Banal Hemorrhage

Smartphones and social media are a double edged sword for me. Without them I'd be a lot more disconnected from the world at large but with them I am more connected with the world at large. Would I be more sociable without them? If we somehow un-invented them, like in Neil Gaiman's short story "And Weep, Like Alexander'", would I be a more sociable guy or not? I lost my phone to the waters of a foreign country recently and I experienced first hand what the world is like without one, and it's not pretty. How did we know which restaurant had better ratings? How were we able to know who that guy was in that episode of Seinfeld? What the nearest fuel source is? I lived through those dark times and I can't even remember! As a bonus for being patient, here's another take on my miserable experience.  

  I thought I was being fancy. Whenever you see a rich bachelor in a movie, they consistently have satin sheets. I've been trained to associate satin with luxury. Because I felt like a fancy person, I bought satin sheets last week. Boy are these things smooth! What they don't tell you is that they may be TOO smooth. I feel like a bar of soap in a crisco disco. It's a veritable sleep and slide in our bed now, with dogs, cats, pillows and humans just sliding all night every night. We're getting used to it but it's been feeling a bit rough, which is an ironic feeling for satin sheets.  Luxury items are funny.  Congratulations on that fancy Italian car for which you will need to hunt for repair parts the rest of your life! Good job on acquiring Downton Abbey, and I hope you can find a good footman in this job market. I know two people who have pool maintenance businesses and the only thing they have in common is that they don't own pools.  Sometimes what you covet w...

I undulate between having faith in people and being ashamed of being people. It’s a constant back and forth. Hey, look at this person that is giving her meager savings to help others! Oh crap look at what a cesspool of abuse the Boy Scout organization turned out to be! It’s back and forth all day, every day.  You wouldn’t think I had any faith in humanity if you've been reading my comics, but I’m a closeted optimist. Every time I see or read about an evil group, I learn of a good individual. In general it’s always throngs of people who allow evil, but individuals who exemplify humanity at it’s best. I’ll take a tree over the forest when it comes to humanity.  These times, all we hear about are the indefensible things that groups do: High level collusion between the government and the idiot parade that stormed the Capitol, Purdue suppressing and inventing clinical data, Facebook knowingly contributing to the crassification of everything. We forget that there are individuals sho...