Who says you can't count on sleeping?

Everyone I speak to lately is learning how I’ve resolved my long-time sleep problems. I relate in detail about my CPAP machine—short for Continuous Positive Airway Pressure. I explain how sleep apnea closes the airway in the back of one’s throat. And I hold forth about how often the apnea was waking me up before I began to strap a snorkel-like mask to my face at bedtime, and how it hardly does now. The best part of these conversations: My CPAP’s benefits seem to be contagious. By the time I’m done, I’ve solved my listeners’ sleep problems, too.

You don’t need sleep issues, though, to agree that some nights you can just forget about getting some rest. Apnea sufferers keep score by the Apnea/Hypopnea Index, or AHI, which averages out how many times per hour they stop breathing and briefly awaken. Knowing your AHI is dandy if you’ve got apnea. But the many people who have trouble sleeping without any apnea should be allowed to keep score, too. After some careful thought, I’ve apparently caught the sleep-medicine community snoozing, for I’ve come up with sleep scores for everyone else.

DBI. If you have a dog, chances are you were a sucker for those doleful eyes from the first and only time they pleaded with you to say, “Come on up, boy.” And having allowed it once while the dog was 12 pounds, you now have an 80-pound anchor with bad breath and gas sandwiched between you and your spouse. The DBI, for Dog Breath Index, is how often per hour you come face-to-face with Rex and wake up from a royal blast of halitosis.

HCI. You don’t need a pet to keep track of your HCI: You just need to live with someone. Family members talk about all sorts of things in the course of the day, and if they’re all equally committed to good sleep, late-night conversation stays light. But if you think family life is that easy, you’re dreaming. The Heavy Conversation Index (HCI) measures how many of the first hours of bedtime you’re staring at the ceiling because one of you brought up something that couldn’t wait till morning, such as life, the universe and everything.

SDI. Most common in October’s run-up to Halloween, the Scary Dream Index (SDI) tracks how many times during the night you wake up in a cold sweat because you’re being chased by vampires, zombies, or something original plumbed from the depths of your very soul. If something’s after you, you’re not asleep and it’s not tax season, never mind trying to keep score…you won’t be sleeping anyway.

FIFI. Some adults, we hear, toss and turn in their nightlong quest to find that perfect sleep position. Unfortunately, that prime spot could mean the other person in the bed is out of luck. The Foot in Face Index (FIFI) counts how many times per night one sleep partner’s rotation in the bed means the other wakes up with toes up her nostrils.

PDII. Occurring for a few months every four years, the PDI might be the most pervasive. (It’s like MLBI, a score related to watching too much late-night baseball, but on steroids.) Whatever else you plan to do the night of a political debate, chances are that you’ll still end up in front of the TV and stay there till it’s over. Just try to fall asleep then. The PDII, for Post-Debate Incredulity Index, measures how many times you wake up from sleep, fists clenched, over something this one or that one said. Or should have said. Either way, just remember that you elected to watch the thing.

With only one score to keep, which the CPAP machine calculates for me, I’m sleeping just fine these days. Or at least I was sleeping. After years of needing to fall asleep using the traditional SCI (Sheep Counted Index), I now have myriad sheep grazing on the property with nothing to do. Some friends of ours wouldn’t sleep till they’d contacted the nearest government agency. They’d ensure that every member of the herd was counted—and would feel proud that it still mattered in the world.

Me? I lie awake, wondering where on earth we could ever find enough mint jelly.

Sorry, I’ve never riesled

He is always in black, which matches his long, flowing hair, goatee and baritone voice. In a ’70s horror flick, he would have played the coven’s high priest—one who does not understand the director’s order of Cuuuut! Or that he is acting in a movie. “But the sacrifice is not yet complete! It is Walpurgis Night!”

Today, he sells wine at my neighborhood liquor store.

His gaze is penetrating as he describes the personality of any wine, and he probably knows all the spirits, too. (They’re the tenured faculty of the Wiccan seminary.) And he is coldly serious as he holds forth about each wine’s complexity, acidity, aromas and other characteristics. I learned this after my wife, Elena, stopped in to ask him to recommend a wine we could serve with a given dish to company. For some reason I cannot fathom, she added this challenge: “My husband won’t be happy if I come home with the wrong wine.” She later reported that he began to stare. Very intently.

All of which meant that when she brought me to him, a few days later, his spigot was open all the way. “I find this one très elegante, a full-bodied bouquet of blackberry, cherry and currant, with an intense yet delicate aroma of oak.” As he spoke, one hand was gesturing; in the other, he seemed to be holding and staring wistfully into a glass of the stuff.

“Uh huh,” I said with a nod, trying to play along. Elena wasn’t doing much better, but she wasn’t the one granted the imprimatur of expertise.

“Or perhaps this Chianti, medium-bodied yet full-flavored,” he added as if recalling the company of a long-ago friend. “The delicate nose speaks of berry jam with floral hints and country nuances.”

I thought to ask how that worked anatomically but decided to take instead what, for me, was the high road. “Which one costs less?”

To the country-club set living all around us, he must seem a high priest of wine. The trouble is that such pretensions are wasted on the likes of me. I enjoy a good glass of wine, but if I wanted to pretend I knew the difference between Chablis and Riesling I’d have applied to work at Wine Enthusiast magazine, which is walking distance from the house. Mostly I make fun of the seriousness of it all and, now and then, pick some random wine myself just to see his expression.

And though I’d never act on it, I’ve been plotting to ask him, with all seriousness, whether a Merlot or a Pinot noir would go better with Dinty Moore Beef Stew. Or in what proportions I should mix red and white wine to make rosé. If I ever indulge this fantasy, I’d better have someone hold the door open: He’s certain to be a good shot with a dagger.

On days I truly feel too intimidated to meet his withering gaze, I remind myself I have an alternative. Even closer to home is another liquor store where I can pick up a wine of some vague hue without feeling I’ll say the wrong thing and end up manacled to a wall in the basement. So I haven’t exactly been worrying about the guy.

To tell the truth—for once—something came over me one day that I passed the store, on the way to the supermarket. I hadn’t realized I was habitually looking in to see if he was there, as if I believed I would one day spot him doing something completely out of character, such as laughing or doing anything whatsoever with a cellphone. He would invariably be there, whatever the day or time, as long as the liquor store was open. But this time I saw someone else. The next time, too. Was the high priest gone?

Whatever his name was, I realized I had misjudged this fellow and decided the world needed more people like him. If everyone felt such pride on the job and strove for excellence, the world would be a better place.

I was still wishing him a job as a sommelier at some exclusive Manhattan restaurant when I learned that he didn’t need a new job at all. My revelation came when we decided to drive to a local restaurant for dinner, and neither car would start—and not just because they’re old. Their distributor wires were missing.

Strung to the front door were a lifeless bird and a sprig of woodbine.

And under the door was an invitation. A limousine would soon arrive to take me, alone, to an unspecified event at our local cemetery. Since I would be guest of honor, I suspect I know who sent the invitation.

I daresay he’s taught me a bit about wine, but I guess I’ve taught him something, too. I’m no virginal, nubile female, the usual candidate for human sacrifice. But as with wine, sometimes anyone will do.

To sleep, perchance to scream

The very notion of a sleep clinic suggests a peaceful sanctuary, a sound-proofed facility with temperature and humidity control, a comfy bed, and absolutely no distractions—not even from the various professionals who would somehow, from behind the scenes, monitor my sleep. You might think of it as a hotel with the additional amenity of a sleep spa.

In your dreams.

As I recalled in my second visit to the sleep clinic, the only way to tell that I’m not sleeping properly is for someone to hook various electrical wires up to me. The attached machine records how I breathe, how often I wake up, roll over, play dead—oh sorry, that’s doggie obedience school—and collects other data.

Anyone who read about my previous overnight at the local sleep clinic would know I expected the worst. The same sleep center, last time around, seemed infested with Asian beetles. More orange than red, they’re as cute as the ladybugs they resemble but with a couple of minor differences: They’re larger, swarm by the thousands and prefer to raise their offspring indoors. Oh, and they bite—which did wonders for my anticipation of blissful sleep. At my last sleep study, I could hear their little feet on the lampshades and the acoustical tile of the ceiling. I didn’t see a single one this time. But just in case they planned to show up after lights out, I brought earplugs.

But of course, the noise wasn’t the greatest distraction. Neither were the two wide straps wrapped tightly around my torso. No, it was those wires, about twenty in all. Two pairs, attached to each leg, were barely noticeable. The rest? They led to my head, face and the vicinity, with electrical leads covered with a gob of conductive paste, which solidifies when pressed. Little pieces of bandage covered every gob so that I looked like I had been wearing an oversized deep-sea-diver helmet…with a ferret trapped inside.

All in all, there were enough wires tangled around my head that I resembled a male Medusa. I knew that if I had to use the bathroom, all I needed was to call out the technician’s name; hearing me on the intercom, he’d come to temporarily unplug the device to which the wires were connected. What I didn’t know was whether glancing at the mirror even once, in the bathroom, would turn me to stone.

Among other updates to the sleep center since my last visit was the mode of observation. My room last time had a window with two technicians behind, staring at me all night for my comfort. How times change. Now there’s an infrared camera that watches my every move—as if I could move given the attached imbroglio of wires. Since today’s remote cameras typically relay high-definition video to a smartphone or computer, I fully expect the video to emerge amid my 2024 run for President. “He uplinks to his Alpha Centurian masters at night!” my opponent will charge.

I was plainly too wired to sleep, so I thought I’d pretend I really were at a hotel. Three other patients—er, guests—were here tonight also, and the technician asked if I wanted water or fruit juice. (What, no cabernet?) So there was sort of room service. But the next morning, I found no complimentary breakfast. And while the bathroom had a towel or two, I found no little shampoos, soaps or moisturizers. Just wait till I hit TripAdvisor.

No matter what results I get, I already know my prognosis will be good. With two sleep-clinic visits under my belt, I know just how to go to sleep—and stay asleep till the morning. I merely have to remind myself how comfortable I feel when I’m not bound tightly in straps and wires, barely able to turn over, like at the sleep clinic. I’ll be afraid to open my eyes till dawn.

As conspiracies go, it’s a stinker

Any one of us could count off a handful of conspiracy theories we’ve heard over past years, and it can be hard to keep them all straight. You know, like the myriad accusations of who put the Baab in the Al Shabaab Shabaab. With, of course, the related query of who put the Ram in the Ramadan-a-ding-dong.

I try not to give people who conjure up such fanciful notions very much encouragement. Other suspicions make much more sense—take, for example, the one about how the NSA won’t listen to your phone conversations if you imitate an accent sounding vaguely Mideastern. That’s why Elena and I have been careful about what we say aloud in our own home. It’s from the occasional visit of something resembling halyomorpha halys, a critter better known as the brown marmorated stink bug.

The real ones come from the vicinity of China, and they’re said to be a menace out in the garden. Their ugly little faces are outfitted with a natural straw they stick into fruits, vegetables and ornamentals to slurp up everything they’ve got. Indoors, though, they have no real purpose. They don’t bite, eat or reproduce. We don’t find many in the house, but when we do, they’re nearby— for instance, on the wall or curtain as we sit in the living room. Now and then one will take flight, buzzing around my head like a baby June bug, which is when it really gets annoying.

When we get one too many on a given day, I reassure Elena with the prospect that back in the Cretaceous Period, stink bugs were probably about six feet long and perhaps stood on their hind legs. Strangely, she doesn’t find this comforting.

That they have no reason whatsoever to be indoors, yet they occasionally come in, is all the evidence I need to attribute their entry to some entity with nefarious purposes, a.k.a. the government. Suppose the stink bugs that mysteriously make it inside the house only resemble those outside but are actually mobile listening devices? That deep buzz when one is flying could be its little motor, and the smell when you crush one is…need I say more?

I could have been convinced that I’ve been letting my imagination run away with me. That is, until I read about the Ehang 184 drone, which the Chinese (see?) manufacturer was showing at this month’s Consumer Electronic Show. Ehang calls it the world’s first autonomous flying taxi, large enough to carry one passenger, but I know better. It’s actually the Queen Stink Bug, which wirelessly issues orders to every presumptive halyomorpha halys that lands on your shoulder.

The company says the Ehang 184 runs on batteries. Still, I want a closer look, for every conspiracy requires the sniff test. Electric power or not, this giant drone has an exhaust somewhere.

You already know how it smells.

Baby it can drive your car

With all the recent news about self-driving cars, I’ve had trouble driving back and forth to work. Not because of my usual distraction of clipping my toenails while steering with my knees. It’s because the very notion of cars without humans in control terrifies me.

Not that I’m a Luddite. I can enjoy an online video about the things people behind the wheel of autonomous cars get to do, such as eat pizza, while the car makes all the tough decisions. Even the most mundane of new vehicles are getting GPS, adaptive cruise control, collision alerts, built-in cameras and other cool features, so we’ll be sharing the road with self-driving cars sooner than you might think. And at their best, these cars are said to operate more safely than we emotional wretches could possibly do.

But on a collision course (shameless cliché alert) with driverless cars is that the latest robots are becoming more self-aware—that is, they’re acting more like people, with all the ego issues and biases of their developers. In other words, self-driving cars will soon exceed humans at bringing out the worst of human behavior. Cases in point:

The parking-space predator. If you’ve ever parallel-parked, you’ve fallen victim. After you’ve pulled up beside the car parked in front of a space, you haven’t even begun to back up and swerve in when another driver swoops into the space, snatching it with glee. The challenge for people who steal spaces, though, is that they need an extra-long parking space to maneuver into without going up on the curb and hitting the hydrant. Clumsy humans. Due its superior steering control, a driverless car can slide right in without hitting the hydrant. And there’s no point yelling at the person behind the wheel; interrupt her conference call, and she’ll spill her cappuccino onto her lap and sue you.

Ready for my close-up. Good human drivers know how far back they should follow the car in front—the so-called three-second rule. (No, it’s not about waiting three seconds before flashing your brights.) The first autonomous cars have followed this rule, too, but all bets are off once you cut off a self-driving car that has sprouted an ego. Thanks to its built-in radar technology, you’ll get the unique experience of being tailgated from scant millimeters away. Don’t think twice; just get over. Better still, exit the highway till your heart rate goes back under 200.

You still there? New York drivers pride themselves on how quickly they’ll honk at the drivers in front the instant the light turns green. But self-driving cars will be even quicker studies, so the second time one approaches an intersection, it will have learned its traffic-light timing. That way, self-driving cars can self-honk at the driver in front .001 microsecond after the light turns green. Take that, New Yawkers.

Swearing they’re better. Humans can only holler so much at other drivers, and at so high a volume, before their throats dry up. After that point, they’d need to pause for a drink and listen to common sense—a.k.a. their wives. Driverless cars can use smart algorithmic tweaking of the car’s audio circuitry to drown out car horns as they shout their searing insults, such as the dreaded monotone “WHERE-DID-YOU-LEARN-TO-DRIVE-YOU-SPARK-PLUG-HEAD?” In autonomous car development, alas, writers are the last to be hired.

Such exchanges make sense only between robotic and human drivers. But eventually all vehicles will be driverless, and that’s when we’ll really learn what mankind has wrought. With the next generation of vehicles’ self-awareness will come even greater anger and indignation. Couple that with self-driving vehicles’ next-generation spatial precision, and we’ll have a roadful of cars that flit in and out of highway lanes faster than humanly possible, cutting one another off at speeds that would exceed the measurable speed range of the best police-radar sensors. And even if the police did pull a car over, it’s hard to know who gets the ticket. The car? Or the human curled up on the floor, sobbing for Mother?

You’ll have to start now if you want to reverse this trend in the bud. Just visit your local congressman. Politicians never return calls or emails—you only vote for them—so you’ll need to appear in person.

Just take public transportation. And be very, very careful should you need to cross the street.

Nothing of blue skies do I see

Once upon a time, companies serving the public seemed to care about their customers. At least, that’s the impression they tried to make. Anyone paying attention in the early ’80s, for example, might remember an ad campaign, by New York State’s Savings Banks Association, that featured a customer proclaiming, “I’m not a business…I’m a people.” A heartbeat later came two ascending notes of angel chorus, suggesting a blessing from above—you know, up past the clouds.

In today’s advertising, people don’t seem to matter for much. Maybe we shouldn’t have insisted on a bagel setting in those free toasters the banks were giving out? Either way, businesses don’t woo us for ourselves, just for the data on our computers. Yet the ads use the same heavenly metaphor, summed up in two words: “The Cloud.” The singing angels seem to have been sacked, but the term nevertheless suggests the same assurance the prayerful among us expect from above. A few examples from ads:

• “Cloud disaster recovery at your fingertips”
• “Own Less. Do More. That’s Cloud Power.”
• “Powering Innovation with the Cloud”

Don’t feel bad if you don’t know what any of these slogans mean. I haven’t the faintest idea myself, and I suspect you’re not supposed to know. You’re supposed to see that word “Cloud” and imagine something on a par with angel chorus—though it’s only your wallet that sprouts wings. But this meaningless advertising isn’t just targeting businesses. Got photos and videos on your home computer? Apple’s iCloud suggests you keep them safe in “the cloud.” Ditto for all that digital music you have in iTunes.

No matter whose money corporate America is after, the underlying promise is the same: The Cloud is a massive network of computers with lots of storage for secure data protection and processing power for smart, real-time business decisions.

But wait just one minute. We’ve seen massive networks of computers before, and with the same grandiose security. In the movie War Games, a high-school kid unknowingly hacks into the military’s defense network. In Jurassic Park, a character who looks an awful lot like Newman from Seinfeld is able to shut down the network’s security functions so he can make off with a canful of dino-DNA. And in the Terminator series, a worldwide network called Skynet becomes self-aware and begins wiping humans off the planet. Do they mean computers like these?

What’s more, I myself have seen too many gangster movies. Once I’ve uploaded all of my photos and songs to the cloud—and cleared them from my computer—I fully expect the price for that cloud-based storage to rise…and rise. “Gee, that’s an awfully nice set a’ videos ya shot of little Emma and Ethan in the soif on dat Hilton Head vacation…you wouldn’t want anythin’ ta happen to dose precious memories, now, wouldja?”

Companies, of course, would defend themselves and say that it’s all about data security, smart analysis, innovative decision-making and more. But I know better. The closer the country’s six million companies get to starting up their own clouds, the shadier things are bound to look.

As for me, I’ll take my chances. I don’t need any company’s cloud to protect my data, thank you. I’m careful enough to make sure that file trouble never hap—

I suppose I will stand for it

All this arose from a single medical study that claimed, and I quote, that anyone who sits at a desk all day, even a fitness buff, is doomed. I believe I was sitting while I read about it. And even though one of my favorite movie lines is “You gotta die of something,” spoken by Sean Connery’s character Malone in The Untouchables, something sent a chill up my spine.

Which is why I have a standing desk.

It’s a cool Varidesk model, with dual levels and a width that allows for two monitors (one per eyeball) above and a keyboard beneath. My company bought a slew of them—or was it a slew and a half? And everyone who wants one gets one. The foresightful, like myself, never surrendered the old desk and chair; I sit down when I catch myself standing like a flamingo. Of the others, not necessarily fogies-in-training like myself, some have started suffering back or foot pains from standing all day. They went to their doctors. Who told them they’re doomed.

My first challenge, as a relatively early adopter of The Standing Desk, was that if I decided to sit down for a while, co-workers who happened by treated me like a clergyman caught looking for female companionship at the local red-light district. “You’re not standing,” one would notify me. His implication was that, having gotten the company to give me a standing desk for which they’d already paid, I was expected to show my gratitude by never again sitting down. For the remainder of my career.

If I seem less than grateful, it’s because I know what comes next. Once everyone at the company has a standing desk, next will come the treadmill desks, which already exist in a single room at my company’s headquarters. I’d be the last holdout—I tend to find myself pasted against the nearest wall whenever I use a treadmill—but these would be just one step toward the next goal: the [word(s)hamster-wheel desk.

I wish I could say they’d stop there, but oh no. First comes the hamster wheel. Next, one of the PTB (the Powers That Be, of course) would realize that such technology, just as with bicycle-powered generators , could produce enough electricity to power a seven-watt nightlight bulb. Next would come the requirement that we power, with our revolutionary wheeling, the lights, computers, and everything else in our office—or have our pay docked to make up the difference. Don’t even ask how they’d rig up the bathroom.

Fast-forward to a few years from now, when humans have gotten chips embedded into their brains and can work and communicate without the need for computers. Work, thanks to tomorrow’s node-to-node technology, will be done merely by putting our heads together, literally. (Talking? What’s that?) But given the many months of powering corporate America with hamster-wheel desks, power companies across the country will have gone out of business. And since employees could now do all their work without use of their arms, legs, and everything else besides their brains, human-generated electricity could reach its full potential. If we didn’t power the computers that upload thoughts to our embedded chips hourly, after all, how could we think?

Rather than individually powered hamster wheels of the past—so yesterday—management would now embrace the rowing-machine concept. Picture, for instance, pairs of staffers who work closely together. They’re communicating through their brainwaves—or, more likely, the embedded chips’ brainwaves. And while they’re doing all this communicating, each pair of workers would hold an oar-like pole and together push it forward, then pull it back, in a circular motion. And repeat. And repeat—is it 5 o’clock yet? At the other end of the oar-like poles would be whirring gears that, from all of this rowing activity, would drive the motors that power the building.

Of course, all this pushing and pulling by all these pairs of workers would have to be done in a certain rhythm, or else the lights would continuously flicker—and never mind what unsteady power would do to IT’s servers. So one manager would sit in a central location with no job other than to call cadence by pounding his drum. Others would stand over us, brandishing whips. We all have to do our part for the planet, after all. The best part? We could even sit while rowing.

Ah, technology. Ah, progress.

Bravely bold Sir Ed

Julia Child wrote her first cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, at 50. Momofuku Ando sold salt and even spent two years in jail before age 48, when he used his noodle to invent instant noodles and make a fortune with his company, Nissin Food Products. But while the rest of us tend to hit our stride once we hit middle age and go no higher, I’m one guy who’s not going to hit his stride lying down. Or something like that.

All this arose from an epiphany I experienced in that most tranquil of destinations. Okay, okay, it was Las Vegas, and I was one of more than 175,000 people who attended this year’s Consumer Electronics Show. I was rushing to a meeting through a morass of people I would swear paid for CES entry solely to plant themselves in front of people with someplace to go (a.k.a. me) when I looked up and glimpsed the sign. First one, then another. My eyes widened as I planted my feet in place. I eventually counted four people carrying tall poles with vertical signs held high above the throngs. They bore the name of an industry pundit, one Shelly Palmer.

I had no idea who Shelly Palmer was, being the sole attendee at CES who didn’t cover electronics. (Don’t ask.) I didn’t even know for certain he was a pundit until hours later, in the hotel room, when I saw him on TV talking about the significance of the day’s CES announcements. (Don’t tell. What happens in Vegas is supposed to stay in Vegas.) But from his simple presence heralded by sign-carrying flunkies, something told me: This person matters.

Yes, I’ve seen this sort of thing before. So have you if you have a pulse and lived through the ’70s. Who could forget Sir Robin, in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, who went everywhere with minstrels who would sing his praises? Of course, the lyrics invariably took an uncomplimentary turn. (“When danger reared its ugly head / He bravely turned his tail and fled.”) But hey—the minstrels must have been underpaid members of SHRE local 381. Songsters of the Holy Roman Empire, natch.

These days, though, you probably don’t have to pay much more than minimum wage to get competent sign carriers to wave your banner for all to see, even if you’re just taking the trash out to the curb. Even faster than those noodles, your flunkies-for-hire would proclaim you instant someone.

For me, that’s the ticket. In a world where a Kim Kardashian could become famous merely by pretending to be someone famous, why couldn’t I put my name on everyone’s lips by mere suggestion? In time, I’d need to hire a publicist; I hear Mariah Carey’s is available. And before you know it, I too would have my own reality show and be set for life. Maybe something like Keeping Up with the Perratores. Creative, huh? It’s better, at least, than 2 Kids and No Longer Counting.

I know what you’re thinking, and it’s probably something to do with flying pigs or snowballs in hell. You might be right.

But there’s more chance of my getting a reality show than of my publishing my latest cookbook, The Real Poop on Rustling Up French Grub.

Because absolutely everything relies on you

Election Day seems right around the corner, and if you’re like most of us, you’re paying no attention whatsoever to what’s actually going on. But some people are rooting for certain trusted candidates to win their elections. If you’re among them, I have some news for you: You’re doing absolutely nothing productive for your candidate. Ask any sports fan.

Oh, I can hear you already. “But I’ve donated money!” “I put a bumper sticker on my car!” “I…I….”

Save your breath, for you’ve been wasting your efforts. Allow me, if you will, a little latitude to demonstrate what I mean.

For starters, you might recall that I’m a Met fan in a Yankee household. The Mets don’t get much play in our house, not because I get outvoted but because I’m no masochist. As a result, the Yankees are on TV an awful lot. So while I tend to avoid my own team, I seem to have played an important role in the Yankees’ having reached the postseason 15 of the past 16 years. And this one, too.

Here’s how I apparently do it. At the simplest level, it begins while my wife, Elena, is watching a game. Let’s say the Yankees are losing, with the opposing pitcher making them look pretty lame. I happen to walk into the room, and moments later a Yankee gets a home run. Well, I didn’t really have any plans for the rest of the game, did I? If so, I’d better just forget about them. Because my very step into the room initiated a sequence of events in the universe that resulted in the batter’s seeing the coming pitch in a wholly different way—and blasting it to the next county. So whatever else I was planning, I’m no longer allowed to leave the room to do it. What kind of husband ignores his wife’s pleas?

My actions, though, seem to represent only one of a host of variables. (I’ll thank you not to ask how many are in a host.) If it isn’t Elena or myself, it’s someone else, maybe across the country, who’s pulling the strings of a given game. It’s someone standing—or sitting. It’s sitting in a certain chair. Legs straight down or crossed. Looking up at the TV or not. Eating the proper snacks, and using the correct hand. And wearing the right hat, jacket, socks and shoes. The list goes on and on. But when everything fits together just so, it’s nothing less than an aligning of the stars.

Now let’s get your candidate into the postseason. Granted, politics is not a game, so eating the right brand of chips alone might not do the trick. For maximum effect, attend a speech; watching it online might not do. You can sense the mood of the crowd; the candidate is scoring points, or he’s not. If he isn’t, you yourself are obviously doing something wrong—you doofus. Bring every hat you own; try them on one at a time and gauge the change in the crowd’s applause. And pray you bought the right shoes, whether or not they still fit.

If nothing happens, it must be because you attended the speech. So walk away. Come to think of it, perhaps it isn’t just about you. Here’s where your leadership qualities come in. If your being there or not makes no difference in how well a speech is being received, it’s possible that everyone in the audience needs to randomly walk in and out of the meeting hall, or at least change seats, until the correct permutation is achieved. Don’t worry: From the length of some speeches, you’ll have plenty of time to experiment.

Of course, it’s also possible that everyone was seated in exactly the right place to begin with…but that one of them needs to be wearing your hat. Pass out those hats, then, with everyone in the audience trying them on until the level of excitement reaches fever pitch. True, chances are they'll sport some nice, thriving colonies of parasitic insects by the time you get them back. But with the country’s future at stake, better that than a lousy candidate. Are you in to win or what?

The Higgs Boson and what really needs finding

Let me apologize in advance for interrupting your musings over important matters—you know, things like why J.Lo and Steven Tyler have left American Idol and what their exit means for the future of mankind. But the scientific community recently celebrated an important breakthrough. Sure, the Higgs Boson can’t compete with even the watered-down, post-Simonic remnant of that show. But what its discovery represents is hope for us all.

In case you haven’t been paying attention, let me tell you what the Higgs Boson is. I don’t know. And I’m in good company. Journalists are already champions at writing their stories before doing their research. Who has time for facts? In the case of the Higgs Boson, though, they had to make the effort to do more than sound smart. Still, the resulting attempts at the subject had poor Peter Higgs, the Boson’s namesake, rolling in his grave. Which was a pretty mean feat considering that Higgs is still alive.

So being a true journalist, I’m going to break from tradition and look out for you instead of my editor. In other words, forget about what the Higgs Boson is. That it’s the smallest particle now known to man, what gives everything on earth its mass, doesn’t matter to you. Or to me. Let’s instead do a search for…all those socks.

Yes, you heard me right, socks. It shouldn’t take a $10-billion particle accelerator to find what seemingly travels to another dimension—or perhaps, since the voyage of these garments begins in a washing machine, to a planet orbiting the luminous Energy Star. Yet you can’t sort laundry after a wash without noticing at least one sock is gone.

In our house, socks are only the warm-up act. True, the TV’s remote hasn’t dissolved into particles since the kids hit middle school. And it’s hardly high technology to phone a misplaced cell phone to listen for its ring, except that before losing my phone I pride myself in turning it off. But Elena’s glasses? Our keys? My credit-card bills, which sit plainly in view for weeks till it comes time for me to pay them?

The scientists found the Higgs Boson using a machine called the Large Hadron Collider, which sounds like a shopping cart that strikes fear in the heart of anyone who parks his shiny new car, a Porsche Hadron, outside the supermarket. If it takes one of these to find all the things that get lost in this house, I want one for Christmas. It shouldn’t cost much now that it’s used. And because physicists are finished using it to find the Higgs Boson, it’s just going to sit around, right?

What most needs finding around here, though, is the result of a certifiable good deed. A friend of son Andrew was, for a time, selling Cutco Cutlery. Sure, they’re fine products, but they’re very expensive. And when you’ve been married for 25-plus years without throwing knives at one another even once, you still have the ones you got a quarter-century ago. So we ordered a few things, including a pair of pruners.

They’re great pruners. The 18-year-old sales rep said they’ll last for years. They will, too. Wouldn’t you agree, since they’re wrapped up carefully in the box they came in? Sure, I know exactly where they are—in that little box. Just don’t ask me where that box is.

The Higgs Boson might tell us how keys, glasses, bills and even those pruners have mass. But someday, I’ll discover where all these things are. When I do, I will be lauded the world over. I can already envision, in fact, the day I go to Oslo to accept my Nobel Prize. My name will be called, and I will stride up the aisle to thunderous applause.

The ordinarily reserved crowd in the seats will be all abuzz. So much so that after I receive my award and all those cameras and phones start clicking away, the award’s presenter will announce that, however unusual, he’d like to ask me a question before I step any farther from the stage.

“Would you kindly tell us why you have a sock stuck to your back?”

They’ll just have to throw the book at me

I’ve come to a painful decision, and my answer is no. If you’ve been following this year’s national elections, you know it’s a very divided race. Giving both sides their deference, it’s a contest between shameless power and shameless wealth. Since I have neither, I was the obvious happy medium—or so insisted my candidacy’s myriad supporters on Facebook.

We all know, after all, how thoroughly a potential candidate’s every past moment is sure to be prospected. Somewhere in all that gold, there has to be some mud. So, with a heavy heart, I spare my supporters further disappointment and, while I’m at it, put legions of fiction writers out of work. If anyone is going to reveal my sordid past, it’s going to be me.

First, let me get the obvious one out of the way and admit it. I’m sorry, yes, I did kick my mother. Repeatedly. I did it while she was in a weakened state, and I thought nothing of it.

What the media won’t reveal, no matter how extensive their coverage, is one important detail: I was in her womb.

Which brings us to the other one, and I might as well give you the press version first—especially since I think the statute of limitations has run out. In short, I was a burglar. I entered a college campus with the sole intention of breaking into a building for the purpose of theft. And once I found the building unguarded, I smashed my way in with tools I’d purchased over the Internet. I found what I was looking for in its metal casing and snatched it. Within minutes I was miles away with the spoils of my crime, plotting my next caper.

I would have had to be an evil genius to purchase burglary tools over the Internet in 1980. But that isn’t the only way that what you would have read differs from what actually happened, and here’s the scoop. I did not enter the college campus with the sole intention of breaking into a building; that came later. It was a weekend, and I was in the middle of finals. I needed access into a building, I explained in detail to my college’s security guard in charge, and asked as reasonably as possible to be allowed in for a few moments.

Public servant that he was, his salary paid by my CUNY tuition and resident income tax, he gave the expected answer: No. “Come back on Monday,” he said. But I had more finals then, I explained, and needed what I needed today. He threw up his hands.

Soon after, I found myself sitting on the steps of a classroom building, casing another that was a few hundred feet away. It was one of several single-story temporary buildings Queens College had at the time—no air conditioning—and I was guessing at least one window had been left open. But a college-security sedan idled just outside the building…five minutes, then ten. Maybe the guard had gotten a warning call on his radio?

Eventually the guard drove off. I waited till he was out of sight and walked slowly past the little building. With a glance over my shoulder, I ran to its side. The window I needed was locked, but another wasn’t. I shoved it open and fell into the room. I listened for company, the only sound my heavy breathing. There was no time to lose! I ran from the room, down the hall and into the room I needed: the classroom where I’d had a final exam the day before. I looked under the desk where I’d sat—nothing. I looked toward the front of the room. Yes

In the trashcan was my multi-subject notebook, which I’d left behind the day before. Presuming I’d return to the car without being apprehended, I would soon resume studying for Monday’s tests.

So there you have the real story, and I have back my private life. No more campaigning, no more worries. And besides, even if the statute of limitations hadn’t run out, I could hardly be charged for burglary and theft in a building that didn’t exist anymore. Right?

But excuse me, someone’s at the door. A few people. And what are those bright flashing lights outside? Hmmm…on second thought, considering the charges, maybe I’m back in the race after all—for Congress.

So many meals, so little time

It has taken some soul-searching, but I have come to a realization: I am a dismal failure. The first warning came more than a week ago, when I hit the buffet restaurant Golden Corral, my favorite feed trough, on the first night of a recent business trip. I’d paid homage to it once before.

What, you haven’t heard of Golden Corral? It’s where you stride in for a bounteous, all-you-can-eat meal at low cost—and afterward wonder how you’ll get back out to your car. If the song “Rawhide” (with its chorus, “Rollin’ rollin’ rollin’….”) isn’t being blasted from speakers above the exit door, it should be.

But to the hush of the cooks, the wait staff and my fellow patrons, I ate my dinner and left the restaurant without the aid of a wheelbarrow. In disgrace, I trudged the mile and a quarter back to my hotel.

It happened again the other day, when Elena and I dined at a local Italian restaurant. I’d ordered my favorite dish, veal parmigiana, which came with pasta and a small salad. But near the end of the meal, as my wife asked the waiter to wrap up what she couldn’t finish, I found myself pointing to my own plate with a trembling finger I recognized as my own. A voice croaked the words, “M-mine, too.”

Understand something about me: I have not been one to take prisoners. More than 70 percent of American men are overweight, and it would hardly be me to leave food uneaten and shame such a…um…sizable portion of the population. And sorry, Michelle, but I’ve considered it my duty as a natural-born citizen of Earth’s sole superpower to super-size a few meals a year.

Best of all, I could always get away with it. As a child, I fully expected to grow up to be Mac, the skinny guy who gets sand kicked in his face in those Charles Atlas comic-book ads. (I didn’t care as much to become the Hero of the Beach as much as attract a loyal girlfriend.) Even if I couldn’t beat up bullies, those early years taught me a lasting lesson: No matter how much I ate, my speedy metabolism would keep even a forkful of fat from sticking to my scrawny frame.

Fast-forward to the 21st century, when eating has come to represent my complete reward system. It isn’t exactly impeccable timing, for cheap junk food since my teen years has permeated the shelves of stores across the nation. And alas, I’ve discovered a device, called a bathroom scale, that apparently responds to my eating habits. A friend at work, Kimberly, tells me I’m lucky to have gotten away for so long without having to worry about gaining weight. I have a different perspective: Those decades left me totally unprepared. I’m a babe in the woods, and a chubby little one at that.

You’ll be happy to know I’ve already come up with a solution. It’s so easy, in fact, that it’s a wonder anyone is overweight. All I have to do is eat as little as possible in between those unavoidable occasions, during which I allow myself an extra calorie or two.

I’m talking about those major holidays, plus Super Bowl Sunday. And Valentine’s Day. The birthday celebrations of all family members, friends and colleagues. Add in meals away from home: business trips and office lunches, dining out with the family, meals during vacations and visits to friends and family. Barbecues at home. Ballgames, including at the stadium. Samples at supermarkets, country fairs and farmers’ markets. Snacks my coworkers put out. Movie-theater treats. Italian dinners at home, too. Not to mention pizza—no matter when or where it calls me by name. And did I forget Saturday breakfast?

In between those occasions, don’t even think about offering me food.

And we adapt so well to captivity

You get to a certain age, and you start thinking you’ve seen much of what life has to offer—at least at the mall. But there it was, no bigger than my hand, and the furry critter was crawling all over the sales rep who insisted that a sugar bear was just what our household needed.

Last I’d heard, Sugar Bear was a cartoon bear that adorned boxes of Super Sugar Crisp, wearing a preppy blue turtleneck sweater. Related to koalas and kangaroos and also called “sugar gliders,” these have appeared on Animal Planet and are billed as the perfect ‘pocket-pets.’” They’re well behaved and appropriate for young children. They bond to their human “families,” they get along with non-slithering pets, they’re loyal, and they love to play. When you have one, in fact, you’ll think of yourself in a whole new way: as a set of monkey bars.

Other people aren’t so complimentary. Sugar bears bite. They love to play so much that you can just forget about anything else you like to do, like read things online. Cats and dogs love them…the way women love chocolate. And they can’t be potty trained, though they tend to pee and poop on members of their human “families,” especially in their pockets. What do you expect? They’re marsupials—they know pockets from birth. Oh, and you don’t spend hundreds on just one; it needs a friend. So you should get a second, of the opposite sex. Of course, you know what comes next.

I’m sure the truth, other than their curious aversion to snakes, lies somewhere in between. But I have a bigger problem with a creature that’s captured in the rainforests of Australia or Indonesia and transported ten thousand miles to press me into servitude. Really now: If I so wanted something in my pocket that required incessant attention, a smart phone is all I’d need.

When Katie and Andrew were much younger, they received Tamagotchis in a birthday-party goody bag, and I considered it a credit to their intelligence that within scant weeks they left the beeping slave drivers for dead, virtually doomed to starvation. I have no doubt the kids would do the same if they played Farmville—and on the scale of Tyson Foods. It makes a father proud.

Yet today’s web-enabled handhelds have become today’s Tamagotchis, and there’s no condemning these critters. They text us, they comment on our status, they play music and videos, and do myriad other things with all the apps—little software programs, for the uninitiated—you can download to them. (Alas, there’s no virtual sugar-bear app.) They never shut up. And they’re creating a race of sub-human beings who walk while looking downward, banging into one another and into the path of cars—whose drivers are also checking their little screens instead of the road.

I know…because I’m trying not to become one. With my new iPod Touch, occasionally a very handy doodad, I’m still trying to find all the settings I need to set so it stops calling me with every IM, email and social-network comment someone sends my way. It doesn’t yet feel like a sugar bear in my pocket.

But the day it does, I’ll just have to download a Pampers app.

Say hello to my little friends

Last week’s freak storm saw our family, by the third night without power, clearing out for warmer climes. Which was probably a-okay with two of our next-door neighbors.

To this particular duo, what we might once have considered an old-fashioned polite disagreement about property lines has devolved into, two or three times a week, a shouting match. Not that we’re the ones doing the shouting; we’d look pretty stupid.

Then again, the subject never seems to come up when I’ve fired up the leaf blower.

A little clarification is in order. On one side, we’ve had the wonderful family we’ve known since the mid-nineties, when we bought the house. On the other, to the rear behind the shed, are much newer neighbors that, we've learned, prefer to keep to themselves. The humans, that is.

The Chihuahuas are quite another matter.

There are two. The one I’ll call "Tony" is actually the only Chihuahua; his sidekick, “Manny,” is another toy breed (alas, no off switch there, either) but might as well be a Chihuahua for the similar pitch and volume of his bark—not to mention his enduring reverence for borders. And, of course, there’s his penchant for following Tony out to bark at me each and every time I even open the back door. And once while I was in the kitchen with doors and windows closed.

You wouldn’t know from this situation how well I get along with most dogs—including “Omar,” ironically another Chihuahua, across the street. In one of our few conversations with Neighbor Father, he was holding Tony. The dog was shivering from the January cold and also in pain from a soccer ball that, said Neighbor Father, had hit him by accident. Without having been there (honest!) I knew there’d been no accident. I let Tony sniff me, which with most dogs meant the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Tony sniffed.

Tony growled.

The relationship has only gone down from there, mostly because Tony and sidekick Manny like to do to our yard what a few folks in the OWS crowd have been doing to Zuccotti Park. Silly me. Why walk your dogs in the rain or snow when you can let them out the door to roam the neighbor’s yard? For that matter, why wait for the rain or snow?

To be fair, I have to give Neighbors Mother and Father some credit. Once I began to chase those rodents—er, dogs—back to their yard swinging whatever yard implement was handy, Neighbor Father and Neighbor Mother took notice.

An invisible fence went up…or so they said. The dogs trotted right past the little white flags in defiance. Eventually, a metal chain-link fence followed. It’s four feet high; the dogs couldn’t jump over it no matter how hard they tried. Not that they’d need to try. Even small-brained dogs, after all, quickly deduce when a fence borders a rectangular property on only three sides.

Now that I think about it, the backyard has been strangely quiet since last week’s nor’easter. This past weekend, Elena and I picked up leaves for at least two hours with nary a yip from next door. Now I’m wondering. Could…could the storm’s high winds have carried the poor little things away?

Well, you know, it’s hardly my place to tell God where to aim His leaf blower.

A little too much for women to swallow

You might think that after 26 years of marriage, a woman would feel she knows her man. Elena certainly would. And she did…until she walked in and saw me watching that show again.

I guess I know what you’re thinking. Browse your own TV channels, and you never know what is suddenly there before your eyes—never mind if you’ve got young, impressionable kids. It’s there. And I got caught dead to rights. Even worse, it’s time I admitted…I’m a fan.

Of Man V. Food.

“You’re watching that again?” she inquires. As a matter of fact, I am.

In case you haven’t seen this Travel Channel show or the successor show Man V. Food Nation, I’ll spoon-feed the details: A fellow named Adam Richman tours the country, taking on the challenge to eat whatever humongous entrée some bar or restaurant says nobody can eat. That nobody should eat it somehow never enters into it, which is part of the fun. And it looks nothing like the new food portions the government has begun recommending—to replace a food pyramid that turned out, for a populace growing in girth, to be merely the tip of an iceberg.

During the show, he leads up to the actual meal by describing the restaurant, interviewing its cooks and showing how the dish in question is prepared (make that “piled”) and, in the process, building what passes for suspense. His experience? Besides having eaten food every day of his life, he has a Masters in Fine Arts from Yale. No, I don’t know how that explains things, either. Maybe more food in my stomach would help.

“It would be a better show if they didn’t always have the same stupid guy.”

When I first heard of Man V. Food, I was attending a trade show in Las Vegas. As it turned out, the Nascar Café in the very hotel I stayed at served a dish that was featured on Man V. Food. The Big Badass Burrito (B3 for short) is an 18-inch, six-pound missile aimed at your heart, not to mention your ego. The good news? You can have one for free. The bad? You have to finish your whole meal to dodge the bill. And those rules. You have only 90 minutes to finish the burrito, and you can just forget about going to the bathroom—or even standing up—till you're done or the clock runs out. I have a feeling most of every B3 served stays in Vegas.

Fail to finish the B3, as one foolish guy did as I dined nearby, and your photo joins those of many others before you on the “B3 Weenies Hall of Shame.” And you pay $20 plus the cost of whatever drinks you foolishly thought would provide lubrication. Alas, the B3 itself might be doomed—the Sahara Hotel, which included the Nascar Café, closed this spring. Guess somebody was eating up the profits.

“I can’t believe you watch that show. Every single one is the same.”

No, I explain, they’re not all the same. Sometimes Adam finishes the dish and, well, sometimes he doesn’t. And there’s another part I must explain. I myself am trying to eat less these days, barring the occasional buffet on the road. And pizza. Pulled pork. Okay, okay, those Drake’s Apple Pies, too. But besides all that, I’m watching portions more than I ever used to. I scan labels for the sodium, the high-fructose corn syrup and those dastardly trans-fats. What I won’t eat, though, I ingest through my eyes—which were always bigger than my stomach. What better escapism than to watch a guy stuff himself silly on meals prepared contrary to all medical advice…before a cheering crowd?

The more I think about it, the more I realize Elena has a point. In fact, I’ve conceptualized a better spin-off to Man V. Food than the unimaginative Man V. Food Nation. The new show I envision wouldn’t just give a truer challenge to our hungry friend Adam. It would also keep my wife glued to her seat. Somehow, though, I’m not sure I myself would watch Man V. Dishes.

Farewell to the Age of Aquarius

My wife and I have been paying dearly this spring for not paying more attention in those mythology classes. I’d written last Spring about our visit from Neptune and the soaking that resulted. What we’d come to realize is that he hadn’t gone far. He’d set up a honeymoon suite in the basement—complete with waterbed, natch—for him and his bride, Salacia, the female divinity of the sea.

And from the several little holes through which water seeped in this spring, we know the pair had offspring.

Since these two are gods, it was a no-brainer to assume the proud parents weren’t going to take their critters with them as they sailed off to the next home with a leaky basement. In whose hands do you think they left them?

From the two heavy rainstorms that hit us in early March, it was obvious: Neptune and Salacia’s progeny were ours to take care of. And oh, their cry! It came in the form of several water alarms I’d put down at the various places where water would flow after leaking through the cinderblock. And while Elena managed to rush from puddle to puddle during a few long days, armed with sponge mop and a wet-dry vacuum, the nights were mine to do the same. Just without the noisy vac.

Though I needed to work the next day after one such adventure, it wasn’t all bad. We have a little TV and an old VCR down there, and for the first time I got to watch episodes of Law and Order without missing the murders that occur in the first five minutes and, hence, the point of the episodes. I also got to watch such Hollywood masterpieces as Sharktopus.

We also heard of plenty else going on that helped us to keep our perspective—trees falling on houses, basements with swimming pools, and so on. During the second storm here, the earthquake and tsunami were also hitting Japan. So no, we couldn’t shed too many tears for ourselves. Besides, one tear in the wrong place and we’d have to hear another of those damned water alarms.

Nevertheless, it was time for a change. This very day, in fact, The Professionals are here. We’d done our research. We conducted multiple interviews of experts and signed the contract with one we thought would do the best job, using the latest in technology developed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. And next spring, we can sleep soundly, knowing that each and every leak in the basement will allow in no more water.

I’m left with only one question: What do you feed a troop of little Dutch boys?

Of universal appeal

I’m sure you’ve already read it. How could a book with this title not fly off the shelves? At least in some universe. And that’s what this book is about. It’s long been cliché to say, “We are not alone.” But now it’s our whole universe that has some company. We’re already seeing the effects.

First, a short step backward in time—to where I was supposed to tell you what book. The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos, besides having too long a title for a blog’s first paragraph, is physicist Brian Greene’s presentation of a new theory going around these days. You’ve heard of the Big Bang theory? It’s scientists' explanation for how the universe began. But now they’re changing it. Just like how they renamed the Brontosaurus the Apatosaurus and took away poor, poor planet Pluto.

According to Dr. Greene’s theory, the Big Bang resulted in not one universe but a “multiverse” of many universes. And maybe there were lots of other big bangs, each resulting in the creation of other universes. Whatever did happen, for all we know every universe might have created doubles and triples, et cetera of each of us. Just imagine, for the sake of argument, forty-two Justin Biebers! And in some of these universes, he might star in action films while the corresponding Vin Diesels croon to tweens.

My first thought about this theory is, how does a physicist prove it? Second, how are readers supposed to imagine a multiverse? For me, it’s like a ball bath with each ball representing a universe. Alas, here’s where my brain starts spinning to the point I go off the deep end—and not into a real ball bath. (I’d squash the toddlers and end up in jail.) In the ball bath of universes I’ve conjured up, the balls lack the hard-plastic shell of the usual kind. They can even, when a child jumps into the bath, blend temporarily into one another. Yes, yes…sounds like trouble. But from where I stand, it sure explains a lot of what makes the news these days.

Take the Minnesota man, last January, whose friend photographed him on his pitched roof. Ordinarily, this would not be odd. Except that his roof was covered in snow. And was clearing it using his snowblower. Haha, we say. What a doofus! But by my educated interpretation of Dr. Greene’s theory, we might instead ask which universe he came from. One, maybe, where the roof serves as a launchpad for people heading off to work, where news covers the latest air-rage skirmish between drivers.

In the same week, a woman tried to send a puppy across the country by priority mail. The box was taped shut with no air holes. We might wonder, what was she thinking? (In the old days of a single universe, we’d ask what planet she was from.) But if we have multiple universes, who’s to say that dogs from other ones even need food, oxygen and the occasional hydrant?

The list goes on, from these events last year:
• The drunken driver in East Lansing, Michigan, who called 911 on herself;
• the deputy at the jail in Collier County, Florida, who shocked a female colleague with his Taser as a joke; and
• the Story, Indiana, woman who accepted a “Village Idiot” award for setting her hair on fire.

Sure, it’s possible that the rest of us really are smart, and those who end up in these news reports are doofi. But who’s to say, in a multiverse populated by many versions of ourselves—all reading The Fog Bell at this very moment—that people from other universes didn’t occasionally slip into ours? In their own universes, maybe we’re the dunces.

Now that I think about it, though, multiple universes could present bigger problems than an inter-universal migration of the daft. Before you know it, trial lawyers will hear about the notion and put it to use. Accused of a crime? Why, you can use The Greene Defense: “It wasn’t me.” Sure, this defense dates back to the Book of Genesis. But armed with Dr. Greene’s theory, the argument that one of the defendant’s myriad doubles blew in, committed the crime and then left again (on the universe he rode in on) is bound to cast some smidgen of reasonable doubt for some jury…from some universe. And just wait till these aliens start getting elected to political office—no, wait, that’s already happened.

Yesterday came the news that the founder of Paypal is building commercial rockets; potential destinations include the moon, an asteroid or Mars. But he’s in need of paying customers. I have just the candidate, someone who’s caused quite enough trouble for one universe. Oh, Dr. Greeeeene…?

G whiz, stop it already

You might have seen the AT&T commercial with four people who are riding together in a car when one receives a funny email over his smart phone. While two of his co-workers wait for their ohhh-so-slooow phones to download the same email, he watches it and squeals in delight. Yes, like a pig. By the time the two companions’ downloads via some other network are done, they break out into laughter over the same email. Him? When his colleague beside him taps his shoulder—for some discordant reason, he isn’t hysterically laughing along—he nods distastefully about what, to him, is now a very old joke.

I’m thinking about the implication of all this. It seemed like yesterday that everyone was rushing out to get the first iPhones and other so-called "smart phones" that access the Internet in the time it once took to fetch the phone book. With the advent of smart phones, the occasion arose to create a retronym for what everyone used before. Nobody did. They didn’t have to—the message was clear. The phone I first bought solely to tell Elena I’m stuck in traffic or haven’t drowned at sea while fishing is now, shall we say, a "stupid phone."

It’s one thing for me to call something I own stupid; you might say it’s my mantra. But silly me, I find it hard to call a phone smart that lets anybody from work email me any hour of every day—and expect an immediate response.

But these smart phones, using such breathtaking monikers as "3G" and even "4G," are presented as so utterly cool that, well, you’d be stupid to resist. The key to their time-saving technology? You’d better sit down for this. You’ll save time whenever you brag about the technology to some schmo without a smart phone…by saying "G" instead of "generation." Trust me. In the weeks before the next G shows up, rendering current smart phones obsolete, those syllables add up.

Having covered technology for the first half of my career, I’m allowed to have a certain level of skepticism. What’s with this 3G and 4G stuff? If every new version is going to render all previous versions obsolete—it’s at least what AT&T wants us to think—why not hold out for the highest G you know? I happen not to know, for instance, the next round number after a quadrillion. That works for me.

Yet these toys have their pull, don’t they? For years we’ve been told to forget about our TV’s two tiny speakers and hook the cable box to a receiver that can drive six speakers or more for "surround sound." I thought it was silly and held out as long as I could. Today we have, um, our TV’s two tiny speakers. Let me try this again: Who wanted one of those clunky CRT TVs when store shelves were overflowing with flat-screen sets? That would be me. Besides, I might find it too hard to turn away from a flat-screen set when it’s time to go to the window, lean out and yell, "I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!"

Nevertheless, I feel the pull whenever I’m with someone who’s telling me some news flash, some clever thing a friend said on a social network, or a colleague’s email reply we both needed to see—all because he had a smart phone and I had my stupid one. I first joined Facebook one night that I was feeling my age. Other sites came next. Anyone who goes on such sites daily, then misses a day or two, gets the feeling of needing to catch up. How much more up-to-date would I be if I just got….

In the meantime, it’s all too much. I even dreamed about it the other day. I had a smart phone of my own and was walking in a rustic park I’ve never seen. A little dog runs over as I head toward what looks like a brook. Cute little guy, so friendly—if he had a Facebook page, I could “like” him. And oh, this lovely brook; I watch as it meanders around a bend. If only I could follow it. But no, I’d never find it on Twitter.

Driving myself to distraction

Lots of traffic today, but I’m finally on the highway. And none too soon. I have my fork, napkin’s here…let me get the lid off this coffee—hey, who taught you to drive, lady? Yeesh…get the straw into my orange juice, and I’m in business. Mmmm…good eggs. Toast? Just right. Let me get a piece of sausage onto my fork…oops, missed. Whoa, buddy! Why don’t I pull into your driveway and lean on the horn while you’re having breakfast?

Oh, yeah, gotta get the GPS ready for those errands I need to run over lunch. Let me set it up, plug it in, turn it on…. Excuse me, guy, there’s plenty of room in the right lane, last I checked! What was that address again? Oh, yeah, W-H-I-T-E SPACE P-L-A-I-N-S. Okay, okay! so I took my eyes off the road for a second! Maybe I was going to exit, did you ever think about that, huh? M-A-M-A-R-O-N-E-C-J…oops. It was your fault for yelling out your window, stupid. M-A-M-A-R-O…oh, forget it, these people are getting on my nerves. I’ll do it later. Creeps! Did your mother teach you those words?

Now…darn, breakfast’s getting cold. Let me just…. Well you wouldn’t expect me to spear dead air instead of home fries, would you? I have to see what I’m eating! Oh, okay, lots of traffic here, let me watch where I’m going. Hmmm…that bumper sticker looks clever. But that…type is too…tiny. Hey, no slamming on the brakes—I don’t care if there’s a turkey on the road, what about the one in the driver’s seat? Just because I help bring home the bacon doesn’t mean I want it draped over the brake pedal. Oh, forget it. Some coffee, that’s what I need. Ahhh! Oh, but it needs sugar. I have some here in the glove compartment….somewhere here…behind—yes, Bub, sometimes I do need both lanes! Can’t you see I’m busy? Do I tell you how to have your coffee?

Here’s the sugar. Oh, and I forgot I had this CD. Let me put it in—oh, not that song, it was the…sixth or seventh I liked best…no, not that one, no, not the next—or maybe it was the fifth. Anyway…oh, what’s that buzz? A text! I was wondering when I was going to hear back from my friend. Is it? Hmmm…no, I don’t recognize that number. I don’t…I don’t know this person! Stupid, stupid, I don’t care about you or where you’ll be when…and I’m going…to tell you that…right now…. Oh, hey, my speedometer’s broken or something, I never go that fast. Oh…oh, I’ll be at work in ten minutes, and I haven’t even started in the newspaper!

And now, uh oh, flashing lights behind me…let me get over here so he can get whoever—or is “whomever”? The grammar book is under the seat. Or was that the thesaurus? Let me just reach down and find…. Hmmm, he’s getting over, too. He wants…me? Aren’t these guys supposed to be going after d-dangerous p-people?

Officer, w-was I…hey, where’d he go? I’m not…wait a minute…I’m not on the highway. I’m lying on my bed! I’ve been asleep! It must have been…the Vicodin, my pain medication…plus lingering anesthesia from my shoulder surgery this morning. What a…what a nightmare!

Oh, I was so scared—thank God it wasn’t real! Well, another couple days recovering, and I’ll be back to work. Back on the road, too. And just in time to be behind the wheel again. After all, I haven’t yet finished my latest DVD.

Revenge of the machines

Their attitude doesn’t get any plainer than it did this week in Spokane, Washington. At one corner crossing, a walk/don’t-walk signal was signaling pedestrians not only to wait but also, it seems, to stand in mute surprise as the signal delivered a digital insult. City officials claimed snow was blocking display of the top half of all but the middle finger of the red stop icon. But we know better, don’t we?

We’ve all shown our frustration at machines that do us wrong, and they’re certainly not feeling the love. It could be your car, a home appliance, or myriad other devices we count on. Or maybe your computer—no, scratch the maybe. And if the computer is networked, you remember too well the day the network went down the single time you forgot to save your work.

For us, this year will go down in family lore for a series of back-to-back assaults that told us just what that Spokane traffic signal told pedestrians. At first, the small mishaps didn’t concern us. Just because the bread is about to catch fire, after all, is no reason to worry that the toaster’s “cancel” button has become just for show. If a burner on our electric stove occasionally prefers not to heat up when ordered, I suppose we all have our bad days. And if the kitchen sink’s sprayer prefers to dispense water below the sink instead of above it, well, isn’t it just a difference of opinion?

Shaking our heads, Elena and I decided that nuisances like these were the dues homeowners pay. But such lackadaisical responses on our part apparently didn’t sit well among household’s machinery. “Human up,” the machines would soon tell us in their own creative way.

The upstairs toilet first decided it was wasteful to empty its contents as often as we, not to mention civilized society, expected. Next came our desktop computer, the one Elena uses for her freelance-editing work, when it seceded from Google and decided to form its own Internet deep in the jungles of Laos. Our washer, judging from the noise, then joined Second Life in the avatar of a jet plane. Amid all this, the boiler began to pretend its temperature gauge was part of one of those carnival hammer games. And someone had just swung the mallet very hard.

They weren’t done. Although my laptop wasn’t hosting the stable of Trojans we learned were on the desktop PC, it rebelled in a way reminiscent of the Groucho Marx line: “Whatever it is, I’m against it.” Any program I launched, I could brew coffee and finish the cup before learning if my request was granted. The PC might start the program in two or three minutes. It might start up two or three copies of the program. Or it might pretend I didn’t exist, which happened most often.

Ultimately, we fought off the attacks. An obscure utility, for example, cleaned up the desktop PC. We bought a new washer before our old one could break through the roof and achieve cruising speed. A local handyman replaced a simple part on the upstairs toilet. And the boiler men came about three times.

The strange part of all this is that I understand the machines’ complaint. Humans design and build products and peddle them to a world of unwilling product testers. And then, when things break, we blame the machines first. Wouldn’t you rebel if you got the blame for your own genetic code? And then, of course, there’s nature’s own tendency to rust and otherwise weaken parts. Humans, ahem, wouldn’t know anything about that.

Being an avid fan of horror movies, I should have realized the machines weren’t finished with us once we felt in the clear. One sunny morning, I was testing the new backup pump I’d bought for the basement. My plumbing, my wiring. For those two reasons, it shouldn’t have worked. But it did. That’s when I thought to check the outdoor pump, the one that serves as our front line of defense against flooding during our springtime monsoon, springing into action when water surrounds its base. I connected the hose and sprayer. I stretched the hose out to the pump’s pit, opened the hatch and began spraying. As the pit filled with water, the automatic pump stood silent. I didn’t.

“Noooooooooooo….”