Distaste for the Illogical

Concerning the suburbs of nearby Boston, I find myself confounded over a pair of recent transpirings. Everyone has his or her own way of evaluating the necessity of pressing the 9 and 1 buttons on the telephone. These two examples are at each extreme of that scale, leaving people like me to wonder if it’s worth calling if I’m suffering my own emergency.

In the first instance, a suitcase with an attached note and cell phone was left dormant in front of a Lawrence, MA district courthouse this afternoon. After it was discovered by a maintenance worker, he found the need to phone it in as an emergency. Rightfully so, seeing as it could potentially represent a serious threat to the municipal building’s staff and bystanders.

The call was treated with apathy.

Worker - “I’d like to report that there’s a suitcase laid suspiciously near the entrance to the courthouse, and it’s been there a while.”

Dispatcher - “Uh huh.”

Worker - “It should be reported, maybe have it looked at by the authorities.”

Dispatcher - “Ok. Great.” (click)

A follow up call was made, and the dispatcher once again hung up. After an internal investigation was launched following the incident, the dispatcher might be in pretty hot water. Oh, and the bomb squad who arrived on the scene after the call was deemed to be of a more serious nature detonated the package. Here’s a picture;

Courtesy of Fox News

In another story taking place at Boston Latin Academy, (the Alma Mater of people like Benjamin Franklin) the police were called and the school was shut down for more urgently serious concerns;

Vampires.

Yes. Boston Latin Academy was shut down because several students had been complaining of vampires in the building. The rumors of vampires roaming the halls and biting students were forwarded to police from several of the school’s pupils, leading to the investigation and subsequent lockdown of an entire school in Greater Boston.

I only wish that instead of pretending to be sick when I didn’t feel like going to school, I had thought of this instead.

Furthermore, I’m shocked that in our terrorist-susceptible culture, vampires were taken more seriously than a possible bomb threat.

If only there were a bomb in the school and vampires outside the courthouse. Oh, my.

Instead of spending the day contemplating why I never took an English class cool enough to get assigned a book THIS awesome , I’ll instead reflect on the concept of luck and how it’s apparently singled out my life for complete degradation.

Take this morning for instance.

I woke up an hour early in order to prepare myself for my first day at my second job (somehow, my needing a second job is the economy’s fault). The first place I called was the auto body shop, to see if one day’s worth of paint work would be finished already (8 days had transpired).

Barring the fact that further attempts to “fix” my car would cause cracks in crucial parts of its anatomy (such as the wheels and engine), I would not be able to collect it before I went in to work. So I called a few friends for a chance at being ferried to my first job shift.

Nobody could do it, and I decided to grab my sister’s keys and comandeer HER automobile. The backup keys had always been in the same basket by the door for the past three years, but for some reason they decided to go missing in action fifteen minutes before I was supposed to be at work. In subsequent desperation, I did some things I’m not proud of to make the vehicle usable.

Despite being unable to remove half of my facial piercings (and losing several components of the other half down the toilet), I had made it to work only fifteen minutes late, which wasn’t half bad in light of how my morning was going. On the bright side, at least I didn’t suffer a freak heart attack, die, and go to hell.

After an awkward day of training, I returned home to change clothes for my shift at my other job. I returned my sister’s car and hopped on a bicycle that I spent fifteen minutes brushing cobwebs off of and pedaled to work. The skies had opened up at some point during my evening shift, and it began pouring rain in anticipatory salvos shortly before I clocked out to go home. The rain had knocked over a bucket of grease behind the dumpster, which is exactly where I had stashed my bicycle to evade the sweeping eyes of opportunists and neighborhood theives. As I got on my bike, I imagined that the scent of rotting meat and three-week-old eggrolls was enveloping me through convection in a kind of stink bubble, forming a symbiotic aura which would forever flatline my chances of ever getting laid again. As I pedaled home in the rain, with my silk work kimono-turned-rain-shield tied around my head flapping in the breeze, I imagined that I was spared from the shame of pedestrians witnessing my sorry spectre because people don’t tend to walk places when it’s pouring rain. In actuality, it was probably my bicycle’s grease-garbage stank that was driving the population of my city into exile.

But I digress. Being lucky seems to be a state that arrives in waves, forming a yin and yang in both our own actions and the events which befall us. Here are some examples of other people who have suffered much WORSE luck.

I can always thank AOL news for making me feel better about myself on any given terrible day. Either that or Judith Voirst.

Instead of tackling my laundry problem today (where I contemplated the feasibility of combining ‘lights’ and ‘darks’ in one massive cycle), I decided to browse the internet for news stories about whatever I felt like reading. A typical start to a bloggy day, I’ve come to realize.

There was a consistent theme to all of the stories I had found/been sent without provocation. It seems this had been a week where the ideals of love are surfacing again and again in the broad spectrum of human (and even cybernetic) emotion.

I get a sense that the Case of Caylee Anthony isn’t going to go well for the defense. In Orlando, Casey Anthony, the 22-year-old  mother of slain infant Caylee is in hot water, as new evidence keeps turning up against her. I hear often enough from many people that a mother could never kill her own daughter, even if pictures of skeletons are discovered on her computer. A mother’s love is unrivaled, despite the mom’s most recent google searches include “neck breaking” and “household weapons.” And even if Casey Anthony was the uncontested citizen of the year, there must certainly be an explanation for her mother’s frantic series of 911 calls, indicating her certainty that “it smells like there’s been a dead body in the damn car.”

An infant was crying in terror at my place of employment this very evening, thrown into an incomprehensible fit of babyish screaming at the display of fire on the hibachi grill (I work at a Japanese steakhouse, and not a place which arbitrarilly presents fire to small children). As loudly as I proclaimed to my coworkers that I wanted that “little crap factory to shut its stupid fat face,” never would the thought of ending its short life have even entered my mind masquerading as a viable solution.

It is well known that human beings are capable of sensing the emotion known as ‘love,’ and direct that feeling in the form of various benevolent actions towards others. I have expressed this feeling retributionally with old girlfriends in the form of ‘not complaining while being forced to sit through “The Notebook,”‘ and ‘letting her choose which generic ethnic food theme we’ll go out for tonight.’

But can the feelings be overwhelming? A love-based need or dependency wearing a human being out? That may be the case with John Gosselin, star of TLC’s John and Kate Plus Eight, who has been allegedly separated from wife Kate Gosselin and their teeming throngs of children. Instead, John was cited by InTouch and RealityTV Magazine as having spent a lot of time drunkenly partying with local college volleyball teams. Too much love perhaps breeds unbearable amounts of responsibility.

Yet another thought; Is it possible for inanimate objects (like tumbleweeds, forinstance) to express a feeling like love towards human beings? Can it be validated? Would a robot be a better replacement for a murdering mother or an on-the-brink father of way too many children?

Scientists and researchers as Toshiba’s Akimu Robotic Research Institute have found a way to program robots to  feel the equivalent of the human emotion called ‘love.’ It’s frightening enough that parents can experience blowouts, but I believe it is far more terrifying that the robot these scientists have developed will often become quickly attatched to what or whomever it sees, and in some cases, will physically not permit the target of its affection to leave its sight or immediate area.

Take for instance, the newest intern at the lab. When it came time for her to leave one evening, “Kenji (the robot) refused to let her out of his lab enclosure and used his bulky mechanical body to block her exit and hug her repeatedly.”

Said Dr. Takahashi, the project lead;

“Despite our initial enthusiasm, it has become clear that Kenji’s impulses and behavior are not entirely rational or genuine.”

Touche, Dr. Takahashi. Touche. A circular argument indeed.