My stack is colorful, varied, and like all good intentions – mostly unused. It’s not really my fault. The covers are so bright, the fonts so enticing, the bindings so lush and there was a — okay, now I’m flashing on John Belushi in The Blues Brothers declaring the equivalent to a woman with an automatic weapon. Do you see my eyebrows raised over my soulful green eyes? Is it working? Do I need to run now?

Damn! Thought I had you there for a minute.

Books, books, and books. They line my walls at home, they slide around in the trunk of my car and at the bottom of my gym bag, and now they’re sitting at my desk waiting to go back to the library. I can take them, it’s just across the quad, but I’m loathe to give them up yet. I’ve only read one of them from cover to cover, made it halfway through another and merely perused the remainders. It’s not that they aren’t good titles, they’re delightful, but the problem is with me.

It’s like this; have you ever found yourself eating a bag of french fries for dinner when you could have had a salad? Gone for the cereal when the yogurt was sitting right there in the fridge? Picked up a cookie and ignored the apple? Those are the comfort-carb blues. I have tossed out many a bag of salad soup along with my best intentions and an empty cookie box, and these books are my mental equivalent. With this wealth of learning and entertainment at my fingertips, I have wasted my precious reading time with familiar novels and I’m not sure why. Look at my choices:

Narcissism: Denial of the True Self – Alexander Lowen, M.D.

Absinthe: History in a Bottle – Barnaby Conrad III

Adventures Among the Ants: A Global Safari with a Cast of Trillions – Mark W. Moffett

In Defense of Food – Michael Pollan

The Hundred-Food Journey – Richard C. Morais

Apollo’s Angels – Jennifer Homans

How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming – Mike Brown

Uncorking the Past: The Quest for Wine, Beer, and Other Alcoholic Beverages – Patrick McGovern

I made it all of the way through The Hundred-Foot Journey and even wrote a blog about it. Adventures Among the Ants was great but that trek ended three-quarters of the way through the book, (the photos are astonishing). Narcissism  was informative and (self?) absorbing but more of a reference book. Absinthe, like the liquor itself, was not what I expected. Pluto might have been a great murder mystery but remains unsolved as far as I’m concerned. Pollan’s Defense of Food boiled down to the simplest sentence: Eat food, not too much, mostly plants. Apollo’s Angels is a history of ballet and really should be more exciting. The writer left in all the history but none of the gossip and snark that makes a good study of the arts. The Quest for Wine… still has a chance, it’s going back home with me tonight.

So why the failure on my part to reach my reading goals? It’s a perfect storm of reasons; partly my own unrealistic goal setting habits, partly the lack of time, but mostly just underestimating the need for a little mental comfort food right now. So many things are changing, personally and professionally, that a safe and familiar book is like an old bathrobe after a day in a suit and heels. My daily reading time doesn’t happen until after 10pm when I’m trying to wind down and go to sleep and maybe world food politics and technicolor bug closeups aren’t the best plan. If I’m going to browse this selection right before dropping into dream-time, I shouldn’t be surprised if a giant ant in a tutu shows up in my favorite bar and asks me if I want a cookie.

Yes, please.

Filed under: Book Reviews, Weasels - Everything Else ]]> http://bookweasel.wordpress.com/2011/10/17/227/feed/ 1 bookweasel http://bookweasel.wordpress.com/2011/10/13/what-flavor-will-you-choose/ http://bookweasel.wordpress.com/2011/10/13/what-flavor-will-you-choose/#comments Thu, 13 Oct 2011 01:09:41 +0000 bookweasel http://bookweasel.wordpress.com/?p=225 ]]>

I know, I know, it’s dangerous, it’s this, it’s that – but I like it. I like being able to go virtual garage sale-ing without leaving my house, or reading the Best-of-Craigslist section for the humor. Even the Rants section can be interesting – I like the novelty of reading a rant instead of listening to one.

Not long ago I decided to jump in the pool myself and see if I could sell something. There were a few items around the place I didn’t need anymore so I figured, why not. My first few postings languished like the last pumpkin on the lot the day after Halloween. No interest, none, zip, nada. It was too much like my middle school dance experiences for my taste so I left it for awhile, but then I decided I was taking the wrong approach. Every ad looked exactly alike, with varying degrees of misspelling and missing punctuation.  Couldn’t I come up with something better? At least I can spell, usually, so the only challenge was making my ad stand out.

As you can guess, it worked. I ran a few ads but my two favorites were for a lawnmower and a very cool tool called a Silent Paint Remover. That’s basically a quartz heater with a handle that heats the paint, but as you’ll see below, the idea was better than the reality.

Here are my contributions to the Craigslist ‘For Sale’ environment:

Silent Paint Remover
This nearly new Silent Paint Remover is a great tool for removing paint, varnish, adhesive, silicone caulk, etc. No chemicals, grinding, or sanding to remove layers of paint and it’s safe to use in your home. The paint remover uses infrared heat to soften paint, varnish, and so on. After the paint is scraped off with a pull scraper, you can paint immediately. No harsh chemicals are required and the paint bubbles right up for simple removal in a few strokes. If you are a contractor, professional painter, or have a large project, this is the best choice of paint removers for you. It’s perfect for home hobbyists and for renovating older homes.
I bought it two years ago to renovate my 100 year old home and the paint remover worked perfectly. Removing those layers of paint was like an archeological dig and it was easy to use, but then I realized something. This is the perfect tool for a Do It Yourself type person, but I am not that person. I’m really more of a Don’t Do It Yourself gal, so I hired someone to renovate the house for me and put this tool in the closet. There it sits, practically brand new, with the carrying case, special paint scraper and contractor grade 100′ extension cord with a safety rating good enough for nuclear war.

Amount of money spent buying the Silent Paint Remover with the Hard Plastic Carrying Case, Special Scraping Tool, and the Super-d-duper extension cord? $450.00
Likelihood that I’m ever going to use this again? .05%

Amount of money I can recover from my brief fling with home renovation? That’s where you come into the picture. I want $350.00 for the entire package. Come on guys, it’s silent! What wouldn’t you give for a little silence in your life?

**********************************************************

Newly New Lawnmower
This sweet little mower is about two years old (that’s nearly 14 in yard equipment years) and got very infrequent use in a medium size yard. It’s in excellent shape but I’m not so it’s got to go.
This adorable mower is very friendly, has all four wheels, a big engine that goes ‘Vroommm’, a sharp spinning thing that goes round really fast and frightens the lawn to death. It also has a big bag hanging on the back that the mortally wounded grass crawls into to hide, and a big handle that must not like me very much because it moves along the rows without me hardly touching it. The manual says it’s self-propelled which is an admirable personality quality that I wish I possessed. As much as I like the mower, it needs a younger and more active owner and besides, it doesn’t get along with my Roomba.
I want the lawnmower to go to a good home so there’s an adoption fee of about $250.00. It’s best if you have a yard because it’s really not an indoor mower.

Both items sold within 48 hours at nearly my asking price. In fact, I got lots of calls for each ad, especially the mower. I suspect not everyone really needed the mower, they were just curious about the ad and wanted to find out who would answer the phone.  I used a friend as a proxy so I didn’t meet anyone in person. There’s no follow-up story of meeting my unknown twin or being adopted into the family of a British aristocrat who was overcome with pity and then discovered I was actually the missing love-child of his own darling but long-lost daughter.  Don’t laugh. It could happen.

Okay, so there’s a shortage of rich guys actually SEARCHING for undiscovered offspring, but the missing twin thing still has possibilities.

Mr. Bryson is a travel writer and I’ve blogged about him before. He’s the one who travels to far-off and interesting locations and then walks all over the place, writing out his experiences and musings in a ‘whatever-strikes-his-fancy’ manner that is a pleasure to read. Going through one of his books is a bit like traveling with a favorite uncle who’s a bit of a character but certain to take you to interesting places. My favorite book of his to date is ‘In a Sunburned Country’ and very nearly made me want to visit Australia. If it weren’t for that pesky spider that gets so surly during the mating season and flings it’s enormous self at phobic tourists, I might even consider it. However, huge aggressive spiders are a very certain prophylactic against my presence so Australia is right out. Sorry Bruce, there’s not enough lager in the world to get me on the same continent as the Sydney Funnel-web Spider.

I’ve traveled a bit and as much as I enjoy it, that moment of finally coming home and crawling into my own bed is one of the happier moments in life. Perhaps that’s why Mr. Bryson’s recent book focused on a location near and dear; his very own home in Norfolk, England. His home is a former parsonage and sounds like a charming warren of little rooms and odd, forgotten spaces. Prowling around a place like that can be a real pleasure and may have been the inspiration for ‘At Home: A Short History of Private Life.’

The author takes us on a bit of a room by room tour of his home and then uses each room as a section of the book. It’s much more than just a description of the Bryson household because he digs into the origin of things we barely notice. Learning the history of hallways, sculleries, dining rooms and drawing rooms was a real treat. Each space launched a history lesson and I had never heard any of this before. I guess like most people I think of history in terms of significant dates, events, and important people, but the history of indoor plumbing and the flush toilet is not only relevant to my personal existence, it’s really fun to read. Education in America has a lot to answer for in that I’ve sat through years of history lessons that were deadly dull when the reality is that our past is utterly fascinating.

I won’t get into the details of each chapter but if you want to know why giving birth in a hospital used to be a REALLY bad idea (think of soap and water and not having any in a hospital setting and you’ll get the idea), or why the government of England in the 14^th century enacted legislation known as Sumptuary Laws to control the who had rights to fashionable clothes.  Anyone who thinks the government is currently in their business should imagine what it would be like if the fabric used in your pants was a matter of law. Yes, there really were Fashion Police before Joan Rivers got her own show. Read the section about dressing rooms to learn why shortages of wheat flour in the 1700’s led to riots and a national fashion crisis. If you had to choose between a loaf of bread and powder for your wig you wouldn’t have any problem at all, but the well-dressed man of 1770 would rather skip the muffin and make sure his curls were well-dusted. It may be hard for us to understand a fashion that required men to shave their heads bald in order to wear a huge wig of pink or blue curls, but just look at Donald Trump’s comb-over and you’ll see that crazy fashion ideas aren’t all that far removed from modern life.

In my rating system the Best Friend Read is the second best rating available and means I took my time and savored every moment of the book, as if it were a coffee date with my best friend. This book was like an extended and intimate conversation with a very best friend, in their own lovely and quirky home. It doesn’t matter if you like history or not, you’ll enjoy getting to know your own living space. You will be surprised and delighted, shocked and appalled, but you certainly won’t be bored.

At Home: A Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson, published by DoubleDay.

Besides the trip and the show, my friends also gifted me with an astonishingly lovely dress and jewelry to match. It’s not often that I go out in public and feel like I’m ready to walk the red carpet, but so it was that night. When your escort takes one look at you and stops dead, it’s either really, really good, or you’ve forgotten to put on your pants. This was really, really good. I’m so glad because the alternative would have really messed with my evening, although the entertainment value for the rest of the group may have been greater.

I had never seen this show before but it was highly entertaining. I’m looking forward to going back in July when they perform ‘Legally Blonde.’ You know I have to go to any live theatre that includes a Chihuahua in the cast and I can’t wait to seeing how it performs in public. My own little dogs are eager to perform in public, usually filling the role of crazed barking swamp monster. Through the vagaries of life I only have two dogs in my household now; a Chihuahua/rat terrier mix with (no kidding) burst vessels in his eyes from barking too much, and a rescue of uncertain parentage and under bite that defies belief. She looks like she’s trying to snort her own lower incisors.  They both have a certain charm but I miss the bulging-eyed quivering mess that is the true Chihuahua. I lost one of my little Chi’s to kidney disease, another to old age, and my last true Chihuahua when my household split along partisan lines.

Maybe it’s because I’m missing my own little beasts that I enjoyed my last book so much. It was ‘A Small Furry Prayer: Dog Rescue and the Meaning of Life’ by Steven Kotler, published by Bloomsbury.  It’s the story of an L.A. journalist and his girlfriend who move to a ranch in the middle of nowhere New Mexico and rescue unwanted small dogs. It’s a gem of a book  that can be appreciated by anyone for the quality of writing, but for us small dog enthusiasts and rescuers, it’s a revelation. He writes of the joys, pains, surprises, and frustrations that only a Chihuahua owner can fully appreciate. It’s not just their own stories, even though that would be enough, but he includes history, social issues and so much more.

Best of all, they’ve posted video of the pack on You Tube. I’m not sure that ‘pack’ is the best word for a grouping of Chihuahuas. There should be a different word that reflects their essential nature, such as a ‘shiver’ of Chihuahuas, or a ‘quiver’ or maybe it should be an ‘agitation’ of Chihuahuas. The word ‘pack’ suggests the elegant sleekness of timber wolves racing through the forest by moonlight. The reality is that Mr. Kotler slowly lopes through the desert, trailed by an undulating mass of tiny bodies, looking as if a mass of furry pill-bugs were rolling along behind him. This is a must see.  You can search for Rancho de Chihuahua on You Tube and several videos will be posted.

For more information on the book, visit his website at http://www.stevenkotler.com/node/123/. I was passed the book by my friend Diana and handed it on to my daughter. I think this one will get the ‘Best Friend’ rating read and will likely make it into the multiples category. (See the About BookWeasel post for more information on my rating system.)  Reading it once won’t be enough for me and I surely hope for more installments of their story. If you don’t want to wait for the book, you can see more information about the dogs and life at Rancho de Chihuahua at http://www.ranchodechihuahua.org/.  I’m sure your donations would be welcome. It’s not easy to keep 30+ little dogs sheltered, fed, and dressed in cold-weather gear.

So to close, thank you to my dear friends for a wonderful weekend, to my date for thinking I looked fabulous, and to Steven Kotler and Joy Nicholson for making a difference for so many little creatures, and then for having the kindness to tell the world their stories.

I judge books by their cover.

Okay, so it’s shallow. I can’t help it if I get seduced by rich colors, elegant fonts, and slick cover pages. I blame my childhood, growing up with nothing to read except my complete set of ChildCraft encyclopedias. While these books were rich in content, the bindings were… (sorry ChildCraft), they were BORING.  Back in those days you had to take a chance on a book and actually start reading it.

Not so the books gracing the shelves of my temple to self-indulgence. All you book-geeks know I’m talking about Borders. It’s utterly enticing, the smell of coffee, the sexy young Elvis pounding from the stereo system, the bright graphics of book covers. It all combines to create a layered tapestry of sensory input. Every shelf is full of something fascinating and every book is the promise of something wonderful. One of my favorite pastimes is browsing the aisles or sitting at a table in café and working on my laptop. If there’s a rotten job that needs to get done, something I’ve been putting off for days, a trip to Borders opens my path to completion and before I know it, I’m done. Case in point: online traffic school. There’s no way this is fun but sit with a vanilla latte in a leather armchair surrounded by book lovers and it’s really not so bad. Not worth the ticket but otherwise highly endurable.

The atmosphere of big bookstore is awesome but even better are the books themselves. This is where the art of graphic design shines brightest. Someone designs everything we see, from the old lost dog flyer all sad on the lamppost to the very busy label on Dr. Bonner’s Pure Castile Soap. I read labels and appreciate the work and artistry, but I’ll still go for the best deal even if the package isn’t very attractive.

It’s different in the bookstore. Here the design reigns supreme. I have never stood with two books in my hands, counting the pages and dividing by the cover price to come up with the rational selection. What I do is open the book to the table of contents, skip to the middle of the book for sample of the writing style, and then skim the entire book looking for pictures. I won’t reject a book for lack of pictures but I might choose one if they’re included. As a visual organizer, the pictures help me absorb the information by giving me a mental image to help anchor the text. But the most important criteria is the cover. A lot of thought goes in to designing a book cover and the result can make a book jump up and holler ‘Buy me! I’ll be great – you won’t be disappointed. An example is a recent read called ‘The Guinea Pig Diaries: My Life as an Experiment’ by A. J. Jacobs.

The cover shows the author in a lab coat, holding a flask containing a smaller version of himself. He’s intently studying this mini version of himself and this hints at the topic of the book. Jacobs writes an interesting version of experience essays: he puts himself through crazy experiments and writes up the process and the result. The first of these I came across was The Year of Living Biblically where he spent a year living by the exact old testament levitical laws. At the end he had a horrific beard and a prayer habit-not an easy thing for an agnostic. His next book was The Know it All where he recounts his experience of reading the entire Encyclopedia Britannica in one year, cover to cover. Admit it, haven’t you always wanted to do that? No? Maybe that’s just me and A.J. but after reading his experience I’m taking this off my bucket list. All those facts began leaking out and he became completely insufferable.  I’m already on the borderline with my frequent references to Star Trek, Monte Python or Terry Pratchett’s Discworld.

I like A.J.’s books because he does the stupid things I’ve thought about doing but never got around to starting. In The Guinea Pig Diaries he experiments with total honesty, something everyone says they want but A.J. showed me that’s really not a good idea. Another experiment was to live in fully rational manner, avoiding any logical fallacies: not possible. There were others but none of them were a real success, just highly entertaining.

It’s true; I have a bad case of the furloughs. My husband has furloughs too, but he has different days then me. Mine seem to happen at random and I can’t get rid of them. I’ve tried everything, but they keep coming back every month.

Since I’m stuck with them, I try to make furlough days productive. In the past I’ve used furlough days to clean up and organize my home office, to pay bills or file documents, or even work on freelance projects for pay. That sounds like more fun than it really it because I have to do that work at home and my house is passed tense. My laptop won’t fit in my lap when my lap is full of wagging tails and my latest book is right there next to me, begging me to be bad and read the day away. But – I am resolute and take a firm stand on this; I always give in.

Today is Furlough Eve and I need to go home. I’m sure by tomorrow morning I’ll feel energized and ready to use my unpaid day for something important, some accomplishment that will take the place of my regular workday. I have my list ready, my stack of books, and my freelance job sitting next to the laptop. Should I read something? Clean something? Type something? Yes, yes and yes. Will I? Hmmm…I’ll sleep on it.

One of my recent tomes was ‘A History of Taste’ and it was less of a food tour through the ages and more of an insomnia treatment. I finished it because there may have been illiterate kids in Ethiopia who would be happy to get that book.

I read ‘The Fig Eater’ by Jody Shields. It took a very loose grab at ‘Dora – A History of a Case of Hysteria’ by Sigmund Freud. The thing I really enjoyed about the book was the sense of being in turn-of-the-century Vienna, almost a narrative map with walking tour of the city and culture. As a murder mystery it wasn’t great, but I don’t like murder mysteries anyway so it doesn’t matter.

One of my frequently read authors is Bill Bryson. He writes travel essays and the most recent read was ‘I’m a Stranger Here Myself’. These are recycled stories about his return to life in America after living in Great Britain for years. His previous books about Australia and a walking tour of England were much more entertaining, but I’m loyal and you never know when you might find a gem hiding in the collection. No gems in this one but it was a pleasant setting.

There’s more I want to write about but time is short and if I write too much I really will write too much. Today is just a stone skipped across the water but at least I’m still about water, and above ground, myself. A friend told me recently that any day above ground was a good day. I have to agree although I think this leaves something to be desired as a starting point. Let’s go with a day above ground with no one yelling at you, or above ground and with a cookie. There, that’s a good day, skipping a rock while holding onto a cookie and if anyone starts yelling you can offer them one or the other – overhand if need be. Life is good.

The first time, no luck; no bar code scan and no book worth reading. I was seduced by the cover of a book call ‘Brief Interviews with Horrible Men’ or something like that. They may have been wretched, or despicable, or reprehensible; I don’t know. The book didn’t stay in my possession long enough for the title to imprint on my brain. These fellows may have been horrendous, but they were not interesting. I took it back on my next trip over after scanning a few pages walking between buildings.

On my next trip, I abandoned my search for a specific book and just browsed around trying to find something that appealed to me.  No luck at first. When the 14-Day book display begins to look like my home bookshelf, and the New Books section appeals to me as much as a tooth extraction, it’s time to get inventive.

I’ll share with you my secret weapon: the reshelving area. Sometimes these shelves are just a holding cell for rebound textbooks, but sometimes there’s a real treasure waiting for its next home visit. Today was wonderful. Not only did my bar code format work perfectly on the second try, (and if you don’t know bar codes that’s a real accomplishment), I found a copy of Freakonomics waiting to go back in the stacks, and a record of clothing styles from Rome to the mid 20^th Century.

Freakonomics promises to be very clever and irreverent of our cultural collective, and the books of costumes through the ages is fascinating. I always thought those descriptions of Marie Antoinette’s three-foot high hair styles were some kind of urban legend, but no! Those chicks really piled their hair up for crazy heights and then added sea galleons, bird cages, hats or even wind up clocks. What’s really strange is to realize that Miss A. got into trouble with the locals for stopping the fashion mile high club. When she started wearing more normal clothes all hell broke loose and she lost her opportunity to go back to crazy hair styles and the head to wear them on.

Sorry, I digressed. Fashion mag’s do that to me, even ones that are fifteen centuries out of date.

So, back to my day in the library. It was awesome. There’s something very tactile about libraries. The smell for one thing is unique to the stacks. It’s not moldy and it’s not fresh. All that paper collected in one place is a not-quite-but-almost pleasant smell, kind of musty and floury.  The books are an experience, even if you don’t check them out. Just the varieties of binding fabric are attractive, the old linen feel of dusty volumes sitting right next to glossy new editions is very egalitarian. I’m very visual so I’m attracted to the newer books with the dust jacket still in place. The books that come home with me are usually colorful and have some photographs or drawings to liven up the pages. I hope that doesn’t make me superficial, but the beauty of being superficial is that if you are, you never know it.

Speaking of…, have you ever noticed what you don’t smell in libraries? It’s perfume. I usually notice when I walk by someone who’s wearing it, and often make horrible faces behind the back of anyone who wafts by in a cloud of scent. Think of Calvin in Calvin and Hobbes when it’s time for dinner. Gaakkk! Aaagg!  But it never happens in a library, at least not yet. Maybe the book smell overpowers the flowers and spice, or maybe Terry Pratchett is right about L-space and the fragrance dissipates over all those Escher aisles.  They surely feel as though they could go on forever.

Maybe someday there’ll be time to explore them all, fingers trailing along the Dewey labels. Perhaps someday I’ll stumble over the remains of some ancient artifact, tiny slip of paper with penciled DDC code grasped in it’s proto-fingers.  I’ll be friendly, ‘Hi Ardi, couldn’t you find ‘Saluki’ either?’ Then I’ll continue on my way until I meet myself coming back the other direction. I’ll have extra reading glasses, ’cause you never know, and my ID card with it’s now- perfect bar code as a talisman against overdue fines and a misplaced SF429 .S33 D84 2009.

Part of the fun of science fiction is the way it looks forward to the future and conjures whole new lifestyles. Star Trek wasn’t just about a Conestoga wagon transformed into a space ship and the lead cowpoke into a star ship captain. I loved watching image of society. They used no money, offered universal healthcare, and portrayed women as equal in the workforce. Captain Kirk played fast and loose with the Prime Directive and no green girl was safe, but Mr. Spock always made up for it. His devotion to logic and emotional restraint was like a popscicle on a hot day.

Most of all, I love the technology of Star Trek. I loved the medical scanners, the communication devices, ‘the transporter for ‘beaming’ down, and doors that SWOOSHED open. These were the stars of the show for me. My daydreams were based on a marvelous vision of the future, but the reality of becoming that society is proving a lot tougher than I expected.

I’m thinking about this because I just ran across an article at Pink Tentacle that shows the future as depicted in a 1969 publication called Shōnen Sunday. Here’s the link:

http://www.pinktentacle.com/2009/10/computopia-old-visions-of-a-high-tech-future/

The artwork is fun but the fascinating part of the article is how closely the illustrators came to predicting the future. Every panel I saw had some super high-tech element that we actually now have. The first panel shows a classroom with digital teacher projected onto a white screen, while each student sits in front of a desktop computer.

Other panels show families holding telephone conversations via the computer, with videophone, and laptop computers with printers. There’s a robot vacuum cleaner and even robotic surgery performed by a waldo arms across the room.

The vision isn’t spot-on, and it predicts all this will be in place by 1989. (Insert annoying buzzer sound here). We’re behind schedule and we’re missing some of it. We don’t have the classroom robots that zoom around bopping unruly students on the head, and there’s still no family space shuttle parked in my driveway.

On the other hand, we do have classroom media that displays the teacher and allows students to interact with the display. Skype and digital cameras allow us to carry on videophone conversations, Roomba is our version of the vacuuming robot, and robotic surgery is here and looks a lot like the picture. I’ve seem the robotic arm surgery room and it was immensely cool, just like it looked in Logan’s Run.

Even though it took much longer to arrive, and we’re not all wearing skin-tight leotards, (thank God), we made it. The future that thrilled me when I was ten and longing for my own four-door flying car is here, (minus the car).

However, it’s not everything I expected. My daydreams of the future didn’t include worrying about losing my healthcare. I thought we would all be dropping by clinics for spray hypos and self-serve miracle beds. I also didn’t expect that jobs would be harder to find, and to keep, than they were thirty years ago.

My techno future is here, and the hardware is wonderful, but my Star Trek society looks further away than ever. I’m tired of money and not having enough of it. I’m tired of worrying about paying for prescriptions or finding that damn flu shot. I never expected that I would be paying more for gas than for water or that my dog would need health insurance. And most of all, most of all, I want my freaking door to go SWOOSH!