Crenellated Flotsam

I may be the last person to notice this, but it makes me as excited as can be.

Way back when, about ten years ago, I began seeing (and laughing at) TV ads that contained the web pages of the advertisers. I even started at one time a list of companies that had a web presence, although I seriously doubt that term was in vogue. I’d been on the Internet for awhile by then, but the Web was the new thing and getting all the ink.

Back then the entire Web address was frequently given, including the http://prefix. Nowadays, they usually mention no more than whatever.com.

That was okay. What started bugging me was that, along with the explosion of interest in the Internet, there grew legions of AOL users, and AOL decided it owned the Internet. For awhile there, it may have. The TV ads soon not only had to list the URL for their site, but — horrors! — their AOL “keyword.” I guess they had some sort of jump thing, but I was never an AOL subscriber.

Later on, of course, the Netscape browser picked up this shortcut stuff and all you had to do was type in the relevant part of the address and it would add the http:// and the .com at the end, and I think that’s pretty much all the AOL keyword address, too.

I hated AOL, but not with a passion. The good news now, and a testament to their declining popularity, is that hardly anyone gives you the AOL keyword any more.
(more…)

I have a rule: If you find a bag on the side of the road stuffed with ten to fifteen thousand dollars, it’s jackpot time! If, instead, you find a nice suitcase with $100,000 run like hell. Someone will be wanting it more than you do.

Today on my bike ride I was exercising vigilance. I spotted the following treasures: a quarter, a brand new wisk broom (with straw, not plastic, bristles), and a half-inch socket. I took the socket, because I’m constantly looking for that size, but that’s not the point.

I hear all the time about people finding money on the side of the road, usually about those who turn it in. I usually do that, turn it in, but I’ve had a nagging desire to be one of the lucky ones who finds a fortune. I have to admit that I’d find the money helpful, and sometimes wish it was my destiny to be so fortunate.

Finding a bag of money on the side of the road is much more likely than, say, my becoming famous or marrying a princess (even, sadly, a Jewish-American one). It would be a minor miracle, but one I’d accept without question. I also think my odds of doing that are similar to my winning the lottery, but may be slightly better now that I ride a bicycle.

A nice big bag of money would be a pain to lose.
(more…)

Many more people, I think, ride bicycles than steal them, which is a good thing. It only takes one, though, and I was fortunate not to run across her today.

I rode up to Trader Joe’s and was, not surprisingly, the worst dressed person in the store. Right as I got there I realized I’d left my keys at home and had no way to secure my bike to the shopping cart corral, as is my wont. Fortunately, and frighteningly, there’s a guard stationed right outside the market. Why a guard is needed is anyone’s guess, but I applaud this modest effort to keep the nation’s workforce gainfully employed. If he didn’t have this job, he might resort to stealing bicycles.

I carried my bike up the steps and found an out-of-the-way place to put it, thereby earning myself a nod from the guard. Not a smile, but it beat him reaching for his gun (if he had one).

I was dressed in my Easter finery (a black U2 T-shirt, shorts, and sandals) and was immediately aware that even in a place like Trader Joe’s, which caters to a secular, liberal crowd, fully half the people in the store were dressed to the sevens. Not the nines — I saw no evening or dining wear — but as close to it as I’ve seen in, oh, a year. Men wore new suits and shiny ties, women often had hats.

Or, bonnets.

I bought some brie, bread, and sausage and rode home.
(more…)

My clothing, not to mention my body, may be far cleaner than necessary.

I’ve noticed a trend recently when it comes to cleaning products. Just about everything is new, improved, hard-working, tough, and I’m feeling a bit on the outside. I’m not sure if, as a kid, I had to change from school clothes to play clothes for the second half of each day, but I remember it. I’m just not sure if it’s a real memory or comes from popular culture. At any rate, I *do* remember many, if not all, of my jeans having grass stains on the knees.

Like stubbed toes, grass stains are something I rarely get any more.

There used to be commercials for Lava soap, ads that showed burly men working in oil fields getting covered with grease and black filth. Lava soap, according to the ads, removed that and made the men acceptable for fine dining or, perhaps, lovemaking. For years I used Lava, marveling at its grit (pumice). Then, it occurred to me that I’d spent the majority of my working life in an office, not on oil drilling platforms. The worst I could expect was ink stains from careless replacements of printer ribbons. Ads for laundry detergent that was “powerful enough” to remove the stains shown, I realized, used as examples stains I rarely, if ever, receive.

It’s been years since I’ve dumped a plate of spaghetti in my lap, if ever.

I’m a single adult. I don’t get filthy, not often, and the mild perspiration and dust that settles on me could probably be as effectively cleaned with a rock and a stick in a rushing stream as with a new, high-powered detergent. I’d think, in this day and age, that there’d be a very inexpensive detergent sufficient for the mild effort my clothes and I need.

Years ago, when Marilyn Chambers was popular, I washed my clothes in Ivory Snow. I continued that until a few years ago when they, too, advanced to being a detergent. All I needed was soap, plain old soap, but now both my clothes and I are forced to endure the rigors of heavy-duty cleaners that are far more efficient than necessary.
(more…)

Of all the “two types of people” sayings, my favorite is this one: There are two types of people: those who separate people into two types and those who don’t.

I’m thinking now about government and something I’d heard or read once about what I latched onto at the time as a real heavy question: What is the proper role of government? So, for the next thirty years I thought about that occasionally, hoping to have a ready-made answer if I was ever asked. You see, it’s important for me to have an answer on the tip of my tongue so I don’t stumble around looking like I’m baffled.

I have to admit I don’t have an answer. Still, I’m intrigued by the question.

I’ve tentatively gotten this far: there are those who see government as Dear Ol’ Mom, and who feel the government should protect us all from any and all things that threaten our existence. Then there are those who see government as a harsh father whose job it is to punish those who commit crimes, but is otherwise mostly non-existant.

I think about cave men a lot when I think about government, also natural selection. The Mom people want to prevent any humans from ending up behind or on the edges of the pack and think we should all be kept alive and saved. We band together as societies and surrender our personal goals for the sake of the many.

Still, I don’t think the notion of a government necessarily implies that no one within its jurisdiction should starve or die. That’s a good thing, to be sure, but I don’t think it’s intrinsic to government’s proper role. Human history has developed, written by the winners, in such a way that consideration for those less fortunate is synonymous with more civilized, but I’m not convinced that’s a logical necessity.

Last week I had an appointment with a representative of the County Hospital where I was taken following my accident. I have no insurance and was more than a little upset to find that during the hours of my unconsciousness I managed to wrack up over five thousand dollars in medical bills. Had I been able to do so, I would have declined any treatment, knowing full well I couldn’t afford it.

When I was able to tell that to my care-givers, they told me not to worry, that it would be all right. The collection agency who received my account (some harried clerk had copied my address wrong, so I never got any bills or anything from the Hospital) saw otherwise, and that precipatated my visit with the above representative. She was a delightful beauraucrat, filling out all my forms for me save for the afadavit where I state my case.

I filled that out, but it wasn’t to her liking. I’d said too much, and she, knowing how the County functions and what needs to be said, gave me another form with hints about what to say, and only what to say. In the end she was satisfied and my record is now clean.

Her job, or at least how she saw it, was evidently to give the tax-payers money away.

I should point out that the hospital, effectively, did nothing. I received a CAT scan or MRI or something and a couple X-rays, but that’s hardly treating anything. I consider that to be ass-covering. They kept me to see if I’d need some surgery, but didn’t, and couldn’t tell if my ribs were broken or anything, so I mostly got an IV and slept. Around the clock monitoring of my vitals, but, again, that’s preventative medicine, not treatment.

I’m saddened that what they did caused over six thousand dollars worth of health care providing. That may be the trouble with our current system, with insurance and so many people lacking coverage, the exhorbitant fees charged. I’m all for people getting well, but for whatever reasons it costs too damn much to go to the doctor. Gardners are worth the twenty bucks or so, but Tylenol isn’t worth ten bucks a pop.

(more…)

Here’s what stops me: A question.

Achilles may have had his heel (we’re told he did), but I don’t stop writing and blogging and advancing very often because of physical ailments. What freezes me in my tracks is having no good answer to “Why bother?”

Every day, continually, I’m faced with things to do, decisions to make, opportunities to better myself or, at least, keep up, and I usually don’t even think about it. I go through spells, though, when the “Will it matter?” question is one I can’t answer to my satisfaction. Most times, when I’m feeling well and happy, it doesn’t even come up, it isn’t an issue, I *know* my place in the universe and am content there.

But there are periods where I look with regret, or can’t face the question at all. The answer to “Does it matter?” is almost always “no,” but it doesn’t usually bother me. Sometimes it does, though, and when that happens, when I can’t formulate any good reason to go on, I stop.

Stop and curl, as if I’m on fire, but no rolling. Why bother putting it out? I don’t care what happens during those times. I have no solid reason to keep on, not even something as compelling as a fear of failure. It seems, when I’m like that, not to matter much one way or the other what I do or don’t do. I’m convinced it doesn’t matter and thus there’s no desire to do anything progressive.

There’s no need to do more than float. My efforts, my desires, don’t matter in the slightest. With no good answer to “Why?” I don’t worry about the result.

(more…)

I’m sorry.

I haven’t been myself lately, but I get like that. When filled with self loathing I dont’ like talking.

Someday I’ll write about AOL keywords.
(more…)

I had a very disturbing dream, maybe a nightmare. It was about socks. Even the subject matter of my dreams is mundane.

I was out in the yard and it was pouring rain. I was trying (for some reason) to set a metal tube in the ground and came inside to put on my work boots. For my boots I needed socks and it was imperative I get dressed quickly. My bed was the top one of bunk beds (sometimes) and it was as if I was seeing it for the first time in years. It was piled high with clothes and stuff, a complete mess.

For some reason (and I love the logic of dreams), I didn’t want to wear any of my “normal” socks. I kept thinking about, and discarding, the idea of wearing any of those clean ones that just come up to the ankle bone and was fixated on wearing, for one last time, one of my older pairs that were on the bed. I kept digging through the piles, looking for matches, and most of these socks were years old, ones I’d completely forgotten about.

Also, they were all filthy. like they’d been worn for weeks on end and left there, stiff and rotting. Still, they were the only socks I could wear and I was wincing as I put them on. One pair after the other, trying to find the “right ones.” They all had holes in the toes or heels, had soles that were stiff with funk.

One pair was an old pair of baseball socks, only the white sanitary socks were attached to the colorful stirrups and the whole thing was like a pair of panty hose. I got them half on, as I had many of the others, and then resumed digging through the piles. I dug between the mattress and headboard, found more disgusting socks, and tried them all on, and none of them were right.

I ended up finding an old pair of thick hiking socks, stiff with dirt and riddled with large, gaping holes. I slipped it on my left foot and was immediately freaked out. It itched, it tingled with disgust, it burned. I tore off the sock and saw my foot was blistered and covered with pusy carbuncles. Still, I needed to put on socks and none of my clean ones were acceptable.

I scratched at the hideous sores covering my foot and was in a panic. I needed to get dressed and working quickly. The mass on my foot peeled off like a shell, as if it were wax. Underneath there was fresh, pink skin and I dropped the fetid skin on the floor where it turned liquid, melting into the wood floor. It left a clean spot, and I needed to hide that, afraid of having to explain.

Then, I was so panicked I woke up.

(writing in “more”)

(more…)

No, I have nothing to say.

A bright spot, for me, is the starting of the Formula 1 season this weekend in Australia. There are some “major” changes since last year, some with an eye toward cutting expenses for the teams. Now the engines are required to last TWO race weekends and, basically, they have to use one set of tires for the entire race (say, two hundred miles). They also implemented some design changes in an effort to slow the cars down, but word has it the designers were already able to recover the lost three tons of downforce.

It rained and I learned I don’t do much if I go without coffee. Through no plan I had very little coffee this week and was unable to accomplish much of anything. I blame it on a lack of caffeine.

I’ve managed to trim the number of people to whom I owe e-mail by two and received a sample of someone’s hopes for the Eurosong 2005 winner, to be announced Saturday. I find it depressing that legal news about Michael Jackson, Robert Blake, and Martha Stewart is getting more coverage than Bernie Ebbers. I found a website devoted to TV shows and have become quite humbled about what the American public thinks is good. On the brighter side, it IS true what they say about a little knowledge.

(writing news in MORE)

(more…)