I Could Be Wrong, But...
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Unless noted otherwise, all writing on ICBWB.com is by David Boyne. No one else is to blame. And while David Boyne does not own the words he has used (English being a truly open source code) the exact way he has arranged those words is protected by copyright laws. Thank you for playing. |
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Easter Eggs I’m a happy and well-adjusted individual. Yet, once in a while, I would like to stop being me. I imagine the possibilities if I were to be someone else. Don't get me wrong, being me is a blast. It's just that after spending all my time with me, I sometimes need a break, a vacation. But every time I travel, I insist on coming along. Everywhere I go, there I am. As long as I can remember, I have been working two full-time 24/7 jobs—being totally self-absorbed and being totally self-involved. Neither job pays the rent or provides health care benefits. And as fun as it usually is to be me, after so many years without a rest, I’m exhausted. I could be wrong, but I suspect I'm not alone in this self-weariness. We do our jobs, take care of business, pay the bills, floss regularly. We play by the rules and we play nice. We keep up with the group and we color within the lines. We don't touch the Picasso and we don't talk back. And then one rush-hour morning on I-5, one of us decides to give the steering wheel of her Ford Explorer a huge spin, like a roulette wheel, gambling that the cars surrounding her are no more real, no more dangerous, than bumper cars at the fairground. And when the reporters later interview her neighbors, the quotes read, "She was pretty quiet, kept to herself. Always smiled; said good morning. I never would have imagined." All the time we are being well adjusted, life is passing. All the time we are doing what’s expected of us, life is passing. And somewhere deep inside, we are quietly, desperately, yearning. Until we suddenly see that steering wheel as a roulette wheel, and say, "What the hell!” And give it a big spin. Perhaps because I sometimes tire of being me, I have become hyper-attuned to the many mysterious mini-doors to Other Worlds that an increasing number of bored humans are embedding in our increasingly removed-from-Nature world. Just slow down and look around. You’ll start to see these doors. Like Easter Eggs. Easter Egg is the name given to secret mini-programs software engineers plant in the mind-numbingly dull code they write. For example, in the page layout program many graphic artists use, called Quark, if you select something on your page to delete and then simultaneously press the command, shift, option and delete keys, a miniature animated space alien appears on your computer monitor, tromps across the screen, raises a ray gun, and zaps the selected item into who knows where. Another example is the email program I use, Outlook Express, which has a menu option, "Switch Identity". Don’t tempt me. Or how about this: Who in their well-behaved mind decided to program all credit card machines and automatic teller machines to prompt us with, "Swipe card?” Delightfully subversive message that. And what about the phenomena of people becoming disappeared? I read recently that 40,000 people every year opt-in on opting-out. They disappear themselves. We call them “missing persons,” as if they are no more than misplaced car keys or cell phones. I wonder...where do they all go? Is there any chance that the cashier with the degree in graphic arts who rang up my purchases in Trader Joes yesterday combined the option "Swipe Card," by taking my credit card, then went home to his computer, opened Outlook, and selected the option "Switch Identity?" Then he hit the command-shift-option-delete keys on his Quark program and zapped his old self into who knows where. And a new him popped up somewhere in the Time Space Continuum, naked, but for my fully-loaded credit card. | |||