Life Lesson from a Cabby: Sleep with the Ghosts

This post can also be found at StrangerSage.com.

Last night was cold in the Windy City. It was 3 a.m. and I was headed home from a holiday party in the back seat of a warm cab as it swerved and zipped down slick and snowy streets. Manning the wheel was Mir, a man from Hyderabad, India who was about to repeat a mantra I have heard and tried to live by for years. The gist is this: "Quit being such a pansy". Frank Hebert puts it more eloquently in his litany against fear, but we'll keep it simple.

What prompted a lecture from the cabby to the crybaby? I asked Mir, a man with 30 years driving experience who had weathered not only the snow-slicked streets of Chicago in an 18-wheeler, but also India's lawless, helter-skelter roadways, to "slow it down, please. I'm afraid of winter driving."

"Afraid?!" asked Mir as he barely missed the late-night drunkards trying to hail him down in the middle of the street, too inebriated to notice or care that the light atop the car wasn't lit. "Never let yourself be afraid. Never! It will stay with you until you die!"

Whoa, there, Cabby, let's not get too intense here -- I'm one eggnog short of a bad morning ahead. But on he went, after I explained that I had been crashed into a few times due to people losing control in bad weather. Admittedly, it is a fear that shakes me to the core, keeps me off the roads at the first sign of sleet, and elicits backseat driver behaviour that might be equated to what you would see if the Jonas Brothers announced to their fanbase they're all gay.

"Say there is a house, and it is full of demons." (Really, Mir? Okay, going with it ...) "I go into that house, and I sleep in it. I sleep with the ghosts, because I am the one with power. I am in control, next to God -- unless I let myself be afraid."

So it's a bit conflated, but I "got" it. Something about the way he said it made me realize how ridiculous I was being, and how -- even when we think we've embraced a tenet fully -- sometimes we need to do a little philosophical maintainence.

How Not to Deal with Strangers Who Think You're Involved with Their Husband

It's a Saturday night, and since the two friends I have in Houston decided to go to a frat party in Austin for the weekend (you think I'm joking, being that I'm over two years out of college, right? But I'm not. Oh no, I am not.) I am decidedly bored enough to write a blog and expose myself as the loser that I am. That's a damn long sentence right there, especially for a grammar Nazi like me! Guess I'm getting pretty wild 'n' out tonight after all.

As I've mentioned before, I don't understand why hotels still offer wake-up calls. There's the alarm clock RIGHT THERE NEXT TO THE BED. And also, cell phones. Those do the trick right good. I wouldn't make such a stink about this except that due to extreme social isolation I've found myself wanting a good bed time story, the old fashioned way, and really, would that be such a risky trade in services? Out with the "Good morning, this is your wake-up call"s and in with the "Good Night Moon" readings, I say.

BUT I digress. The real focus of this entry is much more noble, as it involves false accusations and finding humor in others' tragedy. A grown-up bedtime story, if you will.

Once I got a text message that said:
"thanks 4 ruining marriage u homewrecking [explicit]!! I hope this [explicit] comes back around u when u least expect it." *Somewhere in there was an upside-down question mark, but I'm not sure it was relevant to the message ...

My initial response has me questioning my own innocence, because rather than say "erm, ya got the wrong number" I just said "Who is this?", which elicited the following:
"So ur sleepn with that many married men, you dont know who this is? Wow you really r a [explicit]."

Awesome, right? So rather than end it right then and there by trying to clear up the issue, I went ahead and got a little offended that I was being wrongly accused and responded with "You sure assume a lot ... Like that you've got the right number, for example."

I know, I know -- my bad. But THEN I did try to clear it up and explained (still in text) that the phone number was indeed new to me, and whoever she was trying to reach was not me, etc. etc. etc. blah blah blah. She didn't want to hear it. Creepily, she told me she knew where I lived and had my email address and a picture of me with my dad. She also cited me as an "ugly ass big-nosed brunette". I immediately called the cops. I'm kidding -- I'm not a brunette anymore, so I wasn't worried.

Over the next couple of days I received multiple phone calls from a variety of unrecognizable numbers, each time asking for a Tami or something. When I told them I wasn't her, there was this awkward pause and then they'd sort of maybe chuckle or something and go "Really? This isn't Tami?" And then I would have to explain the whole no-I'm-not-Tami-and-I-didn't-sleep-with-that-married-guy story all over again. I don't think they bought it.

Drama, drama, drama. What can I say? It's all part and parcel to the life of an IT consultant.

If my personal nonmusical lullaby didn't soften your heart, surely a few minutes of live streaming Shiba Inu puppies will do the trick. Sleep well, readers.

Oh REALLY? ... Did you partake in the MIRACLE of human flight, you noncontributing zero???

Conan: Do you feel that we now ... take technology for granted?
Louis CK: Well yeah, 'cause now we live in an amazing, amazing world, and it's wasted on just the crappiest generation of just spoiled idiots that don't care. This is what people are like now: They got their phone and they're like "Uggghhh! It won't ..." GIVE IT A SECOND! It's going to SPACE!

It may be in jest, but he makes a great point and gives a little insight into how many in the generations before us must feel. Do we want to be "that generation"? I don't. I find myself constantly complaining about stuff like this. Maybe it's time to consider our lives now, and all that we have, with respect to a time when you had to turn that circle with the holes in it a whole 360 degrees just to dial a zero.

On a less serious note -- Enjoy the clip below of comedian Louis CK on The Conan O'Brian Show.

Avast ye! Will the scallywags at Google soon be feedin' the fish?

A post on the Freakonomics blog yesterday discussed Google's new consideration to anchor supercomputers on barges at sea to lessen taxes and harness wave power. The question posed in the article focused on the obvious: Blimey! WHAT ABOUT PIRATES?!?!

Aye, it is feared that sea-faring, hornswaggling lads-o-doubloons will heave ho and pillage what private information they can from the massive amounts of data on board the supercomputer barges.

The scene this forms in my fanstastical and childish mind looks something like Jack Sparrow-esque characters running around stabbing servers with swords and shouting things like "Yaaaarrrrrr!!! Bring 'er alongside and find ye the terabytes! Ye need t' hack it, steal the booty, sell it t' China and scuttle th' barge! Gar, whar's me bottle o'rum?"

... But then that's just me.

In case this whole thing sounds a bit proposterous to you, below is the IMB Piracy Attack map for 2008. Good luck, Google -- and be wary the jolly roger.

(Click on the map to go to the actual webpage)

My Yearbook of Me

And you can have a yearbook of you, too! Sites like this are what keep me on my computer into the wee hours of the morning.

www.yearbookyourself.com



*Note: The year 1980 is not shown above because it was a bad, bad, BAD year for hair.