Traditional Crazy
The Google age has ruined wracking your mind to the point of a breakdown while trying to locate an essentially useless piece of information that you know is in there. I have always been stubborn about asking people questions regarding a forgotten meaningless item; I derive a sense of accomplishment upon at last digging a pointless fact out of the rubble in my mind. I consider such the mental equivalent of the slightly pathetic and disgusting activity of using your tongue to dislodge a morsel stuck between teeth, even though there are toothpicks in the kitchen.
When I was fifteen in 1974, attempting to recall a certain song by Olivia Newton John nearly drove me over the edge. I recalled Olivia having two country songs that were very much alike, but I could only remember one–Let Me Be There. For those of you unfamiliar with the tune, it is an upbeat country pop thing with a guy singing an extremely deep bass harmony. And it sounded just like another song that I could not remember, but it was so close. After a couple days If You Love Me (Let Me Know) emerged from the rubble. And I experienced a great satisfaction for not giving in and asking my know it all brother (who probably would have gone dunce on me if I had). I’m including both songs at the end of the post. They are so incredibly alike that Olivia should have sued herself for plagiarism, which wouldn’t be nearly as dumb as the members of Creedence Clearwater Revival suing former leader John Fogarty for sounding too much like himself.
Sadly, if the situation happened today, I would have turned to google during day one of the war.
Funny how the world works–the past and present are always sniping at each other while the future constantly annihilates all. The old die, the young get old and new young come along to hold up their side of the war. You’d think we’d have caught on to the futility of it all by now. Still, nowadays, we are a society that has an alarming amount of technologically equipped dumbasses (of all ages) who instantly google anything that sounds like a question and remember the answer for only as long as needed. People need to periodically challenge themselves or that thing between their ears will atrophy to the size and intellectual potency of a craisin. We forget that machines are tools and should not run our lives.
Drinks cost too much to throw them in people’s faces the way I used to, but that will happen if anyone says to me “all right, Boomer.” A hearty Fu-u-u-u-ck you to anyone who wants to go there. But, damn it, too much of today’s fiction is about apps and websites and texting and fixing labels to human beings who stack nicely in a spreadsheet. Such is removed from the human element and places a coat of shrinkwrap on the experience. The main trouble there is that it’s topical fiction, which has a shorter shelf-life than mullberries; obsolescence, not prosperity, waits for it around the corner. And yet, when you give it a chance, the human heart remains as interesting as it was to Shakespeare: beautiful/ugly; mean/kind; selfish/generous. Now, granted you might meet someone on a dating app–but sooner or later all the Borg trappings must be set aside and you will have to talk about weightier subjects than those described by emojis.
This seems as good a place to segue to the week’s stories as any. Each one displays yet another unseen facet of the infinite human experience.
The Week of Stars
There’s nothing overly mechanized or googled by this week’s group of contributors to the site. Four are first time contributors along with a friend who made his twenty-third appearance. The topics are as varied as the writers and their backgrounds, but all have quality, talent, humanity and heart in common.
First timer David Ford opened the week with The Ballad of Simon Bolter. There are some words best left alone by the persnickety element in the language and “Highwayman” is one of those, for all the alternatives sound silly. This is a fun and witty little piece about the Falstaffian business model surviving into another century.
Sushma R. Doshi wrote about another viewpoint that survives from age to age though it really needs to stop. What’s In a Drink? should give persons who live in the West cause to appreciate some of the freedoms we have. There remain places in the world in which a lone woman of age cannot buy herself a cocktail without causing a stir. The subtlety of the conditioning that the MC is fighting is brilliantly displayed.
There is humor in almost all human endeavors, especially in the workplace. Amita Basu proves that the human outlook on the job is pretty much the same everywhere we go in Backsides. Like good satirical pieces there’s a deeper meaning behind the smiles.
Nico Gurdjian turned down the lights on Thursday with After Dark. This is as fine a bit of setting and character development as you’d ever want to see. The interaction between a dying woman and a caring AI are brilliantly presented and the narrative sweeps you along to a sad but satisfying end.
Marco Etheridge appeared for the twenty-third time with Frankie and the Wildman. Everything Marco writes is unexpected yet resonates with truth. Usually the performers in such entertainments are either portrayed as monsters or objects of pity. Marco makes each one a three-dimensional human being.
I thank the writers who performed this week as well as the persons who took the time to read their works. And I shine special praise for those who left comments. Let’s hope that the trend continues for many years to come.
Before turning you over to the late great Olivia, I leave you with lists of the new-fangled good, the bad and one needed.
Five Good New Things
GPS (it is pretty awesome)
Bluetooth Speaker (They don’t take up half the living room)
What Napster Did to the Evil Record Companies (remember them?)
Energy Drinks (at 64, I still drink a pot of coffee and three orange flavored Rock
Stars a day. Sometimes I get a bit tense.)
24-Hour Drive Thru Fast Food Places (Those workers are heroes)
Five Better Off On the Drawing Board
Micro Flash Fiction (write haikus instead.)
Pot-Pot, Pot-Pot, Everybody Smokes Pot–(My home town smells like an explosion inside a Cheech and Chong movie. I’m glad weed is gaining legality, but it is the only “chemical diversion” I dislike. Tastes like a sore throat and I hate the smell. Plus it makes people less there.)
“Green” Hippies (I liked them better when they looked like tye-dyed Mary and Jesus, dropped yellow microdot, lived in VW vans and drove across the country constantly seeking freedom, man.)
American Soccer Color Commentators (Former players who pipe obnoxiously from their noses. These guys and girls sound like the same, whiny person.)
Non-smokers (I must include the non-cigarette smoking weed tokers who are under the specious impression that doobie is somehow healthier to suck into your lungs than tobacco–see you guys at the Iron Lung Festival)
One Thing That Still Needs Inventing
Star Trek phaser–(I just need one. Figure one “example” will cause people to take me seriously on the freeway.)
Leila
literally stories 
CCR is a long time favorite despite its short existence. Their last album The Long Road Home tells a story. Unlike the earlier ones dominated by Fogarty that one had all the members writing and singing lead, but the only good one “Sweet Hitchhiker” featured John. I never researched it, but my guess is that the other guys wanted their turn and the result was so bad they split. John hated the label and sang a song about it. He was so upset that his brother took the other side that he wouldn’t visit him as he died. To an extent, the short reign and the explosive disintegration resembles a band from Liverpool.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Good morning, Doug
What happened with CCR is tragic and happens too often when money and ego get out of hand with people maybe not yet mature enough to handle the chaos or question the hangers on who call them genius. Poor Tom got AIDS I believe from a blood transfusion like Arthur Ashe. Mysterious ways, they say.
Thank you,
Leila
LikeLiked by 1 person
Leila –
Well said. It’s a good day in the neighborhood which I hope extends as far north as BC. Keep on rocking in this most possible of all worlds.
Little Old Man
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes, Doug it is quite lovely out all the way to the pole! I hope that you and your Editor have a great weekend.
Leila
LikeLike
Hi Doug
I have seen Kiss Me Deadly on TCM. Ralph was an underrated actor. I recall the last scene when the woman opens the case and everything goes to hell. The film Pulp Fiction used the glowing briefcase contents as an homage to the Meeker Flick.
Keep rocking onward,
Leila
LikeLiked by 1 person
An entertaining Saturday post as always. I don’t know if they’re new enough to qualify, but I’d add home espresso makers to the good and the myriad of coffee shop flavored coffees to the bad. I’d also nudge micros from the bad to the good … though haikus are dood, too.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you David
The updated phrase “That and nine bucks will buy you a cup of coffee” really fails to make the point .
Leila
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m guessing you’d have to increase that $9 in San Francisco. Here in Portlandia home on the deranged, I saw a grilled cheese for $3.25 on the menu. Good deal! Oops that was for the added bacon, base sandwich $19.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Great post Leila and thanks you for holding the fort yet again while i travelled in our VW van between where I come from and where I am. I think . Yes to the phaser can I have one as well and I’ll share my cloak of invisibility with you and my any language translator implant – although thinking about it maybe that would be best if I just get you your own! inplant sort of says it all.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hi Diane
Yes a universal translator like in Star Trek (funny how they all breathed the same air) would be very cool. I always wanted a VW van, but I did own a 1968 Beetle in after High School. Wouldn’t do more than sixty but got fantastic mileage.
Welcome home.
Leila
LikeLike
1970s Colorado. We hated to see those vans on a mountain road. They were Nova in
Spanish.
LikeLiked by 1 person
A Star Trek Phaser would indeed be most useful in traffic. Also well worth inventing would the Omega Three Drive from ‘Galaxy Quest’ that rolls the present back fifteen seconds or so, allowing you to start again with more success.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hello Michael
Indeed the “Do-over drive” would be handy as would the tricorder (sp). Imagine having one of those on the sly and selling your remarkable diagnostic talent, all due to a contraption that looks suspiciously like an old tape recorder.
Leila
LikeLike
Leila,
Best week of stories ever.
Ed McConnell
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hi Ed
That’s fine praise for the week’s writers. Thank you for sharing it!
Leila
LikeLike
Great line: ‘digging a pointless fact out of the rubble in my mind’ – a very familiar feeling. I purposely, when I have a name or a person, film, song, book, on the tip of my tongue drive myself to the point of madness before giving in to the ease of Google.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you Paul,
I just happened to be loitering in WordPress when this came in. Just yesterday, I fought it out with my memory until I remembered “Ralph Meeker.” So it goes.
Leila
LikeLike
“Kiss Me Deadly” Ralph Meeker in Mickey Spillane’s “Kiss Me Deadly” with very early Cloris Leachman tortured and killed early. 1955. Perversely appealing to me, perhaps because it was absurd. Watch if you get a chance.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hi Leila,
Sorry I’m a bit behind – Hoping to catch up today and in the process of doing so!
Oh and your post has given me my song choice for next Saturday’s Posting.
Your observations are as astute as always. I like your thoughts on ‘preferred’, or should I say ‘common’ topics now-a-days. When you think on it, there is only so much that we can write about falsehoods. (Not sure if that word works but I’m sure you will know what I mean) True emotion is much more interesting. Human emotion is all about opposites but also not so. We can laugh at something tragic, cry at something happy or vice versa. Anger can be linked to loss or shame. Happiness can come from sadness – It is all so mixed that it is a privilege to write. We can take the same situation and write about it in many a way.
But no offence, the idea of ‘Oh my fuck, my AI companion is learning’ is done and dusted after the first example of ‘Oh my fuck, my AI companion is learning.’!
I love your lists. I’d say for:
Good New Things:
– Anything by Tarrantino (I don’t think I’ll ever be able to spell his name!)
– Smokehead Whisky (It’s new to me!)
– Being bald (No more haircuts)
Bad New Things:
– Being bald (Shaving my head takes longer than the haircuts!)
– Mobiles
– Reality TV
– Those choke your leg trousers that have even sneaked into sodding work-wear.
-Blue trousers and brown shoes – I’m colour blind and can still see what a tragedy that is!
I have a list of many, many more!
For the invention – I’d like a sleep as long as you want thingy but still wake up when you need to.
I probably had a childish schoolboy crush on the lovely Oliva but that isn’t the reason that I wouldn’t slag off her two songs.
…I like The Quo so similar sounding songs is somewhat of a moot point!!
Brilliant as always!
Hugh
LikeLike
Hello Hugh
Thank you for your observations. Yes indeed a magical sleep outside of time and come back when you are damn good and ready is something that is badly needed. I think that all the AI storylines were covered by Asimov and the others in the 40’s and 50’s and ever since its just so much refitting.
Leila
LikeLike
Re: cigarette smoking. and bad things.. here in B. C. Canada it’s illegal to smoke tobacco in a bus shelter or less than 10 feet from a doorway, but you’re perfectly allowed to take out your pipe and suck in the crystal meth. And yes, pot is everywhere… or is it a skunk? Or maybe a skunk smoking pot? West coast skunks do that, I hear. That brings back memories, CCR and Olivia Newton-John. She was a very bubbly friendly person, I know because a friend of a friend of mine met her and told me so. and….Getting info. from the mind like dislodging stuff from between the teeth… hmmm, never thought about it that way. Google and dental floss make things easier, but somehow less satisfying…….
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hello Harrison
Skunk and skank is exactly what we called cheap weed way back when. I no longer catch that sharper odor the illegal stuff had. More proof that the former criminals who used to deal should be in charge of it. Despite my dislike of pot I found it ridiculous that getting busted with a joint could send you to jail and prevent you from getting a good job.
Thank you for stopping by
Leila
LikeLike