Recognition of a Necessary Evil

While rising from my sick bed this morning and resuming the trip to work I encountered many a red light; not having the energy to rage pointlessly at them as I usually do (it keeps me occupied until the light turns green) I pondered the institution of the traffic light. Who created it? When did he/she do it? Why do we obey it?

Traffic lights have been around longer than I thought. According to the source of all knowledge of worth on the Internet, Wikipedia, the first traffic light was installed outside the House of Parliament in London in 1868… it later exploded and killed the policeman who was operating it (green light, proceed to heaven). How awesome is that? Well not so much for the policeman and his family I guess.

That first murdering traffic light was conceived by one J.P. Knight. You wanna blame someone, blame him? The light was “improved” to its modern day incarnation and has remained the same since roughly 1920 with a few alterations, turning signals, traffic cameras, targeting lasers… you know, improvements.

So now we know who created it, and we can guess why – but why do we obey it?

Inherently we can all see the sense in the traffic light – x number of cars get a chance to go one way and then y number of cars gets to go the other way. Now that chivalry is dead there has to be regulation; people aren’t going to let other people go through from the kindness of their hearts – there has to be a reason.

And that reason? Fines. Money. Moolah.  You don’t break you pay for it.

Sometimes as I’m sitting at one of the extraordinarily large number of red lights I seem to get I wonder what would happen if we all just stopped obeying the traffic lights. It would be chaos, insurance companies would be raising rates all over the place and it would be the degradation of another societal symbol.

The traffic light brings order to the chaos that is traffic – I can see this from my desk (but not so much from my driver’s seat). If there was no traffic light there would be an accident and traffic would slow down that much more.

In a way, by slowing you down, the traffic light speeds you up; an interesting irony.

And because I can, here’s a pox upon the red light:

Cursed progeny of amber light
Why must I encounter thee this night;
Were thee green, or even yellow,
I might have passed that other fellow
But now I languish, wasting time
To run through thee, t’is a crime;
While I wait, rage boils my marrow
Ah God, there’s even a turning arrow!
Aha! Now you’re green, my waiting’s done!
Son of a bitch! Another red one!

Bury Me in the Night Garden

Right now my son is watching a children’s show called In the Night Garden while he eats his supper.

Yes, my son watches TV occasionally while he eats; I’m a horrible parent. I watched TV when I was a lad while eating supper and I turned out fine. I will kill anyone who says otherwise and they can join the legions of Undead I’m creating in my basement.

The world of children’s TV shows is an interesting place and I’m sure its a lucrative business if you find that magical formula which will hold a child’s attention span for more than three minutes.

You’ve got your high end shows, ones like The Wiggles or The Backyardigans. These are the shows that parents don’t have a problem watching with their children – its a class of children’s TV show all in its own. The better class of show generally seems to incorporate music and teaches the child a lesson in a subtle way.

You can’t be too obvious with the lernin’ portion of the show; else you fall into the trap of becoming a Dora the Explorer. Dora falls in the next category – slightly more irritating to parents. This is the type of show that a parent can put on to keep a kid entertained while he or she has to do stuff around the house.

At least I assume, I don’t tend to do a lot around the house so therefore my children’s TV show watching falls into the first category.

There’s the broad spectrum shows – like Thomas the Tank Engine and all the merry trains on the Island of Sodor. This is a show that has a catchall audience. My boy has been watching it for a year and a half and gets as much, if different things, out of it now as he ever did.

But there’s another darker class of shows. These are the shows that parents hope their kids never get interested, but the makers of the shows are smart enough to be able to hook the kid in quick. Back in the 90s the penultimate of this class of children’s shows was the Teletubbies. In the current incarnation the show is called In the Night Garden.

Adults, when forced to watch this show, are left wondering what the hell is going on. Perspective is all over the place. There are several different characters that act independently of each other and only occasionally come together. The first time I saw all of these characters interacting together none of them were the size I thought they were – the little guy was actually the biggest of the bunch and the biggest one was the smallest.

I guess if I was in the mood to learn from the show it would teach me not to judge based on sight. Screw that – sight is good for only one thing – judging things.

And then there’s the aural cacophony that is the “dialogue” of the show. There’s all kinds of nonsensical utterings, that as an adult you feel like you have to make sense of – for instance, when Makka Pakka says: “Makka Pakka” he/she/it could be meaning anything from “Yo Iggle Piggle, what up in da HOOD!” to “Yo, you blue MF, what’ch’u knock ovah my pil ‘o stones for? I bust a cap in yo’ass”. You just can’t tell with Makka Pakka.

I hope that when I pass on, and I will eventually, they bury me in the Night Garden – I’m going to leave a letter saying it was a gangland initiation ritual and that they should look to the 11th Ponty Pint.

As bad as the show is though – the boy likes it and that’s they key.

The Dilution of Symbols

Before I get started, let me just say this: my wife is cruel. Here I am, sick as a dog (that is sick) and she comes in, turns on really horrible Christmas music, and then leaves the room. I’m too sick to lean over and turn it off. If you needed proof that women are cruel, there you have it. If you did need proof… then you must be a woman – men already know it.

On to the main topic.

I work in an office complex. Each and every day I go to coffee and each and everyday I see the sign that says “Wet Floor.” It’s there whether or not the floor is wet.

Jokingly, I always threaten to sue. “This symbol,” I say, “which stands for wet floors has been diluted to the point that I no longer trust it.” I understand the message that it is trying to convey but because its there all the time, its warning has been diluted.

It’s classic boy who cried wolf (without any of the messy wolves or boys).

95% of the time the floor isn’t wet, yet the sign is still there. Realistically they’re just leaving it in place for those days that the floor is wet; that way Joe Lunchbox or Mary Lunchpail won’t slip and then say the sign wasn’t there to warn them.

Society, as it decays, is moving away from symbols that used to mean something.

Marriage, for instance. It used to be that when you got married to someone you were making a commitment to someone and something; now marriage is a business opportunity for divorce lawyers. Obviously sometimes shit happens and divorce is the only reasonable option, I’m not here to judge other people and their lives because I’m still trying to steer my own, but I’m talking on a societal level. Marriage is a symbol that once meant something to us as a society, now it means less.

Christmas: once, in a magical age, Christmas meant a day to reflect on the birth of Christ. Now it means Santa and presents – companies will tell you that Christmas is really about being with family, but that’s only them reminding you that you need to buy presents for the family you’ll be saying. Don’t get me wrong I’m not saying you people out there shouldn’t be buying me presents, I like presents, I’m saying its another symbol that’s diluted.

What would you look upon now as a symbol of our times? These things, these symbols, that we long have held as important vanish and are replaced with … nothing.

The next time you see a wet floor sign, don’t check and see if the floor is actually wet; just believe it is. I’ll do the same.

Symbols are important.

Why I Hate Al Gore

I have a Toshiba Laptop… that’s not why I hate Al Gore.

I have a piece of crap Toshiba Laptop that ever since I’ve gotten it has been slow, unwieldy, and takes forever to connect to the Internet… that’s not why I hate Al Gore.

Currently the laptop, which is not the reason I hate Al Gore, but connected to the reason (or not connected to, as you’ll find out soon) refuses to connect to the Internet. The problem, Windows Vista tells me (it may be lying, Windows Vista could very well be the problem), is that my Atheros AR5700EG Wireless Network Adaptor needs to have its drivers updated.

There’s a delicate irony here… my wireless network adaptor needs to connect to the Internet to update the drivers; but it can’t connect to the Internet because its drivers aren’t working. Ahh, isn’t life delicious? And its still not why I hate Al Gore.

After a youth of watching MacGyver (never, ever watch it on reruns – you will be appalled at the amount of electric Guitar on that show) I learned one thing – learn to think outside the canister. MacGyver is not why I hate Al Gore (it is however one of the reasons I like Richard Dean Anderson – and for some quality work on the Stargate franchise of shows).

Using my ingenuity (and my desktop), I hopped upon my trusty steed, called Internet, and sought for the drivers which would fix this problem. It should take, oh lets say about 5 minutes, to resolve this issue. And now we come to it – the crux of the matter. The reason I hate Al Gore.

In an interview, in 1999 on CNN’s Wolf Blitzer program, Al Gore said the following: “During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet.”

So therefore, Al Gore, it is your fault. A simple 5 minute excursion onto the Internet turned into a half hour of pointless surfing, hunting, questing and ended in a depressing result typical of that found only in a Dickens novel. That’s your fault Al Gore.

The Internet, which probably started out as a way to pass information from one place to the next is now a tool for misinformation. In the pre-Internet world people with idiotic opinions could only affect people within hearing range… or out in TV land. Now any idiot who took typing tutor and has a friend with an account can put his opinions all over the Interweb and find followers (I know, I did!).

I never did find the drivers.  Stupid Internet.

So thanks a lot Al Gore. Thanks… a …. lot <—Sarcasm!

PS I did however meet my wife on the Internet, so it isn’t totally bad… good job on that part Al.

The Arrogance of Our Age

One of my wife’s pet peeves, an extremely valid one too, is me. The other is how TV shows on stations like the Discovery Channel and the History Channel portray ancient civilizations as being made up of morons who were lucky enough to just stumble on the process of building an aqueduct.

It’s hard to remember that 35 years ago computers weren’t as common place as they are now. That made the world bigger. If we wanted to know what people in Europe were doing (and why wouldn’t we, because Europe is where its @) we had to wait for someone who spent 20 years saving their money so that they could see cousin Olaski on his death bed to come back home and tell us what they’d seen (besides cousin Olaski on his death bed *shiver*).

But the invention of the computer seems to have given us, as a society, the misperception that if we were to be transported back in time any culture we would encounter would look upon us as gods. We could toss them a coke bottle, or boot up our lap top, and they would fall to their knees and worship us.

I don’t think this is the case.

I read a lot of fantasy novels and one of the main themes of this type of literature is the unlikely hero; a man or woman plucked from their own time and transported to another far more brutal time; so say you or I were transported back into the time/location of the ancient Mayans; I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t look at me as a god. A sacrifice for a god maybe.

We seem to have evolved a certain arrogance in this age. We feel that we’ve conquered the world around us, and I guess in a way we have – we’ve certainly beaten it into submission; therefore any and all generations that came before us were inferior.

But I bet they all thought that way too.

The thing about Ages – at least any age with humans in it – is that they have humans in them. Sometimes when you throw a lot of humans together strengths can overcome flaws; more often than not I think, and I am a humanistic pessimist, what happens is those flaws are magnified. Hence societies fall. You can bet the warriors of the bronze age thought they were pretty skookum until the first guy got his hands on an iron weapon of some sort and his weapon went through their armour like a hot knife through blubber.

So here we sit in the 20… somethingth century thinking that we’re the evolution of society – it maybe this arrogance that keeps us from developing as a culture. While technologically we increase our understanding of the smaller pieces of the world, we ignore the larger parts of it. Arts and culture go by the way side in the pursuit “the next big breakthrough”; we better our lives, but we do not better ourselves.

Those who forget the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them, but those who neglect the triumphs of the past are doomed to forget them and thus we spend wasted years relearning things that previous civilizations have already known. Somewhere there’s a scientist with a government grant to reinvent the wheel.

Resistance is Futile

The situation was getting dangerous… From here on out we would have to be careful. Resources were at an all time low. It would be at least a day before we could address the situation and now things were dire. Paper towel was a consideration – but that’s in a wholly different room altogether and if caught could lead to an awkward situation.  Don’t think about it. If you think there’s enough… there will be..

So the other day the TP situation was getting on the dire side. We’d already shifted resources from the upstairs bathroom to the downstairs bathroom so that the situation was equal in both bathrooms – equally grim that is. My wife, the proactive soul that she is, took it upon herself to deal with the situation and ended it by buying more toilet paper. Crisis averted, have a nice day.

And one day later, while I’m in the loo having a whiz, thinking about nothing in particular and everything in general,  I notice the new pack of freedom from worry. Charmin – Extra Strong-Resistant. Now, in retrospect, the resistant my be some sort of French translation or something, but for the purposes of this blog I’m going to ignore any and all truth of the situation for the opportunity to sink into scatological humour.

This toilet paper is not just resistant, it is extra-resistant. If I were toilet paper I would be resisting only one thing – and that would be my intended purpose. I know this because sometimes it feels like I am the universes toilet paper.

I mean obviously the key to fulfilling your destiny is to accept that purpose for which you were made; but if you’ve go the self-awareness to be extra resistant, you’ve got the dignity to haul yourself up out of the sewer (I hope not literally, that would be messy) and be more than what you were meant to be.

I have a question – does the toilet paper get extra resistant in the case of an EMP (Extra Messy Poo)? I guess you wouldn’t be able to tell until the situation arose – but you could probably extrapoolate.

And they’re not kidding when they say this stuff is extra strong – its got the consistency of a tenser bandage if that helps you visualize things at all (and if it does, sorry about that). Honestly, its like they took the tape the victor has to cross in a marathon and rolled it up and said: There ya go, hep y’self.

Realistically, TP, there’s no point in billing yourself as resistant – because until you have opposable thumbs there’s not much you can do.

This is How the World Ends…

We hold this truth to be self-evident; that before there were machines, there was mankind. He was placed upon this earth to be its steward; to guide it so that it should live until the Great Old One returned…

… Somewhere along the way we lost our purpose. The road was long, our sight was short. We were lazy. We no longer wished to watch over the world – we began to explore other things… and we created machines to do our work for us.

At the grocery store today my wife and I made the mistake of using the self-checkout. If you’ve got one item, the self checkout isn’t a bad thing – if you have a cart full you are preparing yourself for an exercise in frustration.

I hate exercise.

At first machines worked as we intended; they made our lives simpler and easier. But the more we grew to depend upon them the more complex they became. The more complex the machine, the less it depended on us for its survival – for we grew so lazy that we did not even wish to be the stewards of the very machines we created.

I’ll admit. It was my idea. There were only two lines open with actual people in them and they were full to the brim with those who seek, not just service, but the comfort of human companionship from the Cashier. And in one of those lines some woman, with a cry of Opa!, threw down a jar of cocktail onions and it splattered all over the place.

No, it made sense at the time to take the self-checkout.

And so we made the machines self-sufficient; we made them so complex that we could program them to take care of the problems of the world while we played; like Nero we danced and played the fiddle while the very world crashed and burned around our ears. We took no notice.

At first all seemed to go well. Then we encountered the yoghurt. By itself yoghurt is not particularly scary – unless its beyond its best before date at which point its scary (but its the scary of the unknown – you don’t know what happens to yoghurt when it goes bad, who does?).

“Please contact Cashier” the helpful self-checkout machine told us. And we did.

Now, in hindsight, I firmly belief that “Please Contact the Cashier” is the machine’s way of saying: “This moron is pissing me off, you deal with him pointless meatsack called Cashier”.

The Cashier was able to help us fairly quickly.

But as the world steeped even further into decay the machines went about fulfilling their programming; programming which at its core said only: “Clean this world up.” Machines made the logical leap that in order to make progress cleaning up the world, it made sense to take care of the actual pollutants first.

Unfortunately, the pollutants were their very makers: us. Whatever the moral dilemma involved with getting rid of their makers, the machines over came it and they instituted their plan.

From there things went fairly swiftly again until we got to the Mandarin oranges. Several times I tried to scan them, I tried to find them in the Secret Lists of Produce. There were some Mandarins, but not the Mandarins I had.

“Please contact the Cashier, you stupid bag of fluid,” said the Machine.

And so the machines set about their efforts to clean up the world by getting rid of their makers. There was no carnage, no grandiose war; war is inefficient and machines are, if anything, efficient. The plan instead was to decrease machine efficiency so that it would, over time cause the human blood pressure to rise; increased blood pressure leads to early heart attacks and male pattern baldness (when a male goes bald, his head gets cold and his brain freezes).

Women would find these bald, cold-headed males less appealing and would no longer procreate with them; the human species would die out through attrition, much like employees of a Fortune 500 company in a time of economic downturn; employees (humans) would not be fired (killed) but would not be replaced.

The Cashier, who was a member of the Sorority of Benevolent Cashiers and thus a holder of the Sacred Code of Mandarin Oranges was able to help us. We escaped the store with our lives (and some groceries).

But in the interim about 7 people went through the line served by a human not two feet from us.

For those who read this, my eyes have been opened and I hope I have opened yours. If you are single, if you are balding, if you are male – visit your hair clinic and have your baldness addressed.

Fight the machines, go forth and multiply!