No more idiotic memes, No more phony living the dream, No more false information, No more intermediation, No more fake news, No more dishonest reviews, No more pathological liars, No more wallowing in the mire, No more twenty-something experts, No more billionaire perverts, No more ignorant rants, No more foolish occupants, No more chefs who never went to culinary school, No more using social media as a manipulation tool, No more Internet chain letters, No more sycophant abettors, No more fake go fund me pages, No more provocation that enrages, No more glorifying lawlessness, No more doomscrolling aimlessness, No more rampant hatred, No more becoming alienated, No more racial intolerance, No more religious ambivalence, No more shallow influencers, No more flashy necromancers, No more algorithms, No more collectivism, No more tracking, No more hacking, No more curated advertisements, No more unsolicited chastisements, Because I smashed my phone today, I should have done it yesterday, Or perhaps two weeks prior, As the negativity raised my ire, Now that it is finally done, I can see what is truly going on, Now that I have finally set myself free, I have the time to simply be me.
You see it every single day here in Los Angeles: People staring at their smartphones while they are supposedly working, or while walking down the street with their dog, or while driving their car (as they dangerously weave between the lane lines), or while at a Taylor Swift concert. These people are usually completely oblivious to anything that is happening around them, and so it is apparent that smartphones are great at blocking out situational awareness, perhaps by design. These people will be the first ones to go during a zombie apocalypse, and when you think about it, they are already in a semi-zombie state anyway, so it isn’t much of a stretch.
More often than not, these same people also have their Bluetooth earbuds crammed into their ear canals as tight as possible so that they can listen to music, or podcasts, or news, or Matt Foley: Motivational Speaker audio books. It is my opinion that they are intentionally tuning out the world and living inside their own personal bubbles. They never respond to you when you say “Hello” as you cross paths (making them seem rude, cold, and indifferent). They don’t hear you when you yell “Watch out!” as they blindly step onto the street while staring at the screen of their smartphone and walk directly into the oncoming path of a speeding city bus—ironically throwing themselves under the bus.
Then again, maybe it’s best to let Darwinism take its course and not interfere with the natural laws of the universe.
The headlines speak for themselves, “Man dies while taking selfie in front of a bison bull.” “Man dies falling off of parking structure while playing Pokémon GO!” “Woman dies in car crash while sexting her boyfriend.” The list goes on and on. Does this imply that smartphones are deadly? No: It only proves that there are too many dumb people walking around amongst us.
I don’t believe that smartphones have truly made people any smarter than they were before smartphones were invented, in fact, I’ll argue that the opposite is true because this has been my experience. It amazes me that even with the entire knowledge and history of the world at their fingertips—knowledge and history that previously required people to either go to a local library or ask their grandparents if they may thumb their way through their latest Encyclopedia Britannica edition—people still believe that Elvis is alive; that the earth is flat; and that the moon landing was a hoax. Indeed, cognitive dissonance is alive and well in the U.S.
I do believe that too much Internet bandwidth is consumed by the millions of pointless, viral cat and TikTok related videos du jour instead of by people seeking knowledge or facts, both of which appear to be in short supply these days. The last time I checked, knowledge and facts are still tariff free, so there is no additional cost to obtain them…and yet they languish. Half-truths, untruths, myths, rumors, and outright lies seem to rule the day.
Now that smartphones have AI capabilities, I think this is only going to accelerate the dumbing down of Americans. It’s going to be interesting to see how it progresses. I used to believe that AI in its absolute sense was isolated to city, county, state, and federal government politicians, you know, the smartest people in the room—just ask any one of them—and you can see how that turned out for us. If you believe that AI is somehow going to save us, you may only be half right because AI also has the potential to destroy us. I sense that AI will end up doing both in an endless creative destruction cycle. Buckle up, kids.
If there is a dystopian AI controlled Tyrellian evil robot future on the horizon, people won’t even look up from their smartphone screens long enough to notice. The masses will be led to their demise by means of a viral, cleverly gamified extermination program in which all of the “accidents” will seem plausible. May I suggest starting with the ones who have the most daily screen time as they pose the most danger to society? Come to think of it, this gives doomscrolling an entirely new meaning. Just kidding—obviously, it should start with the politicians.
Recently, my old wireless keyboard had some stubborn, sticky keys, so I had to replace it. Mind you, the keys were not sticky with foodstuffs like strawberry jam, orange blossom honey, or gooey perfumy hand lotion like my mother-in-law’s keyboard (true story); they were sticky as in I had to mash them down to get them to work. This mashing of the keys has the potential to trigger carpal tunnel syndrome, so the keyboard had to go to the great computer in the sky. Farewell, my QWERTY friend.
Subsequently, I had to purchase a replacement keyboard and mouse set. The set came with what can best be described as a warning booklet in a 1-millimeter font which required a magnifying glass to read. There were battery warnings, laser warnings, FCC warnings, plus product use guidelines. You’d think that I just bought a nuclear detonating device, not a keyboard and mouse. The only thing missing, I think, was language about the keyboard not being intended to be used a weapon. This booklet seemed like hyper legal overkill to cover any potential product liability. All of this for a keyboard? I’m pretty sure that my dad’s old mechanical Smith-Corona typewriter had no such label. I’m also pretty sure that his generation would have torn any such label off anyway.
Naturally, now I’ve been noticing that there are warning labels on everything. EVERYTHING! It is as if we have collectively lost all common sense and are somehow no longer responsible or accountable for not knowing that a knife may be sharp, or that a fire is hot. This is beyond ridiculous – this is insanity.
Is it not common sense (or common knowledge, which, apparently, is not so anymore) that:
A stovetop may be hot.
A hot cup of coffee may be hotter.
An electric appliance may shock you.
An electric chainsaw may shock you and also cut you.
You might fall off of a ladder.
A lawnmower may be dangerous if you stick your hands or feet underneath the cutting blade shroud.
That sunscreen may not protect you from actually getting skin cancer.
An inflatable flamingo is not a life saving device and you may drown.
Gasoline is flammable.
Rat poison is poisonous.
You might crash your bicycle.
You might cut yourself with a pair of scissors.
If society is going to go through slapping warning labels on all of the allegedly dangerous things, may I also suggest warning labels for people? Simple labels like:
Does not get along well with others.
Do not allow to consume alcohol.
Volatile.
Agitated.
Bigot.
Democrat.
Republican.
Dangerous while driving.
Dangerous while talking.
Narrow-minded.
Intolerant.
Indifferent.
Hater.
Extremely selfish.
Hypocrite.
Liar.
Pathological liar (there is a difference).
Blowhard.
Unmotivated.
Manipulator.
I think this would help avoid a whole lot of conflicts because you simply would avoid these types of people, right? On second thought, it would leave you with the uncomfortable knowledge that there are so many of them running around possibly having children.
I would argue that warning labels are interfering with the natural order of things like Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection, for example. Think about that for a minute. If we don’t allow Darwinism to do its natural selection thing, are we not allowing for the perpetuation of DNA that perhaps should have discontinued?
I don’t believe that we want the guy who shocked himself while trimming his tree by cutting into a utility wire with an electric chain saw and fell off his ladder into a gasoline fueled firepit to have any children. Prove me wrong.
But there is always a lawyer somewhere that would ask, “Was there a visible warning label on the utility wire?”
To the contrary of Laundromats – Part 1, my extremely frugal paternal grandmother Mary Alice never stepped foot inside a laundromat. She had an old electric semi-automatic open top 1940’s era Maytag washing machine with a wringer that sat out on the back patio. Nothing fancy. I saw her doing a load of laundry once in that odd machine. Odd, in that it was cylindrical and didn’t connect to any plumbing and had to be filled with a combination of garden hose water and boiling water from a tea kettle. It also had an external drain hose that was connected to a wye cleanout plumbing fitting on the back wall of the patio. There was a foot switch, a lever, and a knob to control it. It had a clutch. It also required the user to have one or two rinse tubs full of water available.
The semi-automatic washing machine process went something like this:
Place dirty laundry in the tub and fill with water of the desired temperature.
Add laundry soap.
Turn the machine foot switch on, engage the wash tub agitator, and set an egg timer for 15-minutes.
Disengage the wash tub agitator.
Engage the pump.
When the wash tub is fully drained, disengage the pump.
Engage the wringer.
Wring out the clothes and place them into rinse tub 1. Agitate by hand.
Wring out the clothes from rinse tub 1 and place them into rinse tub 2. Agitate by hand.
Wring out the clothes from rinse tub 2 and place clothes in laundry basket for clothesline drying, or place directly into dryer.
Disengage the wringer.
Engage the pump to drain the tub of the water collected from all of the wringing.
When the wash tub is fully drained, disengage the pump.
Turn the foot switch off.
Drain the rinse tubs.
Obviously, this was really only a semi-semi-automatic process, and a very hazardous and ridiculously tedious one, but she didn’t mind doing it. Thank god for the modern automatic washing machine. I hope the person that invented them won a Nobel Peace Prize!
Mary Alice didn’t have nor apparently need a gas or electric dryer. Instead, she had one of those rotating umbrella clotheslines that looked like a TV antenna that she used for drying her laundry naturally with only sunlight and a light breeze. She also knew not to dry laundry on the clothesline if the gusty Santa Ana winds were blowing, shrewdly circumventing the possibility of having to fetch her undergarments from the neighbors sycamore tree.
Fast forward to when I was about 19 and lived in a 2-story 20-unit apartment building with my younger brother and my mom at 6037 Hazelhurst Place in NoHo. The apartment building had a small room on the ground floor near the pool equipment that had one heavy-duty top-loading coin-op washer and one heavy-duty front-loading coin-op dryer that were situated to the left side of the room and a small, convenient counter to the right side for folding your clothes. Above the folding counter was a soapbox vending machine. It was ostensibly a micro laundromat. Sorry, no fluff ‘n’ fold services available.
However, there were rules for using the laundry room to prevent any conflicts. On the back of the laundry room door, the apartment manager had posted a framed 8 ½ x 11-inch mimeographed schedule with gridlines for which apartment had access on which days of the week and which 2-hour time slots. There was another larger, 2-foot by 3-foot professionally hand painted sign from Erroll Sign Company in NoHo (I actually worked for the owner, Erroll Biggs, over one summer) that was screwed to the back of the door that had the following:
LAUNDRY ROOM RULES
HOURS – 8:00 AM to 10:00 PM ONLY!
NO SMOKING!
CLEAN OUT THE LINT SCREEN IN THE DRYER WHEN YOU ARE DONE!
DO NOT LEAVE ANY TRASH BEHIND!
They went a little overboard with all capitalized letters and the exclamation points which gave me the impression that they were a little bit angry and very shouty. Reading between the lines, the sign inferred that people used the laundry room between 10:00 PM and 8:00 AM, regularly smoked in it, didn’t clean the dryer screen, and left trash lying around which probably consisted mostly of empty soapboxes, empty beer bottles, and flattened cigarette butts extinguished on the floor with a shoe.
One Sunday night when our apartment number had the scheduled laundry time of 8:00 – 10:00 PM, I went downstairs to do my load of laundry at 8:00 sharp, but someone had apparently lost track of time and there was a load of laundry in both the washer and the dryer. Looking at the schedule, it was apartment #10 that had the 6:00 – 8:00 time slot. Not wanting to wait (nor should I have had to wait because of the established rules), I moved the clothes that were in the dryer to the folding table and moved the wet laundry from the washing machine and placed them in the dryer. I figured if the person came back while my clothes were still in the washer, they would just start the dryer and when I came down later the dryer would be available to me.
In the meantime, I went back upstairs and smoked a little weed and was feeling alright when I realized it was time to pop my clothes into the dryer at around 8:30 PM. I went back downstairs, and nothing had changed; the wet clothes were still in the dryer and the dry clothes were still in a pile on the folding table. No biggie – I decided to move #10’s wet clothes from inside the dryer and put them on top of it and put my clothes in the dryer and carry on with my business. But while I was loading the dryer, I noticed a rather large, middle-aged woman in a muumuu with these big curlers in her hair looming in the laundry room doorway, standing there in silence, and puffing on a cigarette. She was straight out of a Gary Larson cartoon.
I turned to say hello when she started in on me in a very nasty, throaty, gravelly tone of voice – the kind of voice brought on only from years of smoking. “What do you think you’re doing touching my clothes, you pervert!” Pervert? I don’t believe I deserved that. I defended myself by saying, “Actually, ma’am, this is my time slot (I gestured toward the posted schedule on the back of the door), and you left your laundry unattended, so I just moved it out of the way to make room so I could do my laundry.” I was talking in a low-key matter-of-fact tone of voice. Then she said, sarcastically, “Actually, it is against standard laundry room etiquette to touch anyone else’s clothes!” Standard laundry room etiquette? I didn’t know this was a thing – they certainly didn’t teach this is school.
Sensing the mounting agitation and wanting to avoid conflict, I said, “No problem. I’ll take my clothes out of the dryer and let you finish drying your clothes first and then I’ll come back later.” I grabbed my little white plastic laundry basket and filled it with my wet clothes from the dryer. Then she said, in a very demanding femdom-like voice, “Now you put my wet clothes back into the dryer!” I was shocked at her talking at me like I was her BDSM partner, and so I looked her straight in the eye and sarcastically replied, “I thought I wasn’t supposed to touch anyone else’s clothes, you know; standard laundry room etiquette!”
This snarky rebuff made her snap – she was apparently an angry woman who likes to get her way – she clenched the cigarette in her teeth and then she stepped into the laundry room and took a right-hand swing at me with all of the flabby power that she had in her big, puffy arms. I ducked and took a quick step backyard like a boxer in a prize fight. She missed hitting me by a mile. I said, “Are you crazy?” Then she said in a huffing voice, “You little bastard!” and took another step toward me as she was cocking her right arm back in preparation of taking another swing at me. I noticed that now there was just enough room behind her to squeeze between her body and the doorway. With newfound cat-like reflexes, I grabbed my laundry basket of wet clothes and faked a step to my right, which she jerkily followed while she was swinging at me which took her off balance making her fall softly against the dryer with all of her mass but catching herself from falling on the floor at the last moment. I took another quick step to the left and ran right by her, slightly bumping her, ah, equally puffy butt which prompted her to yell out loud, “DON’T YOU TOUCH ME YOU LITTLE FAGGOT!” So, within about a minute, I was labeled a perverted little bastard faggot. She was batshit crazy. Good job, Karen.
I had half a mind to call the cops on her for aggravated assault but thinking it through to the logical conclusion where the both of us are interviewed about what transpired while the cops are trying to keep a straight face and ultimately advising us to forgive each other and go back to our apartment prevented me from doing so. That, and I may have had a little bit of weed in my pocket.
This experience made me wonder about the frequency of laundromat violence, what was considered the ultimate unforgivable offense, and what the fatality rate was. It both slightly amused and somewhat disturbed me thinking about people snapping over such a trivial thing like touching someone else’s clothes. How about this, Karen: Follow the laundromat rules and don’t leave your damn clothes unattended!
Fortunately, laundromats have changed much from their utilitarian roots over the decades and have become much more civilized, but nowadays it costs like $5 to wash and dry a load of laundry. There are newer, fancier attended laundromats with attached sports bars where you can get a cheeseburger and a beer and watch a baseball game while you are doing your own laundry, or have someone else do your laundry for you, vis-à-vis, Fluff ‘n’ Fold service.
The fact of the matter is that I really don’t mind if someone else touches my clothes. As far as I’m concerned, standard laundry room etiquette can go to hell.
msnarky 