Smart Stuff: Can’t Live Without It.

Today’s headline:

The CIA is using popular TVs, smartphones and cars to spy on their owners.

There are Smart Shoes (auto-lacing. Wow.), Smart Watches, Smart Glasses, Smart Washers and Smarter Driers.

I’m at the point where I can’t do my banking without the latest bullshit $800 smartphone from Apple or whomever.

Everything is so convenient. Not secure, no ma’am, but very, very convenient.

And Feature-rich. You can do so much. You probably don’t even know eighty percent of what your smart products are capable of. Read that manual, make that bastard sing.

Cable-ready Smart TV? Won’t miss the latest Academy Awards and ridiculous screw-ups. Big fun. The Superbowl? Every year see which corporate human product beats which corporate human product. Live press conferences? Get to see the latest corrupt dipshit blubbering from the Oval office.

Some kid made fun of my phone the other day. Again.

I have an old fashioned flip phone from before World War II. I told him to go fuck himself, but the culture is changing and I’ll probably have to get a goddamn smartphone, big data package, lotsa texting, alarms and a camera and direct access to pornography wherever I am. Join the herd.

“Oh, look honey, a text from our five year old granddaughter.”

How have I survived? Until now, if I’m traveling and I get lost, I look at a map or ask a friendly native. A few years ago in Paris, I kept running into people who were wandering around exhausted, peering into smartphones, and they put them down long enough to plead, “Can you tell me which direction the river Seine is?” Lost like hell.

If we’re hungry in Italy, instead of standing on a busy corner and browsing all the places within a six-block radius, reading Yelp blather, we walk around the block and pick a restaurant. I have never been disappointed in my choice. 

I’ll cave. I’ll sign up for another subscription, more bills, headaches, more calls to “customer service”, more ridiculous emails with terrific savings and offers, the chance that one of my devices may be hacked, unauthorized charges, accounts drained.

When I’m ready to buy I’ll have to ask for help from my younger friends, best phone, best company, best package, average monthly bill, and hope that for once I’ll get a straight answer. Not likely.

Why aren’t people who drink smart water smart enough to know that crap isn’t making them any smarter?

Stand behind them in line sometime.

"Nobody knew that health care could be so complicated".

            "Nobody knew that health care could be so complicated."
             D. Trump, President of the United States of America

Well, hell, you fucking moron, I did. I have a general idea that it is complicated. Know why? Because unlike you, I don’t have sycophants and bootlickers to make my doctor’s appointments and to pick up my scripts, to get a few nurses over to the house for a “treatment”. I don’t have underlings to clear the waiting room and guide me through any lab tests or medical procedures, to bring the physical therapist to the palace, to set up the dental hygienist in the downstairs gym. No, dipshit, I’m on my own. If I run out of meds I hope that I don’t get hassled at the pharmacy, that they have enough to fill a prescription (that’s a little piece of paper with the name of the medication, the dosage, and the…ah fuck off, you won’t get it). Have you ever spent hours on the phone with a bored “customer service rep” trying to figure out some arcane crap regarding payments and refills? Fuck, no, you haven’t.

 I don’t have some junior assistant or Melania to roll me over and insert my meds, no sir, I have to take mine with a glass of water at the same time every day and I have to remember all by myself.

My doctor is hassled out of his mind because of all the goddamn paperwork. My old doc, now deceased (probably due to stress) told me that practitioners were working an average of two hours extra every day and seeing fewer patients. They are burning out, so for sure they know how complex it is.

I live in terror that my “provider”, (another funny fucked up term), will not approve the next test, the referral to a Cardiologist or the Dermatologist because it’s really actually possible that the provider might refuse coverage based on some microscopic motherfucking loophole.

I don’t have a bunch of lawyers to guarantee I get what I need. Nope, I spend hours on the goddamn telephone every month.

You dimwit.

EVERYONE knows it’s complicated. Everyone who has to take care of themselves, who's responsible for their families and their own lives, everyone who is NOT part of America’s Chosen, that species of wealthy shitwhores who have never had to stoop so low as the rest of us, we who don’t have slaves and inferiors, vassals and minions that have carried us through every wasteful day of our privileged lives.

So, yeah, the fact that you didn’t know something doesn’t mean no one else does.

“It’s complicated”.

Yeah, for us.

Jesus, what a dope.