Here’s another pic from my sketchbook of 700 Drawing Prompts. (The last page I shared was in yesterday’s entry. I’ve been sharing a lot from this book, of late, because I had it boxed away during our move, and, when I unpacked it, it was like being reunited with a long-lost lover; I can’t stop hugging & kissing myself.) The title of this artwork, as you can read for yourself—faint, tiny & sideways in the top right corner—is “Beach scene”. Its price is 54,000 dollars.
Dear diary,
Ya gotta be careful with addictions. Ya gotta try to avoid addictions, rather. Here’s how it works: First, you enjoy a smidgen of addictive substance (let’s give our preferred substance the variable “G”); then, in sixty seconds flat, you need an additional smidgen of G. That’s double the trouble.
“Apparently there are two Gods in Heaven!”
—Elisha ben Abuyah, upon meeting Metatron
So what’s G for me? Life Itself. I just can’t get enough. That’s why I formerly limited myself to sixteen hours of sleep per lunar day, which, out of each twenty-four hour period, left me with EIGHT big dripping hours of Life Itself. (“But isn’t sleep also Life Itself?” you ask. And I answer: NO, sleep is Death.”) Yet, sure enough, in sixty seconds flat (that is, a few years later), I find myself lifting my ban on excessive wakefulness, and, instead of corralling my sleepytime to sixteen man-hours, I move the goalpost ten paces north-northwest, so nowadays I wake at FOUR! o’clock after going to bed at 21:00. So what does this mean for our country, and to humanity in general? Science declares that, at this rate, by the time I buy my next house—that is, in sixty seconds flat—I’ll take to sleeping only one hour out of every twenty-four. And when at last I die (tho I still claim I’ll never die), I’ll be awake forever & ever: No rest for the wicked.
*
OK I can’t avoid it anymore. I’ll admit the obvious and begin the healing process: Today’s entry is going nowhere, so I’ll abandon it and just continue writing yesterday’s entry. I ended yesterday’s entry with the following words:
I wish I hadn’t sunk to such a serious height in this disquisition. Maybe I should lighten the mood by relaying the things that I did when I visited my mom, after her emergency telephone call.
As I explained earlier in that entry, my mother had left a message on my answering machine requesting that I phone her immediately, for she’s having trouble with her television. So I called her back ASAP, fearing the worst (Perhaps she has lost reception, I thot to myself); but when she picked up the line, before explaining her crux, she couldn’t stop herself from ranting for more than an hour about the recent Supreme Court Justice (or rather about the process of filling that position; which is vacant, at present). She was distraught about the treatment that her party’s proposed replacement was receiving. In her eyes, their poor judge was being smeared by his enemies, who were trying to assassinate his character. I don’t want to say any more about this topic here; I already beat the issue to death yesterday; but the gist is that mom and I took opposite sides: I am against this judge while she is for the dipstick. In fact, I’m so thoroughly ANTI mom’s-beloved-judge that I couldn’t even recount the surrounding events without being unfairly contentious: all thru mine entry, I kept referring to the fellow not as “judge” or “justice” but as “the drunken abusive lecher” because that’s what he is. Plus he’s one of the goons behind the awful authoritarian breakdown of U.S. freedoms (think: “The Patriot Act”) that occured in the wake of the fall of the World Trade Centers.
But time did not come to a halt on account of our phone call (the one where mother pled for help with her TV and sound system); so my sweetheart & I ended up riding our bikes to the old parental manor and offering our (foreign) aid in hopes of resolving these conflicts. That’s what I wanna talk about in today’s entry – what happened during our wild adventure with mom.
Where should I start? How about I tell you of the TV antenna.
Alright, so mom inherited this TV antenna from a wealthy donor at her place of employment (mom is retired; therefore she still works every day), and she plugged this antenna into her audiovisual device, but the thing wasn’t working. So I came over & gave it a try, but we still got nothing: no reception: just gray snow. So I said, “Hey didn’t you used to have a converter box for this thing?” And mom said, “Yes, but I was hoping that this new antenna wouldn’t need that, because that ugly unit is so bulky.” And I said, “Try hooking it up.” So she went & got the converter unit & we hooked the antenna to the box & then hooked the box to the screen. This worked. We flipped thru the channels: they all appeared clear, with perfect reception! & their programming was intellectually stimulating amd aesthetically dignified, as is the case for all American Entertainment.
*
So that’s the story of the TV antenna. Now I’ll tell you the story of the audio system, specifically sound bar’s remote control. After that, we’ll be done, and we can go out for drinks.
*
OK so mom says, “One more thing: Could you take a look at the sound bar for the TV upstairs? It hasn’t been working since that day that Susan hooked up the Nintendo.”
So I lumbered upstairs (I’m overweight, so stairs make me lumber) and set mine eyes on the entertainment system. I then lumbered over to the TV, and picked up the TV, and turned the TV around and looked at its rear. Sure enough, there was an audio wire dangling down, flaccid & unplugged. Then I turned & focused my attention on the sound bar. I lifted the sound bar up high, with my two bare hands, and examined its bottom until I located its input hole. Then I turned back around and clutched the wire from the TV and plugged it into the sound bar. This should have allowed the devices to be able to collude; BUT, when we pressed the “Power” button on the remote, not a darn thing happened.
So I said, “How old is the battery in this controller?”
And mom said, “I brought the remote to a shop recently & asked the sales clerk if it’s properly operational, & he tested the battery & told me that it still has 40% of its power remaining.”
“OK, so did you buy any replacement batteries?” I asked.
“No,” she said.
“Alright,” I said; “then can we just go buy some new batteries now, in case this one that is currently installed has died? For that might be the reason that the remote isn’t able to activate the sound bar.” (The sound bar itself was designed without any physical buttons on it: so if you want to tell it to do anything, even simply to turn on, you must use its remote control.)
“But the guy at the store said that the battery still has 40% power remaining,” my mother argued.
“Well,” I said, “if I could turn on this sound bar any other way, I’d do that, gladly; but it will not operate without the remote, and the remote isn’t working, as you can see—” (here, I aimed the controller at the device while dramatically pressing its button over & over, in an insulting pantomime); “and the only thing I can imagine might be the problem is a dead battery. Moreover, consider: it won’t hurt to have extra batteries available, in case your salesman is correct about the current battery maintaining charge. But if it truly is dead, then replacing it is the only way we’ll get this thing to work.”
“But,” mom argued, “I inherited this sound bar from uncle Ron; and he only owned it for one year before giving it to me, and it was in the original packaging when he brought it over. He was initially going to offer it to his girlfriend’s mother; but then they decided against it, for they said it would most likely prove too complicated for her.”
And I said, “Oh... I see. Well I’d still like to run to the store real quick and purchase a replacement battery. Is that OK?”
And my mom argued further, “But this sound bar was new when Ron bought it, and he didn’t use it at all, for an entire year. He was going to offer it to Debbie’s mom, but they gave it to me instead.”
Puzzled by this repetition, I asked, “What exactly are you trying to say? Are you against buying a replacement battery?”
And my mom said, “I just can’t imagine that it would’ve lost its charge so soon.”
And I tilted my head; pondering, trying to understand...
& mom continued, “Ron never even hooked up the sound bar at his house. He never got around to it. They were just going to give it to his girlfriend Debbie’s mother but then they brought it to me.”
So I said: “Look, I could have gone to the store, purchased a battery, and returned, in the amount of time it’s taken us to hem and haw about it. We’ve now established the True History of this Sound Bar; and I am enlightened. But now I’m gonna run over to Ripoff Retail & pick up a twin pack of 3-volt coin-shaped wrist-watch storage cells, to see if we can get this remote to work – I’ll pay for it myself.”
And my mom said, “Wait, OK: here’s a few bucks. How much do you think it’ll be?” And she carefully counted out one... two... three... four bucks from her purse. And her hands were clutching those dollar bills real tight.
So I biked over to the store with my sweetheart & we returned back in less than half an hour. I replaced the battery in the remote with a fresh new one; and, when I pressed the “Power” button, the device instantly ignited: it displayed a rainbow of lights on its front panel, and these colors twinkled a dance, signifying that the sound bar was ready to do its duty. So I told my mom, “OK, power up the TV.” So she switched it on, and it was tuned to the Republican Propaganda Network. The sound bar obediently amplified the voices of the show’s pundits: they were angrily berating the woman who had testified earlier to being a victim of the aforesaid judicial candidate—the one I labeled a drunken abusive lecher—and the show’s personalities were making the case that we should allow this fool to sit on our country’s highest court, because (they reasoned) the politicians on the other side of the aisle are even more drunken abusive and lecherous than their man-of-the-moment.
Now seeing that both the TV & sound bar were working, mom said: “Oh, thank you so much! I’m really going to enjoy this!”
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