Puters and Potties

Somewhere along the line, the computer took over my life. Not sure where or when. It just happened. Kind of like getting old. It just snuck up on me to become a reality.

It started with an Apple IIc. Why II? Why c? Why a lower case c? An Anthropologist not yet born will be challenged to figure it out some day far out into the future. I won't be here to see it, but what I would give to come back just for that day. A whippersnapper, newly minted PhD in hand, uncovering the birth of my computer age in a landfill long since forgotten. You just have to smile at the quizzical look on the face of Dr. Why Did They Do It This Way? First the Apple. Then the double II. And, alas the c, the lower case c. Surely it will warrant a headline story in the Gallactica World News:

Early Humans Created Computer from Garden of Eden Fruit

It was a two thousand five hundred dollar investment, that Apple IIc. No hard drive. One floppy disk drive. A symphony of disk exchanges to perform the simplest of simple tasks. A1+1 was my favorite. Type in the first cell. Hold down the Open Apple key. Touch c (There's that c thing again). Copy down 100 cells and watch. Magically one is added to one to make two. Then, one is added to two to make three. And, one is added to three to make four, until 100 magically appeared in cell A100. Boring today. Mesmerizing then. It consumed hours of thought, wonder and amazement. No drug could ever match the euphoria it produced. No twenty-second century Anthropologist will ever fully understand it. It was circa 1984. It rivaled the 1960's. You just had to be there to understand. You had to live it to get it.

But (or maybe it should be butt), now the world has decided that running water and memory chips should live in joyous harmony in a public restroom near you. (Is it restroom or bathroom? Lavatory or privy? Not sure. Not concerned.) Lest you miss the point, I must digress.

A new building has risen from the abandoned strawberry fields in Anaheim, just south of the perpetually clogged 91 Freeway (Why 91? Again, I digress.) The Architect was surely a bright young person. Surely he or she will leave behind sufficient genes to create a brilliant young Anthropologist generations from now. Obviously raised on an Apple, but accepting of the diversity of a PC, this young Architect enveloped the entire edifice in computerized ecstasy from guard gate to indoor outhouse.

It is cool that the Security Guard uses the latest Bill Gates' technology to print not only your name, but the name of your host on a stick this to your chest name tag. That same Security Guard touches with the greatest of ease a button that signals the iron gate before you to magically open as though your motorized chariot bears a regal leader to visit. No less impressive is to watch the front door respond to the command of a magic card wanded before it within seconds of being released from the warmth and love of the belly that it hangs before on a lanyard around the neck of your host.

It all makes sense. Perfect sense. The computer generated name tag. The computer controlled door opener. The computer controlled LCD on the wall. The computer etched images of precious symbols of the past hanging in the entry way. God must have wanted it this way. It is far too mysterious to be anything but divine. Surely it did not emanate from the likes of Wozniak, Jobs, or Gates in the dawn of microchip creation. Surely not. Surely so. I accept. I kneel down in humble recognition of human accomplishment beyond all possibility, much less expectation.

But now, venture with me to the hallway. Turn to the right. Then turn right again. Stop. Do not push upon the door. How primitive to think of doing that! How preposterous in this computer age! Do not think of entering this sanctum where washed hands were once an assumption and now are logarithm gone wild. This is it. The bathroom where there is but one place to sit. The washroom where there is only a bowl for washing two hands at a time. The privy where the unsold door frame allows weird, curious strangers to glimpse at your inner most privacies against your will.

No. Do not touch that door to enter. Let computers do computer work. Wand your hand. Stand aside. Await your majesty, whilst the door respondeth to your molecular energy. Be patient. You are human. The door is digital. It computes. It counts zeroes and ones to sense your sweat producing human body. It will open. It will open for you. March through it to your spot. Take the position. Deposit the processed product of your last meal for transport to the bowels of the earth. Step away. Step away as a microchip senses your departure. It will signal an electrical switch which will open a mechanical (imagine that - mechanical) water valve to wash your biodegradable body substance on an underground journey back to the sea salt world of Flipper. (Curiously, your Charmin must still be acquired with manual dexterity. I guess Mr. Whipple missed the eighties and the wonders of electromagnetic wizardry.)

Move now to the glistening wash basin. Work up a slight cosmic aura to signal first your need for soap. Wait as the computer gods dribble a precise drop of cleansing solution to your waiting palms. Beckon now the flow of fresh, clean H2O to slowly lather your digits to a sanitized solution conclusion that would bring Dr. Kildare back from the grave.

You are not yet done. You must first dry. But do not disrupt the dance of zeroes and ones who await the opportunity to musically whir a single piece of precious paper towel to aid you in your task. And last but not least, wave again for the electronic door butler to clear the way for you to return to society without worry about the scum before you who used none of the marvel of these germ obsessed microchips and actually touched, can you imagine that, touched the door handle with a bacteria laden hand to open it? Oh yuck does not do this misdeed justice!

There are children in the womb as we speak who will come into this world one day soon believing that all of this is normal, right, and sacred. They will believe that an outhouse without water, a toilet handle for flushing, a paper towel dispenser that requires human intervention, and a door that demands physical exertion are props made of movie lore that surely could have never existed. It has to make you wonder what they will wonder about , for my generation has already done all of the wondering that needs to be done. They will laugh as we laughed at Grandmother saying, "I used to walk five miles through the snow to get to school." (As I recall, it was uphill both ways!) Alas, the laugh that they will laugh will be on us.

Oh. One more thing. Did I tell you that I have a computer in the bathroom? But that is a bedtime story for another time.

Friends. Acquaintances. Strangers.

There are people, and then, there are people. There are people that you know and there are people that you do not know.

Our world revolves around the people we let into our lives. They come, they stay a while, they go. Sometimes they come back, sometimes they do not. But in a way they never leave. The mind is a funny thing. It holds a special depository of life, living and moving on. It retains some good, some bad. It mellows with age, placing perspective on the passion, the emotion, the value of friends, acquaintances, strangers.

Dorothy, the substitute mother in charge of the Buena Park Teen Center in the old Firehouse on Ninth Street. She made Friday night special. The inside walls of her old fire station kept countless kids from ever looking out through the chains of a jail house fence.

Coach. Gosh? What was his name? He taught a bunch of kids how to craft a baseball field out of the raw dirt in the back of Calder Middle School. He would be a field day for lawyers today. Twelve, thirteen year old kids taking turns dragging a chain net behind an old school bus to level the infield. Hot, sweaty kids, not knowing that heat exhaustion was a step away, learning about life, work, living, responsibility. Memories and values built in the dust of an early summer Saturday.

Professor Grob. Granny Grob to the freshman class of 1967. Her strange perspective about God, creation, and the world made curiosity a requirement, accepting for the sake of accepting, a sin.

Ron Yielding, gone in recent months, a first boss with a soft gift of teaching and friendship that keeps giving near forty years later. Don Fox, a mentor, not appreciated at the time, but taken for granted until it was too late to say thank you. An endless list of people, conversations, experiences, and relationships too numerous to list, too valued to leave behind.

People come and go in a life, but they stay forever. Their chemistry mixes to become who you are and what you are. The alchemy is far too complex to understand. Indeed, It may be the case that understanding would rob the beauty of what once was, but will always be a part of you in the mosaic of friends, acquaintances, and strangers you have known and are yet to know.

Pitter. Patter. Twitter.

Made the leap to Twitter tonight. It seems important to follow the herd these days. It did not work out well for the buffalo, but humans seem to think it is the way to go. Twitter may be the fastest growing of the electronic herds. PBS ran a story this morning that CDC is getting more swine flu hits on Twitter than You Tube is getting on Susan Boyle. Imagine. The disease trackers getting more hits than an amateur singer from across the pond. Science trumps heart throb. What is next? It is enough for me. Can't wait for television to give me my daily dose of CDC news. Daily, heck, hourly. No, by the minute. I am in with electronic parakeet. Me and Tweetie forever.

You just have to keep up with this stuff. Remember when it was cool to have an account on Prodigy? I think it was called Prodigy. Wow, was it that long ago? Then AOL became the rage. Grand kids two generations from now will read about it in their history books. Well maybe not. The news says that schools are outlawing activities where one kid wins and another loses. I guess the Christians were right, Darwin was wrong all along. There is no survival of the fittest. Everyone is same. No one does better than anyone else.

It is all part of our economic woes. Don't believe me? Try buying a red pen. They barely exist. Can't have a kid getting a red mark from a teacher. Red signifies something. Not sure what. Might pain the little sucker forever to get a grade in red. Too bad for all the red pen makers in the world. Guess they will just have to get used to living on their unemployment check like everyone else.

The World. Our World.

It just seems that nothing is real any more. The world, our world, goes from bad to worse, from unbelievable to more unbelievable. Each day brings a new worse than the new worse from the day before. The economy or lack thereof. The CraigsList killings. Now the swine flu (who would ever think that a pig could add to the list) and on and on.

Maybe we have too much news. I think Will Rogers once said something like, "Did you ever stop to think that we have just enough news to fill up the newspaper each day?" That was long before cable television. It was before instant Google News. You have to wonder if our problems are as bad as they seem or if seeing them over and over and over again makes them seem to be more than they are.

One friend is eating crackers because the money is gone and a job is not forthcoming. Another is looking at buying a tent and asking if there is anything left to contribute. These are real problems for real people. They are personal. They are gut wrenching. They have no time to wait for a bailout.

Yet another friend once pointed out that we should quit worrying about saving the earth and start worrying about saving the human race. The logic is sound. The earth will be here a million years from now. It may or may not have people on it. We worry about icebergs melting, but we let companies and the jobs they provide disappear in a heartbeat. We sue over individuals experiencing discrimination and allow entire workforces to stand in line for unemployment insurance that protects no one and no thing. We worry about a mouse on the beach losing its habitat to development and allow millions of people to lose their homes to the greed of finance companies while the blithering incompetence of politicians allows them to give pay raises to their staff as the rest of us go without a paycheck.

The older I get, the more I realize that I have no answers, only questions that people much smarter than me cannot seem to answer. Tim Russert always said that he asked questions for Big Russ and his buddies at the VFW hall. (I think it was VFW.) They were simple questions. They usually got complicated answers. I always liked his questions. I never quite understood the answers. I always thought those Washington bigwigs he asked were trying to pull the wool over my eyes.

Maybe that is the answer that I am looking to find. Maybe we need a world with safe bacon and no wool. Don't tell the sheep that I said that, but I think we are on to something tonight.

Bailout Bathrooms and Beach Parties

Okay, so the press is full of stories about lavish spending by people and organizations now feeding at the government trough. I understand the frustration, even the anger of the moment. But there is one lesson that we seem never to grasp as hard working, taxpaying, beer drinking members of these United States:

WE ARE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER!

It is basic physics and believe me I did not do well in physics. Every action has a reaction. A rich person spending money creates work for a non-rich person. I understand and appreciate that tax dollars were not intended to build million dollar bathrooms, but buying creates making and making creates jobs. There are lots of examples of wasted tax dollars. Remember the Senator who gave out an award for dumb government spending? What was his name anyway?

People need jobs. They need all kinds of jobs. They need put up a beach tent so Sheryl Crow can sing jobs. They need put fuel in the auto executive's corporate jet jobs and senator jobs and middle manager jobs and factory jobs. They just need jobs. Jobs come from spending - either a lot of people spending a little bit each or a few people spending a lot, or maybe this is what we are missing, a lot of people spending a little and a few people spending a lot.

The circle is too complex for simplification. But riding the high horse of indignation about one piece of the intertwining puzzle does not create a job, it stops a job. Where are those people that put up the tent on the beach last week. Where are the ones that put fuel in the corporate jet a couple weeks before. Are they still working? Are they still paying taxes? Or, are they reading the fine print of the stimulus bill to figure out how long their unemployment benefits will run?

I wonder where they are.

Sunday Morning

Sunday morning has a special feeling to it. Quiet, reserved, take it easy special. Saturday is not. Saturday says get up and get going. The lawn awaits. The car wash is ready. But Sunday is a day to start with ease. It has a television show. It has a place where people are supposed to be. It has instructions from God.

I love watching Sunday Morning (CBS). I first remember getting addicted to it back on Gylah Lane. That is a way back then thought. Wow. Charles Kuralt was the best. Stories from every sector of society. A slow, methodical, pay attention tale of life. Kind of an electronic campfire story through the eyes of a modern day sage. Don't get me wrong. Charles Osgood does a great job, but he is not Charles Kuralt. A flight long ago from LA to New York allowed me the opportunity to sit next to Betsy (gosh I never thought I would forget her name) who did the culture stuff back then. She had a cold, but she was gracious throughout the flight. We spoke of women, age and broadcasting jobs. She told me that but for Charles Kuralt she would have been off the air years earlier for the face of a younger commentator. A heartfelt moment of sharing from a famous person to a young, impressionable, just getting started consultant. I can see her as she shared those thoughts. I cannot remember her name.

What did I come out to the garage to get?

A Day in the Life

President's Day
Stayed home for the holiday with Joanie and Barney. Rained all day. Barney spent most of the day on his couch. To think. Two weeks ago he was in Doggie Jail under the name of Tramp. Joanie and I went to Coco's for breakfast. Enjoyed the geezer special. A Mom and her two year old daughter enjoyed their breakfast together at the table behind. The little girl was cute as a button. Fire in the fireplace (good place for it) all day. Barney did not want to get his paws wet, but he is easily tricked by a chunk of leftover chicken. Got some work done. Took a break with Joanie for a quick afternoon trip to Starbucks. Barney came along. He waited patiently in the car while we went in to gather up a tall Pike's Place. He is good at riding in the car. Dinner. Two and One Half Men times two. Time for a Barney walk. Till later.