NO WiFi? Well then, I'm Leaving!

NO WiFi?  Well then, I’m leaving!

Talk about spoiled.  As a rule most of us are overweight, no longer read anything longer than maybe a short Comment on Facebook, if a cute picture of a puppy or a cat is included.  Possibly a 140 character Tweet if it’s a Celebrity.

If we’re really sophisticated we might get a nice Art print at Ikea.  If we’re not and there’s a stain on the wall at home, we might get some kind of print (in a premade frame) at Walmart. 

We drive-by (or drive-thru, depending on what part of the country you’re from and the misspelling is because we’re so lazy we can’t spell drive-through) to get our junk food snacks, coffee, bank transactions, prescriptions drugs, beer and liquor.  In New York and other large urban areas you can place an order for your groceries on-line, go to the drive-by (drive-thru) and they will put them in your car for you.  Dry cleaners and laundry.  And none of these things require a high income.  This is not an economical restricted activity; that is to drive-by (drive-thru) to get your shit.  In fact we get really pissed off, if that’s not an option.  We might not use it, we might go inside and sit down for our coffee or junk food, but they better have the option to drive-by (drive-thru) or it’s on to the place that does.

Then there is wifi.  Oh how we have become addicted to wifi.  Just like the drive-by, wifi has become something Americans view as a right.  At first all of the sit-down coffee shops and junk food places tried to charge for wifi.  The big telecom companies saw a way to pick pennies out of our pockets – by the fistful – through all kinds of tricks.  Then some of the bigger franchises got smart and saw they could get people to stay longer and buy more coffee and shit food if they gave away free wifi connection.

Now free wifi is available in libraries, for those few people who do read.  It’s so commonly available we don’t think about it.  Even on airplanes, during a flight (but it ain’t free and I’m wondering when people are going to start choosing airlines on the basis of free wifi or not). On my last airline flight it was fifteen dollars an hour.  Fifteen friggin bucks an hour!  It was a long flight too and no Internet really pissed me off.  And now they don’t show any free movies on airplanes. 

I get the Washington Post and The New York Times on-line.  I have over a hundred books on a tablet reader, which they make me turn off (and stow under the seat) until the plane reaches its cruising altitude.  I do enjoy the heft of real books.  Turning the pages.  The whole idea of a real book is a pleasure to me.  I just don’t like that heft when it’s in my briefcase or backpack/luggage.  It’s heavy.

I’m old enough to remember vividly when none of all this technology had shrunk the world to the size of a cocktail party.  It would take several week long mail exchanges to set up a telephone call with my brother in Australia.  And then the sound was scratchy and intermittent.  Now I can call him, the sound is great and I can see his face on-screen and he can see me. 

No, I’m sorry but – no wifi and I’m outta there.

Indiana Jones and the Men's Locker Room

Indiana Jones and the Men’s Locker Room

Some years ago when the movie “Indiana Jones and the Ark of the Covenants” came out, I went to see it, of course.  Wasn’t that a legal American requirement?  Everybody HAD to go see “Indiana Jones” or you weren’t allowed to vote?  For most people I think all the “actions scenes” were the whole purpose of those movies.  They were pretty spectacular after all the “Star Wars” stuff, except Indiana was on the ground and more kind of real … had to be something like that.

For me the one scene that stood out and stuck in my mind was the one where that Nazi bad guy shows up in the tent out in the desert.  The bad guy that picked up the medallion and burnt the shit out of his hand (which was very cool).  I love it when the bad guys do something like that.  It’s like instant karma for being a shithead.

So there in the tent, in the desert is the French archeologist and Karen Black and in comes this creepy Nazi with his creepy minions.  They are in the desert!  Everybody else is sweating like crazy, even like real life, you can see the pit stains.  These Nazis are in full-dress Nazi black uniforms and the head creep is wearing a full length black leather trenchcoat!

He whips out this thing that looks like a numchuck  (sp), flips it around with one hand and floop it’s a coat hanger.  I thought he was going to whack the French guy or, worse, Karen Black, on the head.  He shrugs off the leather trench coat and one of his creepy Nazi minions puts the coat on the hanger.  Whoah … did not see that coming!  He’ll shoot people and commit all kinds of other inhuman acts, but his leather trench coat – that’s important! 

Don’t screw with his black leather trench coat!

What did I take away from the whole movie?  What remains stuck in my head?  Not all the action scenes, not the ending where all the Nazis have their eyes burned out and they crumple into charred skeletons (or something, I always close my eyes for that ending – I hate horror movies).  Oh no!  I remember that foldable coat hanger numchuck thingy.  When I saw that, I thought, “Now that’s really neat.  That’s a tricky invention.  A coat hanger you can carry in your pocket, pull it out, wave it around and floop you can hang your coat on it.”

So now, you can see where my brain can hang out.  At my health club today (my Doctor makes me go) I walk into the men’s locker room.  My mind is dreading the forty-five minutes I have to put in on the rowing machine.  There is this guy packing up to leave.  He is just putting a coat hanger in his gym bag.  Let me briefly describe this guy;  shorter than me (maybe he’s 5’4”), portly (more so than me), I’d say about fifty years old and he’s got this lacquered down all gray comb-over.  And, he was wearing a nice sport coat and tie.

This coat hanger was a full shoulder width high-quality coat coat-hanger.  Had the wide bowl shaped shoulder ends, you know so it doesn’t make dents in the coat’s shoulder pads.  Not so easy to wedge into a standard gym bag.  But obviously he loved his coat and he was going to take care of it.  I am also certain he wasn’t a Nazi.  I didn’t say anything, but he seemed nice enough … I assume.

I believe if you have something nice, that is valuable – valuable at least to you – you should take care of it.  Quality lasts, good investment if you take care of it.  When I was teaching I often found myself at the gym in the evenings in my school blazer.  A Brooks Brothers blazer.

When I started to go bald I just went with a buzz cut.  But I loved that jacket.  Never once did it occur to me to bring a coat hanger.  I guess we all have our own unique system of values.

The Big Magic

((Author’s note:  Of course I do not wish to offend anyone.  What follows is just where my brain can wander and sometimes it rants just a bit.  Like calling somebody a *&^%*, when they cut you off at an intersection; you don’t really mean it.))

The Big Magic

I live in an area, a region, of the country where being a Christian is like – well, it’s like a religion.   Which is fine, I guess, good for them.  As I’ve said before, I tried, seriously tried … just never stuck.  (Okay, I’ll admit it … I’m still trying.)

The most common book, by far, you see on the table at Starbucks, next to their coffee latté cappuccino frappé triple espresso milkshake, is a bible. 

No lie there is a guy who comes in here, covered with tattoos, earrings in both ears, with a big pistol (handgun) strapped to his hip.  He always orders some big frothy whipped thing in the largest size they serve.  Sits at a table and takes out a huge bible and starts writing sermons.

I’ve talked to him.  Nice guy actually.  I just don’t get the handgun thing.  He’s a big guy.  Tattoos and stuff, what’s he need a gun on his hip all the time for.  It’s Starbucks! 

In all reality, let’s get real.  Everything man is, was or will ever be; the earth as a huge chunk of dirt whirling around in the cosmos, the massive ball of fire we call the sun; all of it is less than a molecule in the infinity of everything.  Life is a marvelous experience.  The human mind could be said to be the most powerful force of which humans can conceive.  But even the human mind is a thing of just more cosmic material.

The Big Magic is that we can even conceive of it!  Like the pistol-toting pastor I marvel at this concept.  What I don’t get is where the idea that their Jesus would ever even consider packing or putting a bumper sticker on his pick-up that says, “Security by Smith and Wesson”; or, mess with my stuff and I’ll kill you. 

Dust to dust it says in their novel of magical mystical nostalgia.  (Yes, I’ve read it.  Like three times.  Honestly, other than the New part, I can’t make any sense out of it.) Nothing could be truer.  What is all the anger and pummeling of others over this bit of mystical puffery?  God is a three-letter word that has resulted in more destruction, death, horror, torture and the worst of the worst behavior of human kind.  And it’s just a word. 

That one combination of letters (God) has often allowed me to think that maybe written language wasn’t such a good idea.  Stupidity is another word.  Evil is another.  One word (God) won’t make a man a better man than any other word, if he doesn’t truly comprehend it’s definition.  Neither will it prevent him from committing acts of dishonesty, dishonor and/or even destruction.

Now the New part I get.  It’s just that I don’t really see anybody paying that much attention to the plot-line message.

Whatever God a person may choose to believe in, or deny the existence of, must, by logical conclusion, be less than the awareness of the Word.  You can’t even deny a thing unless you acknowledge the word that symbolizes, linguistically, that thing.  That is part and parcel of awareness.  Once a thought occurs, to my thinking, it becomes like a radio wave, neither to be retracted or destroyed.  It cannot be unthought – or unthunk (as it were).

Therefore, once thought it becomes a thing.  It is a person’s right to say, “That thing is not a real thing.”  Or, “I deny the existence of that thing.”  Or, “My life is based on the belief in that thing.”  Which is awareness, as previously stated.

Now, this means that once you attach a word to a thing, or a thought, it has meaning – a definition.  And that cannot be undone either.  To me this means, and it may seem to be a big jump here, that a man (human) lives for a microspeck of time on the universal clock and that man can choose a moral life or an immoral life. 

The definitions of moral and immoral would be based not on that person’s definition of The Big Magic, but on the manner in which that microspeck of time is spent.  “If the universal cosmos has not been improved by the tiny fragmentary existance of your awareness, then you have lived an immoral life.”  And the definition of moral is derived from that statement.  This is The Big Magic. 

(I have weighed the options heavily about posting this blog.  But “I gotta be me.”  That and mostly not a whole lot of people pay that much attention to me … historically, anyway.)

(c) Copyright 2014 by Dale Clarence Peterson