Hey, how’s your day going?

How’s my day? HOW’S MY DAY!?!??!

This, this is how my day is going:

This is what happens when you take the lovely rubberized cover off your iPhone and then go to a meeting and, whoops, drop it face down on a beautiful gray granite floor.

I have many, many curse words yet to go today.

By the by…the phone still works. Just not really inclined to run my finger across the screen…..

Mine is a *special* alarm clock

I’m a bit sleepy today.

You see, there is this rather large male blue jay that has decided to make our backyard its home territory.

It is a rather beautiful bird, nice to look at. But the jay does not have the prettiest of all the birdsong.

You can hear the sounds here (at about :08 is the beginning of what my jay sounds like), though I’m not sure that clip entirely does the volume and rastyness of the jay in my backyard any justice.

There is a power line that runs through the yard, and he perches on that, stares into the windows of my home, and squawks. Loudly. It can only be described as a squawk. And Mr. Jay makes this unpleasant sound at about…oh, I don’t know…a half hour to an hour before my actual alarm clock goes off.

So I’m nice and awake well before I ever wanted to be awake.

Ah, but if only I could fit the blue jay with a timing mechanism so that it would raise up its blue jay raucous at *exactly* the time my alarm goes off…well that would be nice.

Because ya can’t sleep through the racket.

And he ain’t got no snooze button either.

The good news is, in case the jay decides not to show up on a certain day, I have a backup alarm.

Another rasty animal who is all to happy to put up a hungry racket well before the alarm clock:

Cranky Feline

It’s a wonder we can get any sort of sleep around here at all.

Checking in on my coolness quotient

Ok. It’s time for my annual check in. I’m fast approaching a birthday, and now that I’m over 40, it’s a good time to check to see just how wide that ol’ generational gap has become.

We’ll start with trending topics on Twitter. I’ve eliminated all the hashtag items that are Twitter specific funning around like #DontBeShocked and #Musicmonday.

So here’s what we have as of 10:50 Pacific Standard Time.

Hekla
This Is Apple’s Next
#ashtag
Icelandic

Ok, well. Hekla. I pretty much figured it was a new R&B artist. I was wrong. It’s a volcano that may or may not be ready to blow its lid. Bad me.

“This is Apple’s Next” is a topic I’m all over. I read the Gawker item this morning about a supposed “found” iPhone 4. We’ll see. Apple always seems to have crafty moves…

But ok, score one for me, I’m on the board.

And #ashtag and Icelandinc are all about that fun, wacky volcano called Eyjafjallajokull.

Good, good. Three of four on that. Rock on.

Let’s try Yahoo! trending topics. Here we go, as of 10:55 PST.

Boston Marathon
Conan O’Brien
Christina Hendricks
Kelsey Grammer
Timothy McVeigh
Alyssa Milano
Lady Antebellum
Joakim Noah
Space Shuttle Discovery
Eyjafjallajokull

Ok, let’s run through the list. Let’s see….Boston Marathon. I know what that is, didn’t know it was being run today. Half point for me.

Conan O’Brien. Yup, know who he is. Heard he was getting a new cable show. There are a couple news items about he and George Lopez that I’m out of the loop on. Half point for me.

Christina Hendricks. I have no idea who that is. Hoookay, she’s evidently been chosen America’s best looking woman. She stars on “Mad Men” a show I haven’t watched as I don’t have cable. Big fat fail for me.

Kelsey Grammer. I used to watch Frasier and Cheers, so I’m up on Kelsey. I also know he’s super conservative. Ok. Evidently he’s starting his own right-wing network. Fair enough. Half point for me.

Timothy McVeigh. I know who he is. I wish I didn’t. Evidently there is some new project using his recorded voice. I probably don’t wish to hear it. I’ll take a zero points on this one.

Alyssa Milano. I know who she is. She is a $%#@ing Dodger fan. I don’t give a tiny rat’s ass about her. That said, I did read an article about her this morning and her new show “Romantically Challenged” (I didn’t say I was proud of it). Go me. Score one for the good guys.

Lady Antebellum. Know ’em. Love ’em. Love that they won a whole slew of Academy of Country Music awards last night. Whoo! Score one for me!

Joakim Noah. Er, uh. No idea. Ya got me here. Ah, basketball player. Chicago Bulls. Apparently people are pissed off at him. I don’t know why. I don’t watch basketball, sorry. Zero points for me.

Space Shuttle Discovery. Heard of it. Knew it was up. Didn’t know it was trying to land today. Bad weather causes delays. What’s new for the shuttle? Half point for me.

And finally, there’s my ol’ friend Eyjafjallajokull. Point goes to me!

Ok, let me add up the points…do the math here…carry the one…

Seems that I’m hip to 8 of 14 trending topics. That’s a resounding 57%.

Better than half, but not by much.

I’m not completely irrelevant, but I’m definitely trending down.

This year I will try to throw a rope over this generational chasm and hold on tight.

Image via the New York Times.

Edit: in the half hour or so it took to write this, the trending topics changed. Ah well, so goes the internets.

Plot devices that no longer work

So, in the middle of the night last night, while I was *not* sleeping, I got to thinking about, well, phone booths.

And how there aren’t any around anymore.

Phone booths were such a key element to the plot lines of a LOT of books and movies.

For example, where would Superman be if not for the phone booth!

Where does mild mannered Clark Kent put on his blue tights these days?

Probably the bathroom at a Starbucks, but that’s not the point.

The point is, there are no phone booths on every city street corner anymore. Where are you supposed to take that random and creepy phone call? Where are you supposed to wait for the kidnappers to give you your next clue? How do you have an angry confrontation with a guido over how long you are on the phone? You don’t. Not anymore.

The movie “Crazy Heart” had a scene with a phone booth. It was by the side of a desolate road in New Mexico (playing the part of Arizona). It felt odd even in the context of the movie. It was in a weird location and had no wires leading to or from it.

It just didn’t work. The era of the phone booth is dead.

How many of our great stories told over the years involved a phone booth?

Or for that matter, payphones in general?

It’s just not the same.

The lonely cowboy with a stack of dimes trying to get his lady on the line, rain pouring outside the glass phone booth, operator intoning “fifty cents please” in a nasaly voice. That’s literature!

Cowboy flips open his mobile device and curses the low signal strength just doesn’t have the same je ne sais quoi, ya know?

And so then I thought about another lost plot device. The lockers in bus stations, train stations and airports. (ok, I already lamented their loss here, but I’m going there again.)

You know, the bad guy stashes the loot to cool it off, inserts a quarter, takes the key and no one is the wiser? Until the bad guy is bumped off and ANOTHER bad guy takes the key and tries to figure out where it goes so he can get the stash?

Oh yeah. That’s good suspense!

The movie “Desperately Seeking Susan” centered around the Rosanna Arquette character getting Madonna’s locker key that held her valise and that really cool jacket. Remember?

Yeah, we really don’t have those anymore, the quarter to rent a locker places. A few gyms have ’em and a local nature preserve has a few near the walking trails, but mostly people leave their stuff in their car or carry a backpack anymore.

Another good plot device, dead.

Oh, and how about meeting people at the gate at the airport!?!

How many great, dramatic scenes involve someone stepping off a plane and a loved one, bad guy, limo guy, complete stranger, detective, etc. is there waiting?

It’s just not quite as dramatic to have the waiting happen down at baggage claim where you hope you find the right person.

Or heck, really going back, how about waiting out on the tarmac while the starlet decends the metal stairs. Nope.

I won’t EVEN start down the road of the loss of manual transmission cars (I covered it here), but do you think Steve McQueen’s hot little green fast back Mustang in “Bullitt” was an automatic? Oh no, I don’t think so.

I know, I know. I’m being a fuddy duddy and time must always march on. But as a writer, I lament the loss of ANY good device to keep a story moving along….