.

Unforgiven (1992) – “It’s a hell of a thing, killing a man. Take away all he’s got and all he’s ever gonna have.”

Fail Safe (1964) – “You learned too well, Professor. You learned so well that now there’s no difference between you and what you want to kill.”

This Is Spinal Tap (1984) – “I believe virtually everything I read, and I think that is what makes me more of a selective human than someone who doesn’t believe anything.”

A Christmas Story (1983) – “Oh, fudge. Except I didn’t say fudge.”

The Great Escape (1963) – “Cooler.”

Tropic Thunder (2008) – “I know who I am. I’m the dude playin’ the dude, disguised as another dude!”

Being There (1979) – “It’s for sure a white man’s world in America. Look here: I raised that boy since he was the size of a piss-ant. And I’ll say right now, he never learned to read and write. No, sir. Had no brains at all. Was stuffed with rice pudding between th’ ears. Shortchanged by the Lord, and dumb as a jackass. Look at him now! Yes, sir, all you’ve gotta be is white in America, to get whatever you want. Gobbledy-gook!”

No Country for Old Men (1997) – “What you got ain’t nothin’ new. This country’s hard on people. You can’t stop what’s coming. It ain’t all waiting on you. That’s vanity.”

On The Beach (1959) – “The trouble with you is you want a simple answer. There isn’t any. The war started when people accepted the idiotic principle that peace could be maintained – – by arranging to defend themselves with weapons they couldn’t possibly use – – without committing suicide. Everybody had an atomic bomb, and counter-bombs, and counter-counter bombs. The devices outgrew us; we couldn’t control them.”

Fifty First Dates (2004) – “Sharks are like dogs, they only bite when you touch their private parts.”

Bladerunner (1982) – “Time…to die.”

Bridge Over the River Kwai (1957) – “Are they both mad? Or am I going mad? Or is it the sun?”

Love Actually (2003) – “A tiny, insignificant detail.”

Men In Black (1997) – “No, ma’am. We at the FBI do not have a sense of humor we’re aware of. May we come in?”

The Dirty Dozen (1967) – “I reckon the folks’d be a sight happier if I died like a soldier. Can’t say I would.”

Doctor Strangelove (1964) – “Well, boys, we got three engines out, we got more holes in us than a horse trader’s mule, the radio is gone and we’re leaking fuel and if we was flying any lower why we’d need sleigh bells on this thing… but we got one little budge on them Rooskies. At this height why they might harpoon us but they dang sure ain’t gonna spot us on no radar screen!”

What of you? Andy dirty secrets about the movies you watch again and again?

 

 

 

 

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