The Future’s So Shady… No, That’s Not It.

OK yesterday we defamed the elderly. It don’t matter; they’ve barely learned to use the telephone, and I doubt any of them are ever going to be reading teh intarnets, no matter how big they make teh intarnet pipes. So let’s get back to where we started. If you’re not a stick in the mud, technology can improve your life immensely.

As I am the foremost authority on myself, I can assure you in my case that’s absolutely true. That might seem odd at first blush.

I make reproduction antique furniture. Talk about a stick in the mud. Well, go to IKEA if you want to buy Jetsons furniture made out of wooden shredded wheat and formaldehyde glue, swathed in woodgrained wrapping paper. I’m not interested. And I’m not interested because “modern” furniture is an old idea. It’s just as dated as any Shaker table is. It’s the method of making it and selling it that’s new, and I put IKEA in the shade on that score.
So I’m a thoroughly modern mill- man, trust me. So what exactly makes my day so modern, in the true sense of the word, and how is it different than it was just twenty-five years ago? I’m glad you asked:

1. I can get really good coffee anywhere, including in my house.
This is totally overlooked. Good coffee was really hard to find 25 years ago. Home brewed was boiled, generally -a terrible way to make coffee. And your average diner had coffee from the tenth century in that pot. I’ve got a German coffemaker that cost $16.99 and makes sublime java, or I can drive four miles in any direction and get really good joe. I do.
2. I can live where I want.
Everybody told me I was crazy to move where I live now. They said I was too far away from everything. My house has appreciated 539% since I built it 13 years ago. Yeah, I’m a dope. You don’t have to live in a crummy apartment next to your job in a big factory chugging smoke if you don’t want to anymore.
3. My house is comfortable
Hot water always comes out of the shower head. It ‘s warm in the winter and cool in the summer. It’s dry in the basement.The furniture’s not bad in here either. I ride when I mow the lawn. My children have their own rooms. These were magical dreams when I was a kid.
4. I’m alive.
I’ve been brought back from near dead a couple of times. Twenty five years ago, they would have given me aspirin and last rites.
5. I don’t have to drive anywhere.
Look, I’m sympathetic if you’re a road warrior. I’ve been there myself. But I never drive anywhere now. It’s possible now. Even bank robbers can stay home and steal on the internet.
6. I make money at home by writing.
This one kills me. I tap out some text, which is visible in a little window on a screen, and occasionally get an attaboy or WTF from an editor that I have never met, and money is deposited directly into my bank account. This is the equivalent of alchemy circa 1975.
7. People find me even though I simply exist.
I invented guerilla marketing. I was the king of “copier art” word of mouth, free publicity, you name it. Now I simply exist on the internet, and people looking for what I have to sell find me and buy things. I think I’ve spent about $125.00 on advertising in the last three years. The internet is making willing buyer/willing seller come true in spades.
8. I have really good equipment from all over the world.
I’ve bought really good equipment and materials from all over the world and had it delivered to me here and never met the people I bought it from. I remember how hard it was just to get a 1×12 piece of pine after four in the afternoon on a weekday, and forget weekends. Now I can buy a 600 pound cast iron table saw made in Taiwan and sold through a company in Washington state, 2500 miles from me, at 2 AM on Sunday and have it delivered in less a week. I know this is the case, because I did exactly that. And Home Depot is open on Christmas.
9. I have access to really good information
Of all kinds too. Maps, directions, weather, pricing, comparative shopping, the internet is an astounding treasure trove of information.
10.You’re reading this, ain’t you?
I really can’t say enough about this mode of expression. They didn’t even teach men to type when I went to high school.
11.My packages get where they’re going.
I was a shipping clerk for a little while 25 years ago. Shipping used to be as reliable as lottery scratch tickets. Now everything gets there right away, and you can track it all the way there.
12.I know how much things cost.
How does a saleman get paid? It used to be that salesman got money by knowing what a customer didn’t, and taking advantage of that situation. Good luck trying that now, with this screen and Firefox in front of me. A saleman is in customer service now, or he’s fired. Unless you’re a car salesman. Then you’re still evil.
13.I can be contacted at all times.
When I entered the construction trades, the idea of a phone on the job was science fiction. We all met before the sun came up in a dingy construction office and tried to predict everything that would happen all day to everybody and fix it before it happened. Yeah, that’ll work. My life has been immeasurably ennobled by the cellular phone and e-mail. I f your job is miserable because of those two marvels you’ve got a bad job. Quit now.
14.I can make financial transactions on the web.
I go to banks to sign mortgages. I go to the Post Office…Never mind, I never go to the Post Office.
15.I have access to money easily.
People in the real world think easy credit is a snare to catch you. I’ve built empires on unsecured loans. All you have to do is always pay them back. People like me used to be trapped in laboring, or preyed upon by loan sharks, because regular banks wouldn’t touch us. Now they beg me to borrow money. I don’t need any today, because I could get my hands on it when opportunity knocked.
16.I have digital photography
It’s hard to exaggerate its usefulness. I sent a picture of the exact item purchased to a customer, with a picture of it inside its crate with one side open, to show a customer what’s inside and how to unpack it. He purchased it because he saw a digital photo of the last one.
17.I have a big truck.
I never go anywhere, but when I do, I can carry an enormous amount of stuff, safely and comfortably. The very idea of air-conditioning in a work truck boggles my mind still. Is that an FM radio?!!
18.I am not isolated from society.
I reiterate: you’re reading this, ain’t you? I have friends I’ve never met, all over the world. A note in a bottle, or waiting for my Nobel Prize ceremony was my only hope of meeting such persons before.
19.I can fly.
When I was a young teenager, my father took me to Boston’s Logan airport, who was running a sort of tour where the children of the great unwashed (that’s me) could get a chance to ride on an airplane. We took off, circled Boston twice, and landed. I thought at the time that was going to be my only chance to fly in my life. Thirty years later I was flying twice a week to a remote office for my last regular job. I used to get home in time for goodnight stories for my kids. My father worked in Boston when I was a kid, commuting only 35 miles from our house, and I almost never saw him at the dinner table.
20.This box makes me smarter than I am.
That’s not that difficult, but the computer and the internet is the greatest cheat sheet in the history of mankind.

There you have it. It’s always “the future” right now, and it’s so bright… well, I told that joke already. I must be getting old, I’m repeating myself.

Cabin Fever

We got a little summer cabin fever this last weekend. I was plain weary, and my wife was weary of all of us men in our little home, and we had to go somewhere else. Anywhere.

We often find ourselves going to places most people would call “anywhere.” Our friends describe vacations and sporting events and concerts and so forth that sound like everyone’s idea of fun. Sometimes I find myself describing our activities to our acquaintances and family and I see an expression come over their faces that I’ve seen on people that are hearing about eating broccoli when they’d rather be given directions to a steakhouse. I’m sorry, we can’t help ourselves.

We went to the Heritage Museum and Gardens in Sandwich, Massachusetts. The four year old will go anywhere and look at anything, so he’s not a problem. But a twelve year old? He can be bored, and boring.

He invited one of his schoolmates to come. That made it better. They were a pack of wolves all by themselves, and the world was their flock of sheep. We gave them a cellphone and let the line out a little on the invisible string we keep on our children. We were essentially alone in this place anyway.

The place is a big landscaping show, but late summer has few things to recommend it flower-wise. My wife and I were grateful to see a patch of grass that didn’t need mowing and wasn’t crabgrass, so we didn’t care. We went inside that windmill, and heard the docent, perhaps only slightly older than the revolutionary war vintage structure itself, lecture the few of us on the who what when where and why of it. My four year old smiled at him and the docent turned the thing on for him. The rest of us would have got bupkis. My four year old could get a dog off a meat truck. We watched the canvas sheets pass by the dutch door for a good, long, time.

The place is pleasant, and everybody that works there was more than pleasant, but it’s got no real rhyme or reason to it. And it gets a little less coherent as time passes. There’s a reproduction of a huge round shaker barn, and it’s filled with antique cars. I enjoy both things and find them interesting, but there’s a kind of incongruity to such juxtapositions that I can’t shake.

The older boys were jazzed to go because there is a an enormous reproduction sort -of-Fort Ticonderoga loghouse there, and it was filled with an interesting and compelling collection of guns and weapons and Indian artifacts and lead toy soldiers. I say “was filled,” not “is filled,” because we went in and it was mostly gone, and replaced by a rather tepid display of memorabilia from the Cape Cod Baseball League. And there are only so many pictures of future big leaguers looking gaunt because they haven’t figured out where to buy human growth hormone yet that you can stand to look at. And what’s it doing in a fort? Bring back the guns, will you? We saw a few shunted off into little niches here and there. The baseball museum could have fit in a phone booth.

But the big boys were not deterred. Boys are never deterred. They walked back out into the blazing sunshine and the breeze from the nearby lake, saw me and my lovely wife sitting in the shade of an enormous oak, sized up the beauty and utility of intervening grass, and knew what it all was for.

To be.

Our New Hot Dog Stand

I had way too much fun with the Borderline Sociopathic Book For Boys yesterday. Judging from the mail I got, you did too. So we’re going to have a little sideshow called:

You can find it in the blogroll here at Sippican Cottage, or bookmark it and visit it every day.

I don’t know when I became the unelected spokesman for the y chromosome. I always thought of my childhood as a kind of sheltered existence. But it appears that is not the case. I’m told that many of my readers did not take a bus ride cross-country unaccompanied by adult supervision in Guatemala when they were barely high school age. You people need to get out more.

The Borderline Sociopathic Blog For Boys.

Was Not.

-That was a strike.
-No it wasn’t
-Was too.
-Mikey, was that a strike?
-I don’t know. You won’t let me pitch. I’m not tellin’ anyway.
-Richie, that was a strike, wasn’t it?
-Look, it’s my ball and bat and I’m just standing here. I’m not sayin’ either.
-Look, you idiots, if I don’t pitch it’ll never be a strike and we’ll just be fishin’ the balls out of the grass over and over.
-Dad says if we fight, he’ll make me mow the lawn instead of playin’. I’m gonna lie and tell him you’re pick’n a fight with me.
-He couldn’t beat up your sister, never mind you.
-Could so.
-You tried once. No you can’t.
-Well, then, he’ll have to mow the lawn. He won’t say so.
-Beats standin’here listenin’ to you call a ball a strike.
-See!

-Was too.

Saturday Mash-Up Goodness

I’ve tried to explain here before that Kraftwerk and James Brown are essentially different versions of the same thing. No one ever buys it. But I’m going to keep on trying until my medications are adjusted just so, and I forget all about it.

If you’re of a certain vintage, this thing is awesome. I am:

I Never Learn. Again.

[I’ve fallen behind everything outside since I got Lyme disease. Crabgrass. Dandelions. And hornets. My poor little son went out to play in the jumble of stuff gathered around the sandbox, and his big brother had to save him from the nest that had magically appeared there in the last few weeks. He’s tougher than me, and doesn’t hold a grudge. Which is good, because I should have been able to save him from the huge welt on his hand. Here’s the evidence your honor. I plead guilty.]

If a bee or wasp stings me, I’ll die almost immediately. I don’t care about that.

My neighbor, who likes cutting things down on a good day, counseled, unwonted, that I should razor all the shrubs down to the ground outside my door, so as not to attract such insects, just as he had done. They’ll come right in the house when you open the door, he said.

I told him I was unaware that he was also allergic to the venom of stinging insects; it seems like such rarified air I breathe. He said he was not.

The flowers stayed.

Some fears are worse than the perils they stem from. I decided not to pay much attention to it, and get on with my life. I am not reckless about it; I no longer cut down trees until the frosts have come, and other gentle nods to reality. But it does not define me. That would be worse than death.

Many persons find it odd and disquieting to see me ambivalent about this danger. They spot any flying insect and want to evacuate me like some gradeschooler during the blitz. There is an odd possibility that I’m about as cautious about being stung as I was before it became a lethal happenstance. It still hurt back then, after all; I’m not impervious to the logic of avoiding pain.

Six Flags Over Marion, we call the jumble of plastic and wood and sand and accoutrement we’ve assembled in a corner of the yard for the tot to play in. He contents himself merrily on the little slide and the ladder, and buries his troubles and his army men in the sandbox it leads into. My wife can see him from the house there, and he can play there alone or with his big brother. But it is on the edge of the wood, and the woods are not an urban abstraction here. We see things come out of those woods from time to time, and some are not suitable for children to encounter. And so we do watch. Who does not watch over their children? I don’t know them.

My wife was stung by a wasp or bee while sitting with the small child in the yard. She wept and was confused a bit; unsure where it came from. It left a formidable welt on her arm which is still clearly visible some two weeks later. I am an old hand at these sorts of things and put a paste of baking soda on the welt, and then some ice. We forgot all about it, except the itching.

A few days later, the small one was discomfited in some way. He seemed confused and hurt, though he did not cry. He is stoic that one, and rarely speaks anyway. We looked him all over and found a welt on his leg. We couldn’t tell what it was. Horsefly? Bee? Hornet? He sat quietly while we applied a poultice and he seemed hurt in multiple ways. I think it was the first time that the yard had ever betrayed him. We forgot about it.

Should I have forgotten about it? Does inuring yourself to some little creeping dread to the point of ambivalence taint your judgement? Is it worse or better than you treat it? I don’t know.

We were in the yard yesterday, and the little one came running and wailing from Six Flags Over Marion.

I’ve heard genius is a kind of intuition. Lots of people know lots of things, but they never assemble them into the whole required to see around the corner. It is said that people like Mozart look at a piano, and it makes perfect sense to them right away.

We all have moments of clarity I suppose, we regular people. You know many things, some barely impressions, and they coalesce occasionally into hard, fast, ideas. And I saw that child and saw what I should have seen before it happened this last time. There was a frame for the picture, and everything in it.

His little ear was the size of a saucer. Stoicism only gets you so far when you’re barely three, and he wept the tears of the disappointed and hurt. And I tended to him as I had been taught, imperfectly, by my ancestors. Draw it out with baking soda and bleach, and then the ice. Sit still and be calm. He sat and watched Clifford with his mother.

And then I went outside and I tore that plaything apart and found those wretched things I knew were there and poisoned them and crushed them and crushed their lairs like an archangel and a devil combined, and afraid only that I would not get a chance to kill every one.