January 2020 – Still Finding Fun

Tuned In

One of life’s great conundrums, at least to me, is how we as a modern civilization have the collective attention span of a squirrel on speed but can binge-watch television shows for hours on end.

I blame the decline in our ability to pay attention to anything for very long on the electronification of our lives, what with computers and televisions and telephones and social media all demanding that we look and listen and follow and respond all the time. Heck, most people can’t even go out to a restaurant for a nice romantic dinner without setting their phones on the table because, you know, something might be more diverting on that device than what’s happening in life as it’s lived around them.

I, too, am not immune to this trend as my attention span has dwindled dramatically over the years, so I am astounded that so many people can sit still for so long to watch not just television but the same show on and on, episode after episode, season after season.

And, yes, I realize my critique of popular TV viewing habits puts me at odds with almost all of you, dear readers, and that in your eyes I am a culturally deprived buffoon, a criticism borne out by the laughable ignorance I have with popular culture clues while doing the New York Times crossword puzzle (“Receptionist on The Office?” No idea. “Bartender on The Simpsons?” I got nothing). And I have no defense against your rebuttal that you would rather watch paint dry than sit through some of the sporting events that I regularly view.

Howsomever, I stand by my assertion that watching 14 hours of Orange is the New Black without even getting up from the couch to go pee is not something to be proud of.

But even if it is, I think we should all stop for a moment – or hit the pause button, as the case may be – and consider the larger picture, and I don’t mean the one on your TV as opposed to the one on your phone. Fewer people are reading books, claiming they “don’t have the time.” Fewer people are paying attention to world affairs, saying “it’s too boring.” Fewer people are talking to each other, even on the phone, because texting is easier and, of course, it saves time.

And we all know what you’re saving all that time to do, don’t we?

I’m not saying you should turn off your TV; I like television and having grown up with naught but three channels (four if you count public TV, which you don’t when you’re a kid) one of the happiest days of my life was when I got satellite TV with its wasteland of viewing so vast it boggles the mind. But I think life is better with a balance, so perhaps tonight you might think about reading a book for a while or listening to music for a bit or, here’s a thought: Sit and talk with the other person in the room with you.

That’s what I’m going to do. Definitely. A bit of in-depth conversation with the wife. Some personal one-on-one time.

Right after I watch that soccer game I recorded.

On Drugs

Now that there is government health care for all (of me), I’ve begun paying closer attention to those drug commercials on TV that I always ignored because I knew I couldn’t afford them. Because, hey, you never know what ailment you’re going to discover you have after Googling some disease and thinking, hmmm, yes, I could very well be sick with that.

But then you hear the fine print. Such as the possible side effects, which the announcers read really fast as if they think you’ll miss the parts about projectile vomiting, intense diarrhea, excruciating pain, hair loss, and potential heart stoppage. But not to worry! You’ll have clear skin and white teeth!

My favorite disclaimer, however, is the one that says “Don’t take this drug if you are allergic to it.”

Really? That’s ridiculous, because it assumes the drug-taking citizenry is too stupid to know better than to take something that’s bad for them.

Wouldn’t a better disclaimer be “Don’t take this drug if you can’t afford it” because we all know the pharmaceutical industry is not just scraping by selling life-saving drugs at barely above cost.

And why is medicine being advertised on TV like any other product, anyway? I mean, they tell us to ask our doctor about such-and-such drug; am I supposed to go in and say, “Hey, Doc, I heard about this really neat drug on TV that is supposed to help me have a healthier lifestyle. Think I should try some? Got any free samples?”

In olden days they had these hucksters travel from town to town conning the rubes into buying secret elixirs and special potions that would supposedly cure whatever ailed you. These cure-alls usually were made up of odds and ends mixed in with cheap liquor.

We’ve come a long way from those days of gullibility and lack of regulation: You don’t even get any liquor in your medicine now.

Slightly Awry

So I’ve come to the belated conclusion that there must be something just a bit off kilter about myself, a conclusion I’m sure my wife and others acquainted with me have either known for some time or certainly suspected.

I’m not sure if my polarity is reversed, my electromagnetic field is on the fritz, my karma needs rebooting, or I am simply poor at beating the odds. Scientifically speaking, my luck in certain areas is practically non-existent.

How else to explain the fact that there should be a 50 percent chance of inserting a USB device into a computer port the first time, but my percentage hovers near zero? (I know, a lot of the USB devices are helpfully marked to tell you which side is up, but usually I’m inserting them when either I or the computer are upside down and in dim lighting under a desk with my head banging into something.)

And electrical plugs are the same. OK, I readily admit that, again, I don’t take the time to look at the plug, see where the big prong is, line it up with the big slot, and plug it in. I prefer the method that worked when I was a kid and we didn’t worry about electrical safety but made up for it with equality of electrical pronghood sizes: you just shoved the sucker in and it fit.

You would think that occasionally I would guess correctly but you would be wrong and I have plenty of bent prongs on my plugs to prove it. And of course you are already nodding to yourself that, yes, I bet all of his extension cords are knotted in a hopeless mess even though he carefully rolled them up the last time he put them away.

It could be that all that useless jabbing at outlets and untangling cords has sent my electromagnetic field out of whack because something sure does cause stoplights to turn red every time I drive up to one.

Then there are garden hoses, the bane of my outdoor existence. Do you know how much money I’ve spent on hoses guaranteed not to kink? All I have to do is touch a hose and it instinctively kinks up, and if I drag one across the yard it automatically snags on a rock or a twig or sometimes even an invisible obstacle that only it can see. My hoses do not wind or unwind on those hose winder devices that are supposed to let them effortlessly whir in and out of sight because, well, they just prefer not to.

And, no, my hoses now hibernating for the winter in my basement are not all neatly coiled in loops, awaiting a kinkless spring of leakless watering because I refuse to wrestle them into submission any more, preferring to save them the trouble of tangling themselves up by simply dragging them pre-snarled into the dank, dark basement where they can rot for all I care.

Anyway, I try not to let all this get to me – OK, the hoses are still bothering me – because I realize that I am fortunate in many ways and that I am proficient, competent and not lacking in expertise in many areas.

I’ll write a post about them just as soon as I think of some.

Don’t Call Us …

There are a lot of annoying people in the world, but as we all know some of the worst are those telemarketers who target you with incessant sales pitches, usually at the most inconvenient times.

Recently, the calls began picking up in frequency at my house, where due to reasons of neighborhood cell tower scarcity we still maintain an old-fashioned land line. Alas, the reason was that my 65th birthday was approaching, which meant I would be eligible for Medicare. So everyone was trying to help the soon-to-be-senior citizen, particularly insurance companies who have been ripping me off for the last 45 years who suddenly have my best interests at heart and want to assure me they will inexpensively fill in the gaps in my coverage that Medicare won’t cover.

Then there were all the experts who wanted to help walk me step by step through the complicated process of applying for Medicare (how generous of them, I thought, to offer their expertise to me; I wondered if there would be some slight service charge).

It turned out that I was able to navigate Medicare without any telemarketing assistance, and all those calls ultimately stopped after my birthday. But now that I am an authentic, government-approved senior citizen, I worry that I will now be targeted by other, less scrupulous callers who think I will be easy pickings because of my declining brain functions (I readily admit those functions may be in decline, but for reasons other than advancing age).

For instance, it used to be you could tell it was a sales call by caller ID identifying it as a 1-800 type number. But now they have this scam going where they have fake numbers; it started with it being local numbers, so you would think it was some friend whose number you didn’t recognize. Then it escalated into the time I checked the caller ID and saw that somehow I seemed to be calling myself, since the phone had my name and number as the caller. Really? How is this even possible? Or legal?

The second time it happened, I picked up the phone (I’m of two minds about answering telemarketers and robocallers; on the one hand I’ve read that you should not answer and they’ll think the number is invalid, but my wife believes that I should answer and that if I ask politely to remove our number from their call list they will do so. Sometimes I wonder if my wife also believes in unicorns that fart rainbows out their asses. But don’t tell her I said that.) and said, “Hi! Is this me? Or is it I?”

Sadly, I heard only a pause, then the dial tone. I’m not sure, existentially, what exactly that means.