Apocalypse now...maybe...again...

Oh, crap—Houston, we have an apocalypse. Again.

This time it’s the fault of those pesky Vikings. According to a report in The Independent, tomorrow the Earth will split open, releasing the inhabitants of Hell (Hel in their terms; if you’re a Viking you apparently don’t need no stinkin’ second “l” in your underworld address), and the Norse gods are fixing to rumble. 

It's Ragnarök, baby.

It’ll be the Crips and the Bloods by an order of magnitude, which will naturally cause everything to fall into the ocean. Because, you know, that’s the way it crumbles, Armageddon-wise.

(And if you're waiting for delivery of an online order, perhaps you should have sprung for the express shipping option. Just sayin'.)

I'm a little concerned, though, because apparently after everything goes down the cosmic drain, it's going to be up to two humans to repopulate the world? Does it not seem like we've been through this before? With not very positive results? Why would we want to keep doing this over again? Also, what happens to all the animals? How are we suppose to reboot again if it's only humans? Pretty soon, one will eat the other, and there we'll be. Not very good design, in my opinion.

To tell you the truth—after the failures of such presumed prognosticating powerhouses as Harold Camping and the Maya to separately (and in Camping’s case, more than once) predict an accurate apocalypse, I’m beginning to lose faith in this kind of thing.

Anyhow, I don’t know how you’re supposed to prepare for a Viking apocalypse—am I meant to make sure my house is clean? Sprinkle some sort of herbs about? Drink a lot of Absolut? I just dunno.

Well—see you Monday. 

Maybe.

Cram it, clowny

Let me begin by unequivocally stating my neutrality on the issue of clowns. I find them neither creepy nor amusing.

Well, okay—I must specify: by “clowns” in this context I’m referring to the sort who dress in baggier clothes than high school boys, wear garish polystyrene hair and generally sport big, round red noses. Not CEOs or Congress. Those clowns are both creepy and extremely dangerous.

Regardless, apparently there’s an imminent shortage of the variety not wearing $2500 suits. NPR reports that the old ones are fading away, retiring, slap-foot walking into the sunset, whatever; while there seems to be a dearth of youngsters looking to run away and join the circus.

The World Clown Association membership is down by 1000 from 3500 in 2014, and most of the remaining members are over 40. Damn.

On the up side, people are still applying to Ringling Bros Clown college, although if they’re only training 14 at a whack, I’m thinking there’s some kind of Darwinian elimination process going on here.

We’ll just have to see how this story, uh, plays out, won’t we?

Decidedly NOT Apple-sauce

The other day I hooked up with my friend Amy for lunch at Neiman-Marcus and a foray to the Apple store in Walnut Creek.

The lunch was because we needed to catch up and we’ve decided that N-M’s chicken salad sandwich is great, and the store in Walnut Creek has much better food (and marginally less attitude) than the one in Palo Alto.

The Apple store was because I’m interviewing with a company that has a cloud-based “productivity tool” application for mobile devices, but it only supports iOS and some Samsung Android devices. I don’t own Apple products because their we-are-the-great-design-and-supply-god business model gets up my nose, and it seems to me like every time one of my iPhone/Macbook-using friends has a problem they end up having to schlep into an Apple store to get it fixed.

Oh—and neither my tablet nor Android smartphone is Samsung, so I was kind of stuck when trying to explore this app’s user interface (UI).

The tool is basically server-based versions of Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel that you can access (via the Internet) on your phone or tablet. They claim you can create and edit files in these three applications on your mobile device (freeing you from that pesky laptop), although frankly the functionality is limited, and I can’t see ever using a tablet or smartphone to deal with a spreadsheet or preso except in an update/tweak mode.

Certainly the kinds of files I deal with—product requirements, marketing plans, sales decks, revenue matrices, novels, screenplays, etc.—require the ability to drill deep, insert tables and graphics, which the freemium version of this app doesn’t have.

I also have some concerns about other things (like, who’s their target market); but they’re branching out into a social/collaboration platform, which is interesting. I tried it out in their browser version (only supporting Chrome and Safari, ho-hum) and found it a bit of a kludge.

However, I really wanted to try it out on an actual, you know, mobile device, since that’s really the whole point. I know three people (in this area) with iPads. One of them didn’t volunteer to let me use hers, I can’t reach the second and Amy’s is apparently an antique. When she tried downloading the app, she was prompted to install iOS 6 (which isn’t the latest version). And her iPhone has a cracked screen.

So the idea was to sidle up to the display iPads at the Apple store and see if we could get the app (which is free on the iTunes store) and I could try it out in its natural environment.

Well, of course that’s not possible—they’re all disabled from downloading anything off the Internet, for obvious reasons, but here’s the point of all this verbiage:

The store was a zoo, and it was hard to get the attention of any of their employees. But Amy roped one of them—I’ll call him BJ—over so we could ask. He explained that the display devices are all locked out from downloading, even though it’s from iTunes and even though it’s free, etc., etc., etc. I looked him in the eye and said, “Here’s the deal: I’m interviewing with his company, X, and their app only supports Samsung Android and iOS devices. I was really hoping to get a feel for the UX on a mobile device before I talk with them again…”

BJ barely hesitated before he took his personal iPhone out of his pocket, downloaded the app and handed it over to me. He then went off to deal with actual, you know, buying customers. I messed with it for close to 20 minutes (and the session confirmed my sense that you’re not going to use a smartphone for massive inputs; unless maybe someone’s holding a gun to your head), and then we looked round to return it to him.

Well, it seems he’d gone on break, and his break lasted for 15 minutes. A couple of employees offered to take the phone for him, but I said no, I wanted to return it to him personally. So we spent time with Amy trying to persuade me that I totally cannot live without an iPad. She’s an excellent salesperson.

Finally, BJ came out, looking a bit queasy; but massive relief ensued when I handed him back the phone with profuse thanks. (He’d forgotten about having given us his phone when he went on his break.)

I mean, seriously, can you imagine anyone—anyone—handing you their personal phone and leaving you with it so you can mess with an app they know nothing about? When I clearly wasn’t about to pull the trigger on a MacBook Air or iPhone? We were completely blown away, and I have to say that BJ has redeemed a considerable amount of esteem for his employer in my eyes. I’m just not seeing that happen at BestBuy, or the Microsoft store.

And between him and Amy, the 32Gb iPad mini, with case/keyboard and possibly cellular capability is really looking nice.

I’ll just check under my sofa cushions for $600.

But, BJ—really, what a mensch!

Open That Bottle Night coming up Saturday

Former Wall Street Journal wine columnists Dorothy J. Gaiter and John Brecher used to designate the last Saturday in February as “Open that Bottle [of Wine] Night”. The idea was to get you into the framework of actually enjoying what you’d bought, for whatever reason. You make a meal around it, open it and drink it, for heaven’s sake.

It’s a great concept, and one I think people should take up. Including myself.

I was reminded of this last week, when I looked at six bottles of dessert wines that friends had given me long ago. Those bottles went from Virginia to Great Britain, to Virginia, to Washington and then to California over a number of years. The thing is, I don’t really drink dessert wines, and I’ve never had an occasion where it seemed right to announce to dinner guests, “Well, let’s just have a splash of really sweet alcohol, shall we?”

Anyhow, I looked at them and thought, “You guys are dead, aren’t you?”

That suspicion was confirmed when every single one of the corks (except the sole plastic one) crumbled when I tried to pull them out. The wines poured out brownish, like water out of long-disused rusty pipes, or from your bathroom tap at a Sochi hotel, as I dumped them down the drain.

With the last one, it occurred to me that, since I don’t drink this stuff, maybe it hadn’t actually gone totally, you know, off. So I poured some into a glass and tasted it. I think it took a few layers of enamel off my teeth, but I dunno—maybe that’s what it does?

But then I looked at it in the light.

If it were a nice fresh craft ale, I think this would present an excellent appearance. But I just had a Bad Feeling about it, so that bottle-load followed the other four.

I feel really bad about it—there’s nothing at all good about dumping wine. But since the smell of the stuff filled my flat for a few hours afterward (cathedral ceilings and all), I think I made the right choice in the circumstances.

A better one, though, would have been to open and share them while they were still drinkable. So—heads up for this Saturday: open that bottle and enjoy it while you can.

Gratitude Monday: Facebook fan mail from some flounder

As a software product manager who takes pride in what I deliver, as well as a software user with no discernable amount of patience when it comes to actually, you know, using an application, I never thought I’d hear these words coming out of my keyboard, but I’m grateful today for Facebook’s egg-suckingly bad user interface (UI).

Because it turns out that it does have its upside.

First—you understand that Facebook obscures how you interact with it; they really want to keep you bamboozled while they suck down all information about you that could possibly be sold to marketers and advertisers. Not only do they periodically change your privacy settings for you (or at least how privacy levels work) without bothering to inform you, so you have to constantly opt out of changes they’ve made; but they also just plain make things kludgy.

Which makes it a bit of a challenge to keep your account locked down.

It’s like they think they’ll just wear you out so you’ll give up and acquiesce to all their data pillaging. (Like health insurers make their processes so obscure and tedious and endless that they hope you’ll stop trying to use the benefits that you’ve, you know, paid for.)

Furthermore, their notification system seems pretty much intermittent, for both posts and messages, but today I’m concerned with the latter. Because either FB doesn’t notify you if you’ve received a message in your “other” box (i.e., from someone not designated as a Friend), or else the notification comes and goes like Tule fog. So if you’re not actively looking for fan mail from some flounder, you’re not going to find it.

Until potentially much, much later. Because apparently messages never go away, either.

Which (finally) brings me to my point:

Back when I didn’t have my account completely bolted down, I received a query from a former Great Love. (And, tellingly, it was a query, not a friend request, since he would never risk that not going his way.) To wit:

This was in 2009; well, I think I picked it up in 2010. I recall looking at it, snorting and hitting what I thought was delete. (Look—that whole condescending “I understand, and it’s okay” is so typical of his approach to relationships. He never understood a fifth of what he thought he did, and that, sunshine, is not okay.)

So imagine my surprise last week when all of a sudden FB kept telling me I had a message, and I could not find it in my inbox no matter how much I scrolled through the list. That was when I found the “other” category, and it turns out that the little “x” next to a message doesn’t mean “nuke it”, it simply archives it.

And, blow me, but former Great Love was back, this time with something he apparently thought would be more charmingly persuasive:

I have to say, I burst out into such a gale of sustained spontaneous laughter I was afraid the neighbors might complain of the noise. What a drama queen.

And I realized his whole drama queen thing is so…last century. Maybe it stems from him fancying himself a writer; but just listen to him: “…who acted from his own madness”. He couldn’t just stop at dickhead, which at least had the virtue of being accurate? No, no—it had to involve madness. Like he’s freakin' Lord Byron.

And at what point was he “acting from his own madness”? Every instance of dickheadedness during the course of our relationship (which lasted for a brief period during the early 80s)? Or when he tracked me down across the country years later while I was in grad school to offer what was meant to be one of those 12-step amends-making apologies, but he managed it so that it never actually involved the word “sorry”? Or the last exchange a decade ago when I decided there was no upside to dealing with him?

Look—you know the romance has gone out of the relationship when your last words to him are “Just grow the hell up.” And you send them by email. And you delete his riposte without reading it and never give it another thought.

I don’t know what DQ hopes to get out of this, or why he’d bother with me—once, let alone twice. Possibly some internal coup-counting. But if he’d been interested in maintaining contact with me, he should have considered that whole dickhead thing a lot sooner.

Besides—don’t ask if I’m “open” to an apology; either apologize or shut the fuck up. Be a man or a mouse, not Uriah Heep.

I may not always be the sharpest blade in the drawer but I’ve come to realize that being treated with respect and appreciation on a steady basis trumps a load of shite punctuated by flamboyant gestures and crocodile-teary humility. That Anna and Vronsky thing is enthralling for a few months (when you're young), but it’s not sustainable. And my days of contemplating the train approaching the station are long, long past.

And that realization brought a wonderful freedom, shortly after my first outburst of hilarity upon stumbling on his idea of a billet-doux. Which only occurred because of Facebook’s totally crap UI.

God bless ‘em!

The test of true love

So, because it’s Valentine’s Day, and I always try to help you out with your romantic endeavours, and because it’s one of the premiere merchandising holidays in the calendar, I’ve got something cutting-edge for you.

Evidently there’s a high-end Japanese lingerie company called Ravijour, and they’ve put all their high-tech ingenuity into developing a bra that only opens when its wearer experiences true love. I heard about it on Twitter, so there!

No, I am not making this up. They’ve called it the True Love Tester bra, and they’ve made this helpful video to ‘splain how it, uh, operates. Naturally, it involves a smartphone app; pretty much everything worth having does these days, apparently.

Now Ravijour’s reps claim that this thing can tell the difference between elevated heart rate due to a cardio workout or a sudden shock of the Alien popping out of John Hurt’s chest or the stress of, say, a job interview, and elevated heart rate on account of lurv. They don’t mention distinguishing between love and lust, which I think is rather an important point. You definitely want to be able to get it off in the case of lust. They might have that in the roadmap for v2 or so.

(I also hope they have plans to make it not look so, uh, industrially ugly. Just sayin’…)

Neither do they address how you get it off if, at the end of the night, you still haven’t met Mr. Right. Is there some sort of no-luck override code you can enter via your smartphone? (And how creepy is it that you need a smartphone to get your bra off?)

Or what if you meet Mr. Right at your brother’s wedding reception and it pops open right in front of God, granny and your actual wedding date? I mean, you really want some sort of basic-decency delay function on this sucker.

(It occurred to me to wonder why no one's working on the male equivalent of this: underpants that pop open when the sensor senses an elevated rate of blood flow. But I realized that's not feasible at all, because the average guy would be dropping his drawers at least eight times an hour, so, never mind.)

I suppose it’s good to know that someone is working on this sort of thing. Possibly. Because who knows what they’d be up to otherwise?

Vale, Caesar

I had a little root around the interwebs to learn something about Sid Caesar, who died yesterday, aged 91. He was a little before my time, and I might have got my greatest idea about him from the TV comedian portrayed by Joseph Bologna in My Favorite Year.

So I delved into some of his routines, and was quite taken by this one—of a Bavarian town hall clock gone, well, cuckoo:

A couple of thoughts on this: it’s astonishing to me that he spent so long (more than seven minutes) on a single schtick, building up to a completely non-verbal punchline. You wouldn’t be able to go that long without a couple of commercial breaks these days.

And I don’t think I’ll be able to look a civic clock in the eye with a straight face ever again.

Animal crackers out of the soup

Well, there’s another childhood icon gone—Shirley Temple Black died Monday night, aged 85.

I experienced Shirley Temple strictly through television. Her movies must have been really cheap for local TV stations to broadcast, because they seemed to run them right much when I was growing up. She had to be one of the first stars to be merchandised; and Shirley Temple dolls are still manufactured today.

Later, while studying history, I came to understand how she could be such a phenomenon, because people in the thirties really wanted to escape from reality, and her movies delivered the biggest doses of sweetness and light you could get for the price of admission. They never seemed that remarkable to me as a child, but I can see why folks would line up and pay their $.15 to watch her overcome all manner of problems with a few songs and a dance.

Black’s movie career didn’t go beyond childhood, but she went on to marry (badly the first time round; for life the second), raise a family and build a creditable public service career under the Ford administration.

The quintessential Shirley Temple moment for me is her dance with Bill Robinson up and down the plantation house staircase in The Little Colonel. I don’t remember one damned thing about the plot or anyone else in the film, but that sequence is just terrific. So here it is:

Farvel, Marius

If you were alive at all on Twitter yesterday, you could not escape photos of Marius, the young giraffe at the Copenhagen Zoo.

Zoo management considered Marius surplus to requirements in terms of his genetic structure (already represented in the zoo’s population) and space at the facility. So on Sunday, they did as they’d announced earlier: they killed Marius, dismembered his corpse and fed him to the lions.

Oh—they did it publicly, in front of zoo visitors. Just like an old-fashioned public execution.

(No, I'm not showing or linking to them. You want to see them, you can Google for yourself.)

I’ve got to say that I stick at some of the images; zoo officials called it educational, but I’m not sure that the kids got the lesson they intended.

Marius was apparently a victim of EU regulations—the laws under which the Copenhagen Zoo operates prohibit transfer of animals outside of the organization of zoos it belongs to. So even though other zoos offered to take him, Copenhagen turned them down.

There were apparently private would-be buyers, too; but I don’t want to think about what some of those people wanted with a beautiful young animal already written off by those who are supposed to look out for him. Copenhagen refused them as well.

Both NPR and CNN refer to Marius’ end as “euthanizing”, which is bizarre. Euthanasia is the practice of intentionally ending a life in order to relieve pain and suffering. Marius was 18 months old, perfectly healthy and could have lived a long and happy giraffe life for another 24 years or so. The pain that was being ended was to Copenhagen Zoo’s finances and their breeding program.

I’ll confess that zoos make me uneasy. I outright loathe circuses—the idea of wild animals capering about to entertain humans makes me retch. But when I think about zoos I can’t help but feel that the wrong species are behind the bars.

A few months ago I exchanged such thoughts with a guy on Twitter. (And, BTW—steeplechase? No.) I had mild reservations about zoos being completely pernicious precisely because of their animal conservation programs. You know, they were ensuring the continuation of animals under assault from human civilization.

And then came Marius.

it’s interesting to me that the Copenhagen Zoo didn’t foresee the vehement reaction from around the world. I also think it’s passing strange that, with the population of giraffes in Africa declining, zoo breeding programs aren’t capable of offloading their “surplus” back into the wild instead of slaughtering them for a Sunday outing.

Gratitude Monday: I get by with a little help

As the Divine Miss M says, you got to have friends. And I really appreciate mine.

Last week was not the best I’ve ever had. Actually, it was pretty much crap. And one of the lowlights was pinging one of my job prospects—first one I’ve really, really wanted in a good long while—and being told they’ve “filled it with an internal candidate.”

This after stringing me along since October.

I don’t often vent on Facebook, but it just kind of spilled out of me. I relayed the news and asked if it was too early to drink. The first two responses really helped lighten my spirits.

One consisted of a single photo, without comment:

To understand this fully, you’d have to be familiar with the film Start the Revolution without Me, which I recommend highly. I’m not going to explain it here, but I have often felt like this, and my friend LQ was exactly right to post it.

Second response was from another friend—also engaged in the absurdity of the job search. I’ll just quote her: “Baby girl it's NEVER too early to drink. That sucks pig poop.”

And so it does.

But having friends who can help put crap like this into perspective is what keeps me going, even when I feel like an escapee from a Dalí painting.

So big up to my friends. And it’s definitely not too early to drink.