Tag: control

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It’s a Mad, MAD Future

It’s a Mad, MAD Future

I remembered Al Jaffee the Fold-In Genius. I had forgotten Al Jaffee the futurist.

In case you think I’ve gone MAD, let me explain.

You may have seen the obituaries that went around recently proclaiming the death of MAD magazine cartoonist Al Jaffee at the age of 102. The impish Al was a key part of the magazine’s snark and satire, especially after creating the Fold-In … a back cover drawing that would set up a question, only to reveal a new drawing with a punchline answer when folded together. (“What favorite of both kids and parents is guaranteed to be around forever? … Discarded disposable diapers.”)

But as one CBC story reminded me, Jaffee also drew parody ads for the magazine, using a familiar Madison Avenue approach to promote completely outrageous things.

You know, like a phone that remembers what you just dialed even when you don’t.

Or a razor with multiple blades.

Or … well,  you get the idea.

I’m not saying that Jaffee had a pipeline to the future. Plenty of his ad gags turned out to be just that, products that were laughable then and now. But there were just enough hits to be a little scary. And that nails a basic truth: if you want to see what’s coming next, it helps if your glasses are a little cockeyed.

A lot of us live lives that assume tomorrow will be just like today, only with stranger music. From one angle, that doesn’t seem unreasonable. After all, we’re learning from experience and building reflexes, so we extrapolate from what we already know.

That works for a while … until it doesn’t. Even on a personal scale, we know this. A healthy life can change without warning. A job can go away or mutate beyond recognition. Yesterday’s friend can be tomorrow’s memory. Those kind of shocks hit hard.

And on a larger scale? Many science fiction authors have warned that they write great stories but poor prophecies. One ironic example: Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation,” a series of stories about experts in reading the future, had a galactic society with practically no computers. (He would eventually rectify that in the 1980s.)

Sure, sometimes something clicked. But the biggest successes have often come from writers who didn’t take the subject too seriously. Who were willing to be outright silly, in fact.

Take “A Logic Named Joe,” a hilariously screwball story from the 1940s that also happened to anticipate personal home computers, linked databases, natural-language queries and parental controls.

Or “The Jetsons,” where videoconferencing was so common that even doctor’s visits were done remotely.

Or of course, Al Jaffee, who thought he was kidding when he mock-advertised a stamp that would save you the trouble of licking it.

What can I say? Sometimes it pays to be weird.

In fact, it can be downright liberating.

It’s not natural for many of us. After all, it’s risky to break with what “everyone knows.” Most of us don’t like the idea of looking silly or taking a step into the unknown.

But the unknown comes whether we’re ready or not. And sometimes yesterday’s conventional thinking proves to be sillier than even the most satirical writer could have dreamed.

We don’t know everything. And when we admit that – when we leave ourselves open to new possibilities, however strange – that’s when we can start to build a future.

Maybe Al taught us well. Look at the picture in front of you, sure … but be willing to fold it up to see the answer you need.

It’s a MAD idea. But it just might work.

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The Road Less Familiar

The pickup appeared without warning, moving past its stop sign and straight for the side of my car.

BOOM!

The doors took the shot. The air bags thumped into life. And everything came to a sudden, twisting stop.

“Are you all right?” a voice called from outside.

I was, mostly. My car, not so much. As I looked at the tears, scratches, and dents in the doors – including one chunk that was missing altogether – I realized two things:

1) I had been very lucky in my unluckiness.

2) I was going to be much later coming back from lunch than I thought.

***

Even when everyone walks away (thank heaven), something like that shapes your week. Phone calls, paperwork, Tylenol, and more become an unexpected part of the schedule, reminding you that what you planned and what you find can be two very different things.

Funny enough, what I had planned was to figure out a birthday present for my oldest niece, Ivy.

Ivy is turning 9 and has discovered epic fantasy. The bedtime reading for her and her younger brother Simon has lately included The Chronicles of Prydain, the Welsh-inspired adventures of an Assistant Pig-Keeper named Taran. One day, he chases after a panicking prophetic pig (say that five times fast) only to find himself in the middle of dread hunters, ancient magic, desperate rescues and – of course – the fate of the realm.

Did he expect any of it? Of course not. But a moment’s break in the routine transformed his entire life.

Fantasy is famous for that kind of thing. Bilbo Baggins finds 13 dwarves and a wizard on his doorstep, looking for a tea-break and for someone to rob a dragon. Lucy’s game of hide-and-seek finds a wardrobe that contains a lamppost, a Faun, and a kingdom bound in enchanted winter by the White Witch. In tale after tale, it only takes the slightest turn of a corner to turn a world upside down.

“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, gong out of your door, he used to say,” Frodo Baggins says in The Lord of the Rings, remembering his famous relative Bilbo. “You step into the Road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to.”

Maybe that’s why those tales of magic and adventure still hold so much power now. They remind us how quickly the ordinary can become extraordinary, how the dull and everyday has no obligation to stay that way.

Sometimes they’re moments that echo the rest of your life. My own was forever shaped by a conversation in a nearly-empty bookstore – a chat that led to (so far) 21 years of marriage. And again by an unexpected death on a quiet Friday that rocked me, Heather, and all our family. The best and the worst, with the same power to ambush.

They’re not the moments you choose. They’re  not the moments you expect. But they are the moments that re-set your choices and your expectations, that reframe your thinking and remake your life. The moments that can break your heart or make it powerful beyond imagining. Maybe both.

Those moments can be personal. They can be national. What they can’t be is easily dictated.

That’s not comfortable.

We want to write our own stories, to have full control of the plots. And when the twists come, it’s unsettling at best. You can’t see where the tale’s going. You can’t skip ahead. You just have to travel the road as best you can, with all its unexpected burdens and blessings.

And when each turn arrives, it forces us to think. To break out of the usual and look. To actually see the world around us, and not just a far-off destination. To learn what we value and what we’ve taken for granted.

That’s something I’ll try to remember on the road ahead.

Hopefully with a working set of wheels.

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Looking Forward

This year, I resolve to be irresolute.

OK, I’m being a little bit of a wise guy. But only a little bit. After all, we have the New Year coming up. And next to drinking, partying, and lying about staying up until midnight, the most popular New Year’s activity is the Oh-So-Solemn Resolution.

“This is the year I lose 30 pounds.”

“This year, I’ll finally write that novel.”

“It’s time I learned to play guitar.”

“Aliens are out there, and I’m going to catch them on camera.”

Well, maybe not that last one. But this is Boulder County, so one never knows.

About 45 percent of Americans make at least one New Year’s resolution, a recent study found. About 8 percent actually keep them. I’ve been part of both groups. If I kept every New Year’s resolution I’d ever made, I’d cook like Julia Child, play guitar like Andres Segovia, and have more New York Times bestsellers than Stephen King. (Oddly enough, one of the resolutions I did keep – to lose weight – was a springtime promise, made long after Baby New Year had been put down for a nap.)

In a way, it’s understandable. When a resolution is made because you feel the need to do something, more often than not it gets done. When a resolution gets made because you know it’s the Official Time To Make Resolutions … well, you get a lot of resolutions and not much else. It doesn’t mean they won’t get fulfilled eventually, but without a conscious need, Life Happens.

So, I want to try something a little different as we approach the boundary line of the year. Rather than look forward and make a promise, I want to look back and learn a lesson. When I do that, two things jump to the top of the curriculum:

1) I have no idea what lies ahead.

2) I can’t do it all myself.

Number one may seem too obvious to mention, but 2015 pounded it home in a big way. This was the year I got my first-ever leads at the Longmont Theatre Company, including one in a show I never tried out for. It was the year that Heather first learned she had MS and the year that I first met the power of migraines. We had to work out new rules for life, even as we kept on with what we already had: the wonders of Missy, the wrinkles of a new job, the joys and stress of a family wedding.

And thus – number two. The Ringo Starr lesson: “I get by with a little help from my friends.” Maybe the hardest one of all for me to learn, year after year after year. But no less essential for that.

I can’t do it all. I want to. Heaven knows I try to. But until science discovers full-body human cloning and does away with the need for sleep, there’s simply no way that I can be everywhere I’m needed doing everything that needs to be done. As I’ve said here before, I hate not having control – and I know that any of it I think I have is an illusion, subject to revocation without warning.

That means I have to ask. And to accept. And to be grateful. Friends and family and co-workers have all been there at different points to make things happen. I’ve still taken on more than I probably should, partly because I’m stubborn, partly because friends and family and co-workers can’t be everywhere, either. But they’ve been a lot more “everywhere” than I could ever be alone.

So I’ve learned partnership. And pacing. And even just taking care of myself; the hardest thing for any caregiver to learn, really. Vital, though. If your own foundations aren’t solid, how can you support anyone else?

Those aren’t bad lessons to jump into 2016 with. Be ready to be surprised. And don’t meet those surprises alone.

Maybe those are resolutions of a sort. And with a year of learning behind them, maybe they’ll be easier to keep.

But easy or hard, it’s time to turn the page.

Class is back in session.

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The Daily Pay-Per

Forget the lemonade stands and the car washes. If you want to make a quick few bucks, social media may just be your cash cow. Or at least a very small calf.

For those who missed it, the Associated Press reported the other day on two social networks that will pay for your posts. Bubblews starts at a penny per like, view or comment for posts of a certain length (though the full formula gets a little more involved) while Bonzo Me pays its most popular posts a percentage of its ad revenue.

It ain’t much. But it’s something.

“No one should come to our site in anticipation of being able to quit their day job,” Bubblews CEO Arvind Dixit told the AP. “But we are trying to be fair with our users.”

Strangely enough, I’ve got mixed feelings on this one.

On the one hand, my writer brain is ecstatic that someone finally gets it. People go online for the content: to read stories, see pictures, watch videos, keep up with people and things they know and love. And for the most part, the bloggers, posters, video-makers, lovers, dreamers and other members of the Rainbow Connection do it for free.

That’s one thing when you’re putting up a note to friends that Aunt Ginny just got out of the hospital. But when it’s something that takes time and labor … well, as the old sermon goes, the workman is worthy of his hire. In particular, a lot of news agencies (he said modestly) have put a lot of content on the social networks; it’d be kind of nice to see even a modest return.

But – and yeah, you knew there’d be a but – there’s a potential tradeoff. He who pays, says.

I brought this up years ago when I jokingly suggested a federal bailout of the newspaper industry. While I don’t know a newspaper alive that wouldn’t cheer at a new funding source, I know plenty who would be hesitant to go on the government payroll. The reason is obvious: part of the job of the press is to challenge government when necessary, and that’s hard to do when it’s their money sitting in your bank account.

This situation is a little less blatant. And it could be argued that the social networks already have all the control they need. After all, we’re users of a free service, not customers; the Facebooks and Twitters and all the rest pay for the space and set the rules.

But given that, is it wise to offer one more leash?

Maybe I’m overreacting. Maybe it’s a good thing to make every poster a freelancer-in-waiting. If the control’s going to be there anyway, might as well cash in on it, right? Heaven knows most of us could use it.

But every time we’ve thought the social networks couldn’t possibly go farther, they’ve found a way. (Psychological experimentation, anyone?) And so I hate to open one more door, even if it’s one that holds a small paycheck.

It’s one thing to be a guest. Another to be an employee. For better and worse.

How will it all play out?

I’ll keep you posted.

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Hands off the Wheel

The nightmare went right for the gut.

There I was, sitting at the wheel of a car in a crowded parking lot. A car in motion, describing constant circles, not answering any of my attempts to steer.

Foot brakes? Forget it. Parking brake? Somewhere on here, but where? Each new lever or button seemed to make things more disastrous, popping the hood, opening the trunk, making it harder and harder to see the oncoming doom.

The crash was coming. And I couldn’t stop it.

Finally the dream had mercy. Moments before waking, my fingers found the “angel of mercy” brake and yanked up, bringing the car to a slow – of course it was slow – stop.

My eyes blinked open. Relief.

I was never touching that cold medicine again.

We all have our fundamental fears in life. I’ve seen people paralyzed by the presence of a friendly dog, or whose breath grew short in a closed-in space. I even interviewed a phlebotomist once, a professional blood tester, who used to have a deathly phobia of needles.

Me? Well, there are things that make me uncomfortable, like sharp objects or falling sensations. But the deepest, darkest, most basic fear I have – one I share with my wife – is losing control.

After all, I’ve seen some of the consequences.

I’m epileptic. It’s well-managed, to the point that I can live a normal life 99.99 percent of the time. I hold a job, raise a family, even drive a car.

But on those rare nights – only three of them so far, all while asleep, all when off medication for some reason – it’s like Dr. Frankenstein reached over and plugged in the lightning rod.

The mercy of a seizure, at least in my experience, is that you’re not aware of it while it’s going on. You don’t see the jerks and pulls, or hear the noises coming out of your mouth, or know about the bizarre behavior that goes on in the immediate aftermath. (Heather once called an ambulance because my seizure had gone on so long; as they started to put me on the stretcher, I picked myself up, walked to the bathroom, did my business, and came back, completely unconsciously.)

The aftermath: that you know about. If Peyton Manning ran four quarters of the Broncos offense over your body …  if you suntanned on a lane of I-25 at rush hour … if you’ve tried bungee jumping and forgotten that silly little detail about fastening the hook … then you’ve got an idea of what it feels like for three days after a seizure.

It is the loss of control personified. After all, how much more basic does it get than not being able to control your own body?

I hate it. And yes, fear it. Letting go is hard. Admitting I need help – with anything – is even harder.

But lately, I’ve had some reminders.

And most of them are named Missy.

If you read the column last week – or, let’s be honest, many of the ones before – you know our ward Missy, Heather’s developmentally disabled aunt. In many ways, she has control over very little of her life. She reaches for an arm to help her walk. She needs help in a hundred different ways every day, from tying her shoes to managing her home. And yes, there’s many times where it’s frustrating for her, where I can see her wanting to communicate something very simple and not quite knowing how.

But so many times, I see the joy instead.

When we gave Missy her big birthday bash last week, we remembered food and guests and all the usual items – but we also remembered a DJ. Because at her heart, Missy is a dancer, at home with loud music and open floors.

And for  three hours, with only short breaks, Missy danced. And danced. And danced some more.

They weren’t the moves of Baryshnikov or Astaire. They didn’t have to be. Just the bends and the sways and the slow spins of a person in gleeful ecstasy.

Missy had just enough control to reach joy. She didn’t need more. Maybe she even reached a deeper joy by letting go a little.

That’s something I need to remember.

Maybe I don’t always have to drive the car. Maybe, sometimes, it’s OK to just watch the road and enjoy the ride.

Once this cold medicine wears off, anyway.

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Speaking Ill

I’ve used this space many times to take a breath and reflect.

This time, it’s just good to be able to breathe.

That’s right. For the whole week surrounding the Fourth, Casa Rochat was officially the House O’ Plague. At times, it felt like a twisted version of Old MacDonald, as we went about with a hack-hack here and a bleah-bleah there … well, you get the idea.

We never did work out if it was the world’s worst cold or a mild to moderate flu. I’ve decided that the main difference, so long as you never wind up in the hospital, is sympathy. You can get this:

 

Hypothetical co-worker: “So what do you have?”

Self: “I’ve got a really bad cold.”

HCW: “Ah, you wimp, tough it out!”

 

Or you can get this:

 

HCW: “So what do you have?”

Self: “We think it’s a really persistent influenza.”

HCW: “Ack! Flu! Get away from me!”

 

Meanwhile, when you’re dealing with a burning throat, heat flashes, muscle aches, coughs, sneezes and enough dripping mucus to provide sound effects for a dozen Scooby Doo episodes, the last thing you care about is taxonomy.

Still, a week’s worth of enforced rest does make you appreciate the fundamentals.

You learn to appreciate your wife. Especially when she’s violated Spousal Rule No. 17 and gotten sick at the same time as you, to the same degree.

You learn to appreciate sleep, in much the same way that a broke investor appreciates gold. You may not be able to get any, but boy, do you understand its value.

You learn how to use quiet time again. Long books. Mindless stretches on the Net. Periodic bouts with cough drops and throat spray. Anything that distracts you from feeling like an extra in Monty Python’s “Bring out your dead!” scene.

Most of all, perhaps, you appreciate the need to let go and just let things happen.

These days, we’re all about control. Take charge of your life, grab hold of your world, make the existence you want to have. And that’s not a bad thing. Heck, as an epileptic, I can really get into that – being out of control for me isn’t just scary, it’s downright painful.

But we fool ourselves. We make ourselves think we can control everything. And sometimes we do a good job at crafting the illusion.

Right until the next wildfire.

Or the next family illness.

Or the next anything, good or bad, that upsets our plans, blinks our eyes and forces us to say “Where the heck did THAT come from?”

Like supercolds or nagging flu, they don’t last forever. But they can’t be ignored, either. All you can do is make the best of it and ride it out, doing what you can with what you’re given.

Even if all you’re given is some books, some Kleenex and a bottle of Chloraseptic.

Still, everything has its upside. As a wise man once didn’t say: “What doesn’t kill me makes me too bleary to focus on TV political ads.”

You might say my attention flu.