Category: insights

insights

A Robiotic: “Hello, how are you today?”

Robiotics

Hello. My name is Aaron, and I am calling you from a robotic voice-activated recording device…click, whirr…How are you today?…click, whirr.

Hello. My name is Erin, and I am calling you from a robotic voice-activated recording device…click, whirr…How are you today?…click, whirr.

As it were. As it is.

I’m an irregular regular at library discard sales, usually browsing the orphaned texts that possess no universal product codes to reveal their identity for the database-connected; however, among my fellow book-seeking regulars are buyers equipped with handheld scanners that report the marginal value of each barcoded volume: one electronic click-seek at a time…leave, buy, buy, leave, leave, leave — leafing is not only unnecessary but a wasted effort that squanders marginal value.

I’m a leafer, I’m a laugher, I’m a midnight loafer. Sure don’t want to hurt no one.

Inurance

I try to become inured of the unpleasant encounter, the expectedly callous, the inconceivably gullible, the luck of the licentious liar — so far without success. But it leaves me something to write about on this electronic leaf.

I can find the noun Kardashianism  online, but I seem the only person in the Googlesphere searching for this noun: “inurance,”

Did you mean: Insurance?

The robiotic keyboard-activated borgs presently responsible for all things “inurance” have found not a twit, so I am coining the word as you read, as the search-bots report back to the robiotics, the results of their crawls. Long live inurance!

Essential absurdity is yet the essential existential explanation.

Abide as best you can.

Thanks for reading.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Surprised by Sudden Sounds

Hello, what?

A firsthand account of a hearing challenge, one told in the first person. That’s what. Hello in there, hello.

Simone: I know you’re right, Pee-wee, but…

Pee-wee: But what? Everyone I know has a big “But…? C’mon, Simone, let’s talk about *your* big “But”.

Before opting for a $400 pair of hearing aids, I asked some friends and relatives if they were happy with a pair of ear inserts, ones that had cost twice as much as the shiny new automobile I purchased in 1973 (an AMC Gremlin if you must know). Each wearer had a big but that for one reason or ‘tother, so I just kept on mishearing words — mis-heards that made me the butt of many an “Are you deaf?” joke. My sister-in-law works with the elderly, she recognized the dynamic, remarking that many who mishear are falsely diagnosed as suffering from “dementia”.fork.and.knife

Oliver Sacks, the sorely missed independent thinker,  wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times that captures his personal experience with hearing loss: “Mishearings.” A timely take on the mind’s capacity for assigning meaning to spoken language.

And yet there is often a sort of style or wit — a “dash ”— in these instantaneous inventions; they reflect, to some extent, one’s own interests and experiences, and I rather enjoy them. Only in the realm of mishearing — at least, my mishearings — can a biography of cancer become a biography of Cantor (one of my favorite mathematicians), tarot cards turn into pteropods, a grocery bag into a poetry bag, all-or-noneness into oral numbness, a porch into a Porsche, and a mere mention of Christmas Eve a command to “Kiss my feet!”

 

Hearing loss had removed many unfortunate sounds: the song of birds, the snores of Loki the Cat, the sussurance of the familiar, the soothing and the calming. However, at this very moment I am listening to the sharp, measured and deliberate crunches Loki is making — less than a meter away.

 

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
Bird Sounds on DirtNKids 🙂

 

I am able to attend Arabic language classes at the local masjid once again, to actually understand the critical meanings lost to mishearings. It’s wonderful to join in with a measure of confidence that was quite impossible before 🙂

Now here is an unexpected but welcome circumstance: turning the devices off stills the din, the conical insert even acts as an earplug of sorts.

Now I jump into a wild cacophony of sound with a grateful soul. According to the instruction manual, it’s a gradual process that takes a bit of patience. I’ve only worn them for a week now, so my mind is still refreshing the inventory of sounds unheard for many years: floorboards squeak, a wall clock clicks with each passing second (I’ve timed it!) and my feet make a sweeping sound on a carpet.

Thanks for reading.

 

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The ingenuous Indigenous

Today I am putting on my Mad Alliterator hat to celebrate the penultimate day of the week. It seems to be a tradition for blogs to toss out loose threads on the day of Fri, so here are some non sequiturs. Speaking of Latin, did you know that the Arabic names for the days o’ the week are based on the sequential numbers 1 through 7? Seven sequential sequiturs.

arabic-days-of-the-week

PATRIOTISM, n.Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name.

In Dr. Johnson’s famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first.

-Ambrose Bierce

Only in America... can...

I'm proud to be an...where at least...?

What corrupts absolutely? Macht macht  es recht, oder? (Power makes it right, right?)

groene_ten-hooven_231

I glance askance as a perfect storm approaches and I shudder. A quick aside to my reader:

“Actually it looks like a great many storms are lining up and spreading out. But not to worry, climate change is real, but not as real as reality-TV. So put it on the back burner for now (ever). Slogan to accompany: “A miracle a day keeps climate change at bay.”

Halloween rescheduled this year to Election Day.

halloween-costume

2016 to date: Native Americans lead the list of persons killed by the police. 

At this moment there are twice as many chickens on the planet as homo sapiens. Details at your local ultra-mega-super market. A pop quiz: what do advertising and marketing have in common?

Answer to follow.

Thanks for reading

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