Boxing a Pair of Ears

The SQO and I have been binge-watching the Walking Dead.  If you haven’t heard of it, it’s a post-apocalyptic story, where a zombie outbreak happened, and the dead almost entirely rule the world.  After the first season or so, he said “It’s like a soap opera…but with zombies.”

I have to agree with his assessment.  We’ve got the tragic triangle:  “I thought you were dead, so I started sleeping with your best buddy.”  We’ve got the child conceived RIIIIIGHT around the time the hubby came back.  We’ve got the moody teen-aged boy, and the outaw’ish brothers who just don’t quite ‘fit,’ but we’ll keep them around because they know their weapons.

And, of course, we’ve got the packs of reanimated dead humans roaming the cities, eating anybody they can get their hands on.

In later seasons, they introduce all these little colonies of live humans, who are (kinda) surviving.  Sometimes, they clash.

I find the show interesting, in that the real monsters in this show aren’t the zombies…but the various humans attempting to carve their own little piece of kingdom out of the wasteland that remains.

If you’ve got a strong stomach, I’d recommend a watch.  Seasons 1-7 are available on Netflix, season 8 can be found on Amazon (but not Prime, so you’ll have to pay for it), and season 9 is set to air in the fall.

So what’s this got to do with ears?

(otherwise known as…get to the freaking point, already??) 

There’s a character they introduced in season 7, the leader of a group called the Scavengers.  She’s got a long face, abbreviated eyebrows, and an extremely Vulcan haircut.  My first thought was:  slap a pair of pointy ears on her, and move her to a new set…

See…

She even cocks one eyebrow just like Spock always did!

 

So, I amused myself today and browsed Amazon for Spock Ears.  It’s a good thing I’m currently in a ‘don’t buy ANYthing, because you’re gonna have to move it!’ mindset, else I’d have a couple new pairs of socks and a coffee cup.

 

Another Name Bites the Dust

I saw on the Evil Book of Faces last night that Stephen Hawking had died at the age of 76.  Not bad for a man with severe body issues who wasn’t expected to live half that long.

I won’t even pretend to understand a quarter of what went on in that mind…I’ll leave that task for people more in tune with his way of thinking.  I’m a bit more Earthy, myself.

But I wanted to share out a quote I saw accredited to him…because I think it’s fabulous.

And…as yesterday was March 14th – I certainly hope you had some Pi in his honor 😀

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A Tale of Two Mousies

Computer mice have gotten a lot more sophisticated over the years.  what started as a little ball embedded in a cocoon of plastic and tiny rubber wheels has given way to lasers and infrared and bluetooth and scroll pads and other technological sorcery to give the end user almost telepathic connectivity to their computers.

I just found this one today – they’re calling it The Flying Mouse.

 

You see it yet?  It’s strapped to his wrist!

I had a wireless mouse – ancient tech when measured against being able to flutter your hands about and make the computer respond to you – but not so ancient it still has a tail.  This summer, I rather rudely banged the little red plastic guy with my elbow, and he bounced off the hardwood floor.

Shockingly enough, he survived his rough treatment and still communicated with my computer.

When he felt like it.

See – I kinda look at our tech-saturated world with different eyes.  Electronic devices aren’t simply plastic and wire and silicon bits powered by electricity and communicating with each other through fiber-optic cables…

All our bits of tech are actually an extremely advanced race of superbeings.
Vastly more intelligent than we poor, primitive meat-sacks are.
And they co-habitate with us in an effort to study this lesser species and learn about us.

 

Sooooo – my mouse took a nose-dive off my desk, and bounced at least twice on my hardwood floor.  I think it never forgot this attack on it’s little plastic person, and spent the next 6 months torturing me.

It’d track fine for awhile, then become semi-unresponsive.  It would sometimes initiate a click when I hadn’t pushed the appropriate button.  The pointer would occasionally wander drunkenly across the computer screen even when the mouse wasn’t being moved.

I used to tell people it was possessed.  I finally realized it wasn’t an evil spirit…it was just PISSED at me for not taking better care of it.

So this Christmas, the kids went out and bought me a new mouse.  I celebrated by throwing the old, full-of-attitude one across the room where it shattered rather excitedly.

So everyone take a brief moment to welcome the little purple guy.

It’s always the simple things that make your day wonderful 😀

 

Snow-Time

Every December, WordPress puts little flakes of snow on my blog.  They drift, they dangle, they electronically attempt to put everyone in ‘the mood’ for the Holiday season.

I tend to ignore these things when they happen, because the beginning of every winter is my biggest time of denial.

I refuse to accept the existence of the fowl white stuff, therefore, it canNOT be snowing right now.

OK…so it never really works, but a girl’s gotta try, no?

So, it’s snowing in WordPress, the same as it’s snowed on WordPress the last three Decembers I’ve hosted my blog here…am I just THAT slow that it’s taken me THIS long to realize the snow drops in the direction you drag your mouse?

And yes…I played with it for far longer than was probably appropriate, given my age.  I still take great glee in popping virtual bubble wrap, too.

 

Black Mirror

Just this morning, I read a post.

Not Earth-shattering, by any means.  I read a good number of other bloggers out here on the ‘net – sometimes for the laughs, sometimes for the inspiration, sometimes because I genuinely click with the other writer, sometimes because I WANT to know more of the other blogger’s viewpoint.

And sometimes, to be perfectly honest here, it’s for the reciprocal views.  Kind of an unspoken yet understood ‘pact’ between bloggers.  I read yours, you read mine.

It’s all about the numbers.

This particular blogger had mentioned that people who post holiday pictures every five minutes aren’t on a very good vacation…and it got me to thinking of the episode titled:  Nosedive from Netflix’s series ‘The Black Mirror.’

For those of you unfamiliar with this series, it’s a British, Twilight Zone-esque series.  Each episode is a stand-alone, centered around modern society and the unanticipated effects modern technology has wrought/will wreak upon society.

From the show’s Wiki page:

“each episode has a different cast, a different setting, even a different reality. But they’re all about the way we live now – and the way we might be living in 10 minutes’ time if we’re clumsy.”

Believe me when I say the writers, directors and cast haven’t pulled any punches on how things could go if we stay on our current path.

The episode that sticks in my head, if only because I can see society GALLOPING headstrong and arrogantly down the path which leads to the portrayed future, is Nosedive.

Imagine…if you will…

A world in which every action and interaction you partake in is tabulated in a single, master social-internet platform which society has initiated compulsory attendance.  Anyone not high on the popularity scale is deemed fair play for discriminatory practices by the popular ones.

Imagine your entire life centered around your rating.  Those with low ratings have predatory rental rates, refused services, employment difficulties.

It’s as if the A list from high school (yaknow…the ‘popular’ kids) was put in charge of everything in society, and now wields enough power to actively suborn those they look down upon from their pillars on high.

The episode continues to draw me in – it’s one I’ve watched easily a dozen times already.  Each time I view (or listen, with my nose buried in a chainmaille piece) I seem to catch some new nuance or bit of buried irony I’d missed before.

 

In this bleakly-painted yet oddly happy-pastel colored dystopian future – I know where I’d rate…right there in the same driver’s seat as the old lady in the truck.

If you’ve access to Netflix – I suggest you look up this single episode.  It’s Episode #1, Season 3.

 

 

Call Me…on the Line

Anyone else out there resent their cell phone?

I’ve had a serious hate/HATE relationship with phones since…well…forever.  I was never one of those teens who could spend the entire evening on the phone with this girlfriend or that one, talking about boys or what TV show was currently playing or boys or that horrible little slut in chemistry class or boys or the existential reality of the multiverse overlapping our own reality or boys or clothes or…did I mention boys at all?

I’ve always been one of them people who, when they NEED socialization, prefer to have such interaction with the other person in person.  This ‘having a piece of plastic crammed in your face’ has always struck me as irritating – and the whole phone conversation process as intrusive.  If I want to have a conversation with someone, I’m gonna go seek them out and get the eye contact, body language, facial contortion and empathetic parts of the interaction experience – rather than just settle for a slightly distorted electronic version of that voice, without any of the other, non-verbal cues.

Having a piece of electronic equipment stand in for a person you want to have a meaningful interactive relationship with is just NOT spot on.

Dare I say…vibrator?

I’m going on record here…for the upteenth time – I.  HATE.  THE.  PHONE.

And it’s not my specific make/model – its the entire concept of phones as conversation pieces.  The phone is annoying when I’m in a good mood, because when the damn thing rings, it pulls me away from whatever I was engrossed in and demands I focus all my attention on it and the verbal-only, half-conversation which ensues.

But when I’m in a bad mood to begin with?  When the demon-tech sings its siren song, I’d rather swallow broken glass, shit it out the other end immediately, and take the conversation time to bleed out from both ends.  It’d be less painful then trying to limp through a conversation without radiating my frustrations over the airwaves.

At least at work, I can keep it professional.  Keep it short and to the point.  And let voicemail take the call when I’m deep into some project that I can’t be pulled away from.

 

At home?  Whole ‘nother story.  If I don’t answer the damn thing – I get increasingly frantic messages at 5 minute intervals.  I risk a serious shit-show every time I take a 20 minute shower.

 

In the 80’s – when I first moved out into the wild world on my own – my Dad installed a phone in my apartment and footed the bill.  He thought it was important to have me ‘connected’ to the rest of the world.  If I’d had to pay for the line, I’d have gone without.

 

 

In the 90’s – I paid for my own phone line.  Kids and family were factors, but still…when I left the house to go do something, I was unreachable, and the family in particular/society in general were all fine with that.  Everyone was happy to leave a message on the answering machine, or just wait until later in the evening to try to call again.

(for the record, here…in the 90’s, you had to leave me a message – I screened calls through the answering machine even when I was home)

 

In the 00’s – cell phones were dropping price points to become an average-Joe Consumer affordable thing.  After listening to a friend of mine bitching up a blue streak because her husband got pissy if she didn’t answer hers – I swore I’d never own one.  I liked my autonomy too much.

 

And today?  Yes – I carry around the damnable little tracking device…society and convenience have made the little demonic rectangles useful.  And, with apologies to my earlier selves, I’ve upgraded the hate/HATE relationship with phones to a grudging acceptance/HATE relationship.   The device does have a few positives.  A camera, accessibility to the ‘net, and the portability of the phone number.

I tolerate the thing as long as I don’t have to use it for meaningful interaction with another human being…

 

Rant warning!

I miss being invisible and untraceable in the wild world.  I miss stopping for a late lunch after shopping – knowing that nobody can demand a slice of that time, and that they accept my boundaries.

I can’t go to the greenspace to sit on the dock by the water without that shrill ringtone scaring the shit outta the local wildlife JUST as they were getting acclimatized to my presence…

Nor can I find a real secluded spot to sit in the sunshine and meditate…

At the laundry, I can’t ignore the world whilst in it, with my nose buried in my kindle…

Finally – at home, I can’t work on an intricate chainmaille piece without having to stop the creative flow just to listen to political drivel, yet another history lesson, or constant bitching about how stupid all the other drivers on the road are.

 

***sigh***

Guess I need to have a little chat, no?