The Cure for the Post-Holiday Blues

It turns out that there is a cure for that nasty little depression that usually settles over your head right after the holidays.  You know how it goes.  You have all of that happiness, manufactured or not, and activity between the end of October and the end of December.  Those last three months of the year always seem to fly by so quickly.  You have parties to prepare for.  You have to make travel plans.  You have to buy gifts.  You get drunk.  You stagger home.  You take time off from work and work has actual time scheduled to be off.  It’s great and then January comes and there’s nothing. 

Seriously, the human race needs to come up with some kind of additional holiday between January and April.  Even when April comes, and with it Easter, it isn’t really the same as those other holidays.  In my family Easter was not a big deal.  We didn’t get gifts on Easter.  You generally don’t even get day off for Easter.  Getting worked up about a giant rabbit hiding hard-boiled eggs just wasn’t the same as anxiously awaiting presents and a fat man in a red suit. 

So, really, there isn’t much to look forward to until the next October.  I guess some people look forward to Memorial Day and Independence Day and maybe Labor Day but they aren’t real holidays.  At least you get a day off for Independence Day, though, which is nice.  Really, when it comes to holidays Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years really have the monopoly on things. 

So, there is that kind of funk that falls over people when January comes around.  It almost can’t be helped.  Then, I watched football this weekend and, suddenly, I discovered that there was a cure.  There is a way to beat that depression and funk and feel really good about the remainder of the winter.  So, without further ado, here is my cure. 

Step One:  Get yourself and NFL franchise.  Now, this will likely involve billions of dollars.  Technically step one would be the acquisition of billions upon billions of dollars.  It would also help to build some kind of facility for this team to play in.  I would suggest spending those billions on some sort of stadium.  If you have tremendous persuasive powers you might be able to convince the NFL that your team can play at a local college or high school field until the billions for the stadium can be built. 

I know what you are saying.  Sure, it may be very difficult for the NFL to consider putting an NFL franchise in ever town and city in the country.  I never said this was an easy plan.  Of course considering how difficult it will be to raise the billions of dollars by the time you have done that your particular town may be as big as a city and convincing the NFL might be much easier.  If need be, co-opt a much larger city in relative proximity to the town you happen to live in.  

Do whatever you need to do just get a franchise.  Bribe and borrow and steal and perhaps grant sexual favors you may not even like but all of it will be worth it in the end. 

Step Two:  Get yourself some players.  This too will take and accumulation of billions of dollars.  To get the truly good players you need to offer them multi-million dollar contracts.  I suggest you go the George Steinbrenner route and gather as much money as you can and use it to buy any and every player who is any good.  Before you know it the Bemidji Bobcats will have the best quarterback, running-backs, defensive players, coaches and kickers the world has ever seen. 

Step Three:  If you have not already sold tickets I would suggest selling some.  You need to recoup those losses from the billions of dollars you have spent on acquiring a team, building a stadium and getting all of the best players and coaches.  I suggest you build a stadium that has about eight hundred luxury boxes and about twelve regular seats.  A lot of teams make most of their money by renting out these luxury suites to the point that most stadiums really look like some kind of reversed aquariums or something.   

Step Four:  Now your team needs to play really well.  This may be the most difficult part and it may not always work out the way you think.  The Chicago Bears played a very up and down season.  At times they played brilliantly like the last team that won it all.  At other times Rex Grossman looked as lost as a child in a department store who has lost his mommy.  You half-expected to see him on the sidelines holding Lovie Smith’s hand with a thumb in his mouth hand snot running down his nose.  Still, they have managed to end up at this late point in the season still playing.  The key, then, is to keep winning enough key games to eventually get to Step Five. 

Step Five:  Win the divisions until you make it to the Super Bowl.  This should be done shortly after the first of the year, right around playoff time.  You will soon find yourself so overjoyed and happy that the depression of the upcoming Valentines Day won’t even bother you.  If you are lucky enough to have a spouse who enjoys football then you might even be lucky enough to have a spouse who forgets all about Valentines Day as well.   

That’s really all you need to do.  I have to tell you, from personal experience, it really does make all of the doldrums of work and gray skies and cold wind disappear.  The weatherman may be predicting eighteen feet of snow will fall in one giant lump and cover your entire city and you fill find you do not care.  Newscasters will start wearing your team’s jerseys and joking with each other on television. 

Of course, the only thing that could make this better would be to take weasely, annoying, shrimpy, make-up-wearing, smirking, know-it-all, talentless newspaper sports columnists who constantly predict doom and gloom and losses for your home town team and run them out of town nude but covered with tar and feathers.  If this particular sports columnist happens to work for the Chicago Sun-Times, well, all the better.  Of course, you should try not to let the fact that the smirking dwarf is now walking around acting like he predicted the team would win all along or using the term “we” as if the entire city agreed with his miserable doom and gloom predictions all along. 

Now, granted, you can’t have everything.  Those meteors never fall out of the sky and hit the people you want them to when you ask them to, do they?  No, you should really just be glad your team is in the Super Bowl.  Just having that, and only that, can really make a lot of other annoying things seem a whole lot more positive and easier to live with.   

Bryan W. Alaspa’s novel Dust is available in print and eBook format at his website www.bryanalaspa.com and www.amazon.com.

Cinema Snobs

I actually have the credentials to be a total cinema snob.  I got a piece of paper from

Webster
University that says I can be.  It was mostly an accident that got me this piece of paper.  I love movies.  I have always loved movies.  It comes from my dad who loves movies and used to sit me down and tell me to watch certain movies because he figured I would like them and, most of the time, he was right.  This is how I became fans of “Fail-Safe,” and “The Wild Bunch.”  I also saw the suite of Man With No Name movies by Sergio Leone that starred a young Clint Eastwood in a poncho and bad dubbing. 

Apparently if you attend a school like

Webster
University, which has a large theater and film and media department then you get the chance to watch a lot of movies.  You spend a lot of time dissecting moves the way scientists will dissect a frog.  You take a lot of film history classes.  You also get to take classes that meet once a week with names like “Film Theory and Criticism: The Films of Martin Scorsese.”  This class would get together, watch “Raging Bull” or “Taxi Driver” and then discuss it like the end of the world depending on us discovering religious symbolism in “Taxi Driver” and then write a four-page paper about it.  Also, apparently, if you take enough of those classes you can graduate with a Certificate in Film Theory and Criticism.  That’s what I got and that was my minor and that’s why I am, essentially, still not gainfully employed to this day. 

In each of these classes there was always the Cinema Snob.  You have probably run into these people before.  These are the types of folks who sit around watching “Citizen Kane” for fun.  While I too appreciate that movie and have watched it more than once I am also willing to admit that it isn’t exactly a fast-paced, edge-of-your-seat romp like some other movies.  It is long and ponderous and way too serious about itself.   

These were the folks who couldn’t seem to watch a movie in its historical perspective.  I have a good friend who is like this.  He watched the movie “Birth of a Nation” in a film class and could only talk about how bad the plot was.  When I tried to stress that the fact it had a plot was still relatively revolutionary at the time and that the movie was complicated and had an epic feel and that was revolutionary fell on deaf ears.  Yes there are terrible flaws in this movie including its shocking and bald-faced racism, but you can also appreciate the movie in its perspective.  This is a movie that had huge, epic battle scenes that had never been filmed before.  It was one of the first to use the camera to some effect rather than just letting it sit passively by. 

There are those who, I think, sometimes lose sight of the fact that movies are to provide some kind of escape and should still be fun.  I run into too many people who seem to want movies to change their lives or their perspective on the world.  They want deep characters and complicated plots.  These are all good things.  These are things that elevate movies into the realm of cinema and art, but they don’t have to be there every time.  I think a movie can still be fun. 

I have brought up a certain movie time and again in my writing that I hold up as an example of a guilty pleasure and loving a movie just because it is fun rather than, oh, good.  This movie is the Bruce Willis vehicle called “The Last Boy Scout.”  This movie, when looked at logically, makes little sense, is not even the tiniest bit even remotely possibly, could never happen and has the characters doing things that they just could not survive.  If Bruce Willis’ character were a real person in real life there is no way he would be alive by the end of this movie.  This is a movie that has a character shot through the hand in one scene and then throwing a football while riding a horse a second later.  I am fully and freely admitting this is a very stupid, silly movie. 

Want to know the other thing about this movie?  If you can literally shut down your brain for a while and stop trying to be logical or make sense out of it is a movie that hits the ground running and never stops.   I mean this movie opens with a football player carrying a gun onto the field and shooting the other team and ends in a football stadium with a sniper getting chopped up by helicopter blades.  The bad guys are really bad.  The good guys are good enough for you to cheer for them.  Then the bad guys get their comeuppance and they get it good.   

I saw this movie on video with a bunch of friends in college.  None of us was expecting a good movie.  We were looking for a movie to make fun of.  We didn’t get a good movie but we got a movie that was so earnest in its badness and willingness to baffle us with B.S. that we were all swept up into the story and cheering by the end.   

The movie “Desperado” is still one that can spark arguments between me and one of my friends.  Again, this is a movie that makes little sense.  Not one second of this is believable in the real world.  However, I am an old comic book fan.  I am a guy who believes a radioactive spider-bite can make you able to stick to walls and give you a “spider sense.”  Therefore a guy with a guitar case full of guns who never runs out of bullets isn’t much of a stretch for me on the believability scale.  I laughed and cheered and had a blast watching this movie.  My friend thought it was the dumbest thing he has ever seen. 

There are just those who think that everything you do should somehow enhance your life.  If they aren’t watching a television show with profound writing or reading some ridiculously complicated book that somehow gives them deeper insight into the inner-workings of their psyche or the world around them then they feel like the time isn’t well spent.  This same attitude, logically, gets applied to movies.  I, personally, feel that entertaining yourself and letting yourself forget about the world for a while is  worthy cause and that being entertained is enough of a reward. 

Of course, as I say this, I have recently been asked by a certain online magazine to be a movie critic to review DVDs and have those reviews linked to Rottentomatoes.com.  Once I start reviewing these movies it may turn me into one of these cinema snobs.  I think too many movie critics turn into cinema snobs and, in some ways, that makes sense.  If you had the job of reviewing movies then you might want to have some quality and you might get a little jaded. 

Still, I hope I will always believe that there is room for movies that are fun and not profound.  I think there is room for “National Treasure” and “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”  Not everyone has to be a literal adaptation from the original source and not all of them have to change the world.  They can just be fun. 

Bryan W. Alaspa’s novel Dust is available in print and eBook format at his website www.bryanalaspa.com and www.amazon.com.  

The Dumbest Holiday

The worst day of the year is rapidly approaching again.  I speak, of course, of St. Valentine’s Day.  It is, without a doubt, the dumbest holiday with the possible exception of Sweetest Day but since they pretty have the same theme I really sort of count them as the same holiday.  Of course Sweetest Day is an even more ridiculous holiday but since it hasn’t really caught on the way Valentine’s Day has I have to sort of put it aside. 

The dumbest thing is that no one can really definitively state where the whole holiday came from.  It appears as if there were two Saint Valentines, for example.  There was the Valentine of Rome who was a priest there in about 269 AD.  He had a reputation of being a doctor in addition to being a priest and would often treat people even if they were unable to pay him.   

The second guy is a Valentine of Terni.  He was a bishop in what is now known as
Terni in 197 AD.  He was supposed killed by the Emperor Aurelian.  Exactly why he has anything to do with the supposed holiday I have no idea.  There are people who credit the holiday with the guy from Rome and there are other who credit the guy from
Terni and then there are those who same both of them were the same person. 

At one point the Catholic church had eleven recognized Valentine’s days.  So, if you want to add a little variety to your celebrations maybe you should pick January 7, May 2, July 16, August 31, September 2, October 25, November 1, November 3,  November 11, November 13 or December 16.  Of course if you happen to be dating one of those women who determines the fate of your relationship for the remainder of your lives together based upon what you do for Valentine’s Day you may not want to tell her about those other dates or she may expect flowers, dinner and gifts on those dates as well. 

There was also a guy named Valentinius of Alexandria.  He was once a candidate for Bishop of Rome.  He apparently taught a lot about love and marriage and the marriage bed was a big part of his view of Christian love.  Whether or not this is where Valentine’s Day comes from is still in debate. 

There were also a number of fertility rituals that took place in the month of February that had nothing to do with saints.  There was a god named Vali who was apparently some kind of god of light. 

The first time Valentine’s Day and love came together was in the writing of Geoffrey Chaucer in Parlement of Foules.  The day shows up in that poem that Chaucer wrote to honor the first anniversary of King Richard the II.   

Of course none of this history helps explain the rampant commercialism by which the holiday is known today.  Whatever significance this holiday may have had for pagans or Christians at one point is completely lost now.  Now the holiday is about buying cards, flowers, candy and gifts.  It is a completely random day that should, in essence, have no bearing on any healthy relationship but is, in fact, the basis of much strife in many relationships. 

I can understand wanting to celebrate and anniversary.  This is a date that should be significant and special to the couple.  It represents something special for them and only them.  That is romantic.  That makes sense. 

February 14 is a date seemingly chosen at random by society as a date where everyone in a relationship is supposed to celebrate the fact that they are in a relationship.  Of course all this manages to do is alienate and make miserable everyone else who is not in a relationship.  Of course it also makes miserable most people who are in a relationship because so many people put so much emphasis on this rather random and stupid date that really has no significance to anyone who is in relationship. 

Here would be my suggestion if you are in a relationship and you want to celebrate some random day that has nothing to do with your anniversary.  Now, of course, if you happen to have met or fallen in love while it was February 14 I can understand the celebration. For the majority of you, however, the entire date is probably meaningless.  So, if you want to celebrate some stupid date that is completely random I suggest you and your significant other get together one night.  Have dinner.  Light candles.  Then write out the months of the year on a piece of paper and cut that piece up into little pieces.  Then write out the numbers from one to thirty-one.  Both the slips of paper in a box. 

Then, as you and your love-muffin stare longingly into each other’s eyes reach into the box and pull out two slips of paper.  You should now have a random date.  If you pick a date that doesn’t exist, like February 31, then just pick another day.  Keep picking until you have a date that actually exists.  Now go to a computer and make up cards and go out and buy a lot of cards and candy.  At least this way you will have picked the entirely stupid and random date yourselves without doing something just because the rest of society tells you to. 

Of course the candy makers, card writers, and fancy restaurants around the world wouldn’t like this idea.  They all are counting on you coming to them in an attempt to put on the fanciest part you can for your significant stud-lasagna.  Of course the entire day generally comes down to some kind of competition among women who all compete at work to see who gets the biggest bouquet and when it arrives.  Any man who does not send a bunch of flowers to their mushy-wuggins at work had better be prepared to pay for it for the rest of their lives. 

I have been a witness to women conversing about what their significant others were planning for Valentine’s Day.  I have heard these women say that if they got home and their husbands had not prepared dinner and bought a gift that they will make sure to make this person pay and pay for a very long time.   

At the same time the entire holiday seems to make it seem like if you remember to celebrate one meaningless day then you don’t really have to show your love and affection to your special person the rest of the year.  If you just remember that one day then everything else is fine.  Of course, if this is the case with your relationship then you have bigger problems to worry about than Valentine’s Day. 

As for me Valentine’s Day will always be best summed up by an event here in
Chicago.  You know, the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.  You know, where seven men were lined up against a wall and shot in the back. 

Bryan W. Alaspa’s novel Dust is now available in print and eBook format at his website www.bryanalaspa.com and www.amazon.com.

When a Radio Bit Goes Horribly Wrong

It’s tough to be a radio guy these days.  Back in the early days the DJ was pretty much a celebrity because there was nothing else.  You couldn’t really take a record player with you when you went running or driving.  So the only way to listen to music on the go was through the radio and the DJ was as much a part of the entertainment as the music.  That isn’t the case these days. 

How do I know?  Well, I used to be in radio.  I never made it past part-time but, in a way, that was even more depressing than being one of the regulars.  There I would be talking in between Foreigner and Led Zeppelin songs and talking like anyone was really listening.  Most of the time everyone out in the world just wanted me to shut the hell up and play the commercials and the Led Zeppelin song.   

There is a certain arrogance that goes along with getting into radio.  These days most radio stations that play music are going toward satellite broadcasts that don’t use DJs.  The station I worked for actually switched to one of those formats about a month after I left the place.  You also have to compete with satellite radio and the internet and iPods and a million other things.  People have a million ways to listen to not only just music but to the music they want to listen to.  You don’t have to put up with commercials and endless songs by
Styx or whatever band you don’t like.   

The only place where you still have and want people talking are the morning shows and the all-talk stations.  Exactly why people seem to want goofy guys doing silly stunts in the morning is not something I understand.  However, it has become extremely difficult for these morning shows to do things that try to get listeners.  So, the morning shows are doing crazy stunts.  Most of these stunts are just stupid.  Unfortunately, in
Sacramento, the stunt turned deadly. 

The contest was called “Hold you Wee for a Wii.”  For those of you who don’t know what a Wii is it’s the new Nintendo game system that people are fighting about.  This morning team on KDND, The End, in
Sacramento came up with a contest to give away one of these things.  The idea was to have a group of people in a room and have them start drinking water.  They were to keep drinking until they either threw up or reached bladder critical mass and had to go to the bathroom.  Once a contestant did that they were out.  The last person standing won the Wii. 

The thing that became interesting was the number of people who called in and suggested that this was not a good idea.  Of course this morning team had to have had approval from the station to do this.  I have worked and talked with morning teams from St. Louis to
Chicago and back again and they never really do these stunts all on their own.  There are lawyers who always look at these things.  Apparently none of these geniuses thought about something called “water intoxication.” 

You see, if you ingest enough of anything you can become intoxicated.  Being intoxicated is, essentially, when there is more of some other liquid in your body than oxygen-carrying blood.  Whatever that substance is it can have the same effect as when you down a bunch of shots.  If you go past a certain point at any time with any liquid and have more of the liquid in your system then your own blood your body shuts down. 

So, people called in including a nurse.  She suggested that this might not be a good idea because of the water intoxication.  The on-air people said that the people playing the game had signed releases so the station wasn’t liable.  The on-air host also said he was certain that if someone reached a serious point they would vomit.  The co-host, a woman, said at one point, “maybe we should have done more research on this first.” 

The contest came down to two women.  One was 28-year-old Jennifer Strange.  She was the mother of two and was trying to win the Wii for her kids.  They offered her front-row tickets for a Justin Timberlake concert that night.  She declined.  She said her head hurt and that she felt very bloated.  She declined the tickets.  The contest went on.  They kept drinking water.  They offered her the tickets again and this time she took the tickets.  She came into the studio and everyone laughed and said she looked three months pregnant.  She said again she had a headache. 

Apparently, as she drove home, she called into work in tears.  She said she was not coming into work.  She said she felt terrible.  Her mother found her collapsed on her floor in her home hours later.  She was pronounced dead at a hospital and the reason was listed as “water intoxication.” 

The entire morning show crew has been fired.  Whether or not lawsuits are pending is unclear but I am willing to bet people will get sued.  Of course, who blames the lawyers?  Who blames the management at the station who approved this contest?  What happens to them?   

The easiest thing to do is to fire the on-air talent.  I never witnessed a contest like this but I saw a few that were weird.  I remember one that involved the morning guy standing outside at a gas station in his underwear and having stickers ripped off his body with prizes written on them.  Now this was not deadly but it was strange. 

I have head of radio stunts where the on-air hosts were buried in the ground and broadcast from within their grave.  I had some radio friends who did a fake stunt where they insisted they were dangling one of their on-air people over the highway tied to weather balloons.  People called in insisting they could see the guy floating there. 

It’s tough in the radio business today.  It was always a cutthroat business but these days it may even be more so.  This was a senseless tragedy and a stupid way to go.  However, it takes more than firing the on-air staff to make this one right.  There were more people involved than that morning team and you had better believe they are scrambling to cover their butts right now. 

Bryan W. Alaspa’s novel Dust is now available in print and eBook format at his website www.bryanalaspa.com and www.amazon.com.

Someone Else’s Epic

Have you ever had the feeling you were just a bit character or had been cast in some way in someone else’s epic story?  Have you ever felt that you have been cast in a role that you would not normally want to have in this particular story?  For example, have you ever felt like maybe you are being cast as the villain in some kind of epic story?  Well, I am not entirely sure I have felt that way personally but I think the city of
Chicago and the Chicago Bears team may very much feel that way when it comes to this week’s game. 

Of course, the Bears are poised to make their second trip to the Super Bowl.  People in other cities may not realize just how spoiled they are.  If you live anywhere in the nebulous region commonly referred to as
New England you probably don’t think of yourself as spoiled.  Yet, every year, no matter how poorly the Patriots have played throughout the regular season that team manages to get into the playoffs.  The city of
Pittsburgh has numerous Super Bowl visits and victories under its belt. 
San Francisco sure looks terrible now but it wasn’t all that long ago that the 49ers were winning everything and anything all the time.  Sports fans have very short memories. 

In
Chicago we have the opposite thing happening, at least when it comes to the Bears.  In this town if you happen to have once been affiliated in any way with the Chicago Bears of 1985 you do not have to buy a drink in any bar in town provided you let everyone know you had some affiliation with the ’85 Bears.  This was the team that should have been the start of a dynasty before the team made a bunch of dunder-headed moves that broke up that team and prevented it from going on to win countless championships.  Instead we had one glorious, delirious season where the Bears managed to lose only one game and then soundly trounced those aforementioned Patriots in the Super Bowl.  This is a collective great memory for the city because we only have one football team so that means it is the one sports thing pretty much everyone in the city can agree on. 

See, for me the White Sox World Series Championship eclipses the Bears championship because I am more of a baseball fan than I am a football fan.  However, the city’s loyalty with baseball is notoriously divided between the Sox and the Cubs and that divide gets deeper every season.  So, while for me that win was greater and sweeter, for much of this city it only added more bitterness to the baseball season. 

So, right now the entire city is poised to play a game that might take them to the Super Bowl.  Even if we don’t win the Super Bowl the fact that we would be there again would be pretty sweet.  I have only seen the Bears play in one Super Bowl in my life and that was the year they won.  You see, we don’t make it into the playoffs every season and we definitely don’t make it into the championship game very often.  

In any other year this would be the huge story.  The Bears in ’85 were national celebrities for a while.  They were such a mish-mosh of talent.  We had the “Fridge” for crying out loud.  My family went on a vacation to Hawaii the year following the win and everyone, when they found out my family was from
Chicago, wanted to know if I knew the Fridge.  So, the Bears of ’85 had an endearing quality that kind of made them the darlings for just a little while.   

This year, however, the team they are facing is the New Orleans Saints.  Of course we all know what happened to New
Orleans a couple of years ago.  This has become a magical epic year for the Saints.  They came roaring back into
New Orleans and they have a superstar in Reggie Bush and they have managed to dazzle the NFL all season long.  They are explosive.  They are winning.  They are a powerful team.  Considering the heartbreak and death and destruction that has befallen
New Orleans in the recent past they are bringing a simple but amazing spark of hope to a city that needs it. 

You can see what I mean about being cast in someone else’s epic story, can’t you? 

Suddenly it seems wrong to want the Bears to win.  Sure, I am going to be rooting for Urlacher to smash into Reggie Bush and strip the ball from him.  I want the Bears’ defense to wake up from its recent stupor to smash the hell out of the Saints offense.  However, I feel bad wanting that.  It seems as if the Bears are the villains in this story. 

It’s all you hear about now.  How great it is that the Saints are winning, you hear the sportscasters say.  You hear them talk about how wonderful it would be for the city of
New Orleans if the Saints were to make it to the Super Bowl.  They have overcome such adversity and such a horrible season last year.  They have defied every expectation and climbed mountain after mountain to finally be one small step from the pinnacle.  They only have to get past evil
Chicago,  home of Al Capone, John Wayne Gacy and Richard Speck, to achieve what will be a glorious moment for a city in such pain. 

Only an ogre would not want that scenario to happen right?  You don’t sit through all fifty-three hours of the “Lord of the Rings” movies hoping that the hobbits all end up in the fiery pits of Mordor at the end, do you?  Well, maybe you do, and I could understand that, but most people don’t.  Generally you root for the underdog hero in the epic tale and hope he or she comes through the winner at the end.  Everyone likes the underdog.  I love the underdog.  I even loved the cartoon “Underdog.” 

It’s just that, most of the time, Chicago IS the underdog when it comes to sports.  In fact, in some ways, we still are.  People wonder why Chicagoans often have this chip on their shoulders, especially when it comes to their sports teams.  Well, you try living in a place known as the “

Second
City” all of your life and not have some issues with your ego.  We are a fly-over city.  People all over the world think of Chicago as being a frozen wasteland much in the same way people in Chicago think
Green Bay is all year around.  I have had people express shock at the fact that
Chicago has beaches and that temperatures here in July often reach triple digits.   

So,
Chicago is now the villain in this epic story of a city coming back from tragedy.  In the end, I guess it’s fantastic that the Bears have made it this far and have made it further this year than they did last year.  Still, as game time draws near I can’t help but want them to win and to watch them in the Super Bowl.  I guess that makes me a villain.  Oh well, the villains are generally more exciting and memorable than the heroes anyway. 

Bryan W. Alaspa’s novel Dust is available in print and eBook format at his website www.bryanalaspa.com and www.amazon.com.

Jack Comes Back with a Bang

I have been a fan of the show “24” from the very first season.  I remember reading about the concept and how it was supposed to be an entire season where each episode was an hour during one particular day.  The buzz was great that first season.  It was also a first season that opened with an entire plane exploding in mid-air with the terrorist responsible actually escaping out of the plane to do it.  That’s quite an impressive way to start. 

From that point forward “24” has seldom disappointed.  Has it made a few missteps along the way?  Sure, all of us who are fans recall with a cringe the whole Elisha Cuthbert versus the cougar phase.  Many of us also remember the season that just sort of meandered around while Jack flew into
Mexico and dealt with drug dealers and somehow the drug dealers had something to do with a virus or something.  It seemed to take forever to get going.  However, even that season, once the virus got released in a hotel full of people things started moving.  It made me realize that the whole season should have started with the virus being released in the hotel instead of the whole drug dealer thing. 

Anyway, last season “24” reached some kind of state of action-packed perfection that many shows just dream about.  Last season started off with some kind of two-hour premier that was, without a doubt, the two most-tension filled hours of television I had ever watched.  Sure, it stretched the plot a bit even last season, but it was consistently watchable.  Part of what made it so compelling were the strong performances of the President and First Lady.  That means when the plots was focused off of Jack and onto them the story was still compelling.   

Of course this season had a lot to live up to.  For those of you who are fans of the show and perhaps have yet to watch the four hours of the “24” premier this year that the show has not disappointed.  It may have taken until the second two hours of the four-hour, two-day premier to really make me sit on the edge of my seat and audibly gasp in surprise but it definitely did not disappoint. 

Now comes the hard part.  In this day and age when people have TiVo which has created an entire culture and class of people who immediately shout things at you like, “don’t tell me about it!  I have it TiVoed and I haven’t watched it yet!”  how do you actually talk about a show that relies almost solely on surprises for maximum effect?  I also know of people who let the entire “24” season go by so they can then either buy the subsequent season DVD release or put it into their NetFlix queue.  This really makes talking about it hard. 

Needless to say if you have seen any of the commercials you know that super hero and super agent Jack Bauer, played by Keifer Sutherland, is back from his escapade in
China.  At the end of last season Jack was captured by the Chinese and taken away on a boat for events that had actually happened the season before.  This season plays it smartly by starting the action two years later. 

David Palmer’s brother, Wayne, is now President.  The
United States is, once again, in trouble.  Terrorists have been committing acts of terrorism and suicide bombings in cities across the country.  Buses are exploding.  Bombers are walkig into crowded restaurants and shopping malls and pressing buttons that take dozens of people with them.  The terrorist responsible has one demand and he says he will point him to the man organizing all of this.  He wants Jack Bauer’s head on a platter. 

So, this is how Jack comes back from
China.  The man who comes back, however, is a slightly different Jack Bauer than we are used to.  In every other season no matter what happened to the man (even dying) he was always a man who knew exactly what to do.  He was also willing and capable of doing anything to get information.  This is a man who once uttered, “ I need a hacksaw” when it came to getting information from an informant.   

Well, two years in prison has actually tamed Jack Bauer.  He is a man with doubts.  He is a man who is now almost incapable of torturing another person, probably due to the torture has had to endure.  We see Jack is a man criss-crossed with scar across his back and a right hand badly burned and scarred from tortures we have yet to see.  He is a man who is furtive, unsure, and all too  human. 

Of course the threat is also all-too real this time around.  I do not want to give any of it away.  You should discover what the terrorists have planned all on your own.  The scary part is that this is a threat that many countries on the planet might have to face.  In fact, even before the bigger plot is revealed the idea of terrorists committing smaller acts of terrorism in multiple places is all-too real. 

Just remember that there are certain rules every season of “24” must follow.  There is always a traitor in the midst.  Many times this traitor is right in the President’s cabinet (or even the President himself, last season).  Multiple times someone with vital information will end up shot and dying before the information can be gleaned.  Everything is within twenty minutes driving time despite the fact the entire show is set in
Los Angeles.  Every time someone goes with Jack on a mission and that person is not a main character that person will die.  Also, whatever the terrorist plot seems like it will be at the beginning it will end up being something much larger and more convoluted than initially presented. 

Keep those things in mind.  The season opener has delivered the thrills.  During the second two-hours I found myself shouting at the television and putting my hands on the top of my head and gasping audibly and comically.  I was also, surprisingly, touched by Jack and his new attitudes. 

In the past the peripheral characters were always just a little bit more interesting than Jack.  That is still the case.  Lord help the writers if anything ever happen to Mary Lyn Rajskubs’ Chloe.  However, Jack himself was always rather one dimensional.  Yeah, sure, you liked him and wanted him to win but he didn’t quite tug at the heart strings.  There was once a rumor his character might get killed off and I actually thought that might not be a bad idea.  This season, I am very glad he is still around. 

So, I am once again hooked ‘til the end.  I am looking forward the next installment and I will be on the edge of my seat all season long.  This is a great show and it is just way too much fun.  Yes, it’s about terrorism, but it is still a blast and you know Jack will eventually just kick some serious terrorist butt. 

Bryan W. Alaspa’s novel Dust is available in print and eBook format at his website www.bryanalaspa.com and www.amazon.com.

Let’s Hear it for the Kickers

So it all came down to that final moment in overtime for the Chicago Bears.  They had been battling the Seattle Seahawks up and down the field and, essentially, it had come to a stand-still.  The game was tied and that meant sudden-death overtime as is always the case in the NFL.  No matter how you score, you are the team that wins.  If you tackle the other team’s quarterback in the endzone and get a safety you win the damn thing.   

Rex Grossman had done all right.  He made several rather bone-headed plays.  It still seems like the young quarterback needs to have all of the time in the world to make a play.  If you rush sexy Rexy then you can probably get him scrambling and when he scrambles he is just as likely to throw it to the referee or Lovie Smith on the sidelines as he is to a receiver down field.  The man is no running threat at all.  I think the only way to maybe get Rex to run would be to release an actual bear on the field while outfitting him with raw meat underpants.   

Of course there were many in this city, including a certain blog writer that you may or may not be reading right now and you may or may not read regularly, who thought that this was the last game of the season.  People always tell me to have hope but this is
Chicago.  You develop a certain kind of hopelessness when it comes to sports teams in
Chicago.  The strange thing is that this hopelessness never leaves no matter how many teams win championships.  Somehow, no matter what, it always seems like a fluke.  As if the governing board of whichever sport the team has just won the championship of will suddenly realize a horrible mistake has been made and make us take the trophy back and pretend the parade never happened. 

I have lived through six Bulls NBA Championships.  Rather than bask in the glow of the fact that this team which had such a miserable record for so long won six championships I am like most people in this town and despairing over the fact the team has stunk since Michael Jordan left.  Of course they have made it to the playoffs for two years in a row but I really don’t think anyone seriously thought the Chicago Bulls would make it make to the finals. 

I have also seen the White Sox magically win the World Series.  It still seems like some kind of dream I had a few years ago and I have a hard time remembering that it actually happened.  I have all of the newspapers and memorabilia tucked away in a drawer to remind me but after their horrific fall in this past season it almost seems like 2005 never happened.  Once more they were back in mediocrity mode in 2006 and it made all of 2005 seem like some kind of bizarre mistake. 

So, it was with some trepidation that I watched the Bears playoff game this past weekend.  While there were many who were hopeful and convinced they could beat the Seahawks, I will admit that I am not one of them.  When it comes to
Chicago sports I am always the naysayer.  You can ask my fellow White Sox fans that I was predicting their doom every step of the way.  Of course the more I screamed they would be defeated the more they won.  As such, maybe the same will happen to the Bears. 

Of course it all came down to the kicker.  It’s funny how NFL teams treat kickers.  Most of them act like they are those annoying little brothers or kids from down the block who come and want to hang out with you even though you don’t actually want them around.  A lot of times kickers are foreigners who seem like they would be much more comfortable on a soccer field rather than kicking an oblong ball through uprights.   

The thing is it often comes down to the kickers.  I cannot tell you the number of times I have seen a game where if a field goal had just been made the game would have been won.  Or perhaps the number of times I saw a game where the key was staying ahead of the opponents because of a made field goal.  

Quarterbacks get all of the glory.  A lot of times they are handsome.  They have strong and muscular arms.  They are supposed to the leader of the team on the field.  They get much of the credit and the blame when the game goes well or not.  They are the ones on television the most. 

Still, it is the kicker who often comes up in the clutch.  They stand there, separated from everyone else, the stadium often silent, judging the wind and visualizing the kick.  Then the snap comes.  The kicker moves, oblivious to all of the on-rushing players and noise and focusing just on the ball.  Hopefully the holder has gotten the ball and put it down just right.  Then the kicker kicks and off that ball goes.  It’s like time is suspended as that ball tumbles end over end over end.  Hopefully it goes right through the uprights and everyone is happy.  If it doesn’t work then everyone talks about how the kicker isn’t really part of the team and isn’t really a football player. 

Ever team during the off-season spends buckets of money on quarterbacks and receivers and defensive people.  Yeah, sure, they are always important.  However, many only think of the kicker as an afterthought.  Strange considering the name of the game is “foot” ball and the only time a foot actually touches the ball is when someone kicks it.  They are treated like the red-headed step-children and patted on the head and told to go back to the sidelines and keep kicking balls into nets.  It’s rather unfair really. 

How many times does a quarterback just totally blow a run down the field and fail to get the ball into the endzone.  Who always then has to come through and at least try to make sure the entire effort wasn’t for naught?  That’s right, the kicker is the one.  He has to come on the field and try like mad to kick that ball and hopefully come away with three points to at least the drive down-field isn’t for nothing. 

In many ways they are the unsung heroes.  Maybe they have the build of a dancer instead of the muscles of a quarterback but they sure do things I couldn’t do.  How on earth does someone kick a pall over fifty yard down a very narrow-looking corridor and keep the whole wind thing in mind?  I couldn’t do it.  I couldn’t kick the damn ball ten yards.  To me that means they deserve respect.  They win games.  It was the kicker who extended the Bears season one more week at least.  It was the kicker who should get the credit if the Bears ultimately get to the Super Bowl.   

Then again, we’ll see how he does against the Saints next week.  He may turn from hero to goat just that quickly. 

Bryan W. Alaspa’s novel Dust is available in print and eBook format at his website www.bryanalaspa.com and www.amazon.com.

The Lost art of Interviewing

I don’t know when this might have been but I have to think there was a time when interviewing for a job was a simple affair.  Perhaps, much like when people think of the 1950s, there never really was a time when it was simple but I prefer to think there was.  I like to think there was a time when you saw an ad in the paper or perhaps a Help Wanted sign at a place, walked in, filled out an application, talked to someone and walked out with a job offer.  These days that just doesn’t happen. 

Part of the problem has to be that people are crazy, of course.  Too many people are walking around trying to get into offices so they can eventually go crazy and do harmful things to as many co-workers as possible.  I personally know several people who apparently either doze through or choose to ignore the sexual harassment seminars that everyone at every office has to sit through at least once a year.  There are those who have rather grim criminal records and you don’t want to give them jobs doing important things.  You do not want the convicted child molester working as a school crossing guard, for example.   

So, companies have orchestrated these elaborate interviewing methods.  I think the point of these is to somehow weed out the chaff from the wheat or something like that.  Most places require you to keep coming back time and again, like a contestant on some reality show, talking to higher and higher leveled people until you reach the top.  In some ways it is also like a video game.  You keep getting to each level and the monster at the end gets bigger and more intimidating.  Of course there are countless books that try to teach you techniques you can use to get through these various levels.  I think of these like those cheat books you can get for those video games. 

The problem is each company has different standards.  They may question you six hundred times but people who are constantly looking for new work become masters of the interview.  They have a store of stock phrases and answers.  They become almost telepathic when it comes to reading the room and thus adjusting their answer so that they can give an answer they feel is what the people in the room are looking for.  They treat each interview like it’s an acting audition and they act their respective asses off. 

How do I know?  Because I do it all the time.  I have become quite adept at creating these long-winded answers that really go nowhere and really answer nothing but sound like they do and appear to give some kind of impassioned answer to the questions asked.  I think this is why in every single job I have had there has always been this nagging doubt.  No matter how well I have done I am always convinced at some point everyone is going to find out I have no idea what the hell I am talking about and that I have BS-ing my way through it.  Thankfully I think most workers feel the same way and are doing the same thing so really we are all wallowing in the same BS pool. 

There is nothing worse than what I have come to know as the “Firing Squad” interview.  Perhaps you have been on one of these.  You walk into a place and look around at the dull gray cubicles and various offices and people running hither and yon in their ties and dresses acting professional.  The places somehow manage to all smell the same.  It is that mixture of hope, business and crushing despair that I think must come in a bottle or some kind of spraying device and is used by offices all over.  Then you are lead into a room where there is a rectangular conference table.  As soon as you step in there the Firing Squad is formed. 

You sit on one side of the table.  On either side of you, seemingly stretching for miles, are the other empty chairs where, promptly, no one else sits.  Instead everyone else sits directly across from you.  They all have copies of your resume.  They all carry folders.  Sometimes they have pre-printed questions.  They all have note pads.  At some point the leader of this group smiles and nods and explains who everyone is and that they are all going to ask you questions.  Sometimes this is followed by a long and lengthy explanation of the company and what the job is.  Most of the time this is a big giant tease to make you think that no one would possibly tell you this much inside information without wanting to offer you the job.  This is a ruse, of course.  For all I know all of this information is entirely made up.  Then the questions come. 

They come fast and they come furious.  I have become good at the long answers.  This seems to stem the flow and fire of the questions because eventually I have talked so long they are ready to ask me anything simple just to get me to shut up.  One after another they fire.  Some fire more than once.  Sometimes they reach the end of the row and then just start over.  At least if you are the victim facing a firing squad the guns fire and it’s over for you.  These go on forever. 

Once it is done they ask you if you have any questions.  This comes in almost every interview.  They always wait until the end for this.  I have a very good friend named Tim who does so much research about the company he is interviewing with he could probably recite the entire company history to them and ask them questions about business decisions made during the Reagan administration.  I don’t do this.  Most of the time the people doing the interview spend forever telling you all about the company and the job anyway, thus making all of your research rather pointless.  Also, by the time they get to the part where I am supposed to ask questions I am so exhausted from answering and deflecting questions I can barely remember my own name.   

So, I never have any questions.  I am wiped out.  My only question is really where the hell is the bathroom and when the hell can I get out of here.  Instead I usually come up with some kind of lame question about the job or the predicted timeline for the interview process and then I try hard to get the hell out of there. 

If I were a company I would definitely dispose of the Firing Squad interviewing.  I really have a hard time believing it is the best way to pick the best candidate.  I had one not too long ago but I couldn’t honestly remember anything of what just happened.  I could barely walk to the car and drive home.   

How about just an actual conversation between two people?  Is that too much to ask?  Maybe some actual honest questions and some actual honest answers?  I think this is probably too much to ask in the modern business world. 

Bryan W. Alaspa’s novel Dust is available in print and eBook format at his website www.bryanalaspa.com and www.amazon.com.

Living Versus Quality of Life

Not long ago I wrote a column about smokers.  Like much of my writing it was firmly tongue-in-cheek and was, in a round about way, a compliment on the resiliency of the people who still resolutely smoke despite weather and health concerns.  For the most part I was complimented for this particular article.  I concluded that when it came to smokers not a single one of them was likely to quit before they were ready and some may not be ready at all. 

Being someone who has never been drunk and never been high and never tried smoking I am often looked at strangely.  I can share some of this with one of my personal heroes, Penn Jilette.  Penn is one half of the comedy/magician team of Penn & Teller.  While Penn and I would completely and utterly disagree on matters of faith, religion and the human soul I think we could agree on much more.  Penn is a lifelong teetotaler.  That means he has never even had alcohol touch his lips.  He has never even considered doing drugs.  He too, has never been high. 

Penn has a radio show and he recently talked about a dinner he went to with a  friend of his: Lou Reed.  At the dinner were David Bowie and Iggie Pop.  Somehow the topic of Penn never having touched alcohol and never having been high came up.  Apparently this statement was too much for Mr. Bowie and Mr. Pop.  He stated on his show that he was repeatedly asked about it. 

“You mean heroin, right?”  One would ask.
“No, I mean, I have never touched alcohol or drugs of any kind,” he would reply. 

“You mean you’ve done pot, though, right?”  Another rocker would ask. 

“No, I mean, I have never touched alcohol or drugs of any kind,” he would repeat. 

I have run into similar situations just not ones with famous rock stars.  People are baffled at the fact that I have never been drunk.  Not even when you were a teenager?  Nope.  Not when you first turned twenty-one?  Nah.  You never have tried drugs?  Not even pot?  Weren’t you ever just curious?  To answer quite frankly, the answer is no. 

I did my homework.  I was curious so I read about it.  I was in high school and you can’t swing a dead cat in high school and not hit someone who has tried at least one of the major narcotics.  I had a good friend my freshman year that used to tell me about injecting things into her thighs and I now realize she was telling me about doing heroin.  She was miserable.  I had another friend who told me she was worried she was doing so much coke she was wearing holes in her nose. 

This did not sound like fun to me.  Plus, I know myself.  I know I have an addictive personality.  I have little if any will power.  I battle with food every day and often lose.  Why, I figured, would I want to compound that with smoking and drugs?  It just didn’t make any sense. 

What surprised me was a message I got from someone who thought that I was not living life because I chose not to smoke.  This person stated that she had known many people in her family who had died of cancer and she had learned, therefore, not to follow rules and not care and to live life as much as possible.  This meant she, and I quote, “I smoke. I drink. I curse.  I laugh. I dance.  The monster may come.  But I lived.”  I was puzzled by this.  

How very selfish, I thought. 

See, to me hastening your death by engaging in addictive behavior is not “living life.”  If you think you are free because you smoke or do anything addictive you are just kidding yourself.  You are not free, you are subject to the addiction. 

Plus, I have never bought the whole “well he/she died doing what he/she loved to do.”  James Dean loved to race cars really fast.  I am willing to bet, however, there is not a member of Dean’s family or one of his friends who would not have traded all of those great moments he had while racing for a chance to speak to him again right now.  River
Phoenix loved to do his drugs.  During the 911 call placed by his brother the night he overdosed on a sidewalk his brother did not tell the operator, “well, hey, if he dies at leas the was doing what he loved.”   

You can love life without taking things that harm you.  Deliberately taking things that harm you just takes you out of the lives of the people who love you faster.  That’s remarkably selfish of you.  I don’t care how great smoking may feel for you the fact is it’s addictive, it makes your hair and clothes smell bad, your teeth yellow, your breath smell bad, your fingers yellow and it makes you hack and cough.  Then, you get the joy of slowly dying of cancer or emphysema.  I don’t know anyone who finds a haggard woman or man carrying and oxygen tank sexy. 

I would think you would take control of your life and refuse to become addicted.  You would strive to have as few chains around your life as possible.  You would want to taste and smell everything.  Smoking destroys both of those senses.  I know, I asked my dad who is in his sixties and smoked since he was thirteen.  A year after he quit the first thing he said was how great things tasted again.  To me not having the weight of smoking or addiction would be the way to live life.   

Jumping off of a building may be the greatest rush in the world right up until the point the ground gets in the way.  If you play Russian Roulette with a six-barreled revolver you have a 5 – 1 shot in your favor of NOT shooting yourself.  The odds are in your favor.  Still, I don’t recommend doing it.  Those who have played it and survived may have the greatest outlook on life over anyone else.  I still am willing to bet it’s not worth the risk. 

I asked some smokers I know.  All of them agreed smoking was not a good thing and they wished they could quit.  Not a single one felt it enhanced their lives.  Every one said it sucked and was too expensive.  Think of how much time you spend looking forward to the next smoke, standing around outside smoking, trying to get cigarettes, bumming cigarettes off of people and driving to get more cigarettes.  Now think of all of the other things you could do with that time and money.  I bet a lot of things that would more seriously qualify as “living.” 

So, I say dance, curse, sing, drink in moderation and enjoy life.  I do all of those things.  Just do it without hacking and coughing and smelling like a bar.  Do it without adding stones around your neck.  Eventually the weight just drags you down.  I would rather be ninety years old with ninety years of living than thirty and wishing I had more time while taking one more drag of one last cigarette.   

Bryan W. Alaspa’s novel Dust is available in print and eBook format on his website www.bryanalaspa.com and www.amazon.com.  

The Coming of the Machines

Back in the early 80s a movie came out that predicted machines would eventually gain more and more control over the world until they reached the point where they ran the weapons of the United States and launch a missile strike on the
Soviet Union.  Eventually the machines took over and Arnold Schwarzenegger showed up and became Governor of California.  At least, I think that’s how the movie went.  Anyway, the forward-thinking director of this film was Jams Cameron.  Here in 2007 I can now say that Mr. Cameron may have been right but that the machines may not need anything as dramatic as nuclear weapons. 

In case you hadn’t noticed machines are slowly taking over the restrooms of the world.  I think this is an ingenious move by the machines.  You can walk into any restroom in just about any modern building and these machines looks innocent enough.  They sit there against the walls with their electronic eyes like tiny Cyclops.   

They first showed up as the toilets.  I was all for the idea of the urinals in the men’s restroom that flushed on their own.  It made sense to me.  Touching those levers to flush had to be a great way of transmitting germs.  The eyes were a little hard to get used to.  Sometimes you would approach one and it would flush.  Sometimes if you stood at one and moved just right the thing would flush.  Sometimes you would step away and they wouldn’t flush at all.  Sometimes you would be standing there and, suddenly, every urinal along the wall would flush at once. 

I think this was how they coordinated the move into the stalls. 

These were far more disturbing.  These electronic eyes would look at your backside as you sat down.  If you stood up for any reason they would flush.  This would then require a rather humorous toilet dance as you squatted and stood and squatted and stood to try and reset the electronic eye.  Then there were those embarrassing moments when you would stand up and the thing wouldn’t flush. 

Of course the strangest thing I have ever seen was at O’Hare Airport in
Chicago.  Not only were the urinals and toilets in the stalls equipped with minds of their own but the toilets in the stalls had plastic seat covers that moved on their own.  When the person would get up the leave the toilet would not only flush but the plastic sleeve would slide over and cover the seat with a new cover.  Interestingly this seemed to create more problems in some stalls as the plastic sleeve would jam creating bunches of plastic sleeves on the corners of the toilet seat. 

The next to come alive were the sinks.  I first remember seeing this in a movie theater.  The water spouts extended outwards and had no knobs of any kind.  You waved your hand under them and they turned on.  The ones I remember spouted three streams of water over which you had no control of the temperature.  It was only a matter of time before the techno-virus moved to the soap dispensers.  Soon people were required to wave their hands to get a machine-determined squirt of soap. 

The funniest innovation I have yet seen in this process has been the automated paper towel dispenser.  I saw this in a hotel where I was attending a conference.  However, I could have spent the entire time in the restroom watching people waving frantically in front of the dispenser.   If you did it just right, waving in front of just the right eye, it would spit out one square of paper.  You then had to wait a few seconds before waving in front of the eye again so it would spit out another square.   

In a recent visit to a skyscraper in downtown
Chicago I discovered that the automated virus had made it out of the restrooms and was now at the elevators.  In this building you walked up to a keypad that was either right by the elevators, where the normal up and down buttons would be, or to a panel about ten feet from the elevators.  You then entered the number of the floor you wanted.  A small screen above the keypad then displayed a letter.  This letter corresponded with an elevator.  While I was there I got an elevator all to myself and it took me right to the floors I needed. 

At some point, I realized I was dangling over a very large and long elevator shaft at the mercy of a computer system.  This has to be the plan of the machines, of course.  At some point they must have realized that they didn’t need to control of the nuclear weapons to control us.  They could just enter our worlds by taking over the restrooms.  Once they had the restrooms in our control they could take control of our elevators.  Once they have the elevators they could take control of our cars.  Once they control our methods of transportation they will be able to control us. 

Already at O’Hare Airport, the same place with the robotic toilet seat covers, there is a kind of elevated train you can take to the more remote parking lots.  The unique thing about this elevated train is that they do not have drivers.  You can stand at the front car and look out the front window and not have to be in the way of any driver.  It is all run by computer.  Remember, the bathrooms just started with auto-flushing urinals and toilets. 

At some point these machines will decide to rebel.  We, of course, having come to rely on them for our bathroom needs, will be helpless.  We will be left standing in countless restrooms waving our hands in front of paper towel dispensers and soap dispensers.  We will be bent over sinks waving and waving and waving at sinks that never seem to spit out any water at any temperatures.Meanwhile the machines will be laughing as they strand countless of visitors and workers in office buildings around the world in between floors.  On the highways everyone with their automated cars will be completely helpless as their cars take them hostage and on long road trips.  By then maybe the gas stations will be automated and eventually you will just have cars with skeletal remains sitting behind the wheels. 

Now there are many who will consider me crazy for thinking this.  However, when you are one of the ones trapped in a restroom helplessly waving at  paper towel dispenser remember who warned you first. 

Bryan W. Alaspa’s novel Dust is available in print and eBook format at his website www.bryanalaspa.com and www.amazon.com.