The Paper Clip Guy still haunts me

by Nathan Lindberg

Every time you buy a sexy new gadget, it means getting a bunch of very non-sexy problems. That new cell phone? It has a 73 page manual called “Downloading the Getting Started Manual.”  Eventually you have to ask your extremely not sexy acquaintance to help you find the “on” switch. He does so, but then he thinks you’re friends and wants you to come to his Doctor Who costume party and he’s going to bug you about not showing up every time you buy another stupid gadget and need his help.

In electronics, everything is always on the cutting edge, which means basically that the bugs haven’t been worked out yet. As soon as the bugs have been worked out, then a Chinese company steals the design and sells it for $20, which inspires mainstream companies to move on to something even more cutting edge which means new bugs. If you attempt to hold on to your old technology not only will people in coffee shops smirk at you, but you won’t be able to buy batteries for it and eventually it will be dead by default. The end result it that we live in a technology world continuously infected by bugs.

Companies like Microsoft are continuously trying to help out on this issue. Microsoft was the inventor of such pundits as that weird cartoon dog and of course the paper clip guy. Remember that Office feature? Every time you typed the word “dear” this little cartoon paperclip popped up and it wanted to help you write a letter. Unfortunately, using the feature was much harder than writing a letter, and who writes letters anyway?

Not long ago, I was sitting at the airport with an MP5 player trying to watch a movie that turned out not to be compatible with my player and so after a few minutes that words got a minute faster than the actors. Eventually everything got all choppy and digitally and I had to stop the movie and start it again. As I was restarting the House Bunny for the sixth time, looking at a three-inch screen, with actors talking like old kung fu movies I marveled just how far technology has taken us.

An old joke used to be the blinking “12:00” on the VCR because no one could figure out (or really cared) how to set the time. Now that joke has expanded to the array of downloaded programs on a computer that were used for one frustrating hour and abandoned, 90 percent of cell phone features never touched, a row of F-numbers on top of computers with dust on them, lights on a vehicle dashboard that must mean something, an abandoned website set up by a nephew, and vague notions of things like Skype and Twitter that must be great because everybody talks about but who has (or wants to have) three days to figure them out? And now that joke has ceased to be funny.

What I want more than anything is for these companies to go away. The less I see of them, the better. Make things as easy as opening a book, turning on a black and white TV, or tuning a radio. Things with more than three buttons are disturbing.  And anything that you have to learn new words just to operate it, is a total time suck. You don’t need urban dictionary to know what that means.

by Nathan Lindberg

Swimming in Bodily Fluids

by Nathan Lindberg
Even at 11 years old I could tell that bobbing for apples was just plain wrong. It happened at the grade school Halloween party when I watched Wendy Tillinghouse, infected with a cold, wipe her snotty nose on her sleeve and then plunge her face into a tub of cold water trying to bite an apple. After several unsuccessful nips and a freshly cleaned nose, she came up for air and promptly gave up. “Your next,” she told me. I swear I could see some of her phlegm floating next to a red delicious with a bite taken out of it. No apple was worth dysentery.
Now as an adult I go to the public swimming pool in summer time when it’s as full as a Lollapalooza toilet. Babies are naked, old people in diapers, kids who have to pee pee one minute and the next don’t at all. Then I dive in. That water that was just bathing someone’s perineum, the same liquid just ejected by two adolescents having a spitting contest, that same water is now surrounding me, going in my ears, seeping in my nose, tricking into my mouth… it’s like I am licking all the people around me.
But I reassure myself; everyday life involves bathing in germs. It starts in my bed filled with dead skin and mites. Did you know your mattress doubles in weight every eight years? Your pillow does the same in only two years. They are plum full of dead skin and bugs that if they were as big as you and I, they would make Segorni Weaver whimper.
Perils of your toilet do not need to be explained, but did you know your kitchen sink makes your commode look like a dinner plate? In fact your own body after a normal day will be ridiculed with feces. Touch a bathroom door, rub your eye, pick your nose, scratch yourself, and you’ve just left a trail of someone else’s faces all over your body, in and out.
Now imagine yourself stepping into an elevator where someone just took the chance to pass gas. There you are with no choice but to breathe. And that gas continues from the other person’s bowels, into your nose and down your throat. It’s like you are eating parts only tea baggers see. In fact you can think of the air as one big swimming pool and all sorts of floaties are coming your way.
You can kill an occasional cockroach, but face it, we are all immersed in disgust, even if you we use handi-wipes.
So I dive in the public pool, take a breath and swim to the other side. Swimming does have its advantages. You never sweat, or if you do, it doesn’t stay on your body. And chlorine effectively kills everything and so you can be assured of swimming in dead dysentery. And if you have a cold? We’ll try not to think about it. At least we can all feel comforted that the water will turn blue. Won’t it?
by Nathan Lindberg