Completely believing people’s wildest stories

I’m into totally believing people’s wildest stories. Sometimes, when people tell me their problems, it’s complete horse-crap, with only the flimsiest relation to reality. But I sit in wide-eyed fascination of these artistic bullshitters. I’m just along for the ride, and sitting and listening to these tall tales aren’t really going to hurt me. So I believe it. All of it. With all my heart. It has nothing to do with me, so who cares? I even offer to help out with their “predicament” (which they fabricated of course). And it never amounts to anything anyway.

Here’s how you play: you completely, without holding back, believe everything a bullshitter tells you. If they falter, help them out in order to get their story right. In order to win the game, you have to “land on your feet”, and neither player gets hurt. Those are the rules.

OK? Ready to rumble?

I saw Karen again, and this time it was in the Student Building on campus. She asked me if I remember bumping into her a month ago near the Harbour Front with her mother. I vaguely remembered, and said so.

She said if I could clearly remember this, that she wanted me to testify that in court, because she thought the police were giving her trouble. I was not able to find out what kind of trouble. She was evasive. I didn’t want to pry, but my naturally supportive self wanted to jump in and help her out. I told her so. But, funny thing, none of it amounted to anything. The conversation about court just evaporated. Living in fear of the police didn’t seem all that important, all of a sudden, and I never heard about it again.

It was just like the day later on when she spoke about the fact that her parents were Nazis. She was in her 30s when she spoke to me on this (and that would make her parents, what, oh 50 or 60 years old when they gave birth to her)? She went on about how they used to operate the torture chambers in some part of Poland. She lived in mortal fear of her parents, apparently, because they ruined the livelihood of her brother and set his house on fire. She was now living in fear of them coming for her.

Now did I react and say “Come off it, Karen”? Nooooo. I was the proud picture of gullability itself. I listened to her for hours, in fascination of her and this incredible story. The next day I ran to the university library and took out an atlas of Nazi prison camps. There were hundreds of small camps dotting Poland. I laid it out for her to jog her memory. She pointed at one called Treblinka, but she was no longer going into the same level of fine detail that she was regaling to me earlier with.

The subject was dropped, and never pursued again. For some odd reason, the topic of her parents about to kill her any day now did not seem to inspire as much fear and was no longer important, and she never brought it up again.

Remember, when the air was free?

One of the most reassuring things about gas stations is that sign many of them have, advertising “free air”. Yes, those were the days, the days when air was free… I now go to the same gas station, and they now have a coin-operated air pump, which now charges 50 cents for air. The first time I used it, it didn’t stay on long enough for me to inflate all 4 tires. Not wanting to spend a buck just to inflate the fourth tire, I asked the manager to turn on the pump for maybe an extra minute. Would you believe I had to argue this with him?

Oh, how I long for the return of the days when the air was free. We didn’t have to pay for air. Air at one time was not a commodity to be packaged and sold. I guess there is an air shortage. There is not enough to go around. It is a wonder that after all of the tires in the world are filled with air, that there is still enough air left in the atmosphere to sustain life and for us to grow.  Of course, the oil companies would hold all living things responsible for creating an air shortage, such that there is not enough air left to put in the tires after all the living things in the world are done with it. That would be the reason for them charging us half a buck at the air pump.

Threes (by John Atherton)

“Threes” – John Atherton

I think that I shall never c
A # lovelier than 3;
For 3 < 6 or 4,
And than 1 it’s slightly >.
All things in nature come in 3s,
Like ∴, trios, Q.E.D.s;
While $s gain more dignity
if augmented 3 \times 3

A 3 whose slender curves are pressed
By banks, for compound interest;
Oh, would that, paying loans or rent,
My rates were only 3%!

3² expands with rapture free,
And reaches toward ∞ ;
3 complements each x and y,
And intimately lives with π.
A circle’s # of °
Are best ÷ up by 3s,
But wrapped in dim obscurity
Is \sqrt{-3}.

Atoms are split by men like me,
But only God is 1 in 3.

Are there unused icons on your desktop?

Nothing brings Windows to its knees more than unused icons on your desktop. It must be so, because every so often whenever I use Windows, I get this annoying message on my toolbar (one of those balloon things) saying that there are unused icons. This must be some kind of important message, otherwise it wouldn’t be bugging me so much about the icons. I imagine that it must be the reason Windows is so slow. All those icons are just gumming up the works somehow. Pretty soon, I imagine that the icons will cause a fatal crash and bring on the dreaded Blue Screen Of Death. And you know, in cyberspace, no one can hear you Blue Screen. I will end up as roadkill on the Information Highway, with packets of information whizzing past me, with not one of them stopping to help. Perhaps some of them will slow down to stare at me like I was some kind of spectacle, and then you know what will happen next… the entire network will slow down to accommodate the rubberneckers on the Information Highway. This will ultimately bring networks to a crawl, and ultimately, the entire Internet will slow down, and it will all be my fault, because I didn’t clean up my desktop. That will probably be my final thoughts as I lay dying on the Information Highway’s “Slow” lane. And as I rise to go to heaven to meet St. Peter at the gate, he will know about my slothful and slovenly ways and take that into account as he figures out whether I should wind up in heaven or hell. I imagine that there must be a special place in hell roped off for those who commit the egregious sin of not removing unused icons from their desktop.

Of course, there is an answer to the cancerous scourge of unused icons on the Windows desktop. It is a signal, my friends, that Windows is no longer useable. It is time to rip it out and install Linux. I guarantee, my friends, that Linux will not give a hoot about your icons. You can cover your whole goddamn desktop with them and the operating system will not complain. That has got to give you peace of mind. Sure, there is a bit of a learning curve with the new operating system, but at least St. Peter will be pleased with you, and you will have one more reason to remain in heaven. And as a bonus, you can take the passing lane on the Information Highway.