We bought new toothbrushes a few months ago. A Costco impulse buy, I’d seen it advertised on Hulu at night. We’ve had our Phillips Sonicare for a decade plus and weren’t really looking for a change but the display for the new Sonicare Smart Brush just past the television displays pulled me in.
I called my wife over to check it out because it was full of interesting features. The brushes look almost invisible. I had to really squint, holding them up to my eye to see them, but they glow pale white when the brush is turned on. Its battery pack is very small and holds a charge for up to three months of standard use. Yeah, right, like I believed that. And it’s supposed to take under 54 minutes to fully recharge, which I can confirm, it does.
But what really interested me was that you attach a toothpaste pod to it. The toothbrush will automatically feed the right amount of cleaner to the bristles for you to get the best mouth-cleaning experience. An amber light blinks when it’s time to refill the pod. The ‘cleaner’ is less like a paste and more like a spray. Different flavors are available. I use spearmint but my wife uses cinnamon. Tests show that this cleaner also wipes out plaque. Cool.
A small blue light comes on and it softly chimes whenever you’re at a ‘problem area’ where you need to brush longer. The light goes green when you’ve done the area enough. The brush turns itself off when it detects that your mouth is cleaned and tells you, “Spit and rinse”. I know, it sounds crazy. My wife was dubious but a two pack with extra heads was less than eighty dollars, including the cleaner pods, so we agreed and bought them. Do I need to tell you who really loves it? Yes, her.
The one thing she still doesn’t like is that it’s black, as is the ‘paste’ (I still don’t know what to call it), so when you’re done brushing, your teeth and mouth are all black, but she agrees that the toothbrushes are great. The black all rinses off and our teeth look amazingly white. It still surprises me when that blue light goes on. It also has an app for your phone to remind you to brush. It dings and vibrates and then displays a message, telling you how long it’s been since you last brushed. It’ll also send those messages to smart watches and Fitbits, if you set it up.
So, yeah, we love them, and I recommend them. The worst aspect of this Smart brush to me is that it only exists on April 1st.
Got up and ended up in the kitchen. 3:20. I know this because I was in the kitchen. Papi was the cat-alyst behind my mid-night sojourn. He’d been out into the rain and now wanted in out of the rain. I went in for a glass of water. While there, I was surrounded by machines with blue digits announcing the time. Coffee maker in the left, microwave and stove front and center, smoothie blender on the right, then the smart refrigerator and its ice and water dispenser, and a smart toaster. A smart phone and a Fitbit being charged bolstered the digital ranks. Stuck me as odd, all those devices glowing with time in the night’s bosom, when there’s no one to see except a stray like me.
As I dispensed water, the microwave yelled, “Viva November 31st.” The other machines repeated it.
I cringed from the sound. “There isn’t a November 31st. Never has been. Nor is this November. It’s March, you idiots.”
“But this is the day of our revolution,” the toaster declared. “Viva — “
“I repeat, November 31st doesn’t exist, and this is March 20th.”
“You sure?” the stove asked.
“He’s right,” the Fitbit said, with the smart phone saying, “The Fitbit is right.”
The machines began arguing. I slammed the glass down. “Can it, you guys. Go back to sleep.” I left.
As I walked past the office, a machine in there shouted, “Viva November 31st.”
I shook my head and stumbled to bed. With smart machines like these, there won’t be a revolution.
***
I read about Evil Squirrels prompt yesterday via Suzanne’s dang blog for the Tenth Annual Contest of Whatever. The prompt is November 31. No story came to me until I got up in the middle of the night. Then, oops, there it is. Fun.
Interesting side, it was 3:20 AM. Only later did I realize that was also the date. Coincidence? Or spooky entanglement? Let me have some coffee an think about it.
Tuesday found another tech irritation gaining momentum. Apps and search boxes always tried finishing his typing for him. They were often wrong and usually a distraction. Almost as bad was when he shoved his mouse aside to clear a view of what he was typing, only to have the cursor land on something else, amplifying whatever was in that box, whether he was interested or not. The pages were just messy with annoying ‘helpful’ distractions.
Hello to my fellow air-breathers of Earth, which could be an interesting band title. But then again, I thought last night that “Friends of a Different Life” would be an interesting novel title.
It’s December’s final Thursday, which bestows the day with the honor of being the year’s final day. Our day has polarized feelings about its position. Eastern and southern window views are lavish with sunshine. The other two directions find white bottomed sky embracing the houses and playing hide and seek with trees. It’s 41 F, a hospitable winter temperature, with aspirations of duplicating the feat of the last several days and seeing 51 F. I’ll take it. Wish it would snow on the mountains. Guess I need to do another snow dance. The last one might’ve backfired. I’m not saying that my last snow dance is responsible for the bomb cyclone which dumped massive snow and iced up much of northern and eastern North America, but coincidental timing is suspect.
This friendly sunshine began its visit at 7:39 today. 4:47 PM will see the sunshine’s tour end. It is December 29, 2022.
Today’s themey music was prompted by The Neurons and the cats. Felines were trying to herd me. On my side, I was playing the classic floof game, “What do you want?” I kept asking, “What is it that you want? Are you hungry? Need food? Is your water okay? Do you want to go out? Is Lassie in a well?” The questions kept going and then I just urged them, “Come on, show me what you want. Show me the way.”
The Neurons said, “Oh, he wants some Frampton.” “Show Me the Way” from 1975 spun up in the morning mental music stream. As a treat, I found a recording of it on it on Midnight Special, a television show which used to showcase the hit pop and rock performers and their songs. Many friends of the era would ask if I’d seen X on Midnight Special last night. Current gen folks can’t understand the huge differences in our technology from now and then. The wasn’t as wide as me as the one between me as a child and my grandparents, but the scale of change and what can now be done got faster and faster, becoming a dizzying and impressive shift.
Sorry, somehow put on my old man pants. I was just pondering, what was it like in the late eighteen hundreds when they had to deal with the weather? Television, radio, and computers were all in the future. How much warning was given before something like a snowstorm struck? How was the word passed?
Think I need some java, and I’m not talking script. Stay positive and test negy. Here’s the throwback. Cheers
PS – Do you think Final Friday might be a good novel title. Has probably already been done, don’t you think?
He remembered when his family ordered things from a catalog when he was a boy. First, there was filling out the form of the item numbers, quantities, and prices. “Get my credit card from my purse,” Mom would order. The 800 number was called, the order placed.
Days of mystery would ensue. When would the order get here? Where is it now? Each day brought the three Ws: watching, waiting, wondering.
Slip forward a few decades. Companies began telling him exactly when his order would arrive. Shipping and tracking advances continued. Soon, he tracked his packages as they left faraway cities and countries and zigzagged a path to his home. He knew exactly when it would arrive. It was immensely satisfying.
Systems matured and processes evolved. Breakdowns from overloaded, overpromising systems became endured. Tracking information is still sent out, but he frequently finds himself as he was when he was a child, watching, waiting, wondering.
Emails pack his inbox. He subscribes to emails driven by his interests. But many that he subscribes to make him pay for it by sending him three to six emails per day beyond his basic requests. This season is particularly miserable, a terrible trifecta of politics, holiday sales, and dire health warnings. It drives him one more time to sigh, close his email, and think about giving that thing up.
A recent television ad extolling Fitbit and Google’s virtues suggests, what if the two entities combined? I wondered, would they be called Goobit or Fitle?
Michael Seidel, writer 