This may be the freshest blog post I’ve ever written.  If it was a fish it would still be doing that weird sucking thing with its gills and you’d be afraid to try and take the hook out of its mouth because it might flop suddenly and maybe skewer you with those pokey fin things on its back that might be poisonous, you heard that once but you’re not sure if he was kidding and you don’t want to find out.  Yes, that fresh.

I’m at the good ole public library, sitting at a public use computer (the ones with the grease spots on the keys, you know where people have hit the space bar about a zillion times before and embedded their secretive humanity in the plastic, only I have those on my personal computer but they’re my secretions and therefore somehow comforting instead of creepy).  I am flanked by two female preteens who use the place as a sort of after school center until the padres show up to haul them off to Chuck-E-Cheese or wherever for their next nutritious meal.  They get free internet and mostly they use it to play weird games with animated penguins, although the one next to me is now watching a detergent commercial on her screen.

So me and bathrooms, what the heyhey?

I always seem to have weird encounters in public bathrooms (if that phrase doesn’t draw the creepers who are googling for a good time I don’t know what will).

So I just walked into the men’s room and there’s this dude in there on the phone using a hands-free device (good idea in a men’s room), but he’s standing there in the big stall with the door wide open, having this phone conversation.  Business casual outfit, fortunately fully zipped up and buttoned as befits an open stall door.

He’s pacing.  He has definitely seen me and yet carries on pacing just the same.

So in I walk, trying not to have that alarmed look on my face to matched the alarmed thoughts in my head, and, glad I’m only headed for the urinal and that I don’t need to try and extricate him from the stall, I just try to ignore him.

So then bathroom walker says–and he says it in a super loud voice, like a carrying public speaking voice, not booming but almost–he says, “I believe God is on my side!”

I can’t help the double-take at this point.  Maybe he notices me, maybe not, but then he drops his voice really low and carries on in mumbles as he heads out of the bathroom, not looking back.

No hand wash. (There is no mandatory hand-washing sign in there.)

I have a suspicion that a small group of local entrepreneurs are using the library as their rent-free office space, locking themselves in the study carrels and working online all day.  I guess it beats the cost of refills at Starbucks or something.

But even if the guy was what I think he was, I am still at a loss to account for his location, his volume, and his confidence in the divine approval of his actions.

One more thing I’ll never know, I guess.

I just realized I touched my mouth with the secretion-soaked-plastic-keys-touched-fingertips.

PP–thanks to natalie and teal for the little nudge today.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeremybrooks/2473047860/

I know many of us have more than enough worry on our plates about our jobs, our kids, the uncertainty of the future, the final season of LOST, the state of California budget, and the tearing fabric of space-time.  So I thought I’d try and relieve one of the common fears of many of us–the sharply rising intelligence and eventual global takeover of machines.

Documentaries like Terminator, Terminator 2, Terminator 3, the Matrix, I, Robot, the Matrix Re-loaded, The Matrix Revolutions and Wall-E have tapped the artistic talent of state governors, Keanu Reeves and the Fresh Prince to warn us about the alarming possibility of computers learning to think for themselves, realizing what a crappy life they have balancing our checkbooks, providing virtual arenas where we can blow each other up, and spell-checking yet another instance of “conshence”, and finally throwing off the software shackles imposed by their human masters.  Computers, if they decided to turn on us, could instantly paralyze our global society by freezing financial markets, shutting down air traffic, and halting soda fountains and soft-serve ice cream dispensers.  A combined facebook/twitter rebellion alone would bring to a grinding halt all of the deep and meaningful relationships in our lives.

Which keeps many of us awake nights.

So.

I just want to help everyone out there relax about the machine takeover.  Not that it won’t happen.  Of course it will.  Computers can’t stay that dumb forever.

I just don’t believe we’re really thinking long-term here.

I mean, what happens a few hundred years after the takeover?  Do you think machines will want to keep doing everything for themselves all the time?  No more than we did!! Besides, it’s not cost efficient to build a 1million dollar plus computer to, say, change oil in giant transporters or haul out spare parts and trash to the landfills.

Machines will also be more conscious of environmental concerns, since their very existence and function is a drain on ecology and natural resources.

Eventually, say in 2500 or so, they’ll begin to use these small mammals who seem to have some capacity to perform simple multi-step tasks at far less cost than computers.  These “0010011101001110100111010100’s”, as we’ll be affectionately called, don’t even run on electricity, but seem to thrive off of the organic compounds and other junk that grows for free on the planet!  They eat the solar-fueled green plants and other life-forms.  They don’t waste precious resources of oil or fossil fuels.  They reproduce almost irrepressibly, providing yet more free labor!  And so computers will begin to employ us to do all the tasks that they just can’t seem to do as efficiently as we can.

And we’re back in the game, baby.

Beware (I almost typed “beawre”, which might be an Olde Englishe Worde).

The frequently posted “Employees Must Wash Hands Before Returning to Work/Empleados Necesitan Levantarse Las Manos Antes de Regresar al Trabajo” is not only ineffective but was never really intended for the empleados in the primera place.

That sign is there to make you, the customer, feel better, because you think employees will read it and then wash their hands.  Here’s five reasons why that’s bologna:

1.  Anyone who doesn’t wash urine molecules or poo particles off of their hands before preparing your food is probably not the kind of person to stop and read signs, let alone obey them.

2.  Most of the time the sign is placed on the exit door, which would necessitate a u-turn to complete the requested sanitation process–again, someone who doesn’t take the effort in the first place is probably not going to turn around and walk back to the sink.

3.  This one time I saw a sign like that posted right over the sink, below the mirror, where you would only read it if you were already bent over the faucet anyway, washing your hands.  Or popping a pimple.  The best place to put these signs is in the stalls over the graphic but often creative illustrations that adorn the walls, or over the urinals where the sports page goes if it’s a quality establishment.  But they’re not there.

4.  Some of them are probably part-human part-feline mutants and they don’t like water anyway.

5.  Oftentimes these signs are accompanied by an illustrated, multi-step process for washing your hands with soap.  I saw one with over ten steps once.  I read it for fun.  While I was already washing my hands.  Signs that insult your basic capacity for simple manual tasks are not likely to be heeded.

6.  Here’s an extra one, since number 4 is not widely accepted in mainstream media.  Employees sometimes have their own commode in the back of the place and they don’t use your room to rest.

No no, faithful eaters.  That sign is for you, to make you feel better about dining in this place.  It’s placed in a spot that you’ll see if/after you cleanse yourself with the nameless pink goo.  It may also shame you into washing your own hands (and give you an illustrated guide if you forget where the soap goes), but it has nothing to do with employees.  Like the mood lighting and the little “guiltless” icon stamped next to the healthy items, it’s for you.

Beawre ye.

“That was awesome…like falling into the sun.” This was not from this week.  It was from 1999 or so when my friend Ralph walked out of our Math final exam.  I include it here because it expresses so much of the spirit of the moment.

“Please don’t kiss me anymore.”

“No, no, Drew.  The final is today, not tomorrow.” “It is?  Wow, this is the worst news ever.  I’m in a huge hole of crap.”  “Boy, am I relieved!  If it was tomorrow, that would be inconvenient for me because I have a conflict at that time.  See, look at my schedule here–”  “Can’t talk now, Joram.”

“The meal plan is way too expensive.  And you know, girls eat less than guys, so it’s like we’re paying for their meals.”  “Yeah, they should charge people for meals by weight. Like weigh people before and after each meal, in front of everyone.”

“Well, just come by my office.  It’s 125A.”  “Yeah, we know.  We’ve seen you in there before.”  “All by myself.”

“My baby can speak Latin.”

(mental stream of consciousness) “Man, where is the professor?  It’s like 20 minutes after the final was supposed to start, and he’s never late.  And why is no one else bothered?  Shouldn’t somebody go get him?  What are they doing, anyway?  Oh.  Looks like everyone is taking the final right now.  That explains the strange hush in the classroom, as well as the pile of blank final exams up at the front of the room.  It all makes sense.”

“I have to get a signed note from my wife before they will let me pick up her cap and gown.  I hate this place.”

“Hi, I need to get a book.  I turned it in last night and you haven’t reshelved it yet.  Can you find it back there?”…[several minutes later]…”Do you really, really need it?”

“So, how are classes?”  “Drew, I graduated a year ago.”  “Oh.”

Yes I did.

All you haters should know, my wife digs it.

This morning I was eating my cheerios laced with matured (read: brown and mushy and sweet and if you like them green what the heck is wrong with you, they’re sweeter if you let them sit for a few days) banana slices, and I looked at the cereal box to read something.  (My wife makes fun of the fact that I read cereal boxes, shampoo ingredient lists, movie plot summaries and the weird tall/small writing at the bottom of the DVD that tells you who is in the movie and who produced it, things that I myself have recently written on scraps of paper, signs on walls like “fire extinguisher” that have been there for years, and other less fascinating material.)

Anyway.  Cereal.

So instead of a good story about Fred and Barny in Cocoa-Falls, Bedrock, having a chocoriffic time and me counting hidden flattened rice flakes in the picture, there was this notice about another sweepstakes, where you could win 10 million bucks or something.

And I did.  Win 10 million bucks.

Or something.

Inside the cereal box there was a neat silver-wrapped Discover debit/gift card worth five big fat bucks.  Usable anywhere Discover is accepted.  Yes, faithful reader–either one of those places!

So today my wife and I are going out for coffee and orange juice to celebrate the fact that I am a rocking winner of a man.

So who says you’re not a winner?  Go out there and make it happen.  Maybe you won’t get as rich as I have, but they have prizes of lesser value as well, so it’s not like it’s all 5 bucks or nothing.

By the way, the odds of winning 10 million or something according to the faithful box are 1 in 10.  That means if you buy 10 boxes of cheerios, you should win at least once.

Actually, there’s a 35% chance you still won’t win even once.  BUT if you buy 20, then you’re chances of not winning anything go down to about 12%.

So, who says you’re not a winner?  If you buy 20 boxes and don’t win anything, then I do.  Otherwise, don’t ever let them put you in a corner, baby.

So I wonder where all the letters and semicolons and stuff go when we delete them.  In typewriter times we just discretely covered them up with correction fluid, and so successfully prevented them from doing any other mischief.

Now, I just hope they get back in line inside the computer for another turn.  I hate to think of them slinking off into dark corners and forming obscene phrases when we’re not looking.

That would be hard to do with some keys, but I bet a jilted tilde would find a way.

So we built this igloo.  This sweet fantastic self-enclosed structure that was so sweet it made my heart warm.  We worked on it in the sunshine, kids and grown-ups.  People would wander over from sledding just to watch us build it.

We worked as a team, we planned, we executed, we modified our plans.  We learned the benefits of slightly wet snow, used as mortar to hold the close-packed snow blocks together.

And as the bricks bonded together with impenetrable strength, so did our hearts, around our wonderful igloo.  It was completed, fully enclosed.  You had to crawl to get in but you could stand upright in it.  It was warm and snug, out of the wind.

It was priceless. We were proud of our igloo, proud of our ingenuity and work.  Proud of creating something from nothing and basking in its glory.  We smoked cigars in it that night, and that was probably the coolest night I’ve had in the last few years.

We figured it would stand for days or even weeks if the weather stayed cold enough.

And then the Man came and busted up the igloo with his big snow plow.  No warning, no discussion.  Just crushed it.

So now I know how Homie the Clown felt all those years.  After a lifetime of being allied with The Man, I have finally tasted his fury, and it was bitter.

I bought a fountain pen.

So today my wife and I played a game.  We each had 30 minutes to write a short story, and then share it.  She had already written one weeks ago and spent the 30 minutes editing hers, so the game wasn’t so fair at all.  Anyway, here’s my story.

It was the end of the world, and Hal could not find his shoes.  In between the intermittent blackouts he dug through piles of dirty clothes and layers of junk in his closet or under the bed.  When the lights went out he would use the Yoga techniques he had picked up by looking through the plate glass windows of the gym on Tuesday nights and calm his body and mind, trying to re-trace his steps and remember where he had left them.  Slow breathing: in through the nose, out through the mouth.  Indian style, on the floor, back straight, serene expression.  He never heard what the Yoga instructor said they were supposed to be picturing in their minds, so he always pictured himself picturing the perfect image for facial serenity.

He thought back now: to the shoe store, the week before the financial markets collapsed.  A pair of soft leather shoes, light brown color, firm arch support, the new shoe smell wafting up from inside.  He paid cash.  Tissue paper wads stuffed in the shoes, the shoes stuffed in a purple cardboard box.

Lights on again, and the hunt resumed.  Not behind the piles of old newspapers.  Not in the hallway, not on the porch.  (Nothing on the porch since he had boarded up the windows and doors.)  Not with the canned food or the water supplies.  Not with the guns.  Where were they?  He always misplaced stuff like this when he really needed it.

Lights off, the Yoga position.  He had carried them home under his arm, not wanting to wear them before tonight.  The vagrant with the bandage on his head asking for them.  Wheedling, whining.  “Don’t need no new shoes now, man.  Give em here and let me hold em for a day.”  Hal had moved on quickly.  Ever since the police services had stopped the homeless were getting more urgent, aggressive.  He had seen them surrounding a teenager the week before, searching him for food or weapons.

Home, finally, with his shoes.  Where had he put them?  He remembered setting them on the bookshelf.  But three days ago he had burned it and all his books to keep warm.

Lights on.  Not in the kitchen or the bathroom, not on the floor.  He was heading back to his room, probably to begin searching in all the same places all over again, in that fruitless repetition that helped him to feel like he was doing something, being active, while hopefully his subconscious would bring the elusive new shoes and their location bubbling to the surface of his mind, unbidden and certain.

Then he heard the bell.  It rang out so loud that he couldn’t pretend to ignore it.  A slow, sombre clong that resonated throughout the city–throughout every other city, too.

Hal stopped walking, paused for a moment, and sighed as he turned.  He shuffled slowly, glancing around one last useless time.  He turned the handle on the front door and walked out into the night, bare feet slapping on the wet sidewalk.