A Baaaad Surprise

           We all have wallpaper on the home screens of our phones, right?

          But we can’t always see our carefully selected picture, because of all the icons we add. Some people display family moments, artwork, or their latest crush.

          I picked a painting of Jesus, coming to rescue a lost lamb: 

           I like this because we’re all that lost lamb, and also because it’s the only painting I’ve seen of Jesus actually running. Needless to say, I love it. And, even though some icons block part of it, I can tell what it is, and it lifts my spirits.

          But do you think I could keep it just as it is?  Of course not. St. Bob chose to buy an electric Tesla, which requires you to have an icon for it on your phone. Your phone is your key, by the way.

           We added the icon to the bottom of my home screen list, and
whaddayaknow… it is perfectly positioned to make my poor little lamb look like it has buck teeth. A whole row of them:

           I know, I know: Pretty baaaaad.

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The Death of Enunciation

          Well, it has finally happened.  Clear speech is being trained out of us by the dictation feature of our cell phones. We already know that no matter how distinctly you speak into that device, it will come out, “You are the breast!” and worse (see my blog about St. Bob’s blunder here).

          But now we have to slur what we’re saying just to get the correct words to appear on our screen.  If I say “question mark” it does not place a ? at the end of my sentence.  It spells out question mark.  If I want it to actually use the ? symbol, I have to hurry along and say, “Queshamark.”

          And if I want it not to write out exclamation mark, but to print ! I must say, “exlamashamark.” And if I want extra ones it sounds like I’m drunk, cursing, and hacking up a hairball. Make that hairball !!!

Elocution teachers must be turning in their graves.  And then, when you don’t want a punctuation symbol, it gives you one, anyway.  As a substitute high school teacher I dictated, “I’m teaching first period” and it came out, “I’m teaching first.”  And when I wanted to commiserate with a friend who couldn’t get a response from HR I said, “It’s like they’re in a coma,” but it came out, “It’s like there in a ,” with “they’re” misspelled as well.

What if you’re making a list and you want to say, “Here’s what to pack:”?  It will say, “Here’s what to pack colon”.

If you say, “Quotation mark” it will write that out.  You have to say, “Quote” to actually get a quotation mark.  But then how can you say, “I’d like to quote you”? It comes out, “I’d like to “ you.”

And all this extra back-spacing and correcting is eating up our time! So, no offense, but I have to --.

Have you ever scrolled through my blog posts?  Give it a try; hilarity has been happening for years.  

Where are All the Crazy People?

          When I was a little kid my mom would take me shopping in a big department store downtown.  I looked forward to eating lunch in their ritzy restaurant, inhaling deeply as we swept by the perfume counter, and most of all: Seeing the Crazy Lady.  She wore a fur stole regardless of the season, a floppy black hat, and rode the escalators up and down all day, jabbering to herself.  

         For awhile I thought it was an incredible coincidence that she happened to be there every time we were, and then I realized she was probably there every day.  And kudos to the management for letting her do this.  After all, she wasn’t harming anyone, and why not indulge her whims if it made her happy?

          Years ago you’d see folks like this, sitting on park benches, wandering through stores, just being part of our landscape.  For whatever reason they’d lost their grip on reality and were conversing—often in very animated tones—with invisible associates.  I liked the idea that we didn’t hide these people away, but accepted their right to be part of the community, part of our big family.

          Only today you can’t tell who they are.  Everyone seems to be a crazy person.  It’s been approximately 800 degrees outside lately, so last night St. Bob and I went to get an ice cream.  

          And there was an older gentleman shuffling along, his hands in his pockets, muttering, “Yep.  Yep.  Yep.”  Years ago I would have figured him for the hat lady’s brother.  But today, he’s just another guy on his cell phone. 

          In the supermarket last week, another man was scolding someone as he marched along, throwing things in his cart.  “That is not what I told you,” he snapped. “That is not what I said.”  Was he talking to an employee?  A family member?  A space alien zombie of his imagination?

          “Oh, I know, it’s absolutely exhausting,” a woman said into the air as she passed by me at the shopping mall.  Was she musing to herself?  Comforting an invisible friend?  Or on the phone with an actual person?  Snippets of conversation float all around us, and we never know if these are evidence of psychosis or of Verizon’s Friends and Family Plan.

          And I miss the old days.  I miss smiling at the lost individuals to assure them all was well, and I was glad they were there.  Now if I smile at some muttering soul I appear to be eavesdropping or intruding into their Bluetooth conversation.

          Either that, or the entire population has lost its mind, something not entirely out of the realm of possibility.  Yep, yep, yep.

Tell your friends—invisible or real ones—to visit my youtube channel, where I dispense essential life skills three times a week, as the YouTube Mom.  Might even keep you sane, who knows?

          

When You're Desperate for Tech Help

            I am about to tell you about two miracles, so hold onto your mouse or your seat or something, assuming you’re sitting at the computer.

            I have TWICE been asked for tech help.  If my four children are reading this, they have no doubt fallen off their chairs, in shock, and hit their heads on the floor.  While they wait for ambulances to arrive, the rest of you can keep reading.

            It has long been known in my family that I occasionally say things 90-year-olds say, including “I have Face Mail,” “the Inter Web,” and the redundant, “Youtube Video.” My knowledge of things electronic and computer-related could fit inside a thimble with ample room left over for my interest in these matters.  If truth be known, I miss the Selectric Typewriter and the carefree days when I could turn on the TV without rummaging through a basket of remotes and then asking, once again, how to work them.  Be honest: Don’t you think the GoDaddy logo looks like a goat?  And doesn’t it bother you that the Windows logo shows a hummingbird zooming in on leaves?  Leaves!  And don’t even get me started on how much I want Samsung to say “Sam sang.”

            So it was no small miracle (and I SO wish I’d had a videoish thing running) when the women at my Book Club asked me how Twitter works.  I had barely signed up, myself, and only with the enormous help of one Karen Hansen from my church, who is an absolute wiz at these things.  Yet there I was, surrounded by hopeful faces, putting their entire trust in my technical wisdom.  What I wouldn’t have given for my kids to witness the glorious scene.  I found myself parroting the instructions Karen had given me, and the women nodded, lapping it up.  I felt as if I could move to India, call myself Barbara, and advise any number of callers with computer trouble, that very afternoon.

            And I knew such a surreal moment might never repeat itself.  But then I had a layover in Las Vegas last week, coming back from Mississippi.  I was waiting for my flight when a gal about my age sat down beside me, pulled out her cell phone, and asked if I knew how she could listen again to a message she had already played.  Of the throngs of people crowding around, she selected ME from the group, with perfect faith that I would know the answer to her question.  ME!  I must look like a genius, even from a distance. 

            I put my hand on her knee and told her I only wished my children could be there to witness this miracle.  Then I told her that, of every person in the terminal, I was the absolute last one who would know what she was talking about.  And this would include non-English speakers and infants in their carriers.  We became immediate friends, joined by our mutual inability to master the intricacies of cell phones.  We sat together on the plane, and now we’re planning to get together for some girlfriend time.  I don’t know if she has figured out her cell phone yet; this is what children are for—you call them and after they’re through sighing and rolling their eyes they impart secret information that they get from trolls in the forest because I sure as heck don’t see it available elsewhere. 

            If Bob had been there, he would have known the answer, but he was staying behind a week.  Bob has a new phone gizmo called a Samsung Galaxy Note 2 and it feels like holding a paperback book up to your head when you try to speak on it. 

            I expect him to hang onto this gadget for another couple of months until the next big—or small—breakthrough is offered at Apple or Verizon or wherever people with those interests congregate.  Then he’ll swap it out for the Sabertooth or the Platypus or whatever they call the next one. 

            My sister-in-law in Mississippi seems comfortable with technical matters.  But she also says that no one in the South has Siri, because Siri can’t understand their accents.  Hilarious.  And I thought I had tech trouble.