A Worthy Adversary

Ooh, cellular phone provider, you are a sly one.

I must say, I fell for your ruse - you did shrewdly convince me that I would receive a generous rebate on my Motorola model V551, provided that I but fill out the necessary forms and mail them to your offices in a timely fashion. And this promise does, strictly speaking, hold true: there will be a rebate remanded to me, and it will indeed offset the initial investment I made to purchase your bleeping plastic capsule of whizbang gimcrackery. The catch, as it were, just initially eluded me.

"Rebate form must be accompanied by a copy of the Sales Receipt (-check), a copy of the Wireless Service Agreement (-check) and a copy of the UPC panel from the side of the project packaging (-check as well; I even made sure I included the proper UPC code with the proper documentation, as my wife and I purchased identical phones on the same order)." All was copacetic. Then I read on:

"...You must also include a copy of a monthly bill, indicating no outstanding balance and no interruption in service, dated no earlier than 150 days from the date of your activation and no later than 300 days. Payment will arrive via check in 10-12 weeks; if check is not deposited within ninety days of receipt payment will be deactivated."

Wily.

But I will comply; I shall hop through the hoops you have arrayed for me. Your challenge is well met - I have already filled out all the pertinent documents, save for the fateful phone bill dated September, 2005, and you may be assured that the moment I receive this final file it will be duly photocopied, in quadruplicate, tucked into the appropriate envelopes and forwarded to the PO Boxes of your specification, bearing more than sufficient postage.

Upon receipt of your promised rebate checks, I will proceed directly to the nearest financial institution and cash or deposit them forthwith.

I think that I shall spend the money on a decent-sized bottle of victory champagne, unless your rebate submission guidelines dictate otherwise.

Ah, wirelessworld.net, you magnificent bastard. I read your fine print.

Here's How Much Penny Hates Snakes

Last night, at dinner, I kept glancing over at the restaurant's television, where several solemn men in sunglasses were attempting to beat each other at Texas Hold 'Em.

"No TV!" said Penelope, flagging my eyes back over to her face.

"But there's this guy with hologram sunglasses to make him look like a big fat snake." I defended. "You'd be distracted too."

Penny curled her fingers malevolently and said, "My deadly viper hand will attack you and inject you with venom if you don't STOP WATCHING TELEVISION."

I turned toward her and smiled, admiring her death-claw hand formation.

"It's true," she said. "Deadly venom."

I quickly grabbed her wrist and turned the viper toward her face, then thrust it toward her cheek.

"AIEEEEK!" she screamed, momentarily silencing the other patrons in the restaurant.

As everyone went back to eating and talking, Penny stared down at her taco salad, blushing with embarassment that she'd shrieked in fear of her own right hand.

Now That's Proliferation

An informal web search just turned up 14,600 results for a common catchphrase, and as far as I could tell, not one of them led to the actual, original, intended application of the saying.

So many of our shared references are just these peculiar bastard things, now, these things we say to be cute - charmingly reassigning an established idea, as it were, and yet we really don't even know what we're mocking.

When, say, your dog prods your cat with his nose, and the cat responds by rearing up on his hind legs and boxing the dog in the snout with his fuzzy little paws, you watch, and laugh, and quip: "Now *that's* entertainment!"

And it is, and everyone else laughs too. But what, I ask you, originally "was" entertainment? When the first person said those words, the only one who wasn't trying to be sly or clever or knowing or any of that, what was he or she actually referring to?

And how did it get lost to history?

This Spline of Mine

Penny's really getting into silkscreening now, and she's decided she wants to do bigger works. The setup she bought, though, only accommodates paper up to about 11 x 14, so I'm building her a bigger one.

Under the direction of her reliably ambitious brother, we went to the art store this morning and got four wooden frame sections, all with little grooves in the back where you're supposed to secure the screen material. We keep having to run out to the hardware store to pick up little stuff we forgot or didn't realize we needed; you know how it goes with construction projects.

At this point I've built the frame, braced the corners, and screwed the hinges down and made sure they hinge and everything. All that's left is to stretch the screen and push it down into the groove with a cord of spline. It actually seems kind of tricky.

In fact, I may just wait until Penelope gets back from the store. I've never silkscreened before, and I'm not sure how you line up the material, or how perfect it has to be or anything . . . I think I'll just let her handle it.

Hey Lopie, wherever you are: when you get home, you got some splining to do.

Geek Out

I'm typing this right now on an Apple Powerbook 15" with its RAM upgraded to 512K. I'm listening to a song I bought from the iTunes Music Store - "The Sound of Settling," by Death Cab For Cutie, in case you wondered - and it's being wirelessly streamed from the computer to my household stereo (there are speakers in most of the rooms) through our Airport Express. When I ultimately decide to post this entry, it will first go to the wireless router downstairs, then to the high-speed modem, then out to wherever the Blogger servers are via SBC DSL. Oh, and I spent the better part of today playing with my new cell phone, which can now send and receive photos, videos and MP3s to and from my laptop, wirelessly of course, via Bluetooth technology.

How did I become this way?

Ordinarily I'd die before playing into the hands of a cliche, but I cannot deny the fact that I am a young male with a technology fetish. It sneaks up on you, you know? First you're getting a universal remote control that will work on your tv, vcr and stereo, then you're rigging up X10 modules all through your house so that you could conceivably, for reasons unbeknownst to anyone, dim the laundry room lights remotely from the garage, and the next thing you know you're standing in the electronics section of Target, explaining to your wife that a 5.8GHz phone system will not only provide valuable expandability and range, but will also avoid interference with the Internet reception in your house, as with, say, a 2.4GHz system. Yeesh.

You're hearing these words, like bandwidth and bluetooth and burr-brown D/A converters, coming out of your own mouth, and fighting the urge to give your own self a deeply-deserved wedgie. I mean, c'mon: it's Consumer Electronics, for the love of Mike. This stuff is *supposed* to be easy to use. Why do I get such euphoria and deep-seated personal pride when I merely get it to actually work?

*****

I spotted a book yesterday in Target - right before hitting the phone aisle, I believe - by John Kabat-Zinn, called "Wherever You Go, There You Are." I happened to flip to a chapter about "Voluntary Simplicity," and the myriad benefits to be had from simply *being in the moment,* doing one thing at a time so as to stay fully engaged in whatever activity is going on in your environment. It seemed like a pretty good idea.

I could use some of that elegant starkness, I think. In fact, let me just skip the track here on the stereo ... yeah, there we go ... and set my phone on vibrate ... alright ... and see if I can't do some kind of Google search for a Mac OSX-compatible mindfulness downloads. I'm sure I'll get it figured out.

Radio On

This morning, as I was driving in to work, I was blaring my car’s CD player almost as loud as it would go. I was doing this for a couple of reasons.

First, because it’s a crappy car. A well-worn, teenaged Pontiac, it’s constantly derided by my wife and me as the “Grand Piece.” It creaks and rattles and the motor makes sounds like a dying sump pump. But it has a stereo, and that makes up for a lot.

The other reason is that I was playing the song “Roadrunner,” by The Modern Lovers, and I love that song so much that, if I could, I would make it our national anthem.

Throughout the song, Jonathan Richman croaks out his stream-of-consciousness love letter to Boston and driving at night while the Modern Lovers, about eighty-four of them by the sound of it, chant the World’s Best Rock Refrain, so jubilantly and recklessly that it almost becomes a mantra: “Radio on! . . Radio on! . .”

“Wow,” I’m thinking, as I’m listening to the stereo in my car on my way to work this morning. “How great is that?”

That’s not what I’m saying, though: I’m saying, of course, the same thing anyone would be saying in my situation.

“Radio on!”

*****

As the song died down, and the next one started to fade up, I calmed down a little and wondered if anyone had noticed me, rocking the Grand Piece, rolling north on Meridian at 8:30 in the morning.

The next song wasn’t nearly as good - bad playlisting on my part when I made the disc - and I had a second to think. The simplicity, and the evocativeness (I wish there was a shorter word for such a simple idea) of the phrase “Radio on” is just so perfect, the revving up of the beginning “r” and the gape-jawed finish lending themselves so perfectly to yelling along . . . and the meaning, so familiar, of what it means and how it feels to be driving with the, with the “Radio on!” that it’s damn near impossible not to feel something - especially if it’s loud. And I did.

The only thing is, my radio wasn’t on. It was a prerecorded disc, I realized, just like everything else I play in my car or my house. In fact, I’m not even sure we have an antenna. And suddenly I felt kind of deprived.

The Modern Lovers, whether they knew it or not, were singing the praises of a specific experience - of hearing a great song suddenly come on the radio. This is always a moment of cosmic good fortune: This song, this few moments of joy, was floating through the air and it found *you,* and when it’s over it’s over and this is all we get, so enjoy it. Sing along.

It’s just not the same when you can skip back to the beginning and start the track over again.

But I’ve always listened to discs; even when they were tapes, they were discs. I’ve just never liked waiting for the DJ to play something good. I bet I have six hundred CDs. Not to mention a full iPod and a bushel basket of minidiscs I made in college - back when I had little to do besides compile 74-minute collages of tracks from the Muncie Public Library’s music collection.

I found a lot of great stuff that way. But it was all stuff I more or less chose, and in doing so I undoubtedly missed other stuff, stuff that was probably great too, some of it maybe even as great as Roadrunner.

*****

I’ve heard it said, though only by me, that money is nothing more than freedom - the freedom to decide what you want to do with your time instead of having that decision made for you. Most of the people in the world don’t have and haven’t had anywhere near the freedom I have, and of course I am grateful and ashamed at the same time.

I have missed some things, though, and I’m not sure what to make of that. Because I could choose to go to college instead of working, and because I could choose to listen to my own music instead of what was broadcast to me, and because I could choose a job that lets me type my little thoughts and work things out in my little head, I have missed many, many new and surprising - and initially unwelcome - feelings and experiences that others have come to enjoy.

I’ve wallowed in self-absorption where others have gotten to - had to - embrace the world outside themselves, beyond themselves.

This seems fair.

What doesn’t seem fair is for me to realize it now. Why should I get to understand, and have the chance to change, the double-edged privilege that appears to be My Lot in Life? I’m just lucky, I guess.

And the only way for me to repay that debt is to use these remaining precious, undeserved moments to discover something that only I can see, and to share my stories with the rest of the world. That’s all I’m good for.

But I’ll do it, gladly. And I will remember, from now on and as often as I can, that despite all the distractions I may have the leisure to construct, the DJ only plays the song once, and we must enjoy it while it lasts.

And sing along.

Adorable Misconception

There was a little four-year-old girl named Esther in my office today. I suppose all four-year-old girls are little, but I remember that as a distinguishing characteristic of hers.

Another was politeness. She'd brought with her a zip-loc baggie of orange goldfish crackers, and she kindly offered one to me, which I accepted. It was especially generous of Esther, since goldfish are on her list of favorites.

In fact, goldfish could be number one on that list, as evidenced by the following: after accidentally dropping the bag on the floor, she carefully picked up each one that had fallen onto the carpet and dutifully threw it away.

"You have to go in the trash can, Mr. Goldfish," she would say, remembering the hygiene lessons her parents had taught her. "I know that."

Then, on her way to the wastebasket, Esther would kiss each goldfish several times, assuring him that even though he had to be thrown away, she still loved him very much.

I would have interceded in adultlike fashion, explaining all about germs and their transmission, but I was collapsed on my desk, overcome by the cuteness.

What Gives?

It's snowing right now. "Right now" meaning, "In March."

Is that allowed?

Who told nature this was an okay thing to do? Doesn't it know that this winter stuff has gone on long enough, and that all us hairless bipeds are tired of bundling up and staying in and sidestepping the windows in our little boxes of shelter because even the drafts are chilly?

We want to stroll, not shiver! We want leisurely walks and driving with the windows down; we want to push our hands down into non-frozen soil and dig up the weeds that seem to be the only things in favor of this stupid season.

Some of us have motorcycles, you know.

"Do what you are," they say. "Endeavor to live the life that is suited to your nature," they paraphrase. So what are we doing inhabiting a land that clearly doesn't want us around? Because if it did it would at least make some effort to create a more welcoming environment - maybe by delivering cyclical weekly warm days and cozy coffee shops spaced every few miles and thermostats tucked behind bushes and never, *never* displaying the temerity, the unmitigated gall, to SNOW in MARCH.

Menacing Packaging

Color me reactionary, but I think there's something sort of savage about labeling canned pineapple as being suspended "in its own juice."

In fact, the next time a pineapple, or any tropical fruit for that matter, gets on my bad side, I'm yanking it up by its leafy stem and yelling:

"Hey! Watch it buddy! Or so help me I will flay your husk, chop you up in bite-size chunks and marinate your sorry ass in YOUR OWN JUICE!"

Go Lope

My wife has finally gotten the hang of her silkscreening kit.

After much wailing and gnashing of teeth, and plenty of frantic screen-scrubbings in the utility sink, I think she's got it. She's there at home now, squeegeeing and experimenting, seeing her art form before her eyes. Each piece she completes will be a candidate for her upcoming gallery show.

So in these moments of joyous creation, I'd like to welcome all this new, never-before-seen art into the world - Hi there, pleased to meetcha - and to congratulate Penny on mastering a new technique, on not giving up when it wasn't working and you didn't know why.

Go Lope!

Delicious Uses For Day-Old Bread

The April issue of Real Simple magazine includes a feature on what to do with a loaf of day-old bread. I didn't bother reading it, of course, because I was too busy coming up with my own suggestions.

- Run around poking it at people, going, "Eeeww! Day-old bread! Run!"

- Eye it suspiciously.

- Fashion a nutritious pillow for toddlers.

- Befriend local birds.

- Attempt to bludgeon someone you only mildly dislike.

- Burrow inside for a quick nap.

- Decorate it with sequins and newspaper clippings.

- Tie on a small basket and pretend it's a day-old blimp.

- Return it to the wheat field from whence it came. Scatter the crumbs respectfully.

- Celebrate its birthday.

- Age it in your bread cellar.

- Stuff it in the top of your sock band and complain about your yeasty goiter.

- Sell it for half-price at your bakery.

Patriotic Copyedit

A few years back, during Desert Storm I believe, there was a popular song in heavy radio rotation called "I'm Proud To Be An American."

This song, while rousing and heartfelt I'm sure, contained an error - an error which brings me no pleasure to point out, but which I am nonetheless duty-bound to acknowledge and address.

Refrain, verse one: "And I'm proud to be an American . . . where at least I know I'm free. . ."

"At least?" Why the qualification? The implicit message there is that our republic is flawed in many ways, but redeemed by that one characteristic. While this may well be true, I don't think it's what Mr. Greenwood had in mind.

Saying ". . .at least I know I'm free" is like saying "Well, it was a pretty bad train wreck, but I'm confident they'll find my legs around here somewhere." Sort of faint reassurance, in my opinion.

So I propose a change. Instead of "at least," why not say something like, "always"?

". . .And I'm proud to be an Ameri-CAN . . . where I *always* know I'm free. . ." -same syllables; just as majestic.

Just a suggestion.

It's not easy, you know, copy-editing cherished American fight songs, but I feel it's my duty as a citizen. Someone must speak up. Someone must right our wrongs. Someone must be there always, crossing the "T"s and dotting the "I"s on the jingoistic jingles that galvanize a nation.

And I, for one, stand ready and willing to judiciously wield the red pen of justice.

Dude!

Dude!
Originally uploaded by This Guy Colin.

Wait, did I remember the extra energy bars? I did. What about a clean tank-top? Check. Ooh - big auxilliary floodlights for my truck's sweet roll cage?

Yeah!

Clarification For The Record

Just so everybody knows, Tom Petty is not from Indiana.

He's from Florida. I know there was that song, and the reference, and all, but okay -- Gainsville. Florida.

Got it?

Have Mercy

The other day my friend Geraldo heard this song on the radio and really liked it.

It was kinda catchy, a little pop-py, but with an edge to it - like the lead singer, whoever he was, really *felt* what he was singing about, and wasn't ashamed to really throw himself into the performance. And to top it off, it was a love song. Geraldo's been pretty hung up on the love songs lately.

I guess it stuck with him, this song, and over the next couple days Geraldo found himself singing along whenever it came on the radio. He'd sing, and grimace - you have to grimace when belting out a passionate love song - and imagine the words were his, that the love of his life could hear him baring his soul to her, right there in rush hour traffic. After all, this guy on the radio really managed to plumb the depths of a genuine love, how it feels to be absolutely devoted to someone. Finally, someone understood. Before long it was more or less Geraldo's Song.

Well, it turns out to be Christian Rock.

Geraldo is not a fan of the Christian Rock. Not at all. So now he's all upset, angry - a little betrayed even. How could this happen? He was so *certain* it was about a woman. A *hot* woman, probably. And now this.

Those vague lyrics. That second-person format. The chart-topping faith-based initiative disguised as a plea for romance. I'm with you, Geraldo. Anybody could have made that mistake.

Sneaky Christian rockers.

My Tempestuous Bladder

I don't know what the deal is, but I'm the type of person who doesn't have to go, doesn't have to go, doesn't have to go, and then suddenly WHOA, I gotta go.

My wife's the same way, and our kind is easy to spot - doing little chair dances in long meetings, sprinting down hallways as smoooothly as possible, or accepting refills on our drinks, aridly oblivious to the soon-to-be-urgent consequences.

Who invented complicated belt buckles, anyway? I'm thinking of writing a letter. I'm also thinking of fashioning my own belt buckle from an old car seatbelt, since those are designed with emergency unfastenings in mind.

I haven't had an accident yet in my adult life, but close calls are becoming disturbingly commonplace. And just wait 'til I get older... sheesh, I'll have the capacity of a contact lens case and a desperate look in my eye.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go. Now.

Open Letter To The Missus

Honey, about those sunglasses I had... you know, the aviator-looking ones you always said made me look like a jerk?

Yeah - did I really lose those, or did you, uh, lose them for me?