Mass_Distractions

I just got my absentee ballot for the big “Super Tuesday” primary. I’m feeling especially mighty knowing that I’m part of an American tradition that is super-sized. But I was extremely disappointed when I opened my ballot. All our fancy technology! All those fears of dangling chads! The ballot was nothing more than a fill-in-the-blank. After that Florida nonsense I thought it would come in a child-proof hermetically sealed vacuum packed case with a an infrared pen filled with invisible ink to be read by experts with million-dollar goggles. Nope. It’s just a piece of oak tag with 345 red ovals and a warning to stay in the lines and use a black or blue pen. At least there’s some progress since my first fill-in-the-blank test back in 1966 when Mrs. Silverman supplied us 1st graders with official Number 2 Ticonderoga pencils. I was equally disappointed when the President’s big space initiative included a trip to Mars with a cosmic truck stop on the Moon. No matter what your politics, “been there, done that.”Read more

I want to go on the David Blaine diet plan. He’s that illusionist who just spent 44 days living in a clear plastic box the size of a walk-in closet suspended over the Thames River in London. He allegedly survived on nothing but plain water that was pumped in through a tube. When he was finally lowered to terra firma, his handlers said he’d lost 60 pounds over the six weeks in plexiglas captivity. Sixty pounds in what measuring system? I watched “Survivor” and saw Richard Hatch and his conniving cohorts gobble down way more than water and shrink away to sinewy masses in less time. I saw how Tom Hank “Castaway-ed” his beefy frame while technically eating bits of soccer ball and raw fish. Trust me, I know weight loss when I see it. The before and after pictures of magician Blaine reveal a man who’s gained a beard, but lost no bulk. The guy isn’t even cutting a six pack. Instead he looked like he’s downed a few. The greatest illusion David Blaine may come to perform is getting anyone to believe that he’d dropped 60 ounces while dangling over the river.Read more

Do Not Call or not Do Not Call. That is the question. Whether it is nobler to just avoid annoying dinnertime calls or accept them and hurl verbal slings and arrows at unsuspecting minimum wage workers. Two weeks into the implementation of the on-again off-again on-again D-N-C list, mealtime is eerily quiet. There's no one calling. No one to talk to. No one to yell at. I am having second thoughts about permanently hanging up on telemarketers. Read more

Monty Python’s “Ministry of Silly Walks” wasn’t so far fetched. The Pentagon now wants to identify terrorists by the way they walk. That’s right, we’re going to stomp out terrorism one step at a time. I guess they’re taking a big leap by figuring if you walk the walk, you probably talk the talk. The folks at Georgia Tech say they’ve got this cool device that can size up the bad guys by their stride. Sure, I’ve seen enough cowboy movies to know that the bad guys always have that demonic swagger. Although in real life the bad guys are shuffling along in leg shackles doing that “perp walk” thing. Read more

I’m going to be exhausted from getting ready.
I was just reading the new Homeland Security department’s website www.ready.gov. It’s a how-to guide preparing you, your home and your family for a nuclear, biological or chemical attack. It is now our patriotic duty to stockpile “essentials” in case of terrorist attack. “Essentials” as defined by Tom Ridge and his boys and girls at Homeland Security HQ. A quick look in my pantry proves what a traitor I am. A crusty squeeze bottle of mustard, a dusty jar of kosher dill pickles, a container of a substance resembling a shrunken head and 17 extremely expired blueberry yogurts. The only thing I am prepared for is take-out.Read more

As Gilda Radner’s alter ego Emily Latella would say, “What’s all this about duck tape?” I say, exactly. (When did feathers become an adhesive?) As you’ve no doubt heard, the best way for us to get out of a sticky terrorist situation is with duck tape. It might sound daffy but the suggestion wasn’t from any quack. It came from the head of the Department of Home Depot land Security who told us all to stock up on plastic sheeting and duct tape to seal ourselves against a biological or chemical attack. And we all ran to the store like lemmings for rolls and rolls.Read more

Some day the most traumatic events in your life could register nothing more than a blip on the emotional Richter scale. A Boston researcher says he's on to something that could spell relief for tens of millions who suffer from the debilitating effects of psychological shock after a crime or an accident. Dr. Glenn Saxe, a psychiatrist in Boston discovered that a drug commonly used to fight high blood pressure can decrease the memory of a traumatic event. Surviving a bank robbery could be as alarming as the horror of some obnoxious person cutting in front of you at the checkout line. Living through an accident could cause as much heartache as re-gifting a birthday present to the person who gave it to you. And let me tell when it?s your mother the consequences are severe. Read more

Until this week I thought the Xbox was the isolation booth where Fear Factor contestants sweat out algebraic equations while polynomials nibble at their ankles. When it comes to technology I'm an extremely late adopter. If technology were an adoptable child, it would need all its adult teeth, its driver's license and a fully vested 401K before I'd let it call me Momma. So I was not overwhelmed when I was invited to a celebration of Xbox's first year at a hip club in Los Angeles. Now that I've played the game of Xbox Party, I'm sold.Read more

It’s all out germ warfare. Not in Iraq. Right here at home. More precisely: up and down aisle 7 at my local Piggly-Wiggly. That’s where you’ll find a battalion of antibacterial soaps in a variety of colors, sizes, liquid, bar, pump top and squeeze bottle. They’re lined up like precision soldiers, a delta force ready to combat the scourge of streptococcus and some guy named Sal Monella. But the latest dirt on the suds biz is bursting the industry’s bubble. Seems all those antibacterial soaps are overkill. A new study found that any old soap is just as good as the death-to-the-bacterium variety. And that’s got the antibacterial folks in a lather.Read more

"Scan me baby!"
This time next year that little phrase is going to be the ‘What's your sign?’ of the new millennium. No one's going to waste time asking for such analog stuff like a phone number or its more digital cousin the e-mail address. Nor for that matter, will you ever have to give out your name, rank, serial number, mother's maiden name or DNA markers. Nope. All anyone is going to ask is "May I scan you?" This latest evolution in the information age took its first tentative "Pong" step on Friday. The Jacobs family of Boca Raton Florida: Jeff, Leslie and their teenage son Derek joined the brave new world in less than a minute. Each had a tiny capsule the size of a grain of rice injected into an arm. It's called the VeriChip and it's like those ear tags the khaki clad adventurers of the Animal Channel staple onto sedated rhinos. Only in this case no dart guns or wrestling is involved.

Imbedded in the VeriChip is a phone number that has to be read by a by a special scanner. So, basically the Jacobs are like a jar of jam or a can of Spam. Their lives are nothing more than the sum of their bar code. The scanner reads the bar code that is linked up to VeriChip's operators, standing by at headquarters. There the operator reports back emergency phone numbers and medical history.

Here's my first problem. Have the Jacobs' called any operator lately? For their sake here's hoping that the folks at the other end of the VeriChip line are more like Julie, the perky Time/Life operator than the folks who dole out 411 information. Calling for directory assistance is more like a game of fiber optic Russian Roulette. You have better odds of getting a return on an Enron 401K than getting the right phone number.Read more