CSotD: Reality Chex Mix
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Let's start today's mixture of reality checks with thankyouthankyouthankyou Wiley Miller, the only cartoonist, it seems, willing to pull back the curtain rather than to reflexively accept "delivery drones" as something non-ludicrous.
It seems bizarre that the flood of tiresome, repetitive drone cartoons have all been predicated on the idea that the pipe dream Jeff Bezos unveiled on 60 Minutes had more grounding in reality than the same TV show's fanciful reporting on the Benghazi attack or NSA surveillance.
Though, after all, Bezos sure was right about how the Segway was going to revolutionize the way people get around. Can't hardly walk down the street these days for the flood of people on Segways zipping around.
I think "60 Minutes" had that balloon-juice-fueled story back when he first unveiled it. Or maybe it was "Entertainment Tonight."
Anyway, I know it was one of those hard-hitting sources of investigative journalism.
Meanwhile, in other visions of reality
Over at Between Friends, the good news is that Maeve is off to Europe, the bad news is, she's traveling with her ex.
But perhaps that works for her. My view is that, if you don't stop picking at it, it will never heal and it may even become infected, but I'm willing to accept that it's an area in which mileage can vary.
Today's conversation is much more interesting anyway. Kim and Susan are tied down, and I know the feeling of envying those who can just take off and pursue a whim like going to Europe, either with a mysterious lover (as they still think Maeve is doing) or with an ex (as they would at least be disappointed, if not horrified, to discover).
Moreover, I had to face a secondary aspect of this mobility-thing a few years ago, when I interviewed a suspected murderer and had my notes subpoenaed by the grand jury.
I knew — and this was absolutely non-negotiable — that I wasn't going to testify beyond confirming what I'd written.
But the newspaper had been sold between the time of interview and the date of the convening of the grand jury, and I also knew that my new employer was highly unlikely to back me up, which meant that not only would I have to find a place for my dogs to stay (easy enough) but that I'd also probably lose my paycheck and thus my rental and so would have to put all my stuff into storage.
It is discomforting to have these practical details intervene in your theoretical plans, and doubly so when your plans are suddenly not so theoretical after all.
On a less apocalyptic note, once I began making my living as a telecommuting freelancer, I became free to live wherever I wanted, and, while I like four seasons, this is the time of year I question New Hampshire. I've even thought of throwing it all in a camper, taking the dog and living in a WiFi world of national parks and cheap campsites.
That's everybody's dream, but it's someone else's life.
I've often said that I retired at the front end of my life, when I spent 15 years attempting to become JD Salinger. I eventually learned that I wasn't going to be a novelist and, thank god, that I actually enjoyed the kind of stuff I was getting paid to write in the meantime.
So I settled into full-time journalism at about 37. And if I don't have enough money to ever retire at the back end of life, who cares? Writers don't "retire" anyway.
What I don't want at the back end of life is to sit around thinking about what I should have done at the front end. And, without having gone all Jack Kerouac or Ernest Hemingway about it, I took a look at the possibilities.
I even had the chance to live on the road with the dog at about 20 and quickly found it kind of tiresome.
I know. You're not supposed to admit that. But I like having a livingroom. Sue me.
The real trick is to differentiate between "things that tie you down" and "anchors."
One of my favorite movies is also one of my favorite books: "The Unbearable Lightness of Being."
In it, two carefree lovers in Czechoslovakia slowly part ways as one of them, against everything he has stood for in his own mind, falls in love and begins to accept the burden of commitment.
At the same time, the Prague Spring offers other freedoms, until Soviet tanks roll into town and those possibilities are quashed. They are in Switzerland at the time, and the unburdened lover heads off to America, while he goes back to a deeper love.
At the frontier, he hands his passport to the faceless border guard, then reaches to get it back and is rebuked by gloved fingers shaking a soft but definite "no-no."
And so he drives on, across the border and into occupied Czechoslovakia.
Robert Frost wrote "Home is the place where, when you have to go there, They have to take you in."
But Kundera wrote of a home you have to go to for needs deeper than illness, or poverty or even impending death.
Hell, death is always impending.
To borrow a punchline from an old joke, we've established that. Now we're just haggling over the degree.
(Come for the sex, stay for the insights)
Exquisitely Relevant Juxtaposition of the Day
(Bizarro)
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