california

 by Brendon J. Wilson

Techno Nomads

The movers arrived last week, finally. Up to this point, we’d been living like primitive nomads, surviving on the bare essentials: a lumbar-incapacitating air mattress, a few pots and pans for cooking (or wearing as hats), and paper plates. Oh, and three laptops harnessing an unsecured intermittent wireless connection being made available by a network security illiterate neighbour. Ok, maybe “primitive nomads” isn’t the right description. How about “techno nomads”?

Did I mention that our 500-channel cable installation was available as soon as we moved into the apartment? Sure, we couldn’t make long distance phone calls, and Verizon was totally incapacitated by an east coast storm, but hey, we had all the “Gilligan’s Island” reruns a human could possibly withstand from the get-go.

Now that our stuff is here and kind of unpacked, life is finally starting to return to normal. Whoever said that technology is a bad thing never realized that a chair counts as technology, and sitting on the floor sucks. Seriously. Maybe it was cool when you were five, and you were more focused on assembling Lego villages than maintaining correct posture, but once your ass has experienced cushions, there’s no going back. Still, I’m shocked to find that the lack of padding pales in significance compared to the lack of reliable Internet access.

Over the past month, I have discovered that I am almost completely incapacitated without Internet access. Want to figure out where to go? Why not just look it up on Gooogl…oh, right. How about letting your family know you’re still alive, and that California hasn’t transformed you into a raging hippie? Sure, just send them an emai…oh, right. Even once Internet access was installed, I was still dealing with a lack of connectivity. Only 1.5 Mbps? Bandwidth limits? What the hell?

How is it that Silicon Valley dominated the Internet age when people only had 1.5 Mbps into their homes? It’s positively Neanderthal! I can only hope Verizon is purposefully withholding bandwidth from me, trying to stop me from going into some kind of connectivity induced shock, the kind that starving people go into when they suddenly have food to eat. They’re planning to jack up the speed to the 6 Mbps I’m used to, right? RIGHT?

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 by Brendon J. Wilson

Signs, Signs Everywhere

California is the land of signs. Everywhere you go, something is smacking you in the face, informing you that whatever you’re doing, about to do, or thinking of doing is probably a good, bad, or inconsequential decision. It’s taken to the point of absurdity.

For example, consider the sign at the entrance to my apartment building’s parking garage:

“This area contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm.”

Weird, eh? Isn’t this same country that sneers at the thought of gun control (a fact of which I was reminded when some guy shot himself in the park across the street from my apartment)? One can only assume the carbon monoxide lobby is puny when compared with the NRA.

But it doesn’t stop there.

The per-capita ownership of vanity license plates is through the roof here. Everything from the seven-letter equivalent of “hi officer” to nauseatingly cute “his” “andhers” combinations accompanying matching SUVs.

Even TV gets in on the wackiness. The warnings accompanying drug advertisements are downright scary – who wants to use a treatment for acid-reflux disease that has side-effects that are worse than the disease? Or Cialis, a treatment for erectile disfunction, whose Superbowl advertisement included this warning: Erections lasting longer than 4 hours should be treated with immediate medical attention.

I nearly choked when I heard that ad. Then I went back to drinking my beer, the one I purchased from Safeway, under the careful watch of a sign noting: Drinking distilled spirits, beer, coolers, wine and other alcoholic beverages may increase cancer risk and during pregnancy can cause birth defects.

Where the hell am I? I thought this was California – you know, the party state! What kind of party state warns against chemical abuse, alcohol abuse, and four hour erections?

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