Sharing the World with the Undead

This is America. We Americans get to drive any street-legal vehicle we can afford.

We have become a nation of Highlanders, Encores, Expeditions, Sequoias, Tahoes, Outbacks Suburbans, Yukons, Armadas, and the more obscure CR-V AWDs and Acura MDXs. I wonder about the secret code masked by these letters. I mean, did someone seriously sit down and say, “I know a catchy name! How about MDX?”

So here is my suggestion for the entrepreneurial among you: Somebody needs to invent a parking periscope. Yes, I know we already have technology that detects nearby vehicles. We even have technology that parks our vehicles. But I would like a simple periscope I can raise on the Acura or any other car, allowing me to see past the behemoths beside me. I want a fix on the many vessels that lurk nearby. This back-slowly-and-trust-to-fate technique has gotten tiring. Too many kids swerve confidently around me as my emerging sedan inches out across the concrete.

Parking radar has its appeal, don’t get me wrong. I would not mind shields or a tractor beam.  But I’ll settle for an old-fashioned, functional periscope. As I crawl slowly blind and backwards out into various parking lots, I realize I’ve seen too much, and I’m just getting too damn old to drive on faith.

 

 

 

Retrospective from 2016 as We Near Yet Another Capricon: The Search for Bob Kearny

It’s a windy, cold February day, expected to hit zero degrees by morning. Shasta and Mommy are staying at the Westin in Wheeling for another Capricon, a favorite sci fic con that mommy attends each year. Mommy has put on her soft, gray owl shirt. The owl looks fried, a possible illustration for a Hunter S. Thompson novel. Mommy looks about as tired and fried as the owl. She is getting jobs. She added Lincolnshire #103. She expects to add Grayslake #46 next week. Wheeling #WhateverTF long-term Spanish may have gotten away, though. Mommy hit send on the app and then failed to pick up a call from Principal Bob Kearny of Cooper Middle School, not finding its traces on the landline for a couple of days. Kearny has not returned two calls. Wheeling may have escaped.

Shasta is wearing a shiny red spandex outfit, skin tight around her slug’s body. Shasta is an invisible slug, about as large as a medium-sized dog. She has abandoned the usual top hat in favor of a long-haired, purple wig, held on by a copper-colored pair of steampunk goggles covered with wheels and gears. She is resting on a simple, black velvet flying carpet, about five feet off the floor, in the space between the two double beds in the Westin Hotel room. Shasta wonders what mommy is doing.

Shasta: Why do we want Bob Kearny to talk to us mommy?

Mommy: The suburb is right next door. I hear it pays well, too.

Shasta: Do you even like subbing?

Mommy: I don’t know. Maybe I will when I actually get around to it. As far as I can tell, I mostly hunt for jobs for no pay yet. My job is to do job interviews. Just like I write a top-secret blog with 13,500 users that makes no money whatsoever. I seem to have a real knack for not making money.  

Shasta: Well, who needs money?

Mommy: It’s good to be a giant, invisible, young slug. I’d like that uncomplicated life. I don’t want to interfere with the purity of your vision, but money is kind of useful. You want a great mystery? I have a graduate degree in marketing from a school that is among the best in the country. I know I could market. Hell, I once wrote an article for Home Office Computing Magazine that made a small, software company’s year. I could market. But I don’t.

Chekhov is about to be captured. Oops. Now he is about to have a seemingly catastrophic fall.

Shasta: It’s that “kind of useful” mommy. If you went for money, you would get money, whether you or the owl are fried or not. But I am worried about this subbing thing.

Mommy: It seems like a natural move. I qualify. I like the idea of being able to work or not work whenever I want. Once I find the right classrooms, the job might even be fun.

 Shasta: Don’t think too hard. That’s what I always say. But this may be one of those pigs-have-wings things. We have to do some thinking on this one, mommy, we do. This might be a thinking type thing. This might even be a hell-no-I-won’t-go.  Just because the path goes ever onward, doesn’t mean we have to stay on the path. In fact, that “ever onward” might be a great reason to get off the path. Right now.  

How about that Starbucks? You could get a green apron! I’d rather have a green apron than a badge that opens school security doors. I’d like to hit those security doors with a blaster. And I’d rather have a free pound of coffee every week than an extra couple hundred of dollars after four weeks of hell.

Mommy: You need to have a more positive attitude!

Shasta: No, I don’t. Everybody talks about positive freaking attitudes. Everybody talks about gratitude. And gratitude journals. And how great Mr. Spock is. But that doesn’t mean they are right.

Mommy: They are about Mr. Spock, although I am not sure everyone is talking about him. Not even here, and we may have a biased sample. This is a science fiction convention.

Shasta: I sure hope they save those humpback whales. But you get what I mean. Yes, be positive. Be grateful. But don’t let that control your life. Too much positive and you keep on that forever path. You stay when you ought to go. 

Mommy: Too true.

Shasta: That Kearney guy should be an object lesson. Did he make you feel good? No, he did not. I say, make lattes, not war.

What are we doing today anyway?

Mommy (laughs): Yeah, enough deep thought. At 11:30, I want to go to the panel on antibiotics. I need a shower, first. Then the usual: art show, panels, dealers room, con suite. There’s a Star Wars panel. And that Klingon girl is giving a concert. We are going to have linner at Spears, the place with the good crab cakes, pretzels and brussels sprouts.

(Later that day after the art auction.)

Shasta: So did we decide anything?

Mommy: Nope. We’ll have three districts soon. We’ll give that a shot. I think we should do the districts near us, too. Then we’ll be done.  If it doesn’t work, Shasta, I think we could try to sell art. People do. We’re just killing time anyway. Were you listening to that stuff about the Great Filter? Fascinating.

Shasta: He said we are first, we are rare or we are gaf*cked.

Mommy: Hope for rare. The odds that we are the first intelligent civilization ever are lower than infinitesimally low. I mean, seriously, how old is the universe? All those stars with all those planets, and we are first. That would be winning the Powerball of Powerballs. Which leaves rare or gaf*cked. I’ll go with rare although I think the zombies are coming from somewhere.

Shasta: (Squeaks, alarmed. She whirls the black, velvet carpet around, peering in all directions.) What zombies? Where mommy? Quick, get on the carpet!

Mommy: (Smiles.) No, silly, the hypothetical zombies. The Walking Dead. Feed by Myra Grant. Twenty-eight days. The many, many children of George Romero. The Morning, Night, Day and Mid-Afternoon of the Living Dead. Why do we crave white walkers? On some level, maybe we are preparing ourselves for the Great Filter. I wonder if Wikipedia has the Great Filter. (Mommy goes to look.)

Readers: Never heard of the Great Filter? Look it up on a day when you feel like contemplating Big Ideas that Don’t End Well.

This post should maybe be titled ADHD life.

Oops. I realized yesterday that some of my emails had mattered. But between my aching feet (getting better), lack of sleep (sigh), missing items (Albert had borrowed the stupid charge card), ADHD (a win — Starbucks gave me a free coffee card to reward me for being so drifty that I drove off with a wrong-size, wrong-kind beverage AND gave me my original coffee when I returned, letting me keep the grande latte I had mistakenly stuck in my cup holder) and just falling behind — a neat trick when one has almost no responsibilities — well, the whole thing got out of control. Like the previous sentence.

Sometimes the center does not hold. Still, yesterday needs a quick autopsy. How did those vital mails slip away? A major factor was my blasé attitude. Mail? What mail? I did not fail to put dates in my Google calendar. I never uncovered those dates. And what about the double charge on the  charge card bill? I ought to have looked at that bill sooner, before the spouse paid the bill.

First you have to care. Mail and calendar have to happen. Charges should be scanned at least.

Anyone else out there sometimes have similar problems? My solution was to put an item in my google calendar. On Fridays, the mail gets one hour. Allocating specific times to boring tasks can help.

All of this assumes I look at my phone, of course. I could put an entry in the calendar, “Look at Google calendar.” Would this work? When you have to look at the calendar to be told to look at the calendar, you have a problem. I could write “look at the Google calendar” on the Dr. Who calendar hanging on my desk. Calendar after calendar, I could refer myself to other calendars.

Maybe I’ll just go bake cookies instead — and try to remember to go through my mail on Friday.  The human brain  can take over when calendars fail. I’m pretty sure brains can do everything calendars do and then some, at least on a good day.

The sartorially challenged should invite sympathy, not scorn.  Who plans Sarah Huckabee Sander’s outfits? I’d say the odds are good that Sarah has been rummaging through her own closet unfortunately. She may even reflect at length before getting dressed, picking up one dress after another, trying to figure out which style and color will best minimize her hips.

She does not seem to favor slacks.  She leans to solids. That’s the hips, again.

I know Sarah’s struggle. I too am a sartorially challenged woman of curves. When it comes to creating outfits, I just don’t get it. I have organized closets filled with clothes that flatter my skin color. I have jackets, sweaters, scarves, jewelry, pants, leggings, tunics, tailored shirts, t-shirts, sweaters, skirts and other random accessories. Yet, somehow, I still suffer from dressing dyslexia.

I pick matching pieces. I add accessories. I go to the mirror.

Then I ask: What went wrong? Like Sarah and other dressing dyslexics, I often don’t know. I can dress myself well enough so that I can tell the reflection in the mirror is … off, somehow. Like Sarah, I don’t exactly look bad. The shoes go with the pants go with the top, and the scarf ought to fit fine. The dress suits my shape and the tights seem basically harmless. Nevertheless, I can’t count the number of times I have shaken my head at the mirror, looked at the time on the clock, and said, “Oh, well. It looks intentional. Gotta go.”

Intentional. That’s my favorite word for some of Sarah’s outfits. I am sure she created what she had set out to create. But I have a tip for Sarah and other dressing dyslexics: Find the Yahtzee dice.

Awhile back, I created a new system for getting dressed. I’ll use it now. I pick up the black plastic container of six dice. I roll the dice. High dice wins. I arrange the dice in a row based on where they landed. The high dice is the last one in the row, a number six. I pick up three dice and roll again to get a sum total of sixteen.

Each dice represents a location. One stands for scarves, two for pants, three for the casual drawer, four for skirts and dresses, five for tops worth hanging up, and six for jackets and sweaters.  My roll says I have to wear the sixth item from the left in sweaters or jackets. I can use the sixteenth item in that section instead. (I can also say, “It’s fifteen degrees outside. This would be goofy,” and roll again.)

The original plan for the dice system involved closet cleaning. If I rolled an item I was unwilling to wear, that item went into the charity bag. The system worked pretty well and now I am almost entirely down to items that meet my standards, which might best be expressed as, “not ugly and has no holes.” The blue dress with the ruffles on the butt, though? That thing had to go.

Why am I still rolling the dice since my closet has been cleaned? Because much to my amusement, I started getting compliments on my outfits. Suddenly, adults and even middle school students started going out of their way to tell me that I looked good. The dice seemed to have much better taste than I did. Or maybe the dice made me think about clothing differently. When I start with a scarf, I often end up juggling pieces to get that scarf to work.

I’ll go to the closet now. Number six is a long, pale blue and gray sweater with a fringe, perfect for this day at home. I can go rummage through the casual drawer and then I’ll add some jeans. I don’t expect the total ensemble to be a “Wow!” moment, but people won’t be talking about me when I leave Walmart or step off the press podium, either.

“We can rebuild him. We have the technology,” Oscar Goldman said in the Six Million Dollar Man.  

Luckily for Sarah, the technology she needs can be captured in a black plastic cup.  Jiggle, jiggle, jiggle, a quick flick of the wrist. Then all she has to do is arrange the dice, count and coordinate. She might toss a dress or two into the Goodwill bag at the start.

Why dress yourself, Sarah, when random numbers can do it better?

 

The hashtag #BoycottStarbucks epitomizes an unattractive aspect of social media today.  Some woman is calling for a boycott of Starbucks because, horror, they have eliminated the peach and mango syrups. We are also supposed to boycott Starbucks because of the so-called lesbian Christmas cup.

Two girls appear to be holding hands on the cup. Are they lesbians? Transgender? Just girls holding hands? In some cultures, girls hold hands as they walk down the street because they are friends. To those persons protesting Starbucks agenda: Maybe you are right about that agenda. But maybe your interpretation says more about your mind than Starbucks alleged masterplan to change your sexual orientation.

Here at Biographyjar, we like the new cups. We are getting rather tired of the whining, too. No more peach for your favorite drink? Change drinks! Go to Dunkin Donuts. Or Panera Bread. Panera makes some smashingly delicious lemonades and fruit waters. You want to boycott the holiday cup? That’s your privilege. Try McDonalds. Or your local coffee shop. My nearby Caffe Bene does a mean job of blending matcha.

But please don’t try to start a mass movement over peach syrup. This is getting silly. A syrup-based boycott reeks of self-entitlement.

Global warming matters. Black lives matter. Saving the whales  and closing the achievement gap matter. Biojar will stand behind many movements. Biojar also supports trying to reach friends through social media to generate a groundswell of support for asking Starbucks to please bring back the peach syrup.

But #BoycottStarbucks over a missing drink? Boycotts are serious business. Nobody owes anybody a peach green tea lemonade.  C’mon, frustrated tea drinker. A little perspective out here?

Why not order mango or peach syrup online and pull out the old blender?

 

In the movie Robocop, Murphy and Lewis lay mired in a muddy pit at the end, both wounded. Murphy is lying on his back, trapped under fallen steel girders. As Clarence Boddicker goes in for the kill, Murphy extrudes a secret pointy spear and slices the evil Clarence’s carotid artery. Spurt, spurt. Evil is vanquished, at least for the time being. How do robotic engineers always know to include the secret pointy thing (or raygun or whatever) into their latest mandroids?

The clean-up begins, but we hardly ever film the clean-up.

Turnerdom began a quest awhile back. Sunset Grocery had put a premium honey brand on sale right after the clover honey spluttered its last farewell into a teacup. So buckwheat honey gained entrance to the tea cabinet. This led to the startling discovery that some honeys don’t taste remotely like the clover honey of my youth.

Buckwheat honey was fortunately delicious. I will warn readers to watch out for chestnut honey. I actually returned that jar.

What I like about the honey quest:

1. It’s relatively cheap. How fast do we crank through a jar or bottle of honey? For the cost of two lattes, I can get a month of deliciousness. My-Husband-Albert-Who-Sucks-at-Dieting interferes when he pours himself straight teaspoons of honey, but mostly the honey stays around for awhile.
2. Good in tea, cocoa, yogurt and many other foods. Honey works in lattes, too, although my palate does not find the coffee/honey combination tasty without a fair amount of milk in play.
3. Depending on use patterns, a person could cut down on sugar or sugar substitutes.
4. A quick treat that satisfies the sugar craving.  Honey can take the place of that piece of cheesecake. Of course, this benefit only holds if a person doesn’t start drawing lines of honey on top of the cheesecake.

Readers, when you get to SueBee section of the grocery store, why not change the cart up a bit? No offense intended to SueBee. I’ve enjoyed many bottles. But Wonder Flavor might be just a few feet away from that good old squeeze bottle. Buckwheat’s a good launch point.

Biographyjar suggestion for the day: Change the cart up a bit!

 

 

“I am not nuts. … I was right except for the mandroid thing, thank you.”  ~ Ron in Supernatural, upon learning he was right about the secret evil lurking around him.

Ron was right, but Ron got shot dead by a well-meaning, human security guard. It doesn’t matter how well you can detect demons if you let your alertness or even superpowers keep you from seeing the security guard behind you. Ron had found a way to identify demons, or mandroids  as he called them, but that did not save his life. Hubris can keep a person from knowing when to take cover.

Being right feels so satisfying we can forget to watch our backs.

Today’s slightly off-kilter life coaching advice:

Don’t be like Ron. Don’t fixate on the big stuff at the expense of all the tiny details of life. What makes you nervous in your own space? Take a few days to slow down when you are nervous. Identify the “why” behind that emotion. You can’t fix North Korea, but maybe you can manage a pesky coworker or two.

In fact, let Korea and the Mandroids go. Instead, figure out what you might do here and now to reduce your anxiety. If that involves baking cookies for a coworker and/or yourself, go get the chocolate chips. If that involves turning off the news, I support that move.

The season has changed and the floors are cold. Find your slippers. Find your happy movie.

In the between-spaces, try to identify what notches up your anxiety.

You can’t fix what you don’t see.

 

I think this might be the top of my head. I’m not quite sure. I have taken many fun photos lately. What does this picture tell us?

“She obviously has way too much time on her hands!”  is not the answer.

“She could use a bit more hair” is not the answer, either.

“Could be an alien lifeform” comes to mind.

Or “How can she be so many different sizes?”

Or “Why is she photographing little fungus people?”

Maybe, “Wow, I knew Cousin It was not the only one!”

Readers, feel free to come up with your own questions.

Here’s the actual point of this post, though: I made this picture. As we listen to the news, we should keep in mind that nowadays almost anybody can make up almost anything with enough tenacity and a few techno-chops — and I mean very few techno-chops.

My live reports from Mars will be coming as soon as my crew fixes the camera.

Wham! Wham! The candies and minutes disappear.
The app can be our friend. I love having the weather at my fingertips, for example. If not for a tap on my phone, I might’ve walked out into this 54° morning in a short, burgundy, white-striped dress with white sandals.  I looked at my phone and quickly corrected to long turquoise slacks with a black top and warm, blue sweater. Read More