Uncle Alfalfa Feels Better

 

Part 17 of 30

My Fragile Self-Esteem

Seeing myself in a crowd of people, indistinguishable from a bunch of idiots, really was the last straw for my withering self esteem. They say nighttime, our dreams, the interplay of hormones and zygotes, then zygotes taking on unicorns, the next thing you know you're either waking up a loser in the freak show or with a new, better, exciting and above-average breakthrough.

It happened to me. I actually felt it coming on me just before falling asleep. My toes were tingling, the hair on my legs stiffened, there was some unpleasant backfiring in the privates region, my stomach churned (in a good way), and my lungs -- this was scary -- only worked every other breath. One side breathed, then the other. That’s when I realized this was a genuine breakthrough and not just my physical form giving up the ghost. I opened my mouth like a werewolf and my eyes were on fire. I knew I would either wake up on the warpath or happily ever after.

I got up, paced the floor for an hour, put on my yellow tweed suit, and literally thrust my arm through the wall. I muttered to myself what I love saying to my enemies when I spray machine gun fire in their general direction: “That could’ve been your head...” Then I spit, took out my chaw and worked on a new plug. (If you haven’t chewed tobacco lately, for a plug nickel you can still get a nickel’s worth of plug, which isn’t as much as you could get in the Old West but it’s still nothing to sneeze at. For that you need ragweed.)

In one strange last straw moment I felt, indeed, this was the last straw. And did precisely what the moment called for, ramming my meaty fist through the slender wall, which, again, could’ve been your head. I wasn't discriminating. Anyway, the hole opened on tiny room I didn’t know about, which was the cubbie-hole where the house used to have a telephone. I reached in and first latched on to a mouse, which I promptly pulled out and dropped. Then I felt around, a nasty scatter of mouse poop, finally pulling out a small sheet of paper from an old notepad.

Shaking more mouse poop off, I held the notepad in the light and read an ancient note: “Uncle Alfalfa feels better.” This couldn’t have been more helpful to me if it'd been the Gettysburg Address in Lincoln's own notes. Because I am an uncle and my childhood nickname for about two weeks was Alfalfa, which I spurned at the time. See my excitement here? The lesson I took from it was, Just as Uncle Alfalfa felt better in the past, so could an Uncle once known as Alfalfa (2 weeks, maybe a week) feel better in the present day! Wow. Celebrate with me.

This stunning discovery was just the breakthrough I needed to reinvigorate my fragile self-esteem!

Sloshing Tankards of Grog, Phones Ruint

1814

At the Boar's Head Public House, Andermatt, Switzerland, peasants from the countryside and the people of the village are joyously sloshing tankards of grog in great celebration. The grog makers are bringing it in as fast as they can put it out. The tankards are being filled and downed, filled and sloshed boisterously.

Certainly everybody there is merrily sloshed, whether out of their own drinking or their being sloshed by a neighbor. What a happy time, "Here's mud in your eyes!"

The keeper of the Boar's Head -- old Jeremias Boarshead -- later cleaning up the dam place, thinks back on the festivities. He pauses with his brooms and mops and recalls even his own brother in the mix there, sloshing with the worst of them, calling out in celebration, "You dirty bastard!" to the merriment of all.

There were no enemies, only the best of friends in those days -- a neutral place -- when the grog was flowing. Even if sober and dry they would've been enemies. But a tankard of grog in your mouth or coming through the air is the great leveler of a people.

2014

The same damned place is going strong, with some updates, some improvements, maybe. The sink's got a new layer of porcelain. The big difference is the drinkers, coming in as they so often do with phones, computers, and all these dam devices. It's technology on them, the delicate, dainty widdle technology, that nobody can get grog in or its delicate mechanism is spoilt, ruint.

So when the spirit gets lively, from whence it comes, and the grog is flowing, and the shouts of "bastard" are at their most fevered pitch, you hear the saddest words known to man, "Oh, dam, you bastard, you only now just ruint my phone!" The man runs quickly to the back room to grab paper towels, getting it out of the plastic case as hurried as possible and getting it dried off. It spritzes and flashes before blinking off black. "Out the door with me!" he declares, going out the back door.

But the spirit's still lively, though, in the main hall. I'm right under the massive head of some massive animal attached to the wall. A boar, its head. There's drippings from its hair, trickling down its forehead, on to the glass eyes and running much quicker, skipping the nose and making it straight to the lips and chin, and running quickly and dripping endlessly, depending on how much grog there was we got flying.

Bastard me! I turn to check my messages just as a tankard crisscrossed the room, unbeknownst to me. Thankfully, mercy heavens, I heard the whiz and was able to get my phone under my pocket liner just in time to celebrate the tankard's explosive arrival at the big boar's head. More spray going everywhere! I give a hardy and hale shout, "Yea!" Doubling down, I crash a tankard into another bastard's tankard and it sloshes us good. A little gal with a tray's down below, beaming up at us. Cute little thing.

But nothing would be the same, would it, for a studious fellow opening his iPad in this frenzy, only to have it doused with the sloshing by six good mates crashing tankards all at once, going in toward one the others in a conjunction that could easily only possibly end in one big mess. He looks down at his iPad on the spritz, splashed now beyond recognition as a working and vital device. The bastard's gone, it's dead, ruint...

High Tor, the cash register guy, moves through the crowd with his raincoat. We all have to laugh, as we look over and see such a massed assembly of raincoats, plastic wraps, umbrellas, and various diversionary heavy tarps looming over the delicate integrated mechanisms of the register. The son of a bitch was made to communicate with the outside world, it was. Foolishly! They could've done better with a wooden drawer. This thing beams its workings to the office, where the accountant, Old Max, dwells, and from there it's a pushed button's job to relay the accounted sum to the local banking establishment. And in a crowd like this, O!, it was so constantly busy!

Yeah, well ... I poke this one crazy bastard in the ribs, who looks at me with stupid happiness all over his face till he sees my grand plan at once. We will soak the cash register with grog, and let it spritz its way across the floor, if its source of energy will allow it! And so we do. And so it's ruint! The old boy knows the other guys more than me, and we assembled all ourselves around the thing -- we're truly too wasted to be held culpable for our actions -- and it was round robin, one by one, dousing it in grog. A roar of celebration went up as it fell to the floor and spritzed and jumped like it was limping for dear life, any possible shelter, the shadow of a table. There it died and a host of connections were utterly lost forever.

No sir, 'twouldn't've been this way back in 1814, the longtime bartender of the Boar's Head, laments. Back then they could've made the cash drawer swim to the ceiling and we'd still have been able to pull out the pieces of silver and make it a decent payday. Now we just have to hope the soaking of the wet hasn't extended as far as the bank. And that all our dealings hitherto have beamed their way all the way there. Do you think that they did? I'm putting you all on the honor system. The place now is closing, check back tomorrow. We'll settle all debts.

Ruint phones, computers, pads. Tomorrow. Time is no healer.

They Were Married By Telephone

Here's one of the more unusual stories I've ever heard. And you might agree with me, that, "Now we've heard it all!" But according to the people who were there, every word of it is true.

It could be that you recognize the phone booth in the picture. It's one of the five booths like it left in the United States, with this one just so happening to be at Jefferson, Iowa, also home of Rhesus College. I was trying to find it on Google maps, but having never been there, it's tough to spot.

The weird thing is, all his life Rick said he would never attend a wedding. He made that decision when he was a kid and his parents were trying to get him to dress up to go to an aunt's wedding, one of his least favorite aunts.

Then, however, he met Cynthia, they fell in love, and one thing led to another, and the thought of getting married came up. He hemmed and hawed about how to do it. They thought maybe they could go to Vegas, but still he would have to physically be there for the ceremony, and that was what he wanted to avoid.

Did he love her? Yes, I must say, he loved her with all his heart. Although I personally don't know them, I know in my soul that this was a love for the ages. I was very touched as I watched them bloom and grow together, he from a small child with an aversion to weddings, and she a lovely girl with all the hopes and dreams that most girls have. Then they met, and those of us who were close at hand, I've heard, believed wedding bells one day would ring ... or perhaps not, given his strong feelings on the subject.

Could they? Might they? Would they ... live in sin? That is, to cohabitate without the benefit of the formalizing of vows? It's a dicey issue, as both have always been very devout and true to the doctrinal dictates of their church, having internalized a mile-long slate of rock-solid rules all the way to the core. To go against that was obviously out of the question, even in the face of his prior vow to never attend a wedding service and his burning love for Cynthia.

They thought it over, they weighed their options, they consulted all the better known wedding magazines, some of which run to 1,400 pages, for guidance, how to have a wedding without actually being there. But none of them covered the subject. Then, somehow -- it could have been when he was on the phone with her one night -- an idea came to him like a bolt of lightning from a blue sky, We could have it on the phone!

But what kind of phone? I won't get into all the back and forth on this decision, except to say, discussions ran the gamut, from the earliest hand crank phones in museums, to the rotary phones of the mid 20th century, to the cellphones of today. Then they backed up a bit and thought, how about a phone booth? But phone booths are just about gone ... bummer! But a little Google action on their keyboard, and Eureka! There's still five left in service, including this one in Jefferson, Iowa.

And so ... that's the way it turned out ... Cynthia standing there next to the phone booth, the best man on the receiver conveying Rick's responses to the minister's questions, and they lived happily ever after ... The End.

But that's not really the end, of course, since you could go on and on about who wore what, and so forth. Cynthia was lovely in a flowing gown of white. Being an old fashioned girl, she debated whether she should actually wear white, having been together with Rick many times. But, you know, it's tradition, it doesn't really matter if you're pure anymore. Rick was handsome -- what they could see of him -- upright and tall, metallic and silver, rectangular with red stripes, and a well-oiled door that didn't squeak when the best man attended to his needs.

After the wedding, all the kids tried to see how many of them could jam into the booth, causing Rick on the other end of the line to joke around, "Some of you get out, please, you're smothering me! I can't breathe!" The wedding declared officially over, the minister firing a pistol into the sky on cue, Rick came across the road, having spent his wedding in a building, some building over on the Rhesus campus. I don't know which one, maybe Primate Hall.

He had never vowed that he would avoid wedding receptions, so they all went over and had all the usual fixin's, while the kids outside tied tin cans to their car. The mischief went one step further, however, with them also going through their luggage and spray painting Cynthia's underwear red. That ought to make 'em think!

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Today's blog post is brought to you by

RHESUS COLLEGE,

 Jefferson, Iowa

"Home of the Fighting Monkeys"

RHESUS -- "For All Your Educational Needs"

The Miracle Of Email

I'm getting ready to check my "email," another way to say I'm going to click a virtual button and let my computer find out if anyone has written to me. Just let me pause here a few seconds, and go down here -- it's always on -- and, push, there it is going out wherever it goes; it's compiling a list and readying everything so that I the reader can see what I've got. Which this time turned out to be nothing.

I'm glad it's nothing. That means there's nothing I need to worry about, nothing to open and respond to, no tasks that need to be done like scanning something for someone or going to look up an answer to some relative's question. But it easily could have been something, and if it was that would have been OK too. An advertisement from Amazon.com about an album that came out today. They're very faithful about writing to me with such news.

I'm still happy for the miracle of email, getting to jot a note to someone and send it to them without having to buy a stamp. You might think there's the disadvantage that a lot of people don't check their email very often -- which is true -- so whatever I write might languish in their in-box forever. That's true, I've had that happen, in which cases it's better to use the miracle of the phone. We're past the days of dial-up when the miracle of the phone was thwarted by people online all the time and having busy signals. Someone I'm thinking of was online all the time and let their email languish, so that was the worst of both worlds.

And speaking of having to buy stamps, I've got a letter I need to mail right now and I'm fresh out of stamps. Meaning I need to go buy some stamps before I can get it done. Although you can do that online too, but I still haven't done it. When I need stamps I always need them right now, not tomorrow... Still, relatively speaking, we use a lot less stamps today than we did years ago. And it's not entirely because of the miracle of email -- emailing is good but it's not fail-safe, but mostly because of the miracle of the phone.

The phone is one of our older miracles that's still good. We've had it ever since Alexander Graham Bell first built one. A big old box phone that he hooked on the wall, with a mouthpiece as big around as a pie pan. In later years they miniaturized it, but still you had to have it hardwired in your house. I can well remember having to rent a phone from the phone company. That's just the way it was and the way I figured it'd always be. They were very finicky about getting them back, too. I remember, though, one time, somehow we still had the old phone from the phone company, after a move. I worried about that for a long time.

But back to email. I remember my first email account, and what I was thinking at the time, "What hath God wrought?" Then email quickly went to the dogs, with spam accounts. I don't get much of that anymore. They've devised filters for it, so I'm not sure who's still getting the thousands of messages we used to get. One time I compiled a large graphic of penis-enlargement spams, just the headers, and it was very amusing, but somewhere along the way it got lost.

Anyway, time's up. I have to press on with my day, and wonder, what emails will I get before the day is over? Not very many, I hope.

UPDATE: I was thinking of how fast email became old hat. That's a weird thing, how fast things become passe. If they would've told us 40 years ago that we could mail people from our desk and get a reply in a couple minutes, we would've said, "Wow!!!!!!!!!" But after about the first week of email, it was ho-hum.

The Robotic Voice Of Life

I'm always getting the robotic voice of life, like everyone else, what you get when you dial phone numbers. "Our menu has changed, please listen closely to the options. If you know your party's extension, you may dial it at any time. Please press 1 if you'd rather not listen to me." If only they said that!

The fact that everyone's menu has changed, maybe that's not a fact. I've heard it so often that I'm starting to think it's just a psychological ruse to get you to listen to all the options very carefully. Personally, I'm so pessimistic that they're going to have an option that matches up with my needs that I'm likely to just start pressing random zeros and nines, anything to bypass the crap. I did that today with a zero and it just started over at the top.

It's amazing that it can be (or sound like) an actual human voice, but you're not fooled for a second. Because of the unresponsiveness, for one. But then there's the one that's reciting back numbers you've entered, etc., which is so obviously robotic that there's no question.

Whether all of this is a good idea to those who shove it on us, it's not a good idea from my point of view. I'm sure I'm not alone in hating it. Because there's certain places, I don't know if you can ever get someone on the line. I had a phone company once, I'm sure there's no one who actually works there. It's just computers and robots everywhere and no people, except the guy who turns it on.

They try to make it sound normally human. I'd rather they just made it sound more robotic, like the voices on TV and in movies, where there's more insistence, "Your phone will self destruct in five seconds if you don't make a choice." And he really means it! They could get the voice so malevolent sounding that it'd get your blood flowing. You break out in a sweat because he's already up to "9" and you haven't heard your choice yet.

I've also got the robotic voice in my head. Not on a daily basis, but still... I was driving by a church one day and heard this beeping alarm, an insistent "Uhhht, uhhht, uhht..." like that. The robotic voice I heard was "Baptismal overflowing in Quadrant 4." Of course ministers would be rushing from their prayer closets with buckets. Or at the library, "Intruder entering Door 8." Librarians are dropping their books and running.

Here's a bad robotic voice, the self checkout station at the grocery store, "Please place your item in the bag." Then if you don't, it gets upset, because under the bag is a scale that lets the machine know that you've been non-compliant. I've seen some real screw-ups with these machines, enough that I don't go to them anymore than I have to.

I'll leave you with this happy robotic voice, "Your call is important to us. Estimated wait time is 27 minutes."

I Discovered A Planted Cellphone!

He's at it again ...

It's probably the same guy who planted a secret camera last month, training it on me to get whatever useful information there might be. But if so, he's batting a big fat 0 if his plan is not to get caught, assuming there aren't surveillance devices -- bugs -- around the house that I haven't found yet.

This one was very blatant indeed, an actual cellphone right around the corner on the edge of my desk. I'm just sitting here daydreaming and I see it poking around the edge, and I'm like, "What the---!"

I immediately reached over and got it and it was a live line. The guy had dialed his number, set the phone on the desk, then left my room, knowing I'd be back soon. Apparently he thinks I do a lot of talking out loud when I'm by myself, because he wasn't trying to engage me in conversation.

And, yes, I actually do some talking out loud when I'm by myself -- so this is someone who knows me well enough to know that. In this case, fortunately, I didn't say anything; I was in a wistful, quiet mood for a change. And certainly I wasn't likely to say anything incriminating anyway, mostly because I keep most of that to myself, being by nature reticent to say anything like that without first sweeping the place.

Anyway, what would it be? I haven't done anything especially bad. Of course it depends on who you talk to whether something's bad or not. I generally lead a quiet, respectable life. No one can prove anything insofar as I know. I'm always careful that I'm not being followed, and I don't always take the same route. That's a key thing right there, keep your movements unpredictable. Plus, for the most part I've admitted it -- haven't I? That I'm in a relationship? You want to know more about it? I'll shout it to the world! There!

But for someone out there, apparently it's not enough what I say in public. This slimy little worm's looking for the real goods, leading him to desperate means, any stratagem, hidden cameras and now a hidden cellphone.

I'm looking the phone over right now. I'll be checking it for identifying numbers, etc. It looks like he's got some kind of nail container faceplate on it -- that's good! Yes, it even rattles, good attention to detail. The faceplate says it's the "Bulldog Hardware" brand of wire nails, obviously a fake name. And maybe he's even trying to communicate something to me by using that name, showing how much he's already got on me. But honestly, how would he know this? That the school I went to in 9th grade had the Bulldog as their mascot? No one would know that! Would they?

It's a small phone lengthwise, but it's thicker than most phones. Again, he's trying to keep it well disguised, since most people would be looking for a phone that's thinner than this. I'm only lucky -- very lucky -- that I wasn't fooled.

I'd like to check it for identifying numbers -- hmm, I can't find the buttons. The faceplate seems to be permanently affixed. Must be a combination lock. Well, OK, I can't get it, but one thing's for sure: I've got possession of the d----d thing now and I'll be dunking it in water to completely kill it!

Like I said, this is someone who knows me, who knows my comings and goings, and who probably reads this blog. So let me offer him a message and a little friendly advice. You think you're good, but once again I caught you! My advice is to stay away from me and my family, and quit trying to get dirt on me. I'm a grown man. I can see whomever I choose. I'll be watching for you! Take it or leave it...

I'm By The Fence -- Where Are You?

Yes, it feels good to feel good! Good for me and good for the whole good world! The half acre is greening up good with spring. I saw some little flowers thrusting their blooms forth for all the world to see. There's a sun in the sky. I think I heard a bird in the distance, giving a tweet or two.

I've been out and about. I went to the east side of the house and looked north. But before my mood was reversed, I turned and looked once again toward the south. There was the garage in all its glory. O good garage! Grandpa was so proud of you! We all were. To finally have a garage after leaving our car outside all those decades. The only downside is it blocked the greater view to the south. But if we walk to the south side of the garage we can look south and see everything that is south without obstruction all the way to the fence.

Now when I look south, from the south side of the garage, I see the piles of dirt and the works for Old Faithful. It's kind of an eyesore really, especially now that it's in a hiatus state, not spewing but laying dormant. But no matter. Nothing can spoil this day!

I walked over by the east fence, near the corner post. There I took out my cellphone to call my cousin, hoping to get him back to help me revivify our geyser. I could picture him with his cellphone in hand as I rang him. We would converse -- a two way dialogue, just the two of us, man to man.

He answered and we talked. I walked as we talked. Everything seemed fine until I heard some interference on the line. Someone else on that channel, I guess. I suggested we go to a different channel. We found a clear one and I pushed the button to speak, informing him of my desire to revivify our geyser, if he could come over. It turned out he was trying to talk to me at the same time, which meant he didn't catch everything I said. I waited a second, then his voice came over. I gave it a "Roger," and responded, repeating my desire for him to come over and for us to revivify the geyser.

Pretty soon there was some more crosstalk and static on the line. We went up to channel 14. And I don't know, we must have been reliving something from our childhood, those kind of conversations we had, because he was asking, "Where are you?" I waited and clicked the button, responding, "I'm by the fence. Where are you?" He told me where he was, just going outside to check on his dog. It was interesting that channel 14 was so clear today, because we have some neighbors and that's one of their favorite channels. But they might have gone to town.

I clicked the button, "Uh, roger on that. I copy. Checking the dog." At that point I decided to broach again the idea of revivifying the geyser, to which he came back, through the static, to say, "10-4," that he read me fine. I answered that I was now walking over toward the geyser works. He simply said, "10-4." I looked down the dark hole, knowing I could never do that were the water spraying forth. We talked like that for a while and he indicated he would be over in the morning. We exchanged whereabouts all the way to the house, at which point I had to hang up my cellphone because the interference was a lot worse.

Now that I'm back in, I'm happy to be happy! It's such a great day! The half acre is greening up in fine fettle. All is right with the world! And finally we'll be able to revivify our geyser and break its imposed hiatus once and for all!