Into The Haze

As I gazed into a world consisting of more fuzziness than the federal government’s accounting practices, I realized that if I’d have been born a few centuries ago, I would have long since met my end by unintentionally walking right off the edge of a cliff.

I was sitting at the eye doctors at the time, while they did some work on my glasses. This left me to rely on my natural vision, which is a bad thing. The world no longer consisted of objects, but more of random hazy splotches that occasionally moved about, sometimes startling me. As I patiently waited for my spectacles to be returned to me, I realized that if the workers suddenly turned evil and didn’t give them back, I wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. Wait, I take that back, what I mean is couldn’t do anything useful about it. I could try to threaten them, but I wouldn’t even know if I was facing in the right direction, or I could try physical action, but I’d probably end up tackling a coat rack or perhaps a wall.

That’s when I began to wonder what it’d be like if I was born before glasses were invented. Hundred of years ago, the average lifespan was much shorter, and most people attribute it to lack of advancement in the medicinal fields, along with grocery stores and Monday Night Football. However, I’m pretty sure that a large part of it had to do with people who couldn’t see very well who'd wander around until they ended up in the middle of a cattle stampede or something.

If I had no means to correct my vision, I’d basically be toast. I’d be able to notice any danger within six inches of my face, but beyond that it’d be like looking at a watercolor done by a two-year-old with a short attention span. (Wait, is “two-year-old with a short attention span” sort of redundant?) Luckily, in this modern age I don’t have to really worry about this, assuming, of course, that the people at the eye doctors keep from turning evil on me. Maybe I should slip them a few bucks every now and then, just to keep them on my side.

Graph Search (And Steamed Beets)

Originally, this post was going to be centered around the absolutely ridiculous amount of people with colds at my workplace, which has turned it from a place of relative quiet into an ear-deafening sea of non-stop coughing. However, there’s not much more to say about this besides, “Eeeeewwww!” and, “Hasn’t anybody ever heard of cough drops?!”

Instead, in a transparent attempt to be contemporarily relevant, I’m shifting my attention to Facebook and its new feature Graph Search, which is a horrible name to say the least. Without going into details, mainly because I’ve only spent about two minutes total reading about it, it’s an overhaul of the search box that allows you to type in naturally phrased questions and then displays results based on the personnel information people were dumb enough to have entered at one point or another and exposed through various privacy settings.

So, I assume I could use it to ask, “How many of my male friends like Rascal Flatts?” Upon getting the results, I could then mock them all mercilessly, without having had to check all of their individual profiles to gather that information. How helpful!

Apparently, this search doesn’t supersede (big word of the day!) the privacy settings that a given user has set up, so only the information you choose to expose can be found and returned. Still, in an absolutely non-surprising turn of events, this has raised a tidal wave of outrage from people complaining about how Facebook is exploiting their users’ personnel information for their own gain, to which the obvious reply is, “Duh. How have you not caught on to this yet?”

I also read that the search results are heavily based upon what you’ve “liked”. To me, this sounds like a golden opportunity for mischief, and I figure that everybody should “like” things they really don’t, in order to skew future searches and return amusing results. For example, it’d be funny if a search for restaurant recommendations came back with something like Greasy Bob’s Bait Shop And Drive-Thru. (Motto: “Ecologically sound! Whatever we don’t use for one, we put in the other!”)

With that in mind, I should go and “like” thing such as Jersey Shore, Honey Boo Boo, pushups, navel lint, gigantic federal bureaucracies, and steamed beets.

But I won’t “like” Rascal Flatts. I still have my dignity.

Growing Up In HD

Looking at today’s sophisticated technology, I’m relieved I got my growing up out of the way a long time ago. Growing up in today’s world would not be fun.

When I was a kid, the only cameras available weighed about three hundred pounds each and used film. So not only did you have to wrestle with the bulky monstrosity just to take a picture, you also had to go through the work of sending the film out to get developed. What a pain! Just the thought of it makes me want to lie down and rest for several hours. Plus, you never knew what the pictures were going to look like until you got them back and realized your thumb was partially in front of the lens on every single picture in the roll.

As a result of these layers of difficulty and uncertainty, I starred in relatively few pictures while growing up, and they're all grainy and unfocused, making me look like some of the early Bigfoot photographs. I could easily have had a bad hair day, perhaps even a bad hair year, and looking back now nobody would even be able to tell. Personally, I like this. It adds some mystique to my life.

Today’s kids aren’t so lucky. Taking pictures is ridiculously easy with digital cameras, and their quality is impeccable. Kids don’t even have a chance. I mean, if you’re a child of the digital age who had a perpetual runny nose during the first and second grades, all eight thousand pictures and videos taken of you during that time are sure as heck going to show it, to the point of eerily resembling Niagra Falls. And don’t even get me started on zits. (shudder)

Just think of the amount of blackmail material parents can compile on their children these days. It’s nothing short of staggering. Imagine what they could share when their sixteen-year old brings home his first date, should they want to exercise their parental option of completely humiliating their offspring for the total fun of it:

“Here’s a ten minute video of Jimmy running through the yard in his underwear and a Spider-Man mask. I think he was thirteen at the time.”

“Here’s two-hundred and fifty high-res pics of Jimmy on his sixth birthday, when all he wanted to do, for some strange reason, was pick his nose. I still get queasy looking at them. I could text you a few, if you want!”

“This is when the fort Jimmy was trying to build fell over on him and pinned him to the ground. It was hysterical!”

“Here’s a video of Jimmy in a diaper singing some ‘N Sync song. He’s using a popsicle as a microphone! It’s just priceless!”

As a kid these days, your only real hope is that your parents take so many pictures that they become totally unmanageable. In that case, they’ll be spread out among five or six hard-drives, never to be organized, and impossible to sift through. Either that or you could strategically delete them when nobody’s looking. (Better hurry with that one though, before they’re all stored in the cloud and showing up on random advertisements all over the web. That, however, is another story.)

The Dentist Test

For me, escaping from the dentist without needing any restorative work is like studying minimally for a test and still somehow passing. Whenever this occurs, I sprint out of the office laughing like a super-villain.

Suckers! Don’t they know what I eat? Ha-ha! See you in six months!

Keeping with the test-taking metaphor, I always cram for dentist appointments. The morning of said appointment, I’ll brush my teeth extra well and make certain to floss exhaustively, as if doing so will make up for the six months prior of being less than diligent in those regards. Right before the appointment, I’ll brush my teeth a second time. I tell myself that it’s so I have fresh breath and won’t gross out the dentist, but I think that somewhere deep down inside of me I’m also hoping that it will impress the dentist enough that he’ll just give me free pass. (“Well, several of his teeth are fizzing like a volcano about to erupt, but he was nice enough to have fresh breath, so I think I’ll let it go.”)

What’s nerve-wracking for me is that I never learn my fate until the very end of the appointment. The hygienist first spends twenty minutes cleaning my teeth but never commenting on what she’s seeing. Obviously, it’s not her decision if any work will be needed, but I wouldn't mind if she gave a few hints, such as by saying, “Whoa! It looks like gophers have been making holes all over in here!” Then at least I’d be resigned to my fate and could give up hope early of escaping unscathed.

Eventually, just as my anxiety is reaching a peak, the dentist finally comes in and starts poking around in my mouth, at which time he also asks how I’m doing and if I have any vacations coming up. This is a standard dentist joke, I believe, and I never answer him.

As the dentist examines my mouth, he’ll make little noises such as “Hmm”, “Humm”, and “Uh-huh”, but they aren’t enough to give me a clue as to what my ultimate fate is going to be. Again, I’d prefer a blunter approach, such as if he said, “Sweet! This is really gonna help with the boat payments!”

Eventually, he’ll get sick of prodding around and lets me sit up. Then he’ll give me my final grade. If I miraculously pass and escape without the need for any follow-up appointments, I’ll leave the office not only laughing like a super-villain, but also feeling smug for having brushed my teeth twice that day, which was what obviously led to such a favorable outcome. If I fail, I’ll shuffle out dejectedly, promising myself that I'll do better next time, possibly by brushing my teeth three times on the day of my next appointment.