For a while now, I’ve thought about listing some minor, but very persistent annoyances. Aside from venting, I’m not sure what purpose that would serve, and yet….
But first, for no real reason at all other than to tie in the title of this post – here’s a Tom Petty video. It’s great to see the stereotypes of the rocker’s rise and fall from grace, and the cast is pretty impressive. The other pettiness comes after the break.
I strongly dislike my computer. Don’t get me wrong, it has served me well over the years. In the final years of my marriage, it was a refuge for music videos, and a handful of video games in to which I could disappear. It has been a treasure trove of memories – texts and pictures from forgotten relationships. It helped with a lot of job searches and research (I applied to over 60 jobs after my fiancee left). It has allowed me to build this site and build the habit of writing every day. On it, I have posted over 160 poems, reflections, rants, and mini personal essays – I have numerous other drafts – a digital scratch pad of sorts. For all of its service, I’m afraid it’s about time to move on. Last night, I sat there, quite impatiently, watching the little wheel of computer thought spin as it tried to process the request to load a page. I’m sure it was only a few moments, but it felt like an eternity. It does this a lot more than it used to – the tasks are simply getting too hard to execute. Additionally, the left “mouse button” on my keyboard – the one I use for pretty much everything is permanently half-way depressed. (I feel like there’s a Zoloft joke to be made, and for the curious… “Why is the term ‘depressed’ often used to describe a button which is pressed?”). I also get annoyed when I hear my computer fan whirring or when I hear all the little processing clicks that sound like a small army of ants in tiny ant tap shoes inside picking up and putting down micro transistors and electronic objects – running frantically over the motherboard carrying bits of information to and fro… I fully expect the computer to wheeze, cough, expire. An obvious alternative to trashing it in favor of a sleek new model would be to focus on my own patience. The computer still works, and most days, it works just fine. And if you, like me, are finding an odd irony in my thoughts about breaking up with my computer… perhaps we can both chuckle a little about the commonality of souring relationships (jobs, people, machines). Even in this, it’s all about who chooses to go first.
I really don’t like the bathrooms in my apartment. The toilets and sinks simply don’t function the way they should. It’s as if the specs were off and they were bought at some discount warehouse for failures in plumbing design. Water pools at the base of the sinks… not because the drains are clogged or slow, but because the slope/base of the sink bowl is too flat. When I brush my teeth, the bubbly spittle remains in the bottom of the bowl. If I don’t physically rinse it out and use my hand to wipe it down, it dries that way leaving a stale minty film that greets me later in the day. The toilets don’t flush well. This is one thing where Trump might have been on to something as opposed to being on something (actually, I’m in favor of well-designed low-flow appliances).
We have a situation where we’re looking very strongly at sinks and showers and other elements of bathrooms where you turn the faucet on — and in areas where there’s tremendous amounts of water, where the water rushes out to sea because you could never handle it, and you don’t get any water…
Because I’m a self-critical person, I first blamed the consistency of my feces (TMI, but it doesn’t always sink). On the second (or third) flush, I would try to cover anything that was left with toilet paper hoping to create a paper-wrapped package that would more readily be sucked down in the toilet vortex. Adding to the frustration, anything that hit the bowl sticks there. I’ve never sprayed and scrubbed toilets as often as I do now. I worry this will be an embarrassment for anyone that visits and has their own unpleasant flushing experience. The more I observed these issues, the more I could address my toilet in a “it’s not me, it’s you” manner. Again, this is a function of design. First, I suspect that the pressure simply isn’t high enough – I will vociferously defend my volume as being no greater than a normal person’s evacuation – it really is the toilet’s fault. But what’s worse is that all of the water that “rushes” in to the bowl comes from a single point at the very front of the bowl. Some basic understanding of biology and where someone’s ass is in relation to the bowl would indicate the greatest amount of pressure and flushing power – the most water and centrifugal force is needed towards the back of the bowl, not the front. I haven’t studied toilet design, but from what I recall, most have several points of entry for the water to create adequate swirlage…
The sidewalk closure at Union and B.B. King boulevard has been a daily pain in the ass. It forces me to cross before I’m ready or want to. Traffic is never all that bad here in Memphis, but invariably, when I need to cross 4 lanes at a non intersection, there are at least a dozen cars in both directions spaced out just enough that I have felt mild decomp set in as I waited or have panicked as I jauntily bounded across the road, always worrying that I might drop my keys (which are firmly secured in my pocket) or somehow just end up all froggered with that annoying ColecoVision digital game over music being the last thing I hear…. a downward spiral of 8-bit sounds with a slight pop at the end. And yes, I know, it was probably Atari, not Coleco. Again, patience might be the virtue that could remedy this situation… but when I’m out walking about, I prefer to keep moving, and I prefer not to have to cross a 4 lane street only to recross it a block later.
I suppose gratitude for health and friends and family… for food on the table and a warm place to sleep could ease the pain of life’s daily slings and arrows… As does trying to inject a bit of humor in to those things that poke at us ever so slightly every time we brush our teeth, take a crap, cross the street, or try to switch tabs so we can download a meme of the president….
