Bits and Pieces

      As I started to write, I misspelled the title as Bits of Feces, which is how I feel these days. I used to be a fair typist but like so much else that fades with age it got worse. . .  .

    I was shopping for a clamp thingy to hold my phone during zoom calls- tres fashionable these days, anyway, I was looking in the electronic department at Fred Meyer and asked the clerk for help. They didn't have one "You might find it on Amazon," she suggested.

    I just stared at her. Oh I see, you would prefer I give my money to another business and not yours. No wonder retail stores are dying. I'll make my own cause I'm not giving my money to a selfish billionaire. "Find it on Amazon" is right up there with "Google it" as two of my most detested phrases.

    I hate phones anyway and don't get me started on how addicted people are to their stupid devices. I could go on about how they defeat and annoy me but that rant is longer than "War and Peace." In the fifties and sixties they predicted we would have video phones and we scoffed at the silliness of the idea.

      What baffles me is the lop sided focus of this technology. You can find a street view of an obscure village in Pakistan, shoot a full length video, have the internet at your finger tips but the sound quality is half a step above two tins cans connected by a string. It's not a phone, it's a drug. Go back to a land line. you can't lose it, it can't be stolen or follow you around, and you can hear the caller. . . .

     I've given my previous entry on the New Rules of Engagement further thought. Disney may be the leader in developing a new model, as they are the masters of crowd control. It's opening up a few parts of the Florida park with some modifications. It doesn't sound particularly fun or entirely practical but hey business is business.

   That reminds me of the latest fodder for recreational outrage. To wear a mask or not. Either you're in the "Screw this, open up the economy full blast" or the "No, it's too soon the menace will kill you" camp. It doesn't help that the new rules, written by bureaucrats, are as convoluted as a soap opera as told by a lawyer.

     Personally, limited contact with people you know or interact with on a daily basis is probably safe. Large crowds of closely packed strangers is a damn good way to catch just about anything.  

      I've been practicing social distancing (another unlikeable phrase) for years out of disdain and autism. Since being cooped up, I realize how precious my little social circle is to me. . . .

        

   Me and a friend were so desperate to get out of the house we went for a drive and

 ended up at the Shedd cemetery; a flat parcel of land out in the middle of the Willamette Valley. We drank a cup of hard cider and had a lovely time wandering around the tombs constructing the history of the dead. The Pugh family are major tenants and everyone for a ten mile radius must be buried there.

    It got me to thinking about my own demise. For my memorial I want my cremains to be displayed in the oven of my beloved stove which will be raffled off afterwards (minus me). Remember folks, when planning a funeral /memorial offer a prize to boost attendance.

Friday, Shedd cemetary, New rules, Disney, google, phones