Chasing the Future

I must admit, here and now, that I am no visionary. Even with knowledge of the current state and an awareness of past development in any given technology, I have never been able to foresee the evolution of it.
Growing up, I was fascinated by future visions.I loved The Jetsons, although even then I could imagine mid-air collisions of folks whizzing around wearing jet packs. Agent 86 and Inspector Gadget were my heroes. I longed for a Dick Tracy watch; how cool would it be to hear your friend's crackling voice coming from your watch!
A sci-fi nut from early on; I devoured novels by Jules Verne, amazed at his foresight. Some of the rocket man type fiction predicted in novels from the 50's had already been realized by the time I read them. By that time, hell; men were already leaving footie-prints on the moon!
Sure, I knew all about computers; my dad had used one at work. It filled a climate controlled room with mysterious metal cabinets, whirring sounds and spinning disks. Wearing the rose-coloured granny glasses of optimism, in the late sixties the future was now, with limitless possibilities. I watched "Here come the Seventies" eagerly and dreamed of living in my Domehome.
On a side note, it is interesting that, in researching this topic I have found that designers of futuristic cars through the last fifty years really have not changed up the vision. Their models all look like elongated drops of water, beautifully aerodynamic but 3 inches off the ground with zero trunk space. C'mon guys..
Anyway..You would think that all this attention I paid to it, that I would have my finger on the pulse of the emerging face of technology.
Yeah; not so much.
In a college advertising course in 1980,we were instructed to design an ad campaign for one of the following: a personal computer, a personal video camera, a compact disk player or a mobile phone. Admittedly that year was pivotal, with development at a peak in all those products which, unlike myself, my instructor was apparently aware of.
There I sat, shaking my head. You gotta be kidding, right? What would anyone want with a personal computer? Why do we need CD players; I mean look at the history there.. 8-tracks were a monumental failure, as evidenced by the stack of them I had collecting dust. My cassette player was just fine. A video camera would be great, but who is going to want to lug around 30 lbs of equipment?
And a mobile phone? Pfft..never!!
I do not at this point even remember which I chose, or how I promoted my product; but I am pretty sure the names PC, camcorder, CD or cellular never came up.
I hang my head in shame.
The upside of this is that I am continuously amazed and surprised at developments in science and technology, which is a wonderful thing. I cringe at my hindsight, and try to nurture my foresight.. but it sure ain't easy.

An Ode to Plus 2

I heard a whisper on the wind.
"Low tonight minus 15,
high tomorrow plus 2"

How can he stand there so blase, so unmoved; I am convinced that the weatherman has no soul.

Plus 2 is wonderful!
It makes me smile and it gives me hope.
I am excited to see an end to mittens and an end to scarves and scraping and sh-sh-sh-shivering and shoveling, and that other nasty "s" word.

The frozen city is slowly stirring, the magic is beginning.

Rock hard roadways and frozen convoluted sidewalks soften into squishy gritty slush. Grimy puddles conceal bone-jarring craters. Winter white snowbanks degrade into jagged grubby gravel heaps.

It is a mess perhaps, but a glorious mess.

On the sidewalks bundled and bowed figures transform, their shuffles becoming strides; their hunched isolation now turning faces towards the sun, and towards each other.

It shames me to say that I am fickle when it comes to the adoration of plus 2. Were it perhaps to show its happy little face in rainy June or balmy July, it would be properly shunned and loudly cursed. Then it would know how minus 25 feels. No-one writes an ode to minus 25.

A scent is on the breeze; take a frost free breath; breathe deeply. Spring is in the air. Sadly, the first waking smells are not crocuses and they are not daffodils.

I glance at the dog, and sigh.

Free to good home: 37 impenetrable pistachio nuts

You know them. They are either completely closed or have such a tiny crack that you will break your fingernails in a painful way if you attempt to do battle with them. I suppose I could try using my teeth, but my relationship with my dentist is a special one; he is a wonderful man that I never want to see.

Could a hammer win the day? Of course it could, but then you are left with a shmooshed pile of nut and shell that requires more patience to deal with than the whole exercise is worth.

It may be a commentary on my personality that I can chose to just consider these remnants to be write offs; an allowable variance. It's ok.. I expect that my purchase of a bag of pistachios will result in a proportion of waste, discarded without too much thought as part of the whole pistachio eating experience.

When first decanted into a bowl, it is easy to pick out the easy marks. They are everywhere, the rough meat peeking out through the split in their smooth hard shells; beckoning. The discovery of those few that have already completely left their shells is exciting, a bonus! Soon though, it becomes more difficult; poke around, find a good one, toss a dud back, flip, dig, flip.

At which point is it time to raise the white flag; to give in and accede that the remaining nuts will defeat you? For me it varies. Sometimes I just chuck the whole lot, having run out of patience. Sometimes the bowl sits for days, as I revisit the dregs, again and again, hoping perhaps that I will find something that I missed.

I no longer rail at the waste or feel cheated, having come to terms with this expectation years ago.
Life is short; too short to waste on lost causes.. You have to pick your fights, and you can't win them all.

Oh... and make that 35 impenetrable nuts.