Snide Reply

Category: Humor

  • Old People Know Things, Too

    Old People Know Things, Too

    I retired from full-time work in 2024. At that time, I was one of the oldest people employed by the organization. I didn’t want to retire, but things transpired as things do, and I stopped working full-time.

    Of course, I used numerous technologies throughout my career—Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Teams, Outlook, and more. I’m familiar enough with them to appreciate Masood Boomgaard’s “F*** PowerPoint” video. In my current part-time job, I take attendance and enter my timesheets using apps on my phone.

    I’ve also used technology extensively in my personal life. I bought my first computer—a Mac Plus with a whopping 1 megabyte of RAM—in 1989. Now, there are more Apple devices in my home than there are people. Most of the legacy Macs are laptops, but there’s also an iPod or two, as well as a few iPads past their prime. Everything still works.

    Devices currently in use include two MacBook Airs, two iPhones, and a new iPad—a replacement for the last one, which was itself a replacement for the first. The newest iPad is huge compared to the rest—my only concession to needing a bigger, easier-to-read screen.

    I do everything on my devices. All my banking is online; I don’t even remember the last time I wrote a check. If I need one, I borrow one from my husband. I use Excel to comparison-shop everything from kitchen remodeling to deciding which Medicare supplement plan to buy.

    News? I get it online.

    Email? Available on my iPhone, Mac, and iPad.

    YouTube? iPhone, iPad, and Fire TV.

    Front door lock? Biometric.

    Doorbell? Has a camera.

    Furnace? I can change the temperature without getting out of bed.

    Driving? GPS, of course.

    But I don’t stop at the typical uses.

    Knitting? Knit Companion on the iPad.

    Home cleaning? Home Routines.

    Motivation? Finch.

    House training the dog? Puddle and Pile.

    If there’s an app for it, I’m on it.

    Many folks younger than me—especially Millennials and Zoomers—refuse to believe anyone born before them can use contemporary technology.

    It’s really starting to piss me off.

    Recently, I needed to enter a verification code that was texted to my iPhone. As I was about to automatically enter the code (a very nice feature, IMHO), a younger person leaned over my shoulder to show me how to do what I was just about to do. I, perhaps a little too snippily, said, “I know,” and let the phone do its thing.

    Because said person routinely shows her mother how to use technology, she assumed I would need a personal IT manager as well.

    It’s almost comically common for those younger than Boomers to believe we’re technological dinosaurs without the desire or mental capacity to learn anything—anything—new. There’s a witty Boomer response: I taught you how to use a spoon.

    The idea that Boomers are stupid, lazy, and proud of our lack of tech savvy simply isn’t true. We use smartphones, stream entertainment, shop and bank online, brag about our kids on Facebook, and catch up on the news. Some of us even know how to get our stupid routers to stop acting stupid. Most of us rely on technology to the point that we panic when the internet goes down.

    I was born before personal computers were a thing. I learned to write with a crayon. I graduated to pencils and pens by middle school and learned to type on a manual typewriter in high school. My secret crush is the IBM Selectric. IYKYK.

    In college, I wrote papers on a word-processing typewriter; the screen previewed about half a sentence at a time before the letters were typed onto the paper.

    I encountered business computing in a form my kids would recognize early in my career. Email, word processing, databases, and financial software were accessed through a terminal.

    The equipment and applications became more advanced as the years went on. Currently, I’m writing this post at my dining room table on a MacBook Air with a modest 8 GB of RAM. My iPhone and iPad are across the room. Everything is connected to 5G Wi-Fi. Clearly, this old person can use technology—despite being born when engineers used slide rules.

    Whippersnappers boast that they’re good at technology because they were born using it. Consider, though, that many haven’t upgraded their skills as each app iteration is released—they haven’t had to. At this point, nothing is new to them; it’s just improved.

    Boomers have been learning and adapting to technological change since childhood. Sure, by the time we reach our 50s, we may be a little tired of having to adapt—but we do it. We do it to stay current, to avoid becoming the dinosaurs we’re accused of being. Put that in your latte and drink it, Millennial.

    I taught my children much more than how to use a spoon. They cook (well, one of them does), clean, say please and thank you, know how to fold a fitted sheet (though they don’t do it), and only say “Can I go with?” to annoy me. They still call me when they don’t know how to do something, including deciphering the secret Boomer code (aka cursive) I use to write down recipes.

    If I know any actual Technological Boomer Dinosaurs, it’s my husband. He thinks technology hates him and only him. In his defense, he was born at the beginning of our cohort; I was born twelve years later—enough to make us seem like we’re from different generations. His rock stars were The Beatles; mine were Jimmy Page and Robert Plant.

    Recently, though, he started reviewing every movie ever made (or something like that—it’s a lot of movies) and publishing them on Substack. Without assistance. This morning, we had a conversation about open rates and views.

    Thanks to Mike Kalecki for this post’s title.

    Copyright Janice M. Lindegard

  • A Wild Ride Through a Bipolar Mind

    A Wild Ride Through a Bipolar Mind

    I’m lying in bed, having just woken from a nap. It’s afternoon, and I have a modestly expansive view of the outdoors through the sliding glass door to the balcony. That sounds grand but trust me—it owes more to the trailer park than Gosford Park.

    The sky is early-spring blue, and a typical Midwestern breeze blows—stronger than you’d like, but warm enough that you’ll take it. Fluffy white clouds drift by, placid and classic.

    I look equally placid. My brain, however, is not. I am bipolar; my brain knows only two speeds—light and sleep. Now, it’s spinning almost out of control, leaping from one thought to the next.

    Instead of pondering the shapes of the clouds—though one looked distinctly like a fat, ugly swan—I was thinking about adoption. Specifically, about how it’s often presented as a simple solution for building a family when all else fails.

    I’ve often heard, “Don’t worry. You can adopt,” as if adopting is like applying to college. “Don’t worry. If you don’t get into Harvard, you can always go to the College of DuPage.” I’ve adopted. It’s more like, “Don’t worry. If you don’t get into Harvard, you can just go to Yale.”

    My mind hopped from adoption to the increase in infants born in the United States due to abortion bans. That led directly to Donald Trump’s treatment of Volodymyr Zelensky. This makes sense if you make the mental leaps typical of a bipolar mind. Less so if you’re neurotypical.

    Back to Trump, Vance, and Zelensky. It was disgusting to watch the Dracula of U.S. presidents and his sidekick, J.D. Renfield, belittle the leader of another country—an ally. I wanted to be a fly on the wall when Putin reveals what he really thinks of Trump.

    From Trump, I jumped to free speech. Probably not too surprising a leap. Paranoia then entered the picture, and I feared that writing bad things about the Vindictive Commander-in-Chief would get me arrested and tossed in jail with the liberal elite.

    Telling myself that wasn’t very likely—as I’m not very elite—I dove deeper into free speech. “Fuck the Draft” zipped to an anti-gun shirt my son once wore to school. Though his teachers appreciated the sentiment, he was “dress-coded” nonetheless. The shirt showed a child surrounded by crayons and a gun. “Nine out of ten children prefer crayons to guns,” it said. Those children are probably the spawn of the liberal elite.

    I pulled myself out of my head and back to the present as a woman passed by, pushing a stroller. I checked the time and wondered what state I had left the kitchen in. I told myself I should have gotten up a while ago.

    Then I did. I had to pee.

  • Siri has a dirty mind. . .still

    Some time ago, my daughter asked my iPad what the windchill was on that particular day. Siri responded, “Would you like me to search my fellatio football?”

    When iOS7 came out recently, I upgraded and though Siri’s voice has changed, her mind doesn’t appear to have climbed from the gutter.

    This morning my daughter asked Siri, “Where does corn grow?” This was Siri’s response:

    Image

  • Heigh, Ho, Racism! Away!

    Everyone’s buzzing about Paula Deen. An overweight white woman who made millions showing the rest of us how to get overweight, all the while giggling like a ninny, has got the entire country outraged over her racist ways. She’s lost her TV shows, her book deals and her sponsors. She’s apologized three or four times—I’ve lost count now—and we’re all still talking about what a racist cow she is.

    Meanwhile, back at the ranch, a white man takes a job away from a Native American and nobody says a damn thing.

    Johnny Depp owes Paula Deen a big fat thank you, preferably sandwiched between two Krispy Kremes.

    See, Johnny has cast himself as Tonto in The Lone Ranger, Disney’s latest cinematic release. Yeah, yeah, Disney did the casting, but Johnny Depp is Johnny Depp and he’s a big enough star that he gets to do whatever the hell he wants. He wants to play Tonto? He gets to play Tonto.

    And Johnny’s Tonto is as far from the Tonto I grew up with as a Tonto could be. My Tonto was played by a man named Jay Silverheels. Jay’s dad was a Canadian Mohawk tribal chief. Johnny claims that his great grandparents said some relative on down the family line had Native American blood. My family had a similar kind of story about Grandpa Mike. Johnny’s not really sure what tribe, but you know, Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek? What’s the diff?

    The diff is a big one if you’re hoping to be accepted in many tribes. Many have rules regarding how much tribal blood you need to be recognized by, well, your tribe. The Mississippi band of Choctaw would turn their backs on Johnny. They have a 50 percent rule.

    Johnny’s lucky, though. Not only is his great-grandma’s cousin’s nephew’s sister-in-law Native American, but Disney got Johnny around all that nasty blood business. He was adopted by a Comanche activist and accepted into the Cherokee Nation. That, and a big fat Disney donation to the American Indian College Fund, makes Johnny a Native American!

    Whether or not Depp’s got enough tribal blood to fill a thimble, though, isn’t my biggest problem with him playing the loyal friend of the LR.

    My biggest problem with Johnny is that he’s making shit up about Native Americans and throwing it all up on the screen to see what sticks.

    I’ve been to the North Woods in Wisconsin a few times. The place we stayed is a beautiful resort on a wide lake in the middle of the forest. Bald eagles nest there; people fish there; snakes swim in the water there; I don’t swim in the water there. And Native Americans call the place home. The resort sits in the middle of an Ojibwe Reservation.

    First stop after getting to the lake cottage would be a visit to the local grocery store, where we would see real-live Native Americans. Not one of them walked around in full ceremonial paint with a dead bird for a hat. They all had shirts on, too, it being not the beach and all. But Johnny Depp plays Tonto in full whiteface, no shirt on his back and a big black bird on his head. Sort of a reverse Al Jolson, if you will.

    Here’s the kicker, though. Depp believes that he is doing Native American children a favor by reminding them of their noble warrior heritage. Never mind that the head-scalping warrior is the first thing that comes to mind when many non-native Americans think about their native neighbors. Never mind that Native American children have Native American doctors and lawyers to look up to today. Never mind that any number of Native American actors could have played a more authentic and, to my mind at least, hotter Tonto.

     

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    Johnny Depp’s arrogance knows no bounds, though. The man who has less Native American blood in him than a wooden dime-store Indian, grinds Native Americans into the Hollywood soil with a twist of his mocassin’d foot. The only thing Depp reminds Native American children is they still aren’t good enough to play their own people in the movies.

    So, call Paula Deen racist. She did, afterall, use the N-word and fantasize about a plantation-style wedding replete with all Black waiters. And for her racism, she lost work. Unfortunately, Johnny Depp’s racism doesn’t cost him work; it costs the very people he claims to revere.

  • Tat’s Funny!

    koi dragon tatoo
    Tatoo: Ink180 http://www.ink180.com

    Daugther, husband and I were walking down the street together not too long ago and the conversation turned to tattoos. My husband hates them and finds all of them ugly. Our son can’t wait to get one. I think some of them are just fine and have toyed with the idea of getting one myself. Here was the conversation.

    Me: I don’t know. I think some tattoos are ok.

    Husband: Hmph.

    Me: Maybe I’ll get one across my low back, you know, right above my butt.

    Daughter: And it can say “Kiss This.”

    Note: Ink180 is a tatoo parlor located in Oswego, IL, not too far from my home. It is a non-profit ministry, founded by tatoo artist Chris Baker, dedicated to “transforming gang & human trafficking tattoos into something beautiful.”

    While I knew about gang tatooing, I had no idea that pimps would tatoo the women and men who work for them as a symbol of ownership. Ink180 donates coverup tatoos to help former gang members and sex workers leave their past lives. When son turns 18, I’m suggesting he go to Ink180.

    Here’s an example of a coverup tat’ . . .

    cover up tatoo art
    Cover up tatoo by Ink180. http://www.ink180.com

  • Tellin’ it like it is

    From the back seat of the car came this dialogue:

    My son, to his sister: You’re an ungrateful little brat!

    My daughter: So are you!

    My son: No. I’m an ungrateful big brat.

  • This is one funny guy; read his stuff

    I’m the world’s worst at blog rolling, so I think I’ll just reblog posts from bloggers I love. Here’s the first.

    I love this blogger. He doesn’t post regularly, but when he does it’s absolutely worth it. Today’s post had me laughing out loud and I’m still smiling.

    Mike is Happy's avatarMike is happy.

     

    Screen Shot 2013-05-07 at 9.50.59 AM

     

    Aww. 😦

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  • Happy International Women’s Day

    My gift to you this IWD are the following tweets, in the order they appeared in my feed. This is by way of amusing you (I hope), demonstrating my lack of dinosaurosity (I may be old, but I know a hashtag when I see one), and putting together a really quick post so I can go back to recovering from the chaos that is home improvement and writing about my miserable childhood (to be published some day, perhaps soon).

    @craigkielburger:

    Around the world, women spend 200 hours a day cumulatively collecting water. #internationalwomensday

    @JimmyChooLtd:

    Wishing all women around the globe a happy #internationalwomensday.

    I’ll leave you with the happy image of women, water jugs on their heads, tottering through the third world in their Jimmy Choos.

  • My son said something funny I can write about!

     

     

    I’ve said numerous times that my son’s sense of humor is so obscene that I can’t write most of what he says. I attempt to keep my blog relatively family friendly and he tends to use far too many F-words for print. A while ago, though, he uttered the following gem.

    My daughter and her friend were in the back seat, singing along to a favorite song. It was something kind of Selena Gomez-ish or maybe it was Call Me Maybe. Regardless, they were young girls and sang in those screechingly high, thin voices that make even in-tune singing painful to hear. The girls were not singing in tune. It wasn’t bothering me as I will accept just about any sound that isn’t whining. My son, however, is a musician.

    “My god, Mom,” he said, “It sounds like somebody’s grabbed a camel by the testicles!”

     

  • Follow Me

    Image: Beyond Bliss Poodles
    Image: Beyond Bliss Poodles

    Just about every blogger I follow has done the Search Terms post. Because every one else was doing it, I did it, too. And, no, I would not jump off a cliff if everyone else were doing it.

    For the uninitiated, the Search Terms post is about the terms people type into Google that then lead them to a blog. I know lots of bloggers who have really cool search terms in their records, like “the most beautiful chickens.”

    Me? I get people who are either really kinky or really worried they’re kinky. A while back, I wrote about accidentally seeing my son’s penis. Since then, my top five search terms always include at least three referencing “son’s penis.” Today’s top search term was “son wants to drop out of high school.” I sympathize; my son has spoken the same blasphemy, causing me to write a letter to Dave Grohl. When I finally become a Twit, I will tweet Mr. Grohl and see if he tweets back—or whatever is supposed to happen. Hey! I should do that! Blog Fodder!!

    Of course, the next three terms included “son” and various words for penis. Coming in at number five was the disturbing “dark skin women titties.” I don’t think I ever want to meet that person; I certainly don’t want him (I never said I wasn’t sexist) anywhere near my daughter. And it better not be my son.

    Because I am completely preoccupied most of the time and when I am not preoccupied I am being interrupted, I only recently discovered that my computer keeps track of the terms I have searched. I research just about every situation I encounter so my Google search history has become a sort of historical record of Janice.

    Some search terms I remember using, like “shark socks.” My son’s girlfriend has a sock fixation. Among her favorite foot coverings is a pair of Batman socks, complete with little capes. My son decided she needed shark socks, so I searched for shark socks. I was hoping for something ferocious, but most were really lame and barely recognizable as ferocious man-eaters. I did find a very cool pair I could have knit for Girlfriend, but I’m pretty sure the “don’t knit a sweater for a boyfriend” caveat probably has a corollary: don’t knit socks for a girlfriend, especially if she’s not even your own girlfriend. My son settled on Robin socks to go with the Batman socks.

    image-sockrobincape-primary-watermark

    I frequently search for information related to my kids, like “how much water should a 10-year old drink,” “puberty for girls,” “good curfew for teen,” and “getting high with morning glory seeds.”

    The reasons behind some of my search terms seem mysterious if you aren’t particularly familiar with me. “Three squatting myths that refuse to die” could be about Occupy Wall Street or whether squats are harmful to runners’ knees. You might think I was planning a murderous rampage if you saw “how many rounds can a semi-automatic rifle shoot in one minute,” but the opposite is true.

    Some of the things I’ve searched are just plain gross, like “phlegm and coughing after exercise.” Some I’m not even sure I actually searched. While I agree with the sentiment, I have no idea why I searched “and i feel so much depends on the weather” or if I even searched it. I know I didn’t search “pandas” and “giant panda coloring pages.” I bet if I looked in my print queue, I’d find someone printed  35 copies of a Giant Panda coloring page. I also bet she’ll soon be searching “discount price on ink jet cartridges.”

    I have a pretty good idea who searched “when will Earth die.” I know I never would because I just get depressed when I think about it and, with bipolar disorder, I don’t need any help getting depressed. I do a lot of searching about bipolar disorder and bipolar meds. I remember why I searched “forgetfulness and Lamotrigine,” but I don’t remember what I learned.

    I search medical issues for my family, too. Recently, I searched “kidney stone pain,” and “Edward Hospital ER wait time,” then “ureteral stent,” and finally, “can probiotics stop diarrhea.” I learned that kidney stone pain is worse than childbirth, particularly if the person who is experiencing the kidney stone pain has lousy veins in his right arm and the medical worker doesn’t listen to the person’s wife when she says the veins in the left arm are better until he’s blown out two veins in the patient’s right arm. And, yes, probiotics can help stop diarrhea. You’re welcome.

    Following the flurry of kidney stone related searches and their attending life events, I did something I swore I’d never do, so I’m glad I only swore it to myself. Looking for a cheap thrill, I’ve searched “standard poodle puppies” for the past two days. Yup, I’m reduced to looking at pictures of puppies to escape the fun and frivolity of living with a man in constant pain, a daughter who regularly criticizes everything from the way I wake her up to the way my bingo wings flap when I shake a pair of dice, to a son who is more mercurial than Mercury.

    The poodle puppy pity party was effective. For a few minutes, I imagined myself and FiFi, jogging along the prairie path, the wind ruffling our hair, Fifi perfectly trained so that even the occasional pheasant didn’t cause her to break stride. In fact, poodle puppy pictures were so soothing that I upped the ante today. I’m blaming a book I am currently reading but I’m still almost ashamed to admit what I’ve been doing. In fact, I think I’ll do a search: “is it weird to look at baby pictures on the web.”

    Extra credit: There is an inside joke about the Boy Wonder socks. Guess what it is and I’ll write a post about your blog next week.