New kind of computer

There are hundreds of kinds of computers in the world, but all of them are basically the same. Until now, because I’ve invented a totally new kind of computer. I have no background in engineering or computers, which meant I was able to approach the problem of inventing a computer from a completely different direction, and it also meant that it took me an incredibly long time to finish. While other computers have different features and parts, mine doesn’t, because I didn’t know how to do them. The first thing you’ll notice about the new kind of computer is that it has no screen. At the time I began work, some computers didn’t have screens, and it honestly didn’t occur to me to use one. Later, when screens became more popular, I tried adding one to my computer, but I couldn’t figure out how to make the wires from the computer and the wires from the screen go together. But I didn’t get discouraged. I said, “good. I’m glad the wires don’t work.” Because I realized this would help my computer distinguish itself from all the other computers out there. My computer will be the computer that doesn’t have a screen. I’ve also completely rethought information input. When we want to say something on an old computer, we type it in on a keyboard. I replaced the keyboard with a large wheel that has letters painted on it. Just spin the wheel to the letter you want, then spin it to the next letter, and so on. The wheel takes longer, but it helps you think carefully about which words you use -- or, more accurately, which letters. What about the space key, you might ask? Well, there is none, because I forgot to add it. My computer also has a horn on it. We keep our information in “files,” that are then stored on hard drives inside our computer. We’ve been doing it for this long that no one’s ever considered whether there might be a better way. My new kind of computer stores its data on very long pieces of thin, hard rubber. I’ll leave it to the consumer to decide whether they’d rather store their data on pentium chips, or on misshapen pieces of cracked rubber. That reminds me of another fact about my new kind of computer -- it is incredibly loud. To prevent the rubber from melting and deleting all your information, I had to install six fans inside my computer, each louder than the last. You’ll get used to screaming over the cacophonous whir of a large steel box in very little time at all. So, what can this new kind of computer do? True, it can’t play music or connect to the web, or be used in an office because it’s too loud for a work environment, and because two of my computers in the same room will heat the air to over two hundred degrees. But you can inscribe information onto rubber, and retrieve that information later, if you remember your wheel-code, although you won’t be able to see it because the computer has no screen. If you’d like to buy my computer, I was only able to build one, and it took me about thirty years to build. Of course, now that I know how I made it, I estimate I’ll have the second done in about ten years, and I estimate in that time, my computer will be able to hold three times as much rubber. What does the future hold? Will people make the switch from touchscreens and smartphones to loud, hot steel boxes with few functions? Time will tell. Probably, though, right?

Dr. Good, ep. 1

YOU WILL LIVE

Let me explain to you about cable cars

Cable cars are a method of transportation.  No they are not the most efficient or most fast method of trasnport the world has ever invented but they are still na effective one for certain tasks.  Calbe cars themselves are distinguished by theirr having no engines and no motors, instead being pulled bye cables that are pulled by rotating wheels.  They are often asvvlcjksndrlguasljcnsalkjnfvlskjdnflksjflkszjnvlaksjrgbs

Sorry, that was a typo.

Cable cars are often most popular in regions with many mountains or over a body off water that makes other methods of transport difficult to utilize.  For example, one kid of cable car is the gondola tha tis a kind of car with windows that is hoisted by a cable and tkaen GRAAAAA GRAAA GRAAARRRRRRRR excuse me, I'm sorry.

Soem ohave identified cables cars as a mass transatportation alternative to building expensive and diffulclt roads and bridges on difficutl44

Residue

I can't get this darn cocaine residue out of the carpet.  I'm just pushing the vacuum back and forth over it but nothing's coming up.  I mean, I already got all the big piles and the stuff that was right on top, of course.  That was easy.  But now there's just some powder left that's way deep down there, I guess.  It's not the greatest vac in the world, but it's sucking other things up.  I went outside just a little while ago to get some soil and I stomped that into the rug, just to see if it was the vac's fault, but it got all the soil, or anyway, most of it -- it got more of the soil than it's gotten of the cocaine.  The cocaine is finer, I guess, which means it gets really embedded easier.  At one point I thought I'd gotten it all but I wasn't wearing my glasses.

I tried spraying it with water.  I used this little mister bottle we have, I use it on my hair sometimes and to keep the cats off the counters.  It made the cocaine a little easier to see, but it still didn't seem to be lifting off the rug.  I got one of the cat brushes and tried to use it on the carpet, to bring the cocaine back up higher so the vacuum could get it.  I thought this was pretty clever but it didn't work.  The thing about it is we have these bright blue carpets.  I never liked them.  I wanted a nice ivory or something like that.  Jon said, "darker is better, you won't be able to see the stains."  I said, well, what about if someone starts throwing cocaine around the room?  He just rolled his eyes.  And where does he run off to when the cleaning has to get done?

I was on my hands and knees, rubbing at it with a paper towel.  That didn't work though, just left a lot of those gross little paper towel bits mashed up in the rug.  Those are enough of a headache to clean up on their own.  The kids get home at 3:30 and they'll be asking questions.  Jon gets home usually around 7 and if he sees it he'll just run me down, say, "can't you keep this house clean?"  Never mind what the bathroom sink looks like after he's done with it, with little hairs and globs of toothpaste everywhere, and when he snorts a line off the toilet seat he always leaves it gritty and uncomfortable for when you have to sit down and do your business.

Jon is already mad at me because I'd volunteered to have last night's deacons meeting at our house.  Well, the youth group was meeting in the church that night, so we'd either have to have it at somebody's house or cancel it.  What was I going to do?  Let them cancel the whole deacons meeting?  Besides, we have fun together.  Jon came in halfway through and just glared at us and grunted "hi" and went upstairs.  The meeting was over in an hour anyway, Jon didn't have to let it get to him if he didn't secretly enjoy being a bother.  Sandy and Vita and Rick hung around for a little while afterwards and we traded gossip and talked about the kids and it was so nice.  These people are my friends, we have a great time together.  That's how the cocaine got on the carpets in the first place.

I was just taking a break from the cocaine a little while ago, trying to come at it from a different angle, and I noticed a little hairline crack in the window, where Rick had slammed Vita's head into the glass a couple times.  I just about gave up right then!  Jon's going to see that, no doubt about it!  I'll just have to come clean about that one, I guess.  I put some Scotch tape over it so we'll be able to tell if it starts getting bigger.

It wasn't always this way.  We were in love once.  He declared his love in a balloon, floating over a large, yellow field.  The line for the balloons was at least an hour, but we waited.  We got to the top and he promised me my heart was his alone, promised he'd fill my discontents and lacks with love, promised his infidelities would be few and only when something really great fell right into his lap (he'd never be the "pursuer," in other words).  I threw myself into his arms -- but anyone could have said those things to me and I'd have fallen in love.  I've talked about these things with the deacons and they've counseled me that the feeling must still be there, in some lesser, degraded form, sure, but it will always be there, it can't be scrubbed away -- that's what they say.  I told them I'm not so sure.  I told them Jon holds me in contempt, because I wouldn't have loved him if he hadn't said those things on the balloon.  Sandy said, "that reminds me!" and pulled out the baggie of cocaine and waved it around between her thumb and one finger.  They let me take the first bump.  I flushed Jon from my mind with sharp, hot blood.

He hates all geography

Ugh, what is this?  Why is this ground slanted?  It comes to this rocky point.  That's stupid.  It's really hard to walk on.  Not that you'd want to bother.  When you walk on it it's like you're pointed in the wrong direction.  It's really stupid.  They should flatten this out and plant some plants so it's not so rocky and slanted.  The terrain is moronic.  I hate this.
- on mountains

No.  Everything's flat for like a few hundred yards, and then there's just this moronic drop.  Make up your stupid mind, do you want to be up there or do you want to be down here?  There's no reason for this to be here.  You can't even go up to the top of it because the sides of it are too high to walk up.  So it's just this waste of dirt and rock.
- on plateaus

There's all this disgusting sediment.  That stupid wavy blue line is probably dumping it.  Someone should get this sediment out of here.
- on river deltas

Yeah, great idea.  Dig a hole in a triangle and fill it with red liquid.  Pretty obvious no one thought this all the way through.
- on volcanoes

I don't know what I'm looking at, but it looks pretty stupid.
- on glacial inlets

Absolutely anything

It was two or three in the morning and we wanted to see what was in the old woman's bag.  So we -- me and some other folks who were standing around on the subway platform -- pushed her around a bit and called her some names.

"Let us in the bag, you old hag," yelled one man.  He pushed her into a sign.

"Quit holding out on us," said a teenaged girl who was down there with another teenaged girl.  They poked their fingers into her bony chest.

The old woman made the same tired arguments -- that it was her bag, that we had no right to the contents of the bag.  We told her we found her arguments unpersuasive.  We told her property rights had no relevance to the situation, since we didn't want to take for ourselves what was in the bag, we only wanted to see it and spill it on the ground, and do no more than maybe step on it.  We told her to show us what was in the bag or we'd kill her.

It was a largish floral bag.  It seemed to be made of a tightly woven plastic -- I would compare it to a tablecloth.  The floral pattern was faded and browning -- it was a favored bag.  We licked our lips and rubbed our hands and tucked napkins into our shirt collars.

---

The plane was crashing -- we weren't going to make it to the airport.  The pilot put the plane down in a field.  Landed right on the wheels, no problem.  He sent a young girl through the plane to take a poll -- would we rather fly the rest of the way (the plane was fine, he said, we could take back off with no problems), or he could just drive the plane to the airport the rest of the way on the highway.  The poll was close, but driving won.  The pilot pulled the plane out and we hit the road.  We sang a song, in tribute to the pilot.

---

The woman sat down on a bench and held the bag to her chest, tight.  We all stood a few steps away, behind a trash can.  We started guessing what she had in there.

"I'll bet it's some clothes," said a woman in a business suit.  "A little ball of clothes she's taking somewhere."

"She's probably got some food," said a kid with a student's beard.  "Some food that was hard to come by, and she doesn't want to give it up."

"The normal stuff," said an Asian man with sunglasses and a Post rolled up under his arm.  "Wallet, make-up, mints, pens, papers."

The old woman with the bag frowned at us from the bench.  She dabbed at her eyes with a Kleenex.  She begged us to leave her alone, so we abused her with some more filthy names.

A Spanish-speaking man snuck up from behind her and grabbed at the zipper.  The old woman tried to pull the bag away.  "NOOO!" she wailed.  "NOOO NOOO NNNOOO NNNNOOOO!"  While she was wrestling with the Spanish-speaking man, I snuck up from the other side and smacked her on the forehead from behind.  The Spanish-speaking man stumbled backwards -- he'd broken the zipper, but the bag stayed shut.  We scuttled back behind the trash can.  All of us tried to make tornado-sounds, to scare her.

---

We decided to play a game in the plane to kill time.  Everyone would name one thing about the person sitting next to them that they admired.  It could be a physical trait, or a personality trait, or a spiritual trait of some kind.  We went around the plane three times.  I was complimented on my strong voice, my eyes, and my deep well of compassion.  I complimented the young woman sitting next to me on her deep well of compassion, her dewdrop breasts, and her charmingly imperfect teeth.  After the game we all felt wonderful about ourselves, and found it easier to love each other.  But someone remembered -- we had forgotten to include the pilot!  We all rushed up to the cockpit and kicked in the door and told him all the things we loved about him.  He smiled and brushed away a tear and honked the plane's horn, and down below us, the cars on the highway honked back.

---

A policeman came down the steps.  The old woman rushed over to him and tugged on his shirt and asked him to, please, protect her from this crowd, that kept knocking her down and calling her names, and one of us had stepped on her glasses (it was a beefy man with a red moustache), because they want to see what's in her bag.

"Is what this woman is saying true?" he shouted at us.  "Are you harassing her about her bag?"

"Yes," admitted an attractive red-headed woman in a green dress.  "But she refuses to show us what's inside."  This was shrewd -- because we'd confessed so readily, the policeman now wondered if what we'd confessed to was even an offense at all.  The red-headed woman continued, "we think she might have a kidnapped child inside."

Now the policeman spun around and began shouting at the old woman.  "Well, why won't you show them what's in your bag?" he demanded.  "Is there a missing child in there who needs his mother and a warm, soothing bottle?"

"No, of course not!" she cried.  The policeman pushed her up against the steps.  We surrounded her and demanded the child.

---

The pilot parked the plane outside stadium.  He called me up to the front of the plane.  I could see the outfield -- the baseball players were doing their traditional dance, performed at the end of every game.  The home team had lost, but their players still gave their all to the dance.  Their steps were in sync; their arms cut through the air crisply; their leaps were graceful.  The applause was tepid.  I knew what would be said in the newspapers and on the radio the next day: that the players cared more about their dance than winning ballgames, but I admired the poise it took -- to burn with humiliation, burn as surely and brightly as if on fire, and still dance with calm and concentration, nothing rushed, nothing dropped, nothing shrugged off.  The pilot told me that there were two children on the plane, both second-graders, and asked if I'd call their teachers to tell them that the kids' plane had crashed, but that they and all the other passengers were safe.  I said of course I would, anything I could do to help, he had done such a wonderful job driving our plane, it was the least I could do!  He smiled and gave me a smooch.  He told me to use the cockpit phone while he stepped outside to stretch his legs.  The first student was a small boy of Greek heritage with a complicated name.  His teacher was a young woman -- she sounded worried, unrested.  I told her that her student was fine, he had been in a plane crash but he was fine, and would be back in class soon with his little cap and his little backpack and his little pencils and homework.  Yes, it's crazy, I said.  Yes, it was quite an experience for all of us, I said.  Yes, he was handling it well, I said.  We sighed and there was a brief, awkward moment where neither of us knew what to say.  I told her if she needed anything, if she needed absolutely anything, she should call the plane and ask for me.

---

There were maybe sixteen or twenty of us.  We jumped on the woman and grabbed her bag away from her and ripped it open and poured everything out.  The policeman was with us.  The old woman cried out.  There was no train coming.

---

I decided to call the second teacher from the phone in the back of the plane.  A few passengers lounged on the leather sofas and watched the big-screen plane TV.  An older man with a potbelly stepped out of the plane shower with a towel around his waist.  I picked up the smooth black phone from a small circular end table.  I told the second teacher the same story -- that his student had been in a plane crash, but she was fine, and she would be in class soon.  Yes, it's crazy, it was quite an experience, she's handling it well.  Thee plane was very noisy all of a sudden, I couldn't hear anything.  A football team had brought their band and their cheerleaders right into the cabin.  Their team was going to play a game in the baseball stadium, and in the meantime they were practicing a song, or a very loud series of cheers.  Where was the pilot?  He had taken some cash from the band to let them all on the plane, and walked away.  He'd abandoned us; he wasn't coming back.  Why?  Was that it all along -- was it only about money with him?  I couldn't believe the nerve of these cheerleaders, to make a lot of noise while I was trying to have a very important telephone conversation!  About a child!  "Excuse me," I said to the teacher, and I put the phone down and covered the mouthpiece.  "HEY," I shouted at the cheer squad, "WILL YOU SHUT THE FUCK UP?"  I screamed at them with everything I had in me.  I felt spent and exhausted, like when I've been running.  I picked the phone back up, and -- but it felt wonderful, to scream, to be so angry my hair stood on end, to make a spectacle of myself, to give myself over to hate, and to be justified!  People stared at me, the cheer team and my fellow passengers, looking frightened, and I felt wonderful, like the bird flying, like the bird singing --

---

It was all the normal stuff inside the bag.  Pens, wallet, papers, mints, make-up.  Also some other things, like markers, and tape, and an envelope, and stamps, that we hadn't thought of but was still normal.

---

I told the teacher, if he needed absolutely anything --

---

We ripped the bag to shreds, looking for anything else, but that was all there was, was the objects, so we picked them up and pressed them to our faces and mouths and eyes, pressed them as hard as we could --

Snakes eaten

I ate a red snake once.  That was the first snake I ate.  I found it on the driveway, splatted with a big tire print through the middle of it.  Its eyes were all bugged out.  It was hot and sunny out so it was already kind of baked and smelled like jerky.  I picked it up to throw it in the woods and I was like, well, that which comes from God should not be wasted, right?

I've eaten many brown snakes.  That's probably the color snake most eaten by me.  I find them laid out on the stone walkway in the backyard all the time, big bite marks in them.  The dog gets them and shakes them out until they stop wriggling, but I guess she finds she doesn't like them and she just drops them there.  This is not learned behavior because I never taught her how to do it.  But I take them inside and prepare the meat and eat it over a salad or something.  I like a very vinegary dressing.

I saw a blue snake once.  A deep, bright ocean blue -- I almost came to tears just looking at it.  It was wriggling around -- looked like it was hurt or confused.  I saw a bulldozer pull out from this empty lot down the street and it started barreling right towards it.  I tried to flag down the dozer, but it didn't see me and it rolled right over that blue snake.  The snake got caught up in its treads and the bulldozer just took it away -- God knows where it peeled off, if it didn't get ripped up so bad it just disintegrated eventually.  Left a stain on the pavement and not much else -- nothing worth eating, to be sure.  I could live another hundred years and I don't know if I'll ever have another chance to eat a snake that blue, so it's a shame that opportunity went by the boards and I would stop just short of calling it a "true tragedy."

I ate a green snake, just recently.  It was curled up in my mailbox, making a home of my mail.  I didn't know it was in there, I opened the door, it lunged at me.  Got me right on the arm, but it didn't have any fangs.  Someone must have pulled his fangs out -- must have been a pet or a school thing.  I closed it back in there then came back an hour later with a sack.  Once I got it to jump into the sack I slammed it against the curb until it stopped thrashing around.  I think I boiled the green one -- it was all right.  The water shimmered green when I poured it down the sink.

People ask me what it tastes like and I say it tastes like nothing.  I guess that's what I like most about it though.  It reminds you not everything has to be something.  Some stuff can just be around, and you can eat it if you want, but there's no particular reason to.

I made a real feast out of a bunch of yellow snakes I nabbed from the pet store next town over.  I was picking up a pizza at the place next door, Hometown or whatever it's called, and they had this big like tank of yellow ones right in the front window.  So I went down there the next day and there was just some little sixteen-year-old girl behind the counter, so I went in there with a plastic shopping bag and scooped out a bunch of yellow snakes and just booked it.  I don't even think she chased me.  When I got home I just tied the sack around the exhaust pipe of the van and started the engine and blasted them for a little while.  It's safe -- I read about it.  It was like ten minutes and they were groggy but definitely still alive so I had to snap my necks with their hands and I threw them on the grill and I ate all I think there were fourteen of them even though I was well full after six or so.

I saw a pink snake out on the sidewalk outside the church the other day.  Already dead and nice and fat and pink, the way I like them.  It was another hot day and it had been sitting on the sidewalk for God knows how long so I said, what the heck, it's been baking out here all day maybe?  I'll just take a bite out of it.  So I did, I bit right into the neck below the head and what happened was all this colored confetti shot out from the backside and there was a loud horn-honking sound that I would compare to something out of a clown show.  And I was standing there trying to figure out what was going on and these local guys who I always see around but I don't know their names popped up from around the corner and were laughing at me in a very derisive laughter, from which I eventually gathered that they had planted a false snake on the sidewalk with the explicit intention of making me appear foolish.  I didn't even know I was known for my eating snakes and here were these men making sport out of me for it!  I told them I didn't understand why a man would be teased for enjoying an eaten snake every now and then.  Is it not a natural animal, made of meat as cows and lamb are, made by God for the pleasure and consumption of man as all things are?  They only laughed more though, and threw at me some nearby trash they found.  I went home after that, stung and bitter.  After a long night I made a promise to myself to never eat another snake again, no matter the color, and no matter how tempted I might find myself in the future.  It's a promise I've kept, and the men in town don't sneer at me anymore and even let me idle near them at the convenience store soda machine and in line for punch at church and other such places, and I know it's a good thing I don't eat snakes of any color anymore although I am not happy.