AutoTopic: List Your Favorite Ways To Procrastinate

This entry was posted on October 3, 2011 at 07:09

The Procrastinators Unanimous meeting was postponed, so I thought that I’d publish this post instead. Above is a picture of the medal that I got for coming in first – actually, last – in procrastination.  I was going to show it to you earlier, but I just never got around to it.  Right now, I’m doing something I like to call ‘synchronized procrastinating.’  Or maybe it’s simultaneous procrastinating.  It’s a real art form.  You have to want to not bother doing two different things at the same time.

The line in red above, just proves what a master of it that I really am. This was below the above title, of the second blog-post that I ever read, six years ago, before I even had my own blog-site.  It wasn’t until I’d published 825 posts, and was looking around, desperately, for inspiration for another theme, that I finally got around to using it.

And that’s not even my longest-time record for putting things off. I have un-performed household chores that go back decades.  I am the Superhero of procrastination.  I think that I’m from the same high-gravity planet that Superman is from, because several people have told me that I’m very dense.

One thing I do, so that I fail to accomplish, is to apply my industrial-grade forgettery – and I don’t even have to fake it. Oh, was I supposed to pick up that steak that was on sale, for supper?? I’ll thaw some wieners and we’ll have hot dogs instead.  😳

After only two and a half years, I did finally get around to mounting the lovely rapier that my grandson bought me for Fathers’ Day, on the wall.

I don’t sweat the small stuff, and unless there’s a loan-shark threatening to smash both my kneecaps, it’s all small stuff.  I decline to take any of the wife’s ‘honey-do’ list items seriously.  The karma nicely balances out, because she takes them all seriously – until she finds that they’re not.  That happens often enough to justify faking it ‘till she changes course.

I sit beside the big living room picture window, to read. The wife sits across the room.  There is a large window at the top of the stairs behind her, and during the day, the sun shines down through the open rail – but at night….  Her eyesight, like mine, is becoming less acute.

She has a table lamp to her left, and a floor lamp, 4 feet to her right. Recently, I was told to bring up the swag-lamp from the basement, and hang it directly above her chair.  This was the swag-lamp that neither the son nor I wanted down there, the one whose chain had to be hooked tight to the ceiling, or it would garrote anyone going to the kitty-litter tray, or the utility room.

I ignored considered her request for a week – and she moved the floor-lamp 2 feet closer to her chair.  It still wasn’t bright enough, so she still wanted the swag-lamp moved.  I ignored considered it for another week.  We were at the hardware store for something else, when she thought of replacing the 60 watt CFL bulb in the floor-lamp, with a new-style, 100 watt LED bulb.  I have seen the light….and so has she!

Screwed one bulb out. Screwed the new one in. I’m very competent at screwing around.  That I can handle.  Problem solved.  I got to sit on my laurels hands computer chair, and compose this post.  I should be back with another post in a couple of days – if I don’t get distracted.  I do have other things to do.

 

Flash Fiction #115

PHOTO PROMPT © Rochelle Wisoff-Fields

LET THERE BE LIGHT

Light was the first thing to be lost when “The Wave” rolled through. Electricity stopped flowing, technology disappeared and we reverted to the lives our ancestors had endured, hundreds of years ago.

No-one knew what had caused it, but it was the end of civilization as we knew it. The superstitious called it ‘Magic.’  The religious claimed that it was the wrath of God.  Who knew what scientists called it?  All media, including the internet, had winked out of existence!

The Third World countries scarcely noticed it, and Survivalists suddenly had more friends and followers than any Kardashian ever had.

***

Go to Rochelle’s Addicted to Purple site and use her Wednesday photo as a prompt to write a complete 100 word story.

Screw You

This is another in the series of ‘Old Shit I Own.’ Do any of you know what this thing is, or what it was used for?  It’s another piece of long-lost memorabilia I discovered in the protracted Autumn Housecleaning.

The younger ones in my readership may find this hard to believe but, there was a time, not that long ago, when homes were not provided with numerous electrical outlets – or power points, or even wireless recharging of all those indispensible electronic gadgets.

This is a screw plug. It was used in rooms of homes where there might not be even one wall-socket electrical outlet.  You unscrewed the light bulb from an overhead fixture, screwed this in instead, and had a place to plug in things like my Mother’s washing machine, which rolled out to the middle of the room on little wheels.

The problem then was, all work had to be done during the day, or the room would be dark. That problem was quickly solved by the development of the above little gadget.  You could screw the bulb back in to see what you were doing, and insert the socket on the other side of the Y.  I used one of them for a while, until I managed to install a light fixture over my basement workbench.

I know I am truly older than dirt, and born and raised out on the frontiers of the universe. I was too young to do so, but I have seen people using telephones which were a big box on the wall, with a speaking funnel on the front, and an earpiece dangling from the hang-up hook on one side.  You picked up the earpiece and turned a little crank on the other side, which attracted the attention of a real, live, operator.

Edison’s incandescent light bulbs, with an output of 60 watts or more, have been outlawed in Ontario, and replaced with CFL Compact Fluorescent Light bulbs, or now the LED style which produces more light and less heat, and save power. The only thing more ancient than incandescent, may be wall sconces with flaming torches – and you can’t plug a radio into one of those.

Innocent Till Proven Christmas

Bah, F***ng Humbug!

Ebenezer Scrooge was a piker….an amateur….a poseur who was seduced, and relapsed.  He had no determination or staying power.  If you want to know all about hating the Christmas season, just climb up and sit on my lap little boy….or girl, I’m an equal opportunity pervert, and I’ll tell you how it really is.

A 26-year-old man was arrested and charged in Germany for being drunk in a public place, and causing a disturbance.  He allegedly lurched his way through the playground of a public park, and told all the little boys and girls playing there, that there was NO SANTA!  Well, they were just kids, and little children shouldn’t be disappointed, but I understand his displeasure, and how he probably got that way.

Christmas is great for children, and families.  It’s wonderful to get together with friends and relatives, and enjoy the love and support.  You know what’s not great??!  The rest of it!  The very fact that I’m blogging about it now should give you a hint.  Christmas is a beautiful day.  It used to be just a day, then it was a period, then it was a season, now it’s a juggernaut of an industry.

I’m all for peace and love, and getting together with friends and family….on Christmas!  If you need a few days before or after to wrap presents or prepare food or stay and visit, I’m cool with that.  If you need some extra time before to go shopping, I understand stores’ need to advertise and promote.

American stores sneaking north of the border to infiltrate Canadian shopping patterns have already brought us Black Friday, without the Thanksgiving Thursday to go with it.  I’m too lazy to do it, but if somebody else wants to start a drive limiting the time for Christmas retailery and feelgoodery, I’d sign up in a second.

I would think that the first of December would be an acceptable date.  Black Friday is already pushing things.  If it stopped there, I still wouldn’t bitch too much, but it doesn’t.  On Monday, November 12, the day after Remembrance Day, the neighbors across the street turned on their outdoor Christmas lights.  Turned them on, because they never take them down.

Why rant about pretty lights, I hear you ask?  Because they are Hindu Sikhs, that’s why, trying to look like they fit in and draw attention away from the fact that they run an illegal food-service business out of their house.  City crews in both municipalities are installing Christmas lights on trees and bushes in both main city parks.  They do it now, while the weather is still decent, but they don’t get turned on till two weeks before the big event.

My favorite radio station used to play nothing but hard-edged classic rock.  Because of demographic changes, they now only play some hard rock, and slip in Justin Bieber and petulant Taylor Swift, never, never, ever getting back with a boyfriend who’s probably already moved on.  They have theme weekends, like hits songs which never made it to number one.

I turned the stereo on this past weekend and heard Felice Navidad.  Apparently a Christmas song weekend….seven weeks before Christmas.  I went out in the car on Monday, and turned on the radio, and heard Felice Navidad again, all Christmas songs, all the time, from now till Yule.  There’s a station available on-line which plays Christmas music 24/7/365.

In my crossword puzzle yesterday, the solution to one clue was Auld Lang Syne.  I stopped into a store to pick up a present, and Auld Lang Syne was playing on the Muzak.  That’s a New Year’s song, for a week even further past Christmas.  That’s the kind of thing that probably set off Herr Lagertippen, above!  This stuff has been visually and aurally assaulting us for weeks….and there’s no end in sight!  Make it stop!  Make it stop!!

The city is paying a few people to patrol the main street and ask folks why they’re not smiling, and try to get them to smile.  You know why I’m not smiling??!  Because my tax dollars are being wasted to pay gooders to interfere in my busy day.  Just because I wasn’t broadly grinning, doesn’t mean that I’m unhappy.  At least I wasn’t, till you stuck your nose in my business, and got all judgemental.

I’m reading a book right now, titled Overkill.  I considered that as a title for this piece.  I haven’t even addressed the increasing numbers of non-Christians among us, because this isn’t about religion, despite what the thumpers claim.  This is about commerce and culture.

There’s a story about a newly-wed who complains comments about his young bride’s somewhat limited menu. She replies, “What?! You liked beans on Monday, you liked beans on Tuesday, you liked beans on Wednesday, you liked beans on Thursday.  Here it is Friday, and suddenly you don’t like beans??!”  Sometimes there’s too much of even a good thing.  Enjoy peace and prosperity.  Enjoy family, friends and food.  Enjoy Christmas at/near Christmas, and turn off the damned lights and music so that the birds and I can sleep.  Scrooge, were you taking notes?