It’s a titanic and monumental task, and I recognized the daunting challenges it presented. “Rome wasn’t built in a day,” I comforted myself, before remembering it did burn to the ground at one point. What the heck was I thinking getting my mother a computer? My mother’s computer literacy is right up there with penne pasta. In fact, in nine out of 10 laboratory tests, cooked penne proved it was faster when it comes to turning on the computer, logging onto the Internet and searching out a Martha Stewart recipe. My mother is most successful on a computer when she grows frustrated, bangs her head on the keyboard and, miraculously, something happens. Not what she wanted, but something does happen.

Far be it from me to criticize the recently deceased, but I couldn’t help but wonder what the world would be like today if not for Robert Adler’s most famous invention. Who was this 93-year-old man who died last week? What device did he set upon the world, changing us in so many ways? Well, he was the inventor of the remote control. Yes, Robert Adler invented the television remote way back in 1956, the year that mankind officially became a collective heap of saggy Jell-O sprawled across the sofa. I ask again, what would the world be like if not for this invention? Seriously, think about that. For one, we wouldn’t watch TV. Heck no. Something would come on that we didn’t like, and we’d be too lazy to get up to change it. Instead we would go out and construct monuments or come up with the cure for cancer. Why do you think Egypt’s pyramids were built? They didn’t have remotes! So they stacked chunks of rock. Think about it: Goodbye Montel; hello society a better place. Maybe I’m fooling myself. Maybe we would find other sedentary interests to fill our time, like watching leaves grow or exploring the great details on the surface of a pork rind. Or more likely, someone else would have come up with the idea for the remote control instead. It might not have been as effective. Imagine if TVs came with a trained monkey who changed the channel for us. “No, not […]

Dear Dog Toy Manufacturer, I don’t mean to be rude. It’s not my style to jump down people’s throats, call them names or tell them their mother looks like a walrus hooked on margaritas. That’s not me. But allow me to ask you just one question: What happened in your childhood to make you so mean? So malicious? So diabolical and sadistic? In short, why do you want to make my life miserable? Over the years, I have supported you. I have spent gobs of money on your dog toys, probably helping to put your kids through college and meat on your table. Yet, you repay me by creating toys that push me to the edge of sanity. So as a consumer I have a few suggestions I would like you to consider: 1. Stop putting squeakers in dog chew toys — Why in the world are you so hung up on this? Every toy you ever make has a squeaker in it. If it’s a ball, there’s a squeaker. If it’s a bone, there’s a squeaker. I buy dog food and half expect it’s going to squeak. Enough with the squeakers. If my dog ate coffee grounds and a bag of sugar, washed it down with a bottle of Jack Daniels then shot lightning out of her nose, it still wouldn’t come close to what she’s like when a squeaker toy is in the vicinity.

The world has heaped praise on one of the hottest new tech items out there — Apple’s iPhone. African Bushmen, who don’t even know what a phone is, are standing in line to buy one. The dead are coming back to life to take a look. Some hail it as a device that will end global warming, detect buried treasure, give you a massage and full makeover, bring peace and riches to the world, drive your car, and, if you have the time, even make a phone call. Me? I’m unimpressed. Yawn! Why? It’s a phone. A very fancy, cool, hip, tricked out, full of stuff phone, but strip it down, and ultimately it’s just a tin can tied by string to another tin can. Maybe it’s the age I am, but technology doesn’t impress me much anymore.

We’re a society that loves change. Very few things totally satisfy us, so we’re always looking to take what we have and update it, modernize it, change it, improve it and generally make it, well, crappier.But I think I’ve found the one thing we can’t say that about. The one thing that has seen little if any changes over the years. I spotted it while out running the other day and stared in bemusement as it rolled by: a school bus. Yes, a big, yellow diesel-belching school bus, filled with screaming kids that looked like an insane asylum on wheels. It could have been a brand new bus for all I knew, but the world would never know. Modern advancements, or at least modern design, have long passed over the venerable school bus. It’s the instrument of transportation that time forgot — a throwback to yesteryear that is the only constant from one generation to the next. And I, for one, am glad. It brings back memories. There was nothing better as a kid than a school field trip or an away soccer match in a beaten-up bus. Any time you piled in, with all its funny smells and vinyl seats marred by unexplainable stains, it was a good day.

Does anyone really care if a work shed is level? Does anyone know if it matters? I mean, come on. With all the problems we have in the world — the poverty, the war, the sickness, the Hollywood muckity-mucks running around with no underpants — does a little uneven-ess truly matter? By uneven, I’m only talking about a good 5 or 6 inches off, in multiple angles, and directions. People stare, tilt their heads and ask, “Am I screwy or is your shed bending over to tie its shoes?” Now, I’ve written about my shed and its problems before, so I should clarify: These aren’t the old problems — this is since I started working on it. Some things don’t want to be fixed, and my shed is one of them. When last I told of the great story of my work shed, the floor was rotting out, the base beams for the walls had turned to sawdust and a nudist colony of squirrels had opened up a spa in the rafters. (They, or someone else, ate a WHOLE bag of winter rye, and now instead of a floor, I have a green grass carpet from what they spilled.) It was a mess, so I went to work. I ripped out the floor and decided to replace the beams around the base by jacking up the shed. My brother has hydraulic jacks, and I pictured myself lifting it up little by little with a few pumps, sliding new beams under […]

And then it was all quiet … sort of. It seems more and more these days, holidays roll in like hurricanes: plenty of warning, yet never enough time to prepare. Winds lash the trees. The water rises. You scramble, you bite fingernails, and you wish you had gotten out of town when the weatherman warned you. “Why didn’t we go to Tahiti!” But that’s also what makes the holiday so much fun — so exciting. Mothers who come and stay for a week. Mine, even though the refrigerator had long since exceeded its carrying capacity, thought it necessary to buy loaf after loaf of bread from the Spanish Bakery, searching out any little uninhabited region of the fridge to cram it in. We never ate the bread, so I’m still not sure why she kept buying it. The storm isn’t just a metaphor. It did actually come on Christmas morning, as you might recall, just as my mother was driving up from Tampa. All week she had watched the weather, petrified of a strong front that was threatening to bowl her over as she made her early morning run for St. Augustine. She braved the winds and driving rain, hydroplaning at one point on backroads and dodging tornadoes she just knew were coming for her. “What do I do if I see a tornado?” she asked the night before while preparing herself mentally for the journey. “I pull over and jump in a ditch, right?” “No,” I told her. “It’s […]