Hayter’s article for July 31, 2022
“The Supernatural”
I must caution you that this week’s episode involves some things that may make you feel stupid. In my case, stupider. If you would like to forgo the read and skip over to the word jumble, I wouldn’t blame you. I’d do it, but I can’t work those things.
I see eight of you who are sticking with me like grim death. You noble few. All right, I call our first episode “The Dancing Flower”. At the moment, four small plastic flowers are dancing on our kitchen window sill. Earlier this week, there were five. Shiela, the girl who was in the middle, is now in pieces.-- Beg pardon? Oh, flowers are female. What else could they be? Each of them has a girly name -- Rose, Jasmine, Daisy, Buttercup…
Where was I? Oh, yeah, I’m trying to fix Sheila. So, I licked my pointer finger and cleaned her solar panel. It didn’t help. Then I noticed her head was tilted back a bit, so I gently pulled it forward, causing it to snap.
I think it was Confucius who said, “A headless, non-dancing flower is akin to dust in the wind.” The band “Kansas” even made a song about the saying. Okidoke, my immediate concern had to do with Kay noticing that one of her flowers was missing.
The rational thing to do was to grab two of the remaining flowers and put them in the window of the guest room. That way when she notices two flowers in the kitchen, she’ll assume three more are in the guest room. Same thing when she notices the two in the guest room. Since she can’t be in both rooms at once, she may not catch on.
Just as I was about to toss the Sheila, the non-dancer. an idea came to mind. Ever since I saw my first solar-powered dancing flower, I wanted to know how the thing worked. Same with the dancing Santa Claus, bumble bee, and seagull. Such technology is a wonderment. And one item costs only a dollar. At least they did when Kay bought five of ‘em. The price has since spiked. Now you can only get ‘em at “$4 or More Store”
I didn’t think the flower was worth four dollars, so decided to dissect it, so I could learn how the bells and whistles made the ol’ girl dance. Five minutes into the dissection I learned that the operation on the flower’s innards was a beast. The outer shell was a dark plastic and hard as “Titleist 2”. I gave up on the butcher knife after realizing I was about to lose a thumb.
Next, I used metal-cutting scissors. It had always been good at thick cardboard and aluminum pans. The snips couldn’t cut through the plastic, so I started clipping tiny parts of it off with the pointy end. Eventually, I got through to the inner bucket, which pulled apart, throwing the guts all over the place.
At that moment, I saw what no person should ever see. It made me weep. I don’t think there’s a person on this planet who could put a dancing flower together by hand.
The Sheila had a tiny roll of copper wire affixed to the bottom of her pot. The wire was as thin as hair. Curled up, it was smaller than a dime. There was a tiny piece of metal that was magnetized by the small solar panel Every item in that bucket was connected to the inner workings. There is not a human being on earth who could coil the wire, and then affix it to the magnet at one end and the solar panel on the other, with a connection to three parts of the flowers. Maybe a sloth could. Those things have patience.
No, the flower had to be created and assembled by a multi-purpose machine with tiny parts. The type of machine that makes computer chips. The cost of creating a design for the machine and then assembling the thing would suck the air right out of you. And for that, you will make a product that must be sold at a “$4 or More Store”.
That brings us to episode two. It begins with Kay and me driving down to Pasadena last week. After hearing five minutes of Kay’s discussion on web-worms, I asked her the name of a song, that kept bouncing inside my noggin. She asked me who sang the song, the name of the song, and some of the lyrics.
I told her that part of the lyrics involved a circus and a clown. What’s the tune? “I don’t know, uh, “ta, da, da, da, da, ta”. Kay grabbed her phone, touched an app, and then shoved the thing in front of my mouth. And I was driving! She said, “Hum the tune and give part of the lyrics.” I did the “ta, da” thing and said “a circus and a clown”. That was it.
Kay removed the phone from my nose, touched something on the screen, waited three seconds, and then said, “Faithfully by Journey”. I kid you not! Then she touched on “Faithfully” and a guitar and piano set the mood and then Steve Perry starts with “Highway run, into the midnight sun…”
Then it hit me. Bonk! Every moment of every day, hundreds of thousands of songs are moving back and forth from tower to satellite, to computer and cell phone. All you have to do is touch your phone in the right place, say something relevant, hum a tune, and in a matter of seconds, you will receive the name of the song, the singer, and the place to touch that will play the song for you.
That’s not natural. It’s a few steps beyond natural. I’ve lived to witness it, but I’ll not live long enough to understand it. I would like to live long enough, though, to learn how my remote works, but Kay won’t let me take the thing apart.
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