Body Wash Swinger

Somebody left his body wash in the shower at my gym. Mountain Stream. The body wash, not the gym. And . . . I am not, by nature, cheap. Yes, I’ve been using the same body wash for six years because my sister-in-law gave me a box of samples – but that just proves my point. I do not ration the body wash I brought into the shower. I have literally given the stuff away on occasion – homeless shelter, care packages for our troops, that kind of thing.

I am not particularly adventurous, either. I would take watching a show about the Amazon delta to visiting it any day. I’ve been in same house for 10 years, same job for 21, same wife forever.

Yet, there I was squirting the foreign blue goo into my palm. Couldn’t help myself. I’d never take a sip of someone else’s drink, left on the bar, but I had no qualms about slathering someone else’s soap. I didn’t need the soap, I just wanted to try something new.

And the scent. Owe. Like a mountain stream. Loved it. The Moroccan Spice samples I usually use have long lost their volatiles. It’s like washing with paste. This stuff opened my world.

I get out of the shower, dry off, and this guy comes over and reaches past me, into the stall. He takes his body wash, looks at me for a second and I swear his nostrils flared. I think he smelled the Mountain Spring on me and didn’t know what to do. He’s thinking, is this guy really a soap thief? To which I wanted to answer, no. I just like to mix up a little once in a while. You know what I mean, wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

Instead, I said nothing. Another guy at he gym who thinks I’m odd. Ha. Two more and I get a free water bottle.

Like Riding a Skate

I treat clichés like potholes – trying very hard, sometimes too hard – to avoid them.  Still, many little phrases have become trite because they have value.  When people say “It’s like riding a bike” you know what they mean.  It will come back to you.  What gets less attention are the converse statements.  The things people don’t say.  There is no idiom: “it’s like ice skating” Because skating ain’t like riding a bike. 

This past weekend I put on skates for the first time in 28 years.  I can’t speak for everyone – I’d like to but I can’t – so let’s just say for me this skill seems to have run off with all the French I ever knew.  I had no strong skating desire bubbling inside for 28 years.  I wanted to assist my seven-year-old who’s just learning.  Which left us both crashing to the ice and the boy saying, “You’re not much help.”  Cold, man.  And I was already pretty chilled.

Now I have a nice shiner and a bunch of other clichés to remember.  Smooth as ice.  The bigger they are, the harder they fall.  You should see the other guy.  (Actually, he’s fine.  He had a helmet.)  An once of prevention is worth a pound of “Hey, what happened to your face?"

Customer We Don't Care Department

Nintendo, Activision and Kurio each suck, but in their own way.  Their products have let me down over the past three weeks and their customer service departments have been so disappointing that I’ve started to think I’m on some version of the Truman show, which can’t possibly be true because you couldn’t find five people who’d want to watch me drink coffee and read the New Yorker all day.  Of course, Real Housewives of Orange County is still on, so what do I know. 

I emailed Activison when I thought my Skylanders disk was malfunctioning.  They told me to mail them the disk, which is stupid.  You can’t use the disk without all the other Skylanders stuff.  I called, and after an hour, convinced a very polite customer care representative that yes, they could and would send me a disk.

While waiting for a new Skylanders disk, I realized that other games jammed in my hours-old Nintendo Wii U.   It gave us maximum playtime of 30 minutes.  Sometimes less.  I called them and they walked me through everything I’d already tried, wasting another hour of my life until the friendly customer care representative said she’d email me a label and I could send the unit back. 

I’m still waiting for the disk and the label.  It’s been more than two weeks. 

In the meantime, our Kurio 7s stopped turning on.  Dead after a fortnight, it can’t be reset, charged, activated in anyway.  I visited their Web site and found no phone number and no mailing address.  They had a live-chat function that never went live for me.  They had an email function that never allowed me to send an email.  It told me, repeatedly, that I’d failed to put in the right code.  I finally complained on their Facebook page and they told me to message them.  I did.

Now it’s a race to see if they will answer my message before me disk arrives from Activsion or my email from Nintendo. 

As it stands, I’m 0 for 3.

I’m wondering if Apple has these issues.  I’ve owned more than 25 Apple products since 1984 and never once had to call customer service.  And for those of you watching at home, stay tuned.   

UPDATE: Activision disk has arrived.  They are off my list.  Actually, they were pretty cool about the whole thing.  Just took a couple days extra to get my disk.  I will no longer make fun of them.

The Milkman

It is official.  My next novel is The Milkman and it's coming from EDGE Publishing in May.  I'm rather excited.  The novel is science fiction, but the science I'm fictionalizing is economics (not technically a science, but it tries so hard) so it shouldn't scare off those of you who can't read about robots and rayguns.  I'm saving that stuff for my next book.  Once I've got you hooked . . . The Milkman is like a gateway SF book.

I usually don't get excited until I've got a lump of paper in my hand, but EDGE has put a Web page teasing the novel.  So.  I am allowing myself to smile.

Once is enough

Every legal document I read this year had at lest one (1) set of numbers in which the authoring attorneys deemed it necessary to give me all the numbers two (2) times.

It is an insulting practice.  Anyone expected to separate the subrogee from the legatee is certainly capable of understanding the word “three” or, more concisely, “3”.  They don’t duplicate everything else in legal documents.  At least, I don’t think so.  I can’t say as I fully digested every contract I had to review recently.  Ever.

Anyway, two times the word doesn’t make your document twice as official.  If your brief already contains at least one “whereas” or “whereof” you’ve puffed yourself up quite enough.  No need to push it.

It is a waste.  Let’s say there are 1,100 characters on a page of an average document.  The American legal industry generates about $209 billion annually.  If only 10-percent of that is issuing contracts and briefs, the industry could save about $57 million a year just for trying, in a very small way, to be more clear and more polite.  That is not counting the bottom line of all the poor shlubs wasting their time reading a word twice twice for no reason.

Join with me.  Please.  You only live once.  Don't spend your time reading something twice (x2).

Gerbils, towels and things you learn at a con

One can learn a great deal from science fiction conventions.  Plotting, characterization, common pitfalls and basic craft – a well-run con can always teach you something.  The trick, as Spock tells you in The Wrath of Khan, is to remember.

I did not.  My first mistake stemmed from lingering too long after a reading, gabbing away as they moved the chairs in the room from stadium style to circle.  The alarms went off in my head.  Run when they circle chairs.  Run.  I did not do this, either.  Two minutes later I found myself in the far corner of an improv lesson.  Yes.  A comedy improvisation workshop designed to God knows what at a sci fi con.   

The session made me laugh.  Everyone in the room had a quick wit and, by nature of the convention itself, a general understanding of the audience.  I sat, trembling at the thought of doing something and having it flop, or doing nothing and being one of those guys who doesn’t participate, who thinks himself above all this.  As a ‘starship captain’ and ‘Klingon’ searched the ‘mall’ for a ‘rouge gerbil’ I realize this is my moment.  I scampered across the floor, chirping “Oh no not again,” until stunned by a ‘phaser.’

For whatever reason, everyone laughed, the workshop soon ended and I got on to the business of science fiction business.  Midway through the next day, I decide to go for a swim.  The hotel pool is gorgeous and I had a lot of toxins to work out of my system.  Because the pool is nine floors down and through the lobby, I wear my street clothes and change in the changing room.  I do laps for 20 minutes, get out and . . . drip.  No towels.  No lifeguard, no humans, no towels. 

I can’t dash through the lobby and up the elevator sopping wet.  Nor can I put my clothes back on.  I take the only other options I see available.  I get naked, smack the big silver button on the hand-dryer, crouch down and slowly rotate like gyro meat on a spit.  I turn and turn squeegeeing myself for what feels like 30 minutes.

Then another guy walks in.  I stand up.  He looks at me.  Confused.  Then he tilts his head a bit and asks, “Aren’t you that gerbil?”

The sad thing is that anyone attending a science fiction convention must have read Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.  And anyone who as read that book – even just the first few pages – knows that, and I paraphrase: A towel, the Guide says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have.

Never forget what you learn at your next con.  Never forget your towel.  Oh, and don't panic.

Put the NSA in charge of Obamacare

So the NSA hacked into Google and Yahoo, to gain access to data no one thought they could touch.  Wow.  Regardless of what you think about the ethics or legality, it’s quite an achievement.  The engineers at Google and Yahoo are, presumably, amongst the best in the world.

If the NSA can infiltrate them, well, their Kung Fu must be better.  I bet they could fix up a retail-database site like nothing.  The president should immediately re-direct the efforts of the NSA to repairing the Affordable Care Act’s Web site. 

It’s a win, win, win.  They can improve their image while helping 14 million uninsured American’s get healthcare.  Sure, there are all kinds of HIPAA regulations regarding security an such, but hey, that’s obviously not an issue for the agency.

And they can keep Al-Qaeda affiliates from getting health insurance.  Love it.