Epistle 26 – Computers

Maybe they’re just a fad. Computers, I mean. That’s what I thought when I first met one in college. It was a big, hulking monster that you timidly fed punch cards in hopes of some grand pronouncement from the Beast, or at least a passing grade. It was like a carnival fortune-telling machine, only less reliable and without a raven-haired gypsy painted on the front.

I was in quest of a regression, correlation, rectal analysis, or something geeky like that, and had carefully filled in my stack of data cards with just the right information. That part took weeks and there was a foreboding sense the slightest blemish in the wrong place, like a beer stain, for instance, would strip the gears of the ravenous Beast and bring it grinding to a halt. At least I hoped so.

Alas, it was not to be. A week later I anxiously reported to the computer lab (an apt description for a room that compared favorably with Dr. Frankenstein’s lab) to learn that the Beast had gone tilt. The inference was that my stack of punch cards contained an evil message. Something erotic, I hope.

As it turned out, the Beast ate a lot of punch cards, producing only indigestion among the student body; the project was cancelled; and I concluded that if I ever needed a computer in my life, I would have to hire a geek. And then someone steeped in the occult invented the personal computer, and life as we knew it was forever altered, mostly for the worse. I now am the proud owner of four computers plus a cell phone that nags me with email messages anywhere on earth. Furthermore, none of them will play well together.

I’ve heard rumors that they sometimes cooperate on networks, but you couldn’t prove it by me. I’ve spent a small fortune trying to achieve some sense of teamwork, but they all treat me like a goof, running from one to another with a little stick of information that I plug in the side just so I can repeat everything I’ve done on all the others. Sometimes, even the little stick refuses to help and sends me an evil message, just like it’s ancestors, the punch cards.

I’m sure that I am somehow complicit in all this lunacy. Most of the human race says it’s because I use Macs (plus a blueberry or a gooseberry or whatever), which cost a lot more but are really cool. Well, maybe so, but I think it’s just one more major social trend with which I am woefully out of step, in typical Boomer fashion.

Hmm . . . maybe I can bring harmony to my private cyberspace if I cram this old-fashioned 3×5 card into this slot . . .

We Will Win

Epistle 25 – Bein’ Green

My car has 750 miles on it and is sitting in the garage, plotting to at least scare me to death, if not outright kill me. That’s what CNN says, and they ought to know. My car is being recalled because the floor mat or the accelerator or the brake or the computer or all of the above was designed by a mad, serial, automotive engineering loon.

Maybe it’s industrial highjinks by those multinational corporate funsters, but I believe it’s all my fault. I went green. Not just light green–green green. I decided I was not too old to save the planet and spent most of my money on a hybrid. And not just any hybrid.

One that came all the way from Japan with lots of whistles and bells and a spare tire you could also use on your bicycle. The GPS system magically pops up on the dashboard when you start the car (which you can’t hear because it has a big flashlight battery instead of an engine), and will pinpoint to the n^th degree the exact location of my death. So be it. I will be one less greenhouse gas polluting our planet, and for Boomers the gas can be considerable.

Oh, I know there are misguided people who pooh pooh this global warming stuff. I even did it a time or two myself. I just can’t shake this nagging image of dinosaurs heating up the climate in South Dakota with their automobiles. Anyway, I cast aside my doubts and fears and bought my hybrid. Not to say I haven’t carried my share of the ecological load in the past. My house in New Mexico had a swamp cooler instead of an air conditioner and a solar pool heater.

I turn off the lights as soon as my wife turns them on, which especially annoys her when she’s trying to read, and I only water my lawn on odd numbered days. I even recycle my plastic Perrier bottles. What a guy. Let’s forget the fact that I generate all those bottles in the first place.

So now that I am no longer driving a gas-guzzling, smoke belching vehicle, why is my life being threatened by a car that refuses to stop? In the good ol’ days, I didn’t have to worry that my cars wouldn’t stop. Most of them wouldn’t start when I needed them most, but they’d always stop. I was once cursed with a Nash Rambler that should never have been allowed on a public highway, but it always stopped.

I also had a 1959 Ford that occasionally had important parts fall off, but it always stopped. In fact, on the very day I tried to sell it, it stopped for good. And then there was the red Pontiac that I took to the car wash every Saturday because the wax was all that held it together. That car was world class at stopping–anywhere, anytime– until I finally had to put a bullet in it on a Chicago freeway.

Now, after all that, I am cursed with an evil machine bent on my destruction. Not only will it go 500 miles on a gallon of gas, it will keep going . . . and going . . . and going until I run out of road and meet my Maker. It ain’t easy bein’ green.

We Will Win

Epistle 24 – Avast, Ye Lubbers!

Ahoy, mate! Belay the cut o’ yer jib, or when the bos’n unfurls the yardarm, you’ll walk the plank! Down t’ Davey Jones’ locker with ye. We’ll hoist the Jolly Roger by the 2-bell watch or me name ain’t Long John Silver! Arrgh.

As you can probably tell, I’m on the high seas. I don’t have a peg leg, but I do have an artificial hip, which is almost the same thing. I also don’t have a parrot on my shoulder, but there is one on my Tommy Bahama shirt. And, I’m feeling quite salty. Or maybe it’s the margaritas from the Mermaid bar. When one is aboard a cruise ship in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, swashbuckling comes naturally to us old salts.

If the truth be told, I have been Shanghaied on an . . . um . . . er . . . business trip. That’s it—a business trip! Honest! After months of suffering through the lunacy of the politicians and the bankers, a handful of us decided the best course of action was to take our wives and plunder ye olde shoppes of the Yucatan. If we can’t do anything about the US economy, maybe we can help Mexico.

If nothing else, exchanging the pirates of Washington and Wall Street for the Pirates of the Caribbean should certainly be safer and more profitable. I don’t understand why the Spaniards kept looking for El Dorado when there were all those gold and silver shops in Cozumel. Maybe they didn’t like the tourist prices but Columbus was a tourist, too, right?

Anyway, back to my tramp steamer where I have been liberally sharing the wisdom of my many ocean voyages (this is my second) with the lubbers who don’t have my sea legs. The adventure of the high seas is fraught with peril, and the first danger of the deep is the buffet line when you board.

One false step there and you could be trampled to death. And then there’s the threat of diabetic shock from a sugar overdose at the chocolate extravaganza. Of course, there are also all those plump torsos scorched beyond recognition on the pool deck, but somehow those manage to regenerate new cells from the smoke in the casino.

But none of these terrors of the deep can match the wrath of the old toughs who invade the library everyday right after breakfast to play cards with the same people they play cards with everyday back home for free. Occupy their table and God help you.

Which is exactly the crime on the high seas for which I have been found guilty. I have to leave now because a scurvy crew of old, gray buccaneers is marching me off the plank. Arrgh!!

We Will Win

Epistle 23 – Java

I have a Starbucks gold card, which I think means I hang out there a lot. It’s like your friendly, neighborhood bartender having your “usual” set up on the bar before you even reach your stool. It’s comforting to know there is someplace you always belong. Of course, the barrista (Spanish for bartender) changes more than my shirts, but somehow, despite a bewildering array of ways to serve you a cuppa Joe, they always add a personal touch. “Room for cream?” they ask, genuinely concerned for my every wish. I never request room, thinking I’ll get more for my money, which leaves me anywhere from a half empty cup to a puddle in my lap when I add my own.

How did we ever order coffee in the good ol’ days, without lattes, mochas, cappuccinos and tarantellas? (I think that last one is some sort of dance, but it sounds like it should be on the menu.) I can even remember when decaf was invented—Sanka, I think—so not a lot of menu choices before that. My grandmother ran a diner and all you got was a white cup (made of real glass), with a hot, strong (very strong) dark brown liquid beside a beaker of sugar and a small pitcher of cream, which was probably really milk. But none of this sissy non-dairy creamer or white stuff in little paper bags.

No, sir. Not in the good ol’ days. You ordered coffee, you knew exactly what you were getting. The food service was about the same concept. Regardless of the daily Blue Plate Special, my grandmother gave you a plate of brown, green and white stuff mixed in a glurpy swirl. Her theory was that it all got mixed up in your stomach anyway, so why not give it a head start. Ambiance was supplied by the curly strip of flypaper hanging from the ceiling. One look at that, and you didn’t care about the presentation either.

So much for mellow nostalgia. Back to Starbucks where my gold card (it’s really coffee brown) also allows ol’ Starbuck free access to my checking account so he can make sure I never run out of money while I’m in his store. God forbid I should run out of credit and swoon from a frappuccino attack right in front of the barrista. Talk about service! Oh that my bank should treat me as well as the Bank of Starbucks, which didn’t even get a federal bailout.

And what about the snob appeal? Here I sit, sipping my cardboard Venti, in my overstuffed chair, thinking I should have a cardigan sweater and a pipe. I’ll bet everyone in here knows I have a gold card. The staff continually fawns over me, genuinely concerned for my every need. In fact, just this morning the barrista asked about me.

“Room for cream in that?”

We Will Win

Epistle 22 – Y2K Revisited

Ten years ago I bought my last bundle of firewood. It is still waiting patiently to make it from the garage to the fireplace. Apparently, we’re not what you’d call warm-and-cozy-by-the-fire people. Maybe that’s because our first house had a nifty raised hearth fireplace beside a plush white rug that I tried to set on fire with a fake log made of sawdust and cardboard. According to the natural right-out-of-the-forest paper wrapper, the log would burn with multi-colored flames while it crackled romantically in your fireplace. It also exploded when combined with a match.

Anyway, this is not about my lifetime of fireplace misadventures. It’s about the end of the world, which was supposed to happen at the stroke of midnight on December 31, 1999 as the globe spun from the Dark Ages to the bright new millennium. That’s because computers under the evil influence of Hal from 2001—A Space Odyssey had taken over the world and would bring total chaos to planet Earth with one tick of the clock. Electricity would stop electrifying, motors would stop motoring and all the beer would turn warm. Critically ill patients undergoing open-heart surgery would be left in the dark on the operating table; planes would plunge from the sky; and telemarketers would never be able to interrupt your dinner again. The end of time ain’t all bad.

Well, ten years ago was the last time I bought firewood and the last time I stayed up until midnight on New Year’s Eve. I guess I figured if the world was going to come to an end, I should be around to witness it. Now, how much sense does that make? Whether I was awake or not, who was I going to tell about it? Maybe somebody from Borneo who didn’t have a computer, but how was I going to get in touch? Mail him a letter? Maybe. The odds of my letter making it couldn’t have been much worse without the Post Office.

As I sat nervously watching the clock and my wife (if she got hysterical, I would have to slap her), I thought about all those other times people predicted the end of the world. They usually had robes and ponytails instead of computers, but the message was always the same. Whether we were to be vaporized or depart in an alien spacecraft, it was all over and there was nothing we could do about it. Except sell all our stuff and follow the prophet to the mountaintop. But why sell all the stuff? What were we going to buy with it? I guess prophets have a lot of expenses.

I’ll bet by now you boys and girls have figured out that the world did not come to an end at the stroke of midnight on December 31, 1999. Not even geeks could kill it. And I figured out to whom I was supposed to give my money. The fake firewood seller.

We Will Win