Life without a computer
I have decided to try and lead a simpler life. The first step is to remove all items of complicated mechanistic characteristics from my presence—this includes my laptop.
The first day of attempting to exist this way, I walk outside in my robe, pajamas, pink fuzzy slippers, and messy hair and pick up the newspaper lying at the end of the driveway. After waving to the neighbors across the street, I come back inside and move all of the clutter off of my table to make room for the newspaper, which, when opened fully, spreads out and takes over most of the available space. Bothered, I struggle to find a safe place to put my mug of coffee. How much easier and space efficient it was to simply open the laptop, click on the proper icon, and read the news!
Later in the day, I sit down to work on a research paper for my Rhetorical Theory class. Books are spread out everywhere; I had a good deal of trouble finding all of these books, for there was no easy way to tell which of the local libraries had what. I had to make endless phone calls and drive to several different locations before I found exactly what I needed. How much easier it was to just open the laptop, go the local library’s website, use their search engine, and have a stack of books waiting for me to go and pick them up! Better yet, how much easier it would have been to simply use documents from online journals!
I become miffed and irritated as I attempt to put my many books in order so that I can start writing out my first point (by hand, mind you). This takes up space, for I need room for my elbows and notebook.
Things go swimmingly for the first few minutes, but several minutes, until I realize that the paragraph is not developing as well as I had planned. I will have to start over. There is no ‘delete’ button here, there is no ‘copy’ and ‘paste’; there is only a stack of blank lined paper, waiting for my pen to grace it with its presence. I sigh as I crumble the present sheet of paper up and reach for another.
Several hours later, I have wasted more trees, more time, and more energy than I had ever imagined possible. My right hand is cramped from writing page after page, and as I look at the sentence I left off at, I notice that it looks a good deal sloppier than the first sentence I had written. I must have been running out of steam!
I decide that there is absolutely nothing that compares to the efficiency of the modern computer, and promptly decide that I will never try to live life ‘simply’ again.
hippopontamus poem
i did not write this, but it is awefully amusing!
I had a hippopotamus; I kept him in a shed
And fed him upon vitamins and vegetable bread.
I made him my companion on many cheery walks,
And had his portrait done by a celebrity in chalks.
His charming eccentricities were known on every side.
The creature's popularity was wonderfully wide.
He frolicked with the Rector in a dozen friendly tussles,
Who could not but remark on his hippopotamuscles.
If he should be affected by depression or the dumps
By hippopotameasles or hippopotamumps
I never knew a particle of peace 'till it was plain
He was hippopotamasticating properly again.
snufkinforever: I had a hippopotamus, I loved him as a friend
But beautiful relationships are bound to end.
Time takes, alas! our joys from us and robs us of our blisses.
My hippopotamus turned out to be a hippopotamissus.
My housekeeper regarded him with jaundice in her eye.
She did not want a colony of hippopotami.
She borrowed a machine gun from her soldier-nephew, Percy
And showed my hippopotamus no hippopotamercy.
My house now lacks the glamour that the charming creature gave.
The garage where I kept him is as silent as a grave.
No longer he displays among the motor-tires and spanners
His hippopotamastery of hippopotamanners.
No longer now he gambols in the orchard in the Spring;
No longer do I lead him through the village on a string;
No longer in the mornings does the neighborhood rejoice
To his hippopotamusically-modulated voice.
I had a hippopotamus, but nothing upon the earth
Is constant in its happiness or lasting in its mirth.
No life that's joyful can be strong enough to smother
My sorrow for what might have been a hippopotamother.
-- Patrick Barrington
Byrophyta--A Fairytale
It was a dark and stormy night, that cliché way that all creepy stories are dark and stormy. Only on this night, it was particularly dark and stormy. Our stock female protagonist—we’ll call her Emily—was walking along a gravel-strewn path in the dark and stormy night. Why was she walking along a gravel-strewn path that dark and stormy night? Well, you see, she had just left the house of her elderly grandmother after taking her some homemade chicken soup and—oh, who are we kidding? She had snuck off to see that good-for-nothing boyfriend of hers. You know, the one her parents had forbidden her to see ever. The one that she swore up and down really was good to her and had promised not to hurt her and would marry her some day. He was so good-for-nothing that he let her go out into the dark and stormy night all alone! Who knows what evils lurked out there in the woods on a dark and stormy night! Honestly!
Well, at any rate, morose little Emily wandered down this gravel path until she came to an unfamiliar river with an unfamiliar bridge. She had gotten lost, but not being the brightest of girls, she didn’t realize it. “I wonder who put that river there,” she more-absently-than-usual thought to herself. Neverminding that she was lost, she decided to cross the unfamiliar bridge over the unfamiliar river. Requistely old and creaky, the shabby wooden bridge sighed under her weight. Not that she was heavy—on the contrary, she was rather slender and light. But the bridge would have creaked under any weight at all. There was a particularly sinister crack, and suddenly, Emily was in that unfamiliar river, flowing down the unfamiliar waters to an unfamiliar death!
Or so she thought! Dun dun dun. Until she found herself mysteriously pulled out of the waters by a normal-looking-but-in-reality-six-toed-kind-of-handsome-if-you-were-somewhat-inebriated-which-she-was man. “Thank you! I think I was about to die,” she said rather stupidly.
“You were,” said the increasingly-fascinating-to-this-drunk stranger. “But I saved you!” he said gallantly, tossing his blonde mane. “There were rocks up ahead and limestone and moss, and--say you look like you’re cold. The only way out is over more limestone, which may be crumpling and especially slippery from the dark-and-storminess, but never fear, I will test it out before we ascend the approximately 15-foot climb.”
So Emily, wet and shuddering with cold, followed the gallant stranger down the rivers edge until they came to a moss-encrusted-not-big-enough-to-be-a-cliff-but-steeper-than-a-hill . . . thing. Emily was sobering slightly by this point, at least, enough to begin to be afraid of what was going on. Yet what choice did she have but to follow the still-handsome-even-though-she-wasn’t-really-drunk-anymore gentleman? Up he clamboured gallantly (after all, he is blonde—gallantry is a perpetual requirement!) over the green bryophyte (that’s moss for you non-scientists) that hid the shaky limestone. “Nothing to it!” he bragged. “Come up after me!”
And so Emily did. Or, at least she tried to. She was no sooner to the top than she lost her footing and slid backwards. Down, down, and then down a bit more she tumbled, miraculously missing the limestone rocks that jagged out all around her. In a heap she landed at the bottom, greatly confusing her would-be rescuer. Still gallant, he dashed down to the bottom of the rocks—apparently, there was a path that wouldn’t have involved climbing iffy limestone if he had gone just a bit further to his left. There the now fully-conscious-but-wishing-she-wasn’t Emily lay, looking more than cold and wet by this point. The stranger picked her up from her pathetic state and gently carried her to his horse—which also was nowhere near the limestone. So what he was thinking to begin with, no one is really sure.
At any rate, there was Emily, in pain and afraid and now on the back of the mystery man’s equally mysterious horse. “Let me take you to my castle,” he said.
Emily came out of her haze enough to realize that this mystery man was evidently of noble birth. Dang! She knew how to pick disasters! The rest of the ride was a blur.
At last they arrived at the aforementioned castle, appropriately strong and steady against the dark and gloomy night that still set the atmosphere. Mystery Man conveyed the shaken-and-somewhat-stirred Emily to the castle. There, he discovered what had brought her to the woods and convinced her that he needed to send out his finest soldiers to smack around her boyfriend a little bit for letting her out alone and drunk on a night like that. Emily readily agreed.
And so the blonde rescuer—who at last turned out to be named Pancratius, Jack for short—rescued Emily from a river, from some rocks, and from a lousy boyfriend. Not bad for knowing her for 4 hours!! Emily thought it was impressive. And they lived happily ever after.
*with input from Linny Jane!
Fluffy bit of Humor, Edited 1
Jeff thinks of himself as a handsome young man, confident and classy. At twenty-two years of age, he has accomplished more than his parents could ever hope for: a double major in Philosophy and Graphic Design among other activities, like writing for the school paper, being on Student Senate, and graduating with multiple honors. His winsome smile landed him a job as an actor for a toothpaste commercial.
His rippling muscles—Well, that’s enough of Jeff, isn’t it? This isn't a written-in-the-mid-sixties kind of romance novel. Rippling muscles are not too important here.
So where is Jeff, and why do we care about him?
It turns out that Jeff is in a flustered state. Usually Mr. Confident (or so he likes to remind his friends), Jeff is not himself today. In fact, he is nearly twitching with anticipation—for today, he is going to meet his long-time friend. Err, lover. Well, actually . . .He didn’t know what she was. In fact, he could only hope that it was really a female at all.
Okay, it is now time to make known to the reader that Jeff met Kim (well, we assume that that is her real name) through her blog. Jeff still asks himself why he started a blog in the first place. He certainly didn’t have the time, what with his new job smiling all day for cameras. It really took a lot of energy to do that. He had to resist the urge to pout every time he thought about it.
He scanned the café apprehensively, searching for someone he did not know. Looking at the description that he had scribbled onto a piece of scrap paper, he realized that he couldn’t read his own writing. Did the description say ‘wearing a blue hat’ or ‘wearing a blue cat’?
Jeff became even more flustered, and tried desperately to think of what Plato would do. With ultimate truth in his grasp, Jeff would be able to quickely identify Kim. However, his chariot was looking a little shabby these days, and his quest for ultimate truth was looking less than good.
I’m too far away from the top of the mountain, too far from ultimate truth! he thought to himself. * He sighed, searching his mind for another philosopher that might have a good way of dealing with such a confusing situation as this.
*If this means nothing to you, then you need to take a rhetorical theory class, or at least read some PlatoHe could have stood by the cafe for hours considering the wisdom of various philosophers, but realized that it may be easier to just scan the area for a girl with either a blue hat or a blue cat; for it is not likely, he reasoned, that there would be more than one girl dressed this way.
Jeff, the reader can note, is quite an intelligent person.
He scanned the café, searching for a girl adorned with a blue accessory. Beside the window, there was a girl with a furrowed brow, a hideous bright pink purse on her table. He peered at her book: Lovecraft. Jeff despised the horror genre in general, and did not give this girl a second glance. Besides, she wasn't wearing anything blue at all, and there didn't appear to be a cat with her.
He looked over at the tables hidden in the shadows to his left; there were some teenagers dressed entirely in black, looking depressed and sleepy. One of the young men--or was it a woman?-- had a bright blue mohawk, and Jeff made a face. He only associated with people who wore clothes in the genre of GAP or Abercrombie and Fitch. And, again, there was nothing blue besides the mohawk.
Growing concerned that he was being stood up by ‘Kim’, Jeff looked towards the last remaining corner of the café. There was one person sitting on the brown pleather couch against the wall. Perhaps it was her, but Jeff didn’t want to get his hopes up.
Beautiful, long brown hair cascaded down her back.
No doubt she used Herbal Essences this morning! he thought. She had a blue cat draped across her slender, elegant shoulders. Her feet were encased in flat, silver, sequined shoes. She smiled to herself as she flipped through a magazine.Jeff was enraptured.
But he was also scared out of his mind. The blue cat was intimidating, to be sure.
Well, it could be worse, he thought.
At least it isn't a dead gopher or (God forbid) a oppossum. He put the crumpled paper back in the pocket of his designer jeans, ran his fingers through his chesnut hair, and strutted over to the be-catted beauty.
Jeff cleared his throat as he stood somewhat menacingly over the girl. He looked up at him with a smile still on her face.
Does she always smile? That's my job! Jeff thought, almost out loud. But as quickly as she flashed him a smile, it vanished when she saw that Jeff was . . . well, he looked a little young for her! She was twenty-five, a mature twenty-five at that. She didn’t have time to waste on this little immature ruffian, this—this boy!
Jeff offered Kim his most winning of all smiles, the one that he had to use the extra muscles for.
"Hi, I'm Jeff," he said, extending his right hand. "And you must be Kim."
"Actually, I'm not. My name is Francene. Is there something I can do for you?"
"No . . . well, I was supposed to meet Kim here. She told me that she'd be wearing a blue cat; and, well, you are the only one here . . . "
"Look, I'm not her, ok? Can I go back to reading my magazine, or will you insist upon intruding into my existence longer yet?"
"I'm leaving, all right!" Jeff hissed at her, trying to keep the conversation as quiet as possible while attempting to restrain his nerves. As he walked away from the brown-haired beauty, Jeff felt an aching lonliness in his heart, and for the first time in his life, felt lonely and alone. And terribly lonely. And desolate. And--
But hark! What was this dazzling creature before his very eyes? She was not wearing a cat, and she was not wearing blue, but she possessed a look on her face that intreigued Jeff immensly. Suddenly, he no long felt nervous, but was back to his usual confident self.
This girl, he said to himself,
looks is just what I need. I’m capable of winning her over, no problem; she’ll love me and I won’t even have to work hard to win her over.
Jeff felt himself very capable and confident, but only when it came to an easy target—and that is all that he looked out for. If it was too difficult, then it was not worth his time and effort. With this attitude, situations were always win-win. No losing had to be involved if you were excessively better than your target. With this new thought and bold and brave attitude, Jeff resumed his strut as he polonaised across the café and over to the pink-pursed girl reading Lovecraft.
Little did Jeff know that he was in for a letdown.
