Sunday, August 5, 2018

Random thoughts 180805



      I have railed in the past about phones, but thinking about it this morning, there is some good to be said about them. One thing I have observed is when being with young people any thought or concept that comes up in conversation can be instantly researched on google and young people do it. I remember the old days we would wonder about something and have to wait until we could get to a library to research it and oftentimes the thought would be lost before we could learn about it. With a phone a person can look something up and cross reference it in a matter of minutes.
      A few weeks ago Joyce had a perfume that she had bought earlier at our local flea market along with several others. Hailey was here and she asked Joyce what brand it was. Joyce did not know and she said she wished she did because she would like to have more. Hailey asked where the bottle was? Joyce showed it to her. It was a triangular shaped purple bottle and the tag underneath was printed so small it could not be read, except for the name Elizabeth Taylor. Hailey picked up her phone, said " hey google, purple bottle, Elisabeth Taylor perfume." Instantly the answer was there and the perfume was called passion. Joyce asked, "now I wonder where I can find that?" Hailey tapped a few keys and said, "here grandma you can order it right here. I'll send grandpa the link." Joyce would have never found her new favorite perfume without google. Now she has a fresh new bottle.
      I had a thought a few days ago. I decided to change Joyce's birthday from the old date to October 19th, her new birthday. After all she did die on October 19th of last year and was reborn a few minutes later. Joyce is good with the idea, so now it is officially her new birthday.
      Every morning as I awake, there is a song riff in my head that just keeps repeating constantly, sometime driving me to distraction. This morning's riff is from a song "Plastic Jesus." Read, as Paul Harvey used to say, "The rest of the story" before you watch the video of Paul Newman singing the song in the movie "Cool Hand Luke." Paul was at his peak in the movie and at the point when he made all the ladies think about how it would be to be with old Paul. I got to thinking about where I first heard the riff. Here is where I am amazed at how my memory works. It was late 1967, I was in a aircraft squadron aboard the USS Kitty Hawk, steaming off the coast of Vietnam in a wicked storm. No one wanted to be up on the flight deck with lightening striking, when Alvy D. Lindsay said "I don't worry about being up on the flight deck in a storm and then broke into the lyric," "I don't care if it rains or freezes, long as I got my plastic Jesus, standing on the dashboard of my car." I always wondered about if it was in praise of Jesus or a slam on the belief. It turns out the song was written by George Cromarty and Ed Rush in 1957 as a fake commercial about a Texas plastic company that made statues for dashboards of cars and in houses. It was a commercial parody and they sang it on a Texas radio station. I think it is a song of faith, but it was not intended that way.
      I have entrusted all of my writings to google these days. I had at one time everything I wrote on 8 by 11 paper stacked by the thousands in sweater boxes until we left the farm, when I burned them. Now I feel like google will be around forever and long after I am gone from this planet and maybe people will discover me in the future, more than they ever would have, had everything been just left on paper.

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