I am outraged that Rebecca is out sick today!  I wanted to show her my new gold shoes.  How dare she get sick when I want to show her my shoes!  And they’re gold!  These shoes are especially special, because a week or two ago while at Ross Dress for Less looking in vain for a certain type of luggage, I decided, oh, why not just cruise by the shoe section? and these caught my eye as most shiny things do, because as I have mentioned before, I am just like a crow in that way. OH, and speaking of crows, this morning I was washing my face and heard a scuttle-scruffle-skittling-scampering coming from up above me somewhere.  This scuttling was much louder and different from the scriffling of last summer, when I was ON THE TOILET and heard a soft scuttle-scruffle and a GIANT COCKROACH fell OUT OF A GAP IN THE FAN ON THE CEILING right next to me on its back and started kicking its legs until I leapt from the toilet screaming and screaming and fled the room, and I don’t even remember what happened after that because it was so, so horrible.  No, this scuttling was much louder and was probably more scriffling than scuttling, and even a little scralumphing, and definitely a fair amount of scampering.  I looked up, and through the skylight saw the huge shadow of a crow! It hopped around right on the skylight, scritchety-scratching its claws all over the glass, and then started pecking on the skylight! Just pecking away, right on the glass!  I hope that glass is strong because I am not in the mood to endure another creature crashing down on me in my bathroom!

So anyway, I was at Ross looking at shoes, and this adorable gold, shiny pair caught my eye.  I tried them on and realized that they were the same brand my old roommate Candice designs shoes for.  So I bought them because frankly I think it would have been rude not to, right? And sure enough, I showed them to her and while she didn’t design them per se, since truth-be-told they are knock-offs of another brand, she did the sketching and detailing for them (or maybe sketching and detailing are the same thing, I don’t know).  Anyway, I love, love, love them, and I am wearing them today, and Rebecca is not even here to appreciate them!  But you can:

Is it just me, or are y’all with me? Weren’t we raised with the assumption that by the year 2000 we would all have personal robots? The kind that walk around saying things like “I-am-a-robot,” in robotic voices? They would do our homework, clean our rooms, and go get us Cokes out of the fridge. Right? Well, it’s 2006 and I don’t know about you, but I sure as hell don’t have one, and I don’t know anybody who does. I don’t have homework anymore, but I sure would appreciate my room getting cleaned or my dinner fixed. The only robots I’ve heard about are in hospitals, doing precise surgery, and they don’t even look like people! They just look like machines. I mean sure, that’s great and all – I’m all for precise surgery — but can’t they at least make the robots look like people and dress them up like little surgeons? Where is the sense of fun in this world? If we can’t have fun in surgery, where can we?!!!

Technology is far, far behind my expectations, and I’m pretty disappointed, I won’t pretend otherwise.

Automatic-flush toilets were sent here from hell, to remind us of the punishment that may await us if we’re not careful.  I hate them, with every fiber of my being.

I’ll tell you, I like the automatic faucets — easy, saves water, and as a germaphobe, I appreciate not having to touch bacteria-infested surfaces more than necessary.  I see the point of that.  Also, I can completely stand behind automatic paper-towel dispensers.  Waving my hand in front of them and paper towels coming out like magic makes me feel like I’m living in the future.  But the toilets… The Toilets. 

I guess they’re an OK invention — good intentions and all — but they just plain do not work.  They flush when you don’t want them to, and don’t when you do.  I once had an automatic toilet flush seven times during a short bathroom visit, but as soon as I got up to leave, NOTHING.  The whole time I was trying to pee, my butt was getting splattered with water as it churned below, but when I stood up and the toilet should have flushed, it just sat there.  I waved my hand in front of it, backed against the wall so it would think I had left, even actually left the stall and waited nearby, and it just freaking sat there.  And that was just one instance.  I cannot count the number of tricks I have tried to con the toilet into thinking I’ve left so I can make sure it actually will flush, or the times I’ve had to go back into the stall and push the little button to manually flush the toilet.  At least with the old-school toilets I could flush them with my foot — but these, I have to press directly on that little button with my finger, and it grosses the hell out of me.

Another infurating thing about them is when they flush repeatedly before I’m even sitting down.  I lean over and put down the toilet seat cover, stand up, turn around, get all ready to sit down and — flush. There goes the seat cover, sucked right in.  Repeat steps 1-4.  At my last job we had a particularly ornery toilet that did that every time.  I finally worked out a system whereby I had my pants down before putting the seat cover down, then put it down, held it down with my hands while I spun around and jammed my butt down on it before it had a chance to flush away.  It worked pretty well, but sometimes it made me dizzy.

I know I’m not the only one experiencing this.  Otherwise, how do you explain the sheer multitude of unflushed toilets?  Before, we were all responsible for flushing our own toilet.  Sure, there was the odd person-raised-in-a-barn who never flushed, but that person was shunned by society and therefore was the exception rather than the rule.  For the most part, people flushed and you didn’t think much about it.  Now we’re being trained not to even think about whether our toilet has flushed.  We just leave the stall and expect it to be done for us.  What’s next? Toys that pick themselves up?  Toothbrushes that march merrily into our rooms at night, dive into our mouths, and brush our teeth for us? (Actually, that wouldn’t be so bad… )  But really, how is anyone supposed to learn any responsibility with all this automation?  And even if it isn’t damaging society, it doesn’t work!  The toilets only flush when you don’t want them to!  Please, let’s just go back to good old-fashioned manual-flush toilets — and send these devils back to hell where they belong!