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I'm still alive, although the last couple days have been kind of touch and go. I'm not going to bother you with the details of my stomach virus. I've inflicted those on enough people already.
I know I'm bad about updating this journal, but at least I rarely impose any of this type stuff on you: The Seven Sins of Blogging.
I do, however, post stuff like this, just to see if I can continue to trick you into clicking on my links.
... but I doubt I'll be lonely.
www.cummingfirst.com (It's safer than you think.)
Tell me you could read that with a straight face. (And remember, lying is a sin.)
It has a light side
It has a dark side
It binds the universe together
I say that first line to kids these days (and by "kids" I mean late teens to early 20s -- yes, I'm an old fart) and they just smile and nod. But looking into their eyes I see the same lack on comprehension that is their permanent state it seems. "You don't know what I mean do you?"
"Yeah. Uh… no. Not really."
So then I tell them the rest of it, and the very brightest of them get it. Others I have to draw a picture and explain all the details. Finally at some point the light comes on. They experience the shining revelation that there was a point to my seemingly random and illogical comment.
Suddenly, they wake up out of their stupefied existence and embrace a whole new, wide world of subtlety and nuance. They stop taking everything and face value and question what they hear and strive to understand the deeper meaning of human speech.
No. I'm lying. They just go back to nodding and smiling whenever they hear something they don't understand. They're pretty sure it supposed to be a joke, so they laugh. They think it makes them seem clever, but they don't realize they the dumbest thing you can do is laugh at a joke you don't get.
They ask a question and get "42" as the answer. It doesn't make any sense. They have no idea why the person would say that. They nod and laugh. But their eyes give them away. The clue light stays off. Suddenly they've become the punch line.
But, I'm not just talking about dumb kids -- the ones who'll have a hard time mastering the most important phrase of their life: "You want fries with that?" But, supposedly smart, well educated students -- this generations the brightest and the best.
When I was in High School, I was an average student. My math classes by year were Algebra I, Geometry, Algebra II, and Trigonometry. That's as far as I got. Not because I was dumb -- because I was average. Today, I hear students taking AP (advanced placement) Calculus II in high school. That should be a second year college course by the standards I went to school under. But ask them to do simple math. "Okay, six times eight, plus seven, what's that?"
Tell them "42." They'll believe you. When you laugh, they'll pull out a calculator and still get it wrong. But somehow they're passing math classes I never got to. How is this possible?
I weep for the future. Not the future to come, but the one I'm living in now. This is the 21st century. I was brought up to expect flying cars and personal jet packs. But, no, I was reading the wrong books. I should have paid more attention to H. G. Wells. I'm living in a society that's rapidly being taken over by Morlocks.
PS: Bizarre synchronicity. The blogging software I use for this throws up random quotes at the bottom on the page. When I previewed this the first time, the quote I got was: "The future is not something we enter. The future is something we create."—Leonard Sweet
We have to do better.
:blush:
Yahoo! News - Police: Woman Tried to Pass Fake $1M Bill
Some people would probably read this as a stupid criminal story, I think it's just a stupid 'person' story. She probably sincerely believed she had a one million dollar bill. Futhermore, I have no doubt she expected to get $998,325 in change back out of the till at Wal-mart. Wal-mart for chrissakes! If I'm going on a shopping spree with a million dollars, I think I could find someplace better than Wal-mart to spend it. Sheesh.
Oh well, this is the land of, "I'm gonna buy me a double-wide and move to Alabama."
I have a reading lamp that clamps to the headboard of my bed. About a year ago I needed to replace it and bought this fancy little one that used a tiny halogen bulb. Yesterday, for the second time, the bulb burned out. I went to the store to look for a new one and just couldn't do it. I couldn't pay six dollars again for a bulb for that lamp. The lamp only cost about fifteen dollars when I bought it. I bought a new lamp that for five dollars and a pack of regular bulbs for it. Now, I have a lamp that I'm not using, which doesn't have a working bulb, but I can't bring myself to throw away. :satisfied:
Since I don't have anything else right now...
I lost a contact lens yesterday. I don't know how. It just… vanished. I had taken my lenses out and thrown them away Monday night. Then yesterday, I put a new pair in. First the right -- no problem, then the left. Then I looked around and something wasn't right. I could see fine out of my left eye, but the right was like I didn't have a lens in. I checked. I didn't. It didn't make sense that it had come out. I would have noticed. But it definitely wasn't in my eye. I couldn't find anywhere that it had fallen out. I just had to get another one and put it in. I have no idea where that first lens went.
