Notes from the Petting Zoo

When I was a young adult, I moved into my mother’s house about the same time she was moving out. She had her own place and her own phone number and her own social circles.

About six months after she moved out, I started receiving periodic phone calls, late at night, from a very drunken woman, asking for my mother. The first few times, I tried to be patient and kind and tell her that my mother had moved. She would usually respond with “Oh yeah, I forgot.” and hang up, or something else like that. Never said who she was, though.

This continued, however, for quite a while. Roughly two or three times a month, late at night, this drunk woman would call, looking for my mother.

I mentioned this to my mother several times and each time, she was mystified. All her friends had the new contact information, so no one should be calling me. I thought about it for a while, and then asked “Do you care what I tell her?”

My mother thought a moment, took a drag off her cigarette, and then shook her head. “Nope.”

Excellent.

A few weeks later, this woman called again, asking after my mother.

“Are you family?” I asked.

“No. Why?”

“Oh, you don’t know?”

“Don’t know what?”

“Um, Mom’s… well, Mom died.”

There was a silence, and a couple of false starts, then “What? How? When?”

“We don’t know yet. It was pretty quick and they haven’t figured out the cause yet.”

“When? When? Oh god!”

“It was two weeks ago. I’m sorry.”

“No, that’s not right, I just talked to her the other night.”

“I know, it seems that way to us, too. She was just here and then–”

“No! No, that can’t be right, I just talked to her. You’re lying!”

“Do you think– do you think I would lie about that? She’s my mother!!” (tried to add a tremble in my voice here)

There was a series of inarticulate garbling gobbling sounds. There was a little shriek. Then she hung up. I hung up and went back to bed.

The next day, I told my Mom what I had done. She shook her head a little and (based on my memory) said “Well, I guess we’ll find out who it is the next time I go out.”

I asked her if she was okay with my doing that, just to make sure, and she nodded, “If I had thought of it, I would have done it, too.”

I have a very cool Mom.

We never found out who it was, and the woman never called back.

Back to the Master List of Essays

Mobile phones have made our lives simpler. I can tell whenever I take public transport, or I overhear mobile phone conversations in public. They all sound like this:

“Yeah, I’m on the bus on my way in and I thought I would call and ask if you could set aside the Morgan contract before you start the–”

“The bus. I’m on the bus. I was wondering if you could please set aside the Morgan contract before–”

“Bus! Bus! Yeah! So, if you could set aside the Morgan contract before you start–”

“The Morgan contract. Contract! Yes, could you set it–

“The bus! No, I’m not driving — I’m on the–”

“Yes, the bus! So, the Morgan contract, could you–

“MORGAN!“

“Yes, the Morgan contract. Could you set it aside for me so I can look at it–”

“Yes, the bus. Yes. No, I don’t have it with me, YOU have it. Just set it–”

“The Morgan contract. Morgan. Yes. Contract. Yes. No, I don’t have it with me. I’m not at work yet. I’m on my way, though. I should be there in about–”

“No, I’m on the bus. The bus!”

“Okay, stop. Stop. Shut up. Listen. Listen. Listen.”

“Five minutes! Morgan contract! Now!”

(and they flip the phone closed before the conversation continues)

Now, you can’t look at how that request started, and then look at the same request shouted quickly in five short words and tell me that ain’t some kind of advancement in communications.

The future is now.

Back to the Master List of Essays

Some common Great Lies (in no particular order):

• “I think extremely logically.”
• “I have a great sense of humor.”
• “You won’t feel a thing.”
• “I know what I’m doing.”
• “This normally never happens to me.”
• “I’ve never done this with anyone else before.”
• “I’m a good driver!”
• “I hardly ever drink!”
• “I’m never doing that again!”

Back to the Master List of Essays

I worked for a small weekly campus newspaper for several years. I loved it. Mostly did business work and cartooning, but occasionally, I had the good fortune of knowing how to track down the really hard hitting stories.

One day, during a particularly slow news day, the editors were complaining that there was just nothing going on. I adopted my best Obnoxious Editor voice and told them that “in my day”, we didn’t wait for news to come to us, we went out and found it ourselves. So I grabbed the campus directory and started calling.

Now, I must tell you in advance that I started every conversation with my name, that I was calling from the paper, and that I was looking for interesting news on a seemingly newsless day. My mother taught me to always be polite in telephone conversations.

First, I called the library elevator phone (I happened to have that number memorized).

I identified myself, followed by “We’re just doing our best to find the news before the other cheap rags on campus. Tell me, is there any news in the elevator, there?”

A pause, then “Um, no, nothing really newsworthy.”

“No mysterious floors appearing, not controversy over button control?”

“No, no, we’re fine. Hey, I gotta go.”

“Okay, thanks.”

I turned to the editors and solemnly announced “Nothing’s up in the library.”

Then I called the next number that caught my eye: one of the biology labs (in the science buildings).

Again, I identified myself, followed by “We’re just checking to make sure everything’s cool in the T-4 phage lab.”

This person seemed to catch on a bit better. “Yep, everything’s cool.”

“No terrifying new diseases accidentally released?”

“Nope.”

“No mutated lifeforms break out, and now loose on an unsuspecting campus?”

A pleasant laugh, followed by “No, we have all of those accounted for.”

“So, you’re saying that we’re all safe for now!” (very dramatic voice)

More laughter, “Yep, for now. No guarantees, though.”

“Okay, thanks.”

I hang up, and turn to the increasingly incredulous editorial staff “We’re safe… for now!” (very dramatically)

I dial the local campus radio station (in the Campus Activities Building), again, identifying myself and my perverse mission. The humor here is that the radio station is practically ten feet away from the newspaper office.

“Any news from the world of radio?”

“Nope.”

“Anything weird happening over there? Any strange signals, weird calls? Any sort of disaster kind of thing? Crazies? Fires, powerful explosions rocking the building that we need to know about?”

“No, not that I know of.”

“well, thanks. You’ve been a good citizen.”

I hang up and announce “Nothing major on campus is threatened or destroyed. I guess it IS a slow news day.”

After the meeting, I head back to my dorm to pick up some books, then I head back to the library.

As I approach, I notice that the crowd out on the square is even larger than before and the building’s cordoned off. I ask and someone tells me “Bomb threat, man.”

“The hell you say! Man, that’s news!”

“Yeah, they’ve evacuated all the buildings — I guess someone made a calls to all three buildings at the same time, so everybody’s out while the bomb squad searches the library, the science building and the Campus Activities Building.”

“Wow, that’s–”

Then it hit me. Shit.

I spend the next hour waiting on the square with everyone else.

The next time I went into the newspaper office, there was a brief exchange of glances between me and the editors. We said nothing, and have never spoken of it since.

But we did a nice story on a mysterious bomb threat, so the afternoon wasn’t a total wash.

Back to the Master List of Essays

Solicitors. Hate ‘em. Can’t help it. Just do.

Everybody has their own story about solicitors. Here’s another:

I’m fiddling on the computer, my housemate in the room. The phone rings and I answer it, slightly distracted.

Man on the phone wants to sell me automobile insurance.

“I don’t want auto insurance.”

“But you need it. How can you drive without it.”

“I don’t drive.”

“But you might. Might be an emergency.”

“I can’t drive.”

“But you might learn.”

“No, you don’t understand, I’m not allowed to drive.”

“Why not?”

“I’ve had legal troubles.”

“That’s okay. We can work with that. What’s the issue?”

“Three convictions for vehicular homicide.”

“No problem. We work with people who have records all the time.”

“You don’t understand. I can’t drive. I’m not allowed to drive.”

“A lot of people have trouble with the law. We can work around that. It’s all legal.”

“Vehicular. Homicide. I’ve killed people with my car. On three separate occasions. With my car. I’m never allowed to drive again. Ever.”

…there is a slight pause…

“Oh, well, then I’ll just take you off our list, then.”

“Yeah, I think that would be a good idea.”

I look up and my housemate is staring at me. His face is beet red. As I hang up, he bursts out laughing, “Jesus, I can’t believe you just told him that!”

Never got a call back from those folks.

Back to the Master List of Essays

Solicitors. Hate ‘em. Can’t help it. Just do.

Everybody has their own story about solicitors. Here’s one:

We’re trying to get out the door. Something is going on, I can’t remember, a movie or something and we’re already a bit late. The phone rings and my wife answers it. I watch her face. No sign of recognition, no “Oh hi!”, just listening.

Gotta be a solicitor.

Her exasperated eye-roll confirms this.

Puckishly, I lean close to the phone and in a weird husky drawl, I loudly declare “Honey, can we have sex now — my balls itch!”

She shrieks with laughter and slams the phone down. Not the first time I’ve shocked her, I expect, but I imagine the person on the other end of the line was even more surprised.

Back to the Master List of Essays

During a summer break from college, I was a temporary employe at an electronics manufacturer. This is okay work if you can get it. Repetitive and boring, but good pay and not a huge challenge. The trouble is, “temp” often translates in the vernacular to “slave” or “joke-butt” and in this case, the latter was the winner.

I sat near one of the business phones. It was mounted to a post. About every half hour, it would ring.

And it wasn’t just my phone. Phones all over the place would ring like crazy, and it was always personal calls, often arguments, and embarrassingly loud and explicit. Oh dear. All over the floor.

No one would answer it, but plenty of people looked up and then looked expectantly at me. So, I would answer it, being nice and helpful, of course. Invariably, the voice would ask for someone I didn’t know (hey, I was a temp). I’d ask around “Hey, who is Joe?” and more often than not, it would be a manhunt to find whoever the hell Joe was and try to get him to the phone.

Usually, the supervisor knew and could direct me.

Then, “Joe” would try and tell me where to find him in case so-and-so calls again. Like it mattered to me. We were graded on the speed of work and this manhunt business was taking huge chunks out of my day.

If I left the phone ring, then eventually the supervisor would answer it, fuming that no one (meaning “me”) had answered it. I told him that I didn’t know anyone and he said to find him and he’ll tell me who was who. After a few days of never being able to find the supervisor, either, I realized a solution. I looked up the phone instructions and simply forwarded this phone to his desk. He had voice-mail. Problem solved.

The next day, he came over to the post phone and dialed the number to cancel call-forwarding. “I can’t be handling all these calls,” he said (assuming, perhaps, that I could?).

For the rest of the summer, I put up with it. I compared notes with my friends who were also temps and this was common behavior, like it was some kind of screw-with-the-temps game.

During the rest of the summer, I mapped out phones and extensions.

On one of my last days, instead of eating lunch, I ran from phone to phone — every phone that had ever pestered me or mine, or any phone that I had ever been able to hear or otherwise be bugged by. Each phone number, I forwarded to the next phone, until I reached the last phone on my list. I forwarded it to the first phone.

Thus I made a forwarding ring.

I went to some random phone out of the ring and called the extension at my desk. Busy. Excellent.

The rest of the day was blissfully silent.

That next morning was silent as well, until around 10am. A confused fellow wanders over to our department and goes up to another guy: “Hey Bill, there’s a call for you, but it’s over in the printers department.” Bill leaves to get his call. Rapidly, other people start getting calls in that department.

See, once someone broke the chain by UNforwarding their phone, they received all the calls that came into the ring. Every call went to some department all the way across the manufacturing floor. Away from me.

By after-lunch, enough folks had figured out what the deal was and the entire phone system was rebooted to clear the forwards. There was even a meeting to explain that the phones were messed up, but that everything should be fine now. And no, they had no idea how it had gotten messed up.

It was so worth the quiet day.

Back to the Master List of Essays

I had a job once, as a technical writer at a small manufacturing firm. In addition to writing an extensive users manual for a particular product, I also wrote an extensive and detailed programming guide, including working examples of every function. I was also a bit of a programmer, and had written several software toolkits for the same device. I knew the thing pretty well.

In addition to producing all this data, I also redesigned the website, which allowed anyone to download the new manual, as well as the software samples and everything else I had done. There was also an extensive FAQ on the website, covering that device.

The goal was to reduce customer service calls as much as possible and I am nothing if not thorough.

Our phones have two kinds of rings: a short jerky ring for internal calls, and a long ring for calls from the outside world. Normally, this isn’t a difference to me, because internal calls are business, and external calls are my wife (no one calls a technical writer except a recruiter, but that’s a different story).

One night, while working late, the phone rings. A long ring. Expecting my wife, I answer.

Now, it’s important to understand that this company has grown quickly. A year before, there was maybe fifteen people and now it’s around fifty or so. “Back in the day”, the only people who stayed late were the owner and the sales guys, to handle calls from different parts of the world. At some point in time, they realized that they aren’t always in their offices after hours, so if there is no answer after so many rings, then the call gets bounced to the General Ring line. This means that all the phones in the company ring, so that no matter where the head honchos are, they can pick up.

So, I answer, expecting my wife. I still answer professionally, but I admit I am disappointed to hear a thick accent on the other end of the line. My wife does not have a thick accent. I am professional and courteous and I ask how I can help. The gentleman informs me he is having trouble with his device. My first thought is “Ooooh, this should have gone to CS, but that’s okay — I know this thing like the back of my hand, so I’ll help the guy and chide the CS crew tomorrow for sending me the call”. So, I start trying to help the guy.

His device is an older model, way out of calibration. I tell him that he really needs to send it back for calibration. He agrees, but tells me it’s not his position to make that call. He’s one of their programmers and is having trouble connecting it to a computer (it’s a form of peripheral). I ask him a few basic questions, and slowly, he answers. His English is good, but his knowledge isn’t. He keeps referring to the manual he has, which is an older manual — before my time. It has software tips that were wrong. I tell him that he needs a new manual and an updated programming guide that contains the correct commands and the correct parameters.

Then he asks “Can’t you tell me how to do it over the phone?”

Er, he just asked me to write a program for him over the phone. But still, I’m patient. “No, not really,” I tell him. “I can’t remote control you to write software.” “Then maybe you can write the program and send it to me?” he asks hopefully.

Still patient…

“No, I can’t write customer applications,” I tell him, as gently as I can. “However, I can direct you to the page on our website that has all the updated information and the software toolkit and everything.”

“No, that won’t help,” he tells me, “I don’t have Internet access from here.”

“No problem,” I say, “I’m happy to e-mail the whole thing over.”

“No,” he says, “I don’t have e-mail, either.”

I’m stunned by this, because our products are high tech laboratory measuring devices. It’s hard to imagine a high tech lab without access. I double-check: “You are running a laboratory with high tech laser and optical test equipment and you have no web or email access?”

He confirms this, “I don’t have permission to access the web.”

Okay, still patient, but after the past half hour, it’s almost gone…

“Then how was I supposed to send you the software application you asked me to write?”

“Oh, I was hoping you would have a disk you could put it on. Then you could mail it.”

(internationally, mind you)

“Ah, no, not really. That’s why we have these things online.”

“Then could you send me the programming tools and the new manual and stuff?”

“Via surface mail?!”

“Yeah, can you do that?”

(still patient…)

“If you tell me your address, I will ask our shipping department to mail you the new user manual–”

“Can you do it?”

“No, I won’t be in until late tomorrow.”

“Not tomorrow, can you do it tonight?”

“No, I really can’t. I’m at work and the shipping building is locked up.”

“Can you take it out to an overnight shipper, maybe?”

(still patient, but slipping…)

“Look, I appreciate that you want it, but this would be so much easier if you were online somehow — you could have everything in about five minutes. Assuming I felt like leaving work to post an overnight package to you, it wouldn’t even be picked up until tomorrow anyway, so I might as well plan to ship it from here.”

“No, I need it now! I have to get this working today! Why can’t you help me?!”

(snap)

Now, I’m not entirely sure exactly what I said after that petulant whine. Really. I seem to remember using the words “backwards” and “primitive” a couple of times, as well as the phrases “put a grown-up on the phone” and something about how it wasn’t my fault his company couldn’t trust a web account at the same time they were trusting million dollar laser facilities. There were some other things said — nothing profane, mind you, but strong. There was a click — maybe he hung up, maybe I hung up, I don’t know.

The next day, the owner came into my office and walked over to my phone and jotted down the number. “What’s up?” I asked.

He gives me a funny look and tells me they received a call from one of the foreign customers who was sure he had the wrong number and bitched and moaned about how this wrong number had caused him trouble at his job, yadda, yadda, yadda.

“I don’t know for sure who he talked to,” the owner said, “But I think it’s probably a good idea to take your phone off the after-hours rotation.”

I nodded, silently.

I’m a good technical writer and a decent programmer, but there’s a reason the Universe hasn’t seen fit to put me in Customer Service.

Back to the Master List of Essays

You know what would really convince me that psychics possess paranormal power?

If I received a series of useful, specific advice about a situation I was having — without having to ask for it. Then, a few times after that advice proved so useful, the psychic would identify themselves as such. Useful, specific, applicable knowledge about the future. I’d pay for that.

I’d split my PowerBall winnings with that.

Back to the Master List of Essays

I think there is a certain strangeness about knowing you have been in a place that no longer exists. Last time I checked, all the houses I ever lived in still existed, except for one. Even the house from birth still exists, deep in the heart of Michigan, still owned by the fellow whose sister bought it from my folks and that was decades ago.

This place pictured no longer exists. It’s high above the Nevada desert, in a little room on top of a ziggurat. The ziggurat is long gone, burned to ashes and the ashes taken away. This memory, of my friend Ron and the gal he was seeing, are pretty much all that remains of that time, and this memory is a good one.

I think it’s neat to have a good real memory of a place that no longer exists. That means that the place isn’t completely gone.

Too bad I’m not a planarium worm.

Back to the Master List of Essays

“There is rarely an actual connection between the snake oil delivery of a ‘crumb of wisdom’ from someone who isn’t particularly a Master and the actual content of the message. Chances are, once people trade in crumbs, it means the plate’s unreachable for them. It might also mean they’re a rat. Rats eat crumbs, right?”

-Oscar Wilde

Back to the Master List of Essays

How do you process a compliment?

Seriously.

Do you find yourself preening? Do you feel jaded? Are you worried they might find out the truth? Do you think they’re just trying to get something out of you? Do you suspect they are just lying? Do you think someone put them up to it? Do you believe exactly what they tell you? Do you immediately try to distract them from the compliment?

How do you process a compliment?

The next question is, how to you process a criticism?

The same way or different?

If different, then why different?

Back to the Master List of Essays

How much money does the city of Portland spend collecting feral rabbits, sterilizing the males, and re-releasing them in order to control the overall feral rabbit population?

How much money is spent collecting food for the homeless?

I can’t be the only person seeing the obvious solution here…

Back to the Master List of Essays

It helps to realize that there is no distinct entity “Time”. We create “time” to keep from experiencing the Universe all at once. “Time” is a construct of our inability to observe the unfettered Universe.

That said…

Does the nonexistence of Time imply the lack of Free Will?

Free Will assumes a temporal framework. Free Will means that we can make decisions that affect the future. But this is incorrect, because the temporal framework exists only in our minds.

“Free Will” is a nonsensical construct because there is no such thing as a Future where the exercise of Free Will could have an effect.

Experience is, regardless of how our minds desperately want to slot it temporally.

Back to the Master List of Essays

I dreamt the Earth’s shadow crawled across the moon in twelve hungry horrifying seconds, leaving nothing behind it as it wheeled away. The ground shook and I felt the sadness of a place lost forever.

Back to the Master List of Essays

I met a snake. I’m sure it was poisonous, and I’m sure it was quite smart.

It looked like a person. It talked like a person and it seemed happy and of good cheer, as was I when I was talking to it.

But there was a slip. A tiny slip. Beneath the cheerful exterior, I saw the flicker of the snake. Calculating, soulless, deadly.

I will not lay claims to any special powers of observation — I might have simply gotten lucky. If anyone else saw the slip, they missed it, or they discounted it (four or five words, really, hardly anything). Maybe there was nothing there at all, but I doubt it. I felt wary and cautious before I even knew why. I felt whatever passes for shielding in me click into place before I even knew why.

I will meet this snake again, I know. My life is peculiar that way. I will be civil, even friendly, but I will watch it carefully and I will never turn my back on it. Never.

Back to the Master List of Essays

“The slow blade penetrates.”

Yeah, what was ol’ Gurney Halleck really teaching Paul? I recall this scene from the movie and I recall this scene from the book as well. Startling!

Back to the Master List of Essays

Just a few thoughts on the human body…

1. Our mouths are bigger than our ears, so we tend to speak more than we tend to listen.
2. We have twice as many ears as we have mouths, therefore we should listen twice as much as we speak.
3. The majority of holes in our body do not make noise. Does this mean that we need to worry less about what we say and more about from which hole we say it?
4. I think it is no coincidence that our hands reach our genitals, our fingers fit in our noses, and our tongues can stick out far enough to be noticed by someone across the room.

Back to the Master List of Essays

While I watched the Olympics (only thing on in English other than MTV), I was struck by the beauty and power and determination of the athletes. These people have trained and knocked themselves around and modified their whole lives to compete. And they compete well and they do things that are really extraordinary (well, let’s not think about the luge at the moment, I mean, just for the sake of discussion).

In each competition, I watch these extraordinary athletes do extraordinary things and, inevitably, one “wins”. Then the commentators start this weird ritual, which usually begins with a question:

“So, what do you think went wrong there, Skippy? What was keeping Mildred from winning that?”, followed by all sorts of jibber-jabber about reasons and little details, and spirit and all sorts of things.

But what I would like to hear sometime is this:

“Geez Bill, they’re Olympic athletes, fer cryin’ out loud. They do great! Absolutely nothing has to go ‘wrong’ at all. They’re all excellent and they all did great and we had a great time watching it and we sometimes fantasize about being that good, but if there’s anything wrong with what we just saw, it was that someone, somewhere, is forced to choose among these athletes. We are forced to choose one as somehow ‘special’ and that means that, for some bizarre reason, these other excellent athletes are somehow less-special. That’s what went wrong, Bill. The athletes could be absolutely perfect, but only one can ‘win’. The competition is set up that way, and competition has been around for thousands of years and I accept that, but still, I won’t deny that, if anything, that is wrong.”

That would be interesting to hear.

The closest I’ve heard was a wan “Well, they’re all winners, really,” when of course, we are looking at the declared winner and the obvious also-rans.

Back to the Master List of Essays

I’ve been looking a lot at how we discuss things. At how we equate things that sometimes seem startlingly unequal.

I had a bit of a flash this morning on the way to work. We seem to often divide the Universe when we think. Consider all the various dichotomies that we might encounter, even on a daily basis:

• It’s either good or evil.
• You’re either committed or you’re not.
• It’s sexy or it’s not.
• It makes sense or it doesn’t.
• etc.

There are more. There are more than there are leaves on a tree, I suspect, even a really big tree.

Each time we do this, each time we make these sorts of judgments, we divide the Universe. These divisions are perfectly okay — sometimes we just have to make them to survive. That’s not the part that got me thinking, however.

What got me thinking is how we can sometimes do this division using two different rules and we expect the Universe to divide the same way.

This, I think, is the basis for some of our most pernicious arguments.

For example, I can divide the Universe into “Good” and “Evil”. I can also divide the Universe into “Legal” and “Illegal”. As far as I’m concerned, there isn’t a lot of overlap with those splits. There is some, and I’m comfortable saying that yes, there are some Bad things that are Illegal and some “Good” things that are “Legal”, but by an large, I consider those two totally different sets.

As long as I keep reminding myself that those splits are two separate distinct splits, then I usually do okay, but when I forget and I accidentally assume that the “Good” split is synonymous with the “Legal” split, well, that’s just going to be trouble.

Now, there are some folks (which is why I like this example) who define new groups dependent on previous groupings, such as someone deciding to define “Good” and “Evil” by drawing from the “Legal”/”Illegal” split, or vice versa. In those instances, of course the splits are identical, but that’s because one is simply a mirror of the other. Think of it as “Good”/”Evil” and a new reflection, “GoodPrime”/”EvilPrime”, but then we change the labels of the grouping to “Legal”/”Illegal”.

I think the more careful we are to keep these shifts in mind, the less likely we are to accidentally get involved in discussions where we are trying to equate “Illegal” with “Evil”, “Love” with “Money”, and other fine reasons for hair pulling and blood pressure raising.

Besides, it’s about time a new generation of people adopted afternoon soap operas as their life models.

Back to the Master List of Essays