The M.A.D. post

The M.A.D. Post  

(steampunk pics are acknowledged with links to original creators' sites, click on captions to go to the websites)

My brain has been a whirl of ideas and undone creations, and my memory is not serving me very well. I forget where I put things, and I forget what I came to the bedroom for, or why I’m standing with a newspaper and a knife in my hand. All this ‘mindly’ matter got me thinking about technology and the ‘thingamabobs’ that aid us in so many ways. A friend showed concern a while back about Facebook shutting its virtual doors on us in March, because what’s-his-name (what is his name?) was tired of it all and wanted a social life, A SOCIAL LIFE. Nah, I don’t think so. And tired of all that money rolling out, paving his socially inept path - don’t think so. Anyway, I feel safe in the fact that my relationship with FB is still ongoing. I first opened my FB account when my daughter went to Sweden, just so I could see her pics and catch up on her news, and then I started finding glorious people from my past. I don’t think virtual friendships are the ideal, nor do I need to know what friends had for supper (unless it’s truly exotic and there’s a pic) or that they’re going to feed the dog or are going to bed. I am not mad about being poked, but I do like being liked, and I love knowing about friends’ creations and dreams and travels and children, and when they’re feeling down so I can send the vibes. Without FB I wouldn’t be in touch with friends who have moved away, or those I last saw in childhood. Nor would my creative world have been opened up by the inspiration from friends who I have met through their artworks and who have become friends on FB; friends I can now say I know and love through being exposed to their inspirational work and family pics. I would not for one second swap ‘real’ relationships for the virtual kind, but social networking on FB serves me so well. I have tried to Twitter or Tweet, but I have not figured it out, so, because I don’t understand it at all, I shall leave it for the birds.

Hang on, I was talking about my memory, wasn’t I? Well, if they can walk on the moon… no, I take that back, not sure they really did…have you seen those dodgy landing photos?  If they can create all these technological miracles that can do just about everything for you, then how about a Memory Aiding Device? I would be the first in line for a Memory Aiding Device (M.A.D.). Imagine getting a brain tweek just as you’re about to put your sunglasses in the fridge, or a twinge as you stand looking vaguely at the grocery shop shelves without your list, and the twinge would stop as you get to the item you need. A M.A.D. is definitely where I’m at, and how difficult can it be to make this? If they can make iPads and iPods

my little eye pod

and docking stations and miraculous wonders named after brainless fruits (Blackberries and Apples…REALLY) then surely they can do this. Talking about fruity technology, is it meant to confuse the confused and embarrass the techno challenged oldies? Apple technology used to be about      how you put fizz into apple juice, now it is about strange and wondrous applications that enhance your life in fabulous ways. I can just imagine asking my 90 year old mum if she’d seen my Blackberry Torch. What would she think she was looking for? 

      my blackberry torch

It seems it might be a trend to name the latest techno gadgets/companies after fruit. There’s even a phone company named Orange, but I guess it could be the colour not the citrus. The whole idea is just utterly bananas as far as I’m concerned.

Talking of M.A.D. I could also do with a N.O.D. (Never Over-react Device). This device would distract you in an urgent manner when you needed to stop doing the “diva drama queen” routine. We all know how bodily functions stop us in our tracks…like…I need a wee NOW! Well this device could tweek your bladder just as your rant gets out of hand, you know, when you actually leave your body and see yourself letting rip at some poor, unsmiling shop-teller who has scanned your peanut butter three times by mistake. You float there above your ranting self and think “Gees, woman look at you, this is humiliating, stop already, you look too red, the manager is heading over.”  Well, if you were just given a prod from the N.O.D. you would leave the shopping items and head to the nearest toilets with your legs crossed, saving you from getting the teller fired, the manager apologizing and you from having a stroke. It would however mean, that to save face, you'd have to start your shopping all over again at another mall. If everyone had a N.O.D. then there would be no more road rage, but then I think the device would have to tweek something other than your bladder or there would be far more people than there are already, peeing against walls all over Durban. Perhaps it could just cramp up a leg muscle which would be released as soon as you step away from the victim’s vehicle and get back into your car and put down the full 2 litre Coke bottle you’re wielding.

Steampunked laptop

Now to me all these amazing 

high- tech inventions are just ‘thingamabobs’. The word thingamabob is a bit archaic I guess, and it brings to mind the mad professor inventing machines to take over the world, using clock cogs and brass pistons. I quite like the idea of thingamabobs - less sleek and more fantasy. There is actually an art form that does just this - makes thingamabobs and doodats. 

This type of artwork is called Steampunk. Steampunk is just about the coolest thing I’ve seen (ever) and I’m collecting old watches and rusty keys, washers, chains, eye glasses, magnifiers, stray hands, articulated joints and flying goggles for my inventions (any donations welcome…I’m serious). You may be wondering how this relates to the whole memory/ranting new device theme, bear with me. Steampunk refers to an art form that adds an antiquated Victorian aesthetic to modern technology. I love it, and if my memory device could be Steampunked, then I’d be overjoyed. 

If a computer can have a 
memory device why can't I?

Somehow the sleek look of the latest devices just adds to the stress levels of those trying to understand how to switch them on. By Steampunking them, more people might feel an affection for them, an excitement, as though you were about to embark on a wild adventure in a Zeppelin. By seeing little cogs and tiny brass screws they would be determined to understand the wonder of a device that would enhance their lives. No one would be able to bring themselves to throw a wondrous gadget that seemed to come from a story book against a wall in the frustration of sending yet another blank message to someone. 

blue tooth

The wonder of having the latest technology in a curious Victorian casing would definitely endear me to it. It seems man has always wanted to be transported back in time to fix the mess ups that have caused the chaos of living today. Having an item that looks like it was found in a Victorian attic would give that feeling of another time, when spinning cogs and wind-ups made sense.

I think what I’m really saying is that there are times when all the spinning chaos of such a fast paced life, has me needing to just simplify things. I have this desire to find a large glass shaft, stand in it, and ask to be beamed up, in the hope that there is a tray of brownies, iced tea and a swaying palm on the other side.

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Links to the steampunk devices pictured on this blog (have a look at all the inspiring stuff): 

http://www.toxel.com/tech/2009/07/12/12-steampunk-gadgets-and-designs/

http://www.tektuff.com/extraordinary-steampunk-computer-workshop/

PS: speaking of  'thingamabobs', please watch this video of The Real Group (I saw them live last week,wow). They are the most amazing acapella group from Sweden, and this song in particular sums up the confusion I feel when I'm faced with the never-ending, always evolving, technological whirlpool. 
It's a must-see, Steampunked sort of song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpyMQNFkgRc&feature=related

Tread carefully

(apologies for the poor quality of the pics. I took them on my cell phone, and it was made before cells had mega pixel cameras) 

Last week I was coming home from Westville on the concrete highway. I was in the fast lane next to a pantechnicon, when I heard an almighty bang kaplunk, slap slap, gonk, kapow, crack, crack, crack. It was coming from my car, not the truck, and I nearly had a seizure (the fact that I’m writing this blog means I survived). I didn’t know what to do, there was no garage, no houses or shops to pull over at. I wondered, should I stop here on the highway, risking being squashed by a truck or mugged by someone who might pretend to help (now don’t go thinking I’m being neurotic because I heard a story of a guy who had a flat tyre and stopped to change it, three friendly guys stopped to help him, then drove his car into a neighbouring country, leaving him on the roadside, without his phone, laptop and lunch) or do I risk being blown-up in my car by driving home? I decided, I’d take my chances driving home. So I crawled. There wasn’t any smoke or engine smell, so I just crept, kaplunking all the way and praying for green lights. I made it home and went to check the side the noise had come from- there were huge chunks of tread missing from the tyre. Don’t think that you’d never use a re-tread because they’re dangerous, because this was NOT a re-tread. The AA came and changed the tyre saying “re-treads can be dangerous”, then corrected himself by saying “Oh, this isn’t a re-tread” and “I’ve never seen this happen before”. Over the years many people attending to things that have gone wrong for me, have said those very same words (like the electrician who said it after I was almost electrocuted by touching the hot tap, but that’s another whole tale).

the desk where you pay for all four tyres

The morning after the de-treading, I got up earlier so there was time to gird my loins before going to the garage to have the tyre story sorted. Now I say girded because workshops and garages are very overwhelming for me. I think it has to do with those polystyrene cups at water machines, the grease, overalls and testosterone fumes. I sprayed extra perfume on my wrists thinking if it gets too gamey I can always snort them. So I get there early and there’s already a queue, then I realise, I do not have a book to read and if I decided to read the car mags on the table, I didn’t have my reading glasses. I cursed under my breath. One of the mechanics/tyre guys checked out the damaged tyre (told me it was just old and had started to split) and then advised me to change them all. I almost asked for a brown paper bag at that moment, but remembered the terror on the freeway and decided to get them all done (I don’t neglect my car and all tyres had the legal amount of tread on them, except for the offending one which did have lovely tread on the parts that still had tread). This salesman could feel my vulnerability and honed in like a jack-hammer, perhaps he had a whiff of my perfume and interpreted it as a sign of weakness.

Did she also forget her glasses?

So off to the waiting room I went. Now I have to be honest, this is not a bad looking garage if you’re a man. It is black and yellow and chromed with that rubbery floor stuff with small raised circles all over it. In the waiting room there is a water cooler, big screen TV, fairly comfy chairs and a carpet mottled black and brown- I think it was the way it was dyed not from grease and sand (clever colour choice). It is also air-conditioned.

I relax a bit, thinking, well, it’s cooler than my car and I’m comfortable, how bad can it be? There were about five others in the waiting room, they all had their reading glasses with them or they didn’t need them so were reading their newspapers. One woman was lap-topping, and another just gazed into the workshop area blankly (she obviously hadn’t prepared herself very well, because I could see she was trying to hold it together and her dazed look wouldn’t allow her to smile at me). So I sighed and relaxed into my chair (black artificial leather, also a good choice). There is rugby on the TV, but the sound is down thankfully. I wonder why they don’t put some wors rolls by the water cooler, or some biltong or even a couple of samoosas. I guess they don’t really want rugby fans loitering about getting all social after their cars are done. Hang on a minute, I see the ball is round. It is soccer on the TV, but I don’t know the rules of either very well, and can usually only tell the difference by the ball shape, yet I don’t see a reason to use a funny shaped ball to play rugby, a round one seems perfectly sensible to me.

The view

I glance over the road, train lines look grey in a grey world highlighted by an almost white hot sky, litter clings to a barbed wire fence. 

Rather than watching the cars slide past across my view and rather than watch the soccer, I decide to find my microscopic note book and jot down thoughts for my blog. My car is sitting without wheels in the distance and the queue for the alignment is getting longer, this will take a while. I’m comfortable and jotting ideas and smiling to myself. It is quiet except for the odd clang of a wheel spanner falling. These tyre guys wield those spanners like ninjas. One has his spanner in his belt making a cross over his bum, ready at any moment to swing it into action, a veritable Darth Vader in overalls.

I jot, and think, quite pleasant actually, and then……. someone comes in with a vacuum cleaner. A small vacuum that has lost all its brushes and nozzles, because it is quite obviously only used for vacuuming carpets in cars. It only has the pipe coming from the machine and, I kid you not, that guy knelt down (because the pipe was too short to stand) and he vacuumed the whole carpet (about 8 square metres of it) with the 2 inch end of that pipe. If I am not at the end of a vacuum cleaner pipe (and that’s not often, ‘cause I’m a failed housewife) then I can’t tolerate that noise. It is like swarms of things in my head, it drones and butchers my thoughts) so I stop jotting and speak to the vacuum man, who complains bitterly from his crawling position about not having a longer pipe or any brushes. I think to myself that there are some guys on the workshop floor who would be better suited to vacuuming with a short pipe, seeing their knuckles are almost touching the floor when they walk. Earlier I saw one of them rolling two tyres in tandem across the floor and then hoisting them up. Tyres in their rims are heavy and this has lengthened their arms somewhat. I resign myself to the fact that I will spend another hour waiting and trying to hum a tune to the drone. Finally, silence again, and the vacuum operator smiles at me as he leaves. I am too exhausted to jot or think, so I wait and almost doze but stop myself because I may snore and just become part of this testosterone hell.

Finally my car gets aligned and I’m told about the importance of rotating the tyres every 6 months. NO amount of imagination or clonking sounds created in my head allow me to see myself doing this again in 6 months time.

Back then the cars had a trap door that we could pull open with a chain to check our tire wear.  Tim Flock  

For any guys who may be interested in these trap doors here's an article...just looking at the website reminds me of my ordeal http://www.circletrack.com/featuredvehicles/ctrp_0711_fireball_grand_national/photo_13.html