Snowflakes and Screws

Saw something new today, a snowflake.
Yup a snowflake.

Not that I have never seen one before, I live in New Jersey, no shortage here, and although it’s late October and too soon for snowflakes, it’s not completely unheard of. The NEW part is that this flake was INSIDE my car.

I guess I should explain.

You know that theory about the fluttering of a butterfly wing causing a hurricane, or that if you had just been 5 minutes earlier your whole life could be different. Well same idea, smaller scale.

A couple of months back I was having a good day, the sky was blue, the air was hot but I had cold air pumping through my car so who could care? Not I, in short life was relatively spiffy. That of course was soon to change. All it takes is just a little twist of a screw to change your life. Sounds like a corny set up to a movie, or trite words of wisdom from a friend who watched a corny movie two days ago, but it’s true. And it did.

The screw belonged to a 10 year old car with about 135,000 miles on it; the car of course belonged to me.
The car. This car. My car, as it turns out is a bit lazy and spoiled. It likes to know the temperature and although it has a computer, it can’t seem to find the time to look it up on the NOAA website like the rest of us. Noooooo, it needs its very own thermostat and apparently a new one. Seems simple enough, right? Before I go any further I should mention the car is 10 years old with 135,000 miles on it, did I mention that already? Well in case you missed that, those stats seem to matter, if you don’t believe me go look it up, I’ll wait, I have time.
Back?
Okay. As you now know, a 10 year old car with 135,000 miles is worth about as much as a bucket of wet cement. And unless your name is Jimmy the Nose and you have an associate who needs to disappear, it isn’t much worth. However, none of this bothered me, I have to drive just about 120 light years everyday back and forth to work and as we all know now, cars seem to lose all their value under these conditions. Needless to say I wasn’t really thrilled about spending thousands of dollars on a future bucket of wet cement. Fixing the car seemed like the way to go.

This of course was a mistake.
You see, cars with 135,000 miles on them tend to have other issues, like oil leaks.

Mechanic: "Hey this is really leaking oil."
Me: "Yea I know, can you tighten up the bolts on the pan."
Mechanic: "Again?"

You get the picture.
Turns out you can only tighten a screw so much, before it gets so pissed off at you that it decides to strip, and not in the really cool Pin-Up girl sort of way. Have you ever had a car that needed a quart of oil a day? It’s not good. It was time.

I could go into the trials and tribulations of my car shopping but I know you’re sitting on the edge of your seat waiting to find out about the snowflake.
Remember the snowflake?
This is a story about a snowflake.
I’ll get to the snowflake in a minute.

So after what seemed like a lifetime of car shopping (which I will get into at a later time), I bought a new car.
It doesn’t leak oil, that’s the good news, but it does like to know the temperature. (I don’t get it either) Every morning when I get in it, it tells me what the temperature is outside. So not only does the engine want to know the temperature so it can open and close a valve, it has this need to show off and tell me the ambient temperature also. Which by the way, is really exciting stuff when it’s 72 degrees, however this has a reverse effect when it’s 36 degrees, especially in October.

This morning I wasn’t too excited, in fact I was fucking cold, and to let me know just how damn cold I was, the car decided to rub it in. That’s right, not only did it display the temperature, 36 (if you forgot) but it put up a little picture of a snowflake.

Just what the world needs, a smartass car.

Broccoli Killer

First some fun logic:

Animals have life forces because they are alive.
Plants are alive therefore they have a life force.

I think therefor I am.
Broccoli doesn't think so broccoli isn't really there?
... I see a flaw already

With that I would like to present the last days of Mr. Broccoli.

Earlier........ Broccoli: “Please don’t cut me down, I like it here with my family"
Later........... Broccoli: “ Holy crap it’s cold in here”
Later still... Broccoli: “ Holy crap it’s getting hot”
And finally . Broccoli: “ No not my head, Please don’t do th……..

I know what you’re thinking, ‘that can’t happen, broccoli has no lips’.
Broccoli doesn’t care if it lives or dies, and neither does anyone else, in fact we prefer it dead, on our plate, like Chicken Little, Bessie the Cow and Wilbur the Pig. Oh right, not those, they were special like Bambi, but other nameless animals not clever enough to go into show business.

Hell, even the Jolly Green Giant turned on his own kind, even took sprout with him down the path of betrayal. It’s a dog eat dog world out there kids, even if you’re a vegetable.

But really what can broccoli accomplish in it’s life?
Besides of course something as trivial as photosynthesize.
But other then converting raw sunlight into life giving energy, what can broccoli do?
I mean really, can it program an Ipod?
Not even on it’s best day, lets kill it!


What’s my point this time?
Not sure I even had one, just something to think about on a dreary Wednesday

The Sponge Bob Syndrome

I’m sitting here watching Sponge Bob dance.
Bob’s a balloon, hovering above the office keeping a vigilant watch on the place. He’s sort of corporate, he’s wearing a tie; so no one questions his attendance.

He’s a happy little sponge, nothing seems to get him down, but I’m sure in time, like everyone else who has joined the rat race, that too will end soon enough.

Sad really, I’m getting used to SB, as he now likes to be referred as, he most likely won’t be here much longer. His arms have gone limp, his legs flat and he’s looking a bit thin in the waist. Still he’s dancing and smiling, a trooper to the end.

I wonder if we’ll talk of him when he’s gone. Others have left this place and no one seems to mention them much, people who have been here for years. It’s funny, no matter how irreplaceable you think you are, soon after you’re gone, you’re forgotten. It’s business as usual. That’s the cycle of life, always has been, always will be.

People are born, people die, even balloons come and go. To be honest, I haven’t put much into my relationship with SB, in fact I’ve never even really said hi to him. I just see him around, like so many others hanging about the place.

Sure I know his face, he may even know mine. But we never talk; I mean what would we talk about? We have so little in common. He’s a poriferan and I’m a human, probably not much middle ground. I should at the very least give him the number to good dentist, that would be nice of me. Maybe a conversation could start up there, well it might if he could talk. Then again, it could be insulting to approach him and start off with “Good morning SB, would you be needing a dentist?”

But talking to a helium filled Mylar balloon really isn’t the point, is it?
That’s just nuts.

Off with your head

Off with your head

Seems innocent enough, if you’re a queen (drag or otherwise) and you just don’t like what a subject has done. I have no problem with this sort of rash disciplinary action. Let’s face it, some people are better off without their heads. You see, heads contain brains, and some people really haven’t used their brains to the best of their ability, and wouldn’t they be better off without the cumbersome task of carry them around?
I thought so too.

I was going to leave this as is.
It sums it all up in a nice neat package don’t you think.
It implies all the necessary information, right?
For those who chose to not use their brains they just may end up without, sort of the use it or lose it rule. This hopefully will encourage people to use their brains for fear of losing them.

I know, I know, there are times we all shut down and use other parts of our bodies to operate heavy machinery. And that’s ok…. sometimes.
I’m focusing in on the times when using a bit of the ol’ gray matter might not be such a bad thing.

You know, like deciding that fresh air and water may be more important then a 50foot sailboat. Logic dictates you need both of the first to appreciate the second. But I digress.

Trying to accomplish something so insignificant as the preservation of life isn’t going to happen here, so lets tackle a smaller subject.

Lint
Yes you read that correctly, lint.

The stuff that was once your shirt.
It clogs your dryer, fills your bellybutton, and makes you dust your house, lint. For everyone it’s pain in the ass that is never going to go away. Every time I clean out the dryer lint catcher I look at particles of my shirt, my socks, my pants, even my un-mentionables which by the way are mentionable, they’re called underwear, (Boxer-briefs if your keeping notes), and say to myself or at least think in a pondering sort of way, damn that’s a lot of lint.
And it is.
It’s a lot of lint.

Makes you wonder if the shirt companies are doing this on purpose, sort of a planned obsolescence to bolster shirt sales. Bastards!

But what can we do, we are small, medium, and x-large but we are no match for them they are giant, and shirts just don’t come in that size. Sure you could go couture, but if we had that kind of cash lying about we wouldn’t be the ones cleaning out the lint trap and noticing our shirts committing suicide in the tumble cycle. It’s a catch 22 and we’re at the blackjack table coming up with a hard 16 and nothing but low cards filling up the table, we know a ten is a coming.

Lint seems insignificant, but so does the preservation of a habitable Earth, or so it would seem. I mean no one seems to really take the time to do anything about either one. Sure a few strides have been made, things like lint brushes, and vacuums but their not really cures are they? Nope, just ways to clean up the mess after it’s been made.

Doesn’t seem to be sensible use of the brain now does it?

Pull-tabs

Anyone else beside me miss the old pull-tabs on soda cans?

When I was a kid I made a really cool chain by linking pull-tabs together. Sometimes I miss the little things that get swept away because of safety issues, things like: Lawn Darts, Kabangers and those neat little pull-tabs. Okay I don’t really miss smashing my fingers with Kabangers all that much, but pull-tabs were great.

It was a different time in America, we roamed the neighborhood helmet-less on our bikes, played with a ball and jacks that were swallow-able, (don’t you love these words I’m creating) and sometimes we were even found lying on that shelf up against the rear window of a car.

Pseudo hippies wanted to buy us all a coke, Schoolhouse Rock taught a generation about the loneliness of a bill, and we all knew the song of Woodsy the Owl:

Give a Hoot don’t pollute
Never be a dirty bird
In the city or in the woods
Help keep America looking good
Hoot! Hoot!

Yea the past times of America were just different, I wasn’t the only one who made chain links out of pull-tabs,lots of people did it. Who knows where it started, doesn’t really matter, it was fun, sort of like catching fireflies only without the needless death of innocent bugs. It was just something kids did to pass the time.

For those who don’t remember pull tabs and why they became extinct, I’ll try to explain.
Pull-tabs were detachable covers for drink cans, unlike the ones today, that when opened stay attached to the can. They sort of looked like big bubbly zipper pulls. The concept was easy enough to grasp, you grabbed the tab and pulled it off of the can. But here’s where the problem came into play, after you pulled the tab off, you had to get rid of it. Sure throwing it in the garbage makes sense, but everyone got so used to kids taking the pull-tabs to make chains, that when there were no kids around they didn’t know what to do with them. So they dumped them back into the can so as not to litter.

‘Wow’, you are thinking to yourself, ‘that Woodsy must have been a very persuasive owl.’ And you’re right, he was, as far as owls go. But let’s remain focused people, pull-tabs.

Unfortunately that lazy disposal technique had some pitfalls. You see a few meatsticks ended up guzzling their refreshment so fast they gulped down the pull-tab right along with it, choking on that sharp little cover. Although most people didn’t choke on them, there was another problem, sooner or later you were bound to cut your finger on the edge of one of those tabs, especially if you were trying to make a chain out of them, what can I say, nothing‘s perfect.

This was bad: bad for the people, bad for Coke, bad for the hippies, bad for the defense lawyers, and even potentially bad for Woodsy. So they pulled the tabs for good and replaced them with those punch through things we have today. Pull-tabs are gone forever, leaving future generations chainless.

It was a one of those neat little things you could do for free in your spare time. Sure it was a little dangerous but a bit of common sense would keep you alive, and there were always plenty of Band Aids lying about for those pull-tab chain hobbyists.

So what’s my point?
Is there a point or was this just a trip down memory lane?
Sure there is a point, and a question.

Was it better to live in a time when people could choke on sharp metal objects?
Well…
maybe.

You see, we are creating a world were we feel it’s better to get rid of dangerous things then to teach people how to respect those things. That’s sort of like putting up a fence around the pool instead of teaching your children to swim. Sooner or later those kids will find themselves in deepwater.

Life is messy. Life is dangerous. And yes we should make it a safe place where we can, but at the same time we shouldn’t be escaping the responsibilities of teaching people responsibility. I could go into a rant about this but I won’t.

Instead I’m just going to wonder...
besides those cool pull-tab chains what else is being lost everyday.