My writing software just sent me Christmas greetings? I am not sure I like that. I prefer my machines to just shut up and perform a function. I, without a sense of shame, prefer my machines to look pretty and keep out of the conversation but I don’t expect my machines to bring me a drink, not even if I tap an empty bottle or cup on the table and raise my eyebrows. I am a modern, equitable man and don’t think my machines should have to light my cigar, though I don’t want my machines to offer their opinion, either. My software is a typewriter, as far as I am concerned. It is a machine. It is not an intelligent being. It does not owe me anything beyond the parameters of typewriters that organize type accurately according to my bidding. If I am typing, then I do not want my typewriter to ‘suggest’ corrections, I do not want my typewriter to know what day it is, I do not want my typewriter to ‘greet’ me. I don’t want my typewriter to ‘autofill’ and complete my sentences. Worst? I don’t want my machine to say ‘Merry Christmas’ in Times New Roman, 12pt. If I am typing, I want my typewriter to print letters in a neat, orderly, legible fashion and in a font of MY choice,completely disregarding what time of year it is. Period.
That much aside, I usually feel bah/humbug around this time of year anyway. It’s easy enough for me to be overwhelmed by what presents I should give and to whom, or how much of which type booze to drink and whether it should be mixed or straight, how many cookies to make for others, how many for myself. When I have all of these electronic devices informing me what holiday is coming up, that just makes it worse. I turn on the computer, a reindeer and sleigh swoop across the screen. I open the microwave door, a little jerky motion Santa displays on the L.E.D. screen? I open my Christmas card and get a soulless midi version of, “We wish you a Merry Christmas, we wish you a Merry Christmas…” until the best thing for it is to get a hammer and put these things out of my misery. If such magic as an appropriate seasonal greeting is possible, why do I have to re-program day and time whenever the power goes off? It ain’t right.
Sigh.
I can almost imagine how it must be for our fellow humans of other religious indoctrination. “Yeah, yeah.. Merry f’n Christmas to you and by the way, Happy Kwanzaa, a pleasant Solstice and Happy Hanukkah!” (which holiday is spelled 24 different ways, according to the Oxford English Dictionary and does not occur on December 25. Just imagine how difficult it is for a software designer to figure out which way to spell Channukah in blue light? No wonder they can’t get the electric boxes to figure out what time it is …and, the Islamic calendar is lunar, not solar so what then? Their microwaves and writing software must have to guess whether it is Ramadan or Eid or, or…) It is little wonder that most people get grumpy when the days get to their shortest length of the year.
I am grumpy, too.
Robert On The Air 