Month: November 2020

Lazy Boy

Beautiful Northern Thailand

I have a lot of free time and own a motorcycle. There’s virtually nothing holding me back from entertaining myself.

No one knows the day or the hour, so we just act as if. We breeze along, oblivious to the forces that conspire to kill us. I am as guilty as the next guy. I drive a motorcycle multiple times a day in a country that has the highest motorcycle fatality rate after Libya, which really isn’t a country anymore, just a launching spot for rubber dinghies full of desperate refugees headed for Italy.

Yes, I continue to make plans, albeit tentative ones. If I’m still around tomorrow, I plan to stop by a nearby hospital and have some tests done. They’re having an “end of the year” promotion, and the common blood and urine tests combined with a few others will set me back about seventy dollars. Since I am seventy years old, that seems like a prudent thing to do. But maybe I’m over-reacting. After all, when my number’s up, it’s up.

I could do a lot with seventy dollars. I imagine I could enjoy ten to twelve hours of Thai massage at that rate. Of course, I’d have to spread it out over time. Twelve hours of Thai massage would probably prove fatal.

12 Signs Your Dishwasher Is Dying

Most dishwashers are capable of speech. Their vocabulary might be limited to table ware, pots and pans and various detergents, but they can carry on a conversation about things you might want to talk to your dishwasher about. After all, this is 2020. Artificial Intelligence has seeped into every aspect of our lives, with varying levels of success.

But even dishwashers must reach the end of their days. As they shuffle off this mortal coil, they may rumble and gasp, spurt hot, soapy water when least intended, and fail to properly clean your dishes. You must reduce your expectations of your dishwasher. It is getting old. It maybe not be here next year or even next week.

Try to sympathize rather than scold. When talking to your dishwasher, emphasize all the good times you spent together, all the meals you prepared and the machine cleaned up after. Let the dishwasher know you appreciate all the times it worked as expected.

Free as a bird

I am scouting a new path, and forging new tools to help me enjoy the journey. My old habits have brought me mostly ennui and pain. From now on, I will try to find new ways to live.

When in doubt, I will do nothing. Although I may not be able to wait until certainty arrives, I should at least be able to resist the compulsive and repetitive behaviors that have brought me this far down. I have sunk to previously unimaginable depths. The financial future looks bleak. My reputation is in tatters.

Old friends avoid me. Now that I drool uncontrollably and palsy shakes my limbs, I am unlikely to make new ones. I could assume that somehow this is all my fault, karmic retribution for my past deeds, but I don’t think that will get me anywhere I want to go. Neither saint nor sinner, I am merely a garden-variety human being, struggling to make the best of the situation in which he finds himself.

Should I expect redemption? A bounty of good luck? Absolution for past failings, and the sympathy of bystanders? Hardly.

When I stole that bus I knew what I was doing. When I forced the children on it to walk into the desert without food or water, I was fully aware of my actions. What I failed to understand were my motives. They were obscure to me. Before that incident, I had never thought one way or the other about school buses, yet one proved to be my undoing.

Fortunately, every one of those school children survived, though I’ve heard that a few are still undergoing therapy. The owner of the school bus declined to press charges, for it was revealed that the driver was taking an unauthorized cigarette break and flirting with the cashier at the gas station. He shouldn’t have left the keys in the ignition and the door wide-open.

My lawyers tell me that I’ll likely get off with a sentence that remands me to mental health counseling. After a year or so, I’ll be free of the ankle bracelet and able to come and go as I please.