One More Thing...

When I go to one of my email accounts, I’m met with a log in page which has “news” stories on it. Right near the top, right where I have to click to open my email, they have a little ribbon of scrolling thumbnails of what someone considers to be “Top Videos”. I never click on these thumbnails, unless it’s by accident. They almost always include things about how some so-called celebrity’s outfit “turns heads” or how they “wow” in some outfit. I Hate that stuff. I Hate those expressions.

First of all, who talks like that? I have never heard those expressions come up in conversation, thank God. I hope I never do. If I’m hanging around a crowd that talks like that, just shoot me and get it over with.

Second of all, in terms of the subject matter, Who Cares? If that’s what's important in my life, please see my comment above.

As for the "news stories, today there’s a story lower down with a headline that reads “Malls of the Future Might Blow Your Mind”. Really? I can’t wait to read it!

Why is someone wasting their time on this? I avoid stories that have headlines with words like “might” in them. Yeah, ok, it might happen. And I might buy a dog who learns how to talk and then won’t shut up.

Then again, I might not.

I actually started to read this thing- not because I was thinking “Oh Boy! What will the malls of the future look like? Please tell me- I MUST KNOW!!!”, but more to see just what this piece of journalistic road-kill looked like. I couldn't get past the first few lines. 

This is the kind of thing that, if written fifty years ago, would also have predicted that we would now be traveling around in flying cars and jet-packs, fueled by the nuclear reactors in our basements. To that, I can only say...

If you’re the type that can’t sleep at night unless you have answers to such burning hypotheses, you can read the article here. You might find it interesting.

Then again, you might not.

Random Comments

I shouldn't be posting today. It’s been a while, and I usually try to keep things light around here. But I’m not in that kind of mood today. At least, not totally. I’m thinking too much.

Yesterday was a little on the difficult side. For various reasons, issues of Sam’s history came up. I don’t know why it is, but sometimes I can talk about it in a very matter of fact way and other times, its all right below the surface. The dam starts to break and the water begins to rush out before I can patch it again.

I don't know what’s the matter with me. It’s been close to fifteen years now, but sometimes it feels like yesterday. There's so much wrapped up in it, and so many things that I've never gone into- with anyone. Some days I think I’ll try to write about it all. Most days though, I think I’ll just let it all die with me.

***

On my drive to work this morning, I saw a dead crow in the middle of the road. The image has stuck with me all morning- the jet black bird laying whole and still against the bright yellow line. 

***

I get emails from from a Super Store on a daily basis which advertise their Deals of the Day. Usually there’s three or four items, sometimes more, sometimes less. Today, one of the items is a four slice toaster. When I was young, we had a two slice model for years until one day, my Aunti Anna gave us a four slicer as a gift. I think it was in thanks for taking her to Maine with us.

I wonder whatever became of that toaster.

***

Another Deal of the Day is a digital scale that hooks up to your smartphone. Is this what we've become? Is this because we can no longer set our phones down long enough to read anything else? Is this because our eyesight is so bad that we can’t see the numbers from so far away- and we’re too out of shape to bend over to read them? Or this because we’re in even worse shape than that, and we can’t see past the massive land mass that exists before our face and feet? 

Whatever the reason, if you're interested, you can get it here for $29.99 instead of $69.99 (today only). For an extra $8.99 you can get a protection plan that covers “normal” wear and tear along with 24/7 claim support.

I'm not sure what they define as "normal". It seems to me that if this is the kind of thing that you're interested in, it doesn't apply to you.

Note that the iPhone is not included.

***

It's starting to rain now. I called Sam a few minutes ago to check up on him and see how he's doing. Things are good.

Friday Night Video

Ok, this is not the video I had planned on posting tonight. I'll do that other one some other time. Tonight, I'll go with this one instead.

This one got on my radar because of a brief conversation I had with Sam when I got home today. I won't bother you with the particulars, but it included mention of this film.

When Sam was small, he struggled with language- both in expressing himself and in understanding others. He still does, but it is a world away from where it was.

Anyway, because of this barrier, I would look for things that we could watch together that were particularly visual, things where he didn't have to do a lot of processing while the action moved forward. And because he has a great sense of humor, I would look for comedies.

This was a big reason why we ended up watching a lot of Looney Tunes. There's not a lot of talking going on in those Road Runner cartoons. It was also why were watching and re-watching a lot of Mr. Bean. Language is not a big part of either of those.

One of our favorites, then and now, was the Laurel and Hardy film, "Big Business". If you haven't seen it before, you should take the eighteen minutes and sixteen seconds it takes to watch it. I enjoyed it long before Sam came along, and have enjoyed it even more since. I think it's my favorite Laurel and Hardy film.

Now, even if I'm watching it alone, I hear Sam's belly laugh. Hard as it is to imagine, that makes it even better.

Here you go...

My Basement- Part Three

Nona and Ellie's House.

There are certain summer days when the humidity hangs in a certain way that when combined with the dampness of my basement, has a scent just like my grandmother’s basement used to have. I’m not sure what the exact circumstances are that creates this smell- only that when it happens, it usually happens in the summer months, and it happens too infrequently.

When it meets me, it’s almost always when I reach the bottom of the basement stairs. And when I catch it, I have to be careful to take it in in just the right way- otherwise it can fade- sometimes with a turn of the head.

My grandmother’s basement was damp too, though I don’t remember thinking of it in that way when I was small. But it must have been, not only because of the scent that I remember, but because there used to be some stone troughs cut into the floor. And while I never saw water in them, I knew they were there for that reason.

Her basement was divided into three main areas. On the left as you came down the stairs, was darkness. There lurked the furnace and whatever gremlins lived in and around it. There was also the remains of what I was told was once a coal chute. I was told that once upon a time, they had to shovel coal in their furnace for heat. I had never heard of such a thing before. Of course, this was the grandmother that, when she was small, had ridden in a covered wagon- so maybe it was true.

The right half of the basement was where my aunt stored her boxes. And since it was my aunt, these boxes were all neat and organized- unless we were visiting. If we were visiting, then the piles of boxes, like the couch cushions and furniture upstairs, turned into forts. These forts were great fun for having shootouts and such, and were especially great for building hideaways.

In the left center of the basement, near the foot of the stairs, was a small room that my aunt used for a workshop. I remember the room having some tools and a drawing board and a cot and a light that once tipped over that I got blamed for- but not by my aunt. The room was a little dark and filled with cool stuff, and since it was out of the way and down the basement, it made it even better and more mysterious- like some forbidden island.

My aunt lived pretty much her whole life with her mom. My grandmother was one of the nicest people I've ever known, but I think that no matter how nice people are, and no matter how well they get along, there are times when we each need our own space. There are times when we all need a fort of our own.

This scent was a part of that basement. I paid little attention to it back when I was ten years old. It was just there. But now, every so often, when the air is just right, I’ll catch it at the bottom of my basement stairs and it'll take me back to my grandmother's house, if only for a brief moment.

My Basement- Part Two

Except for a couple of dry months in the winter, my basement is a damp basement. If it were not for the sump pump that sits in a pit along the south wall, “damp” would be an overly optimistic goal. But aside from one disappointing week several years ago when I was on vacation, the pump had performed reasonably well. On the week I had been away, the pump had decided it had done all it could and now it was up to someone else.

This came as a complete surprise to me, as I had never heard any complaining, from the bearings or otherwise. But quit it had, leaving me to find a replacement to deal with the minor pond that had been forming while I was away.

My sole criteria for the old guy’s replacement was that the new guy fit in the same trench. Anything more than that was and is beyond my expertise sump pump-wise. So the new guy was quickly found and unceremoniously dumped into the same pit that his predecessor had called “home” before him. With one or two exceptions, the new guy has performed admirably over the years, particularly in light of the feeble interview process he went through to get the job.

Like all problems with sump pumps, they only rear their heads when you need them the most. Who bothers to check a sump pump when it’s not raining? Not me, that’s for sure. Usually the problem becomes apparent to me as I’m staring out the window at the torrential downpour. I slowly come to the realization that a) I should have heard the pump turn on long ago- and I haven’t, or b)The constant humming in the background that I’ve been hearing has been coming from the sump pump- and it should have taken a breath a long time ago.

There was a time several years ago, where the rod holding the float on the new pump disintegrated, leaving the pump to run incessantly. This, I naturally discovered in one of the aforementioned torrential rains and it was doing neither of us any good. I knew it was only a matter of time before the new guy burned himself out, leaving me to go through the same rigorous process that I had gone through several years earlier, back when I first hired him for the job.

I unplugged the pump and pulled him from his pit, replacing the decayed rod with a rod I cannibalized from his predecessor. Then, I lowered the new guy back into the pit and got him running again. This did the trick and reinforced my notion that it doesn’t pay to throw anything away (but only when it comes to my stuff). By the way, there are few things more exciting than dropping a pump into an overflowing pit of water as the water surrounds your feet while you’re trying to plug the sump pump back in.

But the pump has performed admirably up until last summer, when something changed. The heavy rains of last summer were streaming more freely into my basement than they ever had before. Even more disconcerting was the fact that pieces of leaves and other debris were washing in along with it. Under the best of conditions the new guy would have found it impossible to keep up with these deluges- and these were not the best of conditions. I found myself several times having to pull him from his pit and clean leaves and grass clippings out of his workings before submerging him in my rapidly flooding basement.

Eventually, I built a cage around the pump that acted as a strainer for the rivers of debris that now accompanied every heavy rain, and while this solved the problem of having to leave work early to resuscitate my old friend, it did nothing to answer the question of why my basement was now the preferred route for establishing a major body of water.

Over the next few storms, I was able to track the most major incoming stream from a corner of my house- not far from the pump’s home. The view of this corner had been previously blocked, not only by the typical obstacles which nest in the basement, but also by the oil tank. Once I uprooted the piles of treasures, I could see that there was an area in the corner wall, behind the tank, where cinder blocks had replaced the brick. In the floor below it, was an opening from which water was rushing to freedom.

The culprit- note the cinder blocks above.

It’s odd to live in a house for so long and not know that something like this existed. What was the point of this, and why was it suddenly a problem? I decided that this hole in the floor was most likely there to relieve the stress on the foundation during heavy rains- stress that had buckled the old brick previously in the corner. Why was this happening now? Obviously, it was because my foundation was disintegrating. At least, that was the biggest worst case scenario I could come up with- which is how I tend to react to these types of things.

I covered the hole with a weighted bucket as best I could, not fully comfortable that this was the best course of action. It mattered little since the water came in anyway. I examined the outside of the foundation, looking for signs of depressions or major sinkholes. For better or worse, everything looked normal.

Eventually, the heavy rains passed and winter came and with it, a few dry months of relief which allowed me to not deal with the problem.

This summer, the rains came back, and with them, to no one’s surprise but mine, came the floods. During one of the brief dry spells, I was having one of my infrequent conversations with my next door neighbor. He and I share a driveway and, I suspect, a sewer line below it. Anyway, somehow the conversation turned to all of the rain he got in his basement from the last storm and how this has been a bigger problem for him for the last year or so. Apparently, he felt the sewer was backing up.

I didn't quite get this and pressed him several times until it became one of those uncomfortable situations where I am certain that he either felt that I was an idiot or that I was calling him one. Finally it became clear to me that he wasn't talking about the sewage line. He was talking about the storm drain. Apparently his house, like mine, has a little hole in the corner of the basement and this is connected to the storm drain. The water was supposed to be draining out, not in. I had never heard of this before and the logic of it completely escaped me.

Why, I asked, would we even need such a thing, since we both have sump pumps? If the drain sat lower than the pump, I might be fooled into thinking it served any purpose beyond allowing a backed-up storm drain from the street to flood into my basement. But since the sump pump sits lower, shouldn't it be taking care of any water before it ever reached the drain?

He didn't follow my supposed logic, and since we’re neighbors, I decided not to push my luck any further. I had already come too close to the edge with the plumbing terminology. Instead, I called the Public Works Department on the following day, and they cleaned the storm drain the day following that.

We've had several more days of heavy rain since then and I’m back to having my extremely damp, but pretty much lake-free basement. For now.

My Basement- Part One

There have been intermittent storms over the last several days with more predicted for today- and for the next few days following. When it isn't raining, the humidity makes you wish it was- the mistaken belief being that it would offer some kind of relief.

On the plus side, everything is nice and green. On the minus side, this includes things that shouldn't be green- like my basement and the side of my home.

My hundred year old mansion rests, more out of habit than out of comfort, on an old red brick foundation which had been patched here and there, with various combinations of cinder blocks and concrete. This patching was done long ago by a previous owner and for the most part, has been out of sight- which is to say, covered by stacks of junk. Some of this junk was recently moved, albeit temporarily, exposing the bright grey glare of the concrete that intrudes on the sea of reddish-brown brick like out of place land masses.

I had forgotten about most of these patches. A couple of them have sat partially exposed throughout the years, visible through the various jungle fauna of boxes that surround them. But these patches have become invisible over time due to the same problem of over-familiarity that we all face eventually.

These newly exposed continents are jarring- not solely because of the brightly intrusive glare in an otherwise subdued setting. But jarring because they signify some major lapse on the part of the red brick- it no longer doing the job it was expected to perform.

I should mention that what I am calling patches are really more than that. These are concrete or cinder block structural replacements, added to the subterranean landscape for reasons found necessary long before I ever came around. These reasons remain a mystery to me, but this is exactly the kind of thing that makes me uncomfortable. While most of the walls remain largely red brick, it forces me to sit in judgment of the untouched areas and question which among them will be letting me down next.

I find it best not to dwell on these kinds of things.

Friday Night Video

After skipping a week (or was it two?), I'm back with a "new" video. It's that old family favorite called "Living Doll" from the Twilight Zone,  November 1st 1963.

Fair warning, this post will only be funny to people that know Sam. And even then, probably not.

Before I begin, it helps to know the layout of our tiny little house. Our living room is open to the dining room. On the north wall, which is in the dining room, I have my desk with the computer on it. On the wall above my desk is a little mirror. The mirror is there so that you can see who's behind you and glance at the tv. The south wall is in the living room and that's where the TV sits. Against the west wall sits the couch and opposite the couch are three chairs.

A couple of Saturdays ago, it was only Jake, Sam and I at home. Sam was on the computer with his headphones on, watching cartoons. Jake was on the couch playing on his laptop and I was sitting across from Jake in one of the three chairs. I’m looking at a story on the AV Club Website about a Twilight Zone episode that I hadn't seen in years. You guessed it (because I told you at the beginning), it's “Living Doll”.

I rarely watch much TV but when I do, it’s almost never on a Saturday afternoon. But this story inspired me to dig out my Twilight Zone DVDs and check it out. It’s been a long time since I had seen it. Sam was occupied and unlikely to notice and if Jake happened to notice, I was pretty sure it would creep him out- so that was an added incentive. I popped in the disk and started to watch.

In this episode, Telly Savalas plays a jerk of a stepfather- the kind of guy who has a chip on his shoulder against the entire world- which in this case is his wife and little stepdaughter. So the episode begins when the wife and daughter come back from shopping and Mom has bought the girl a doll named Talky Tina. Right off the bat, we learn that Step Dad is not one to keep his comments and feelings to himself- both of which run the full range between anger to paranoia. All he does is pick, pick, pick. He hates the doll from the get-go and we soon learn that the feeling is mutual.

One thing leads to another and eventually he throws the doll in the garbage can in the garage. Later, the phone rings. Step Dad answers it’s and Talky Tina is on the other end. When Mom comes back in from the other room, Step Dad smells a rat and accuses Mom of the hijinks. She thinks he’s nuts. Meanwhile, the little girl goes to bed, brokenhearted over not finding the doll, and Step Dad goes out to check on the trash can... and finds the doll is gone (Shocker)! He goes to check on the little girl, who by now is fast asleep in her bed and there, in her arms- is the doll (another shocker)!

The doll opens her eyes when Step Dad enters and the doll wakes up the little girl just as Step Dad grabs the doll and accuses the little girl of being behind his torment.  "Daddy, please!", cries the little girl. Step Dad shouts back, "I'm not your Daddy!"...

All of a sudden, from behind me I hear, “What is that guy's problem?” It was Sam, who had been watching for I don’t know how long. Sam is one of the most patient people in the world and all of Talky Tina’s shenanigans either didn’t register or they didn’t matter. But clearly Sam had had enough of Stepdad’s crap.

I shut it off at that point- not knowing whether Sam would enjoy the fell good ending or find it somehow disturbing. For now, we'll never know.

Unfortunately, I couldn't find a full video to imbed here so you'll have to check it out through this link or you can try this one.  Or you could let the moths out of your wallet and invest in the DVD.

And if you're interested, here's the link to the article that got me started.

In the News

I see that the cole slaw that I just finished eating has now been recalled.