Get Dressed To Make A Phone Call

When you're a kid your life is nothing but a series of firsts. First steps, first teeth, first broken bone, first driver's license, first kiss, first run-in with John Law, the list goes on and on. But as you get older the list grows shorter and shorter. You've done many things at least once, and the older you get, the less inclined you are to doing anything new or anything dangerous. If you haven't ever jumped from an airplane once you turn 30 chances are good you never will. And I'm over 30. But I did buck the trend today, and had another first.
   I had my first Skype call.
   Since my computer has a camera built-in I've had this capability for a year and half now, but I never downloaded Skype, never installed it, never felt the need to. But a friend of mine is doing some freelance work and is using up her cell phone minutes, and she was under the mistaken impression that I used Skype regularly. She is also one of those people who doesn't have a land line, for some unfathomable reason. I did a quick install, set up my account, and she called me. It was interesting, much like video teleconferences they've had for decades, but from the convenience of my own living room.
   I gotta say, I don't like the idea of having to get dressed to make a phone call.
   I knew she was going to call, so I combed my hair. Not something I'm used to doing for a phone conversation. That's the great thing about phone calls, you can do anything - and I do mean ANYTHING, just ask my sister - while you're talking to someone. But not with Skype. I have to sit in my chair at my desk, stare into the camera so I look engaged, and be careful not to make any noises that the microphone might pick up. And trust me, I make a lot of noises no one else wants to hear.
   It's convenient for keeping in touch with loved ones, foreign exchange students talking to their parents back home, for instance, but for a quick chat or what have you, I'm not so sure video phones are a great idea. If I gotta make sure I'm wearing pants before I answer the phone something's not right with the world.

Mastodons And Banana Peels

I got to thinking about cavemen the other day. And I don't mean Otzi the iceman, I mean real cavemen from like 30,000 years ago, before cities, before science, probably even before writing. They lived hard lives, even a minor cut could get infected and lead to death, let alone anything as serious as getting mauled by a sabretoothed tiger or giving birth. But they soldiered on, invented agriculture and civilization and didn't have time for things like depression or road rage, even though they probably invented roads.
   But what did they find funny?
   There are certain universal tropes in humor - slipping a banana peel, for instance, or anything the Stooges do - but some things just aren't funny across cultures. Japanese don't think American humor is funny because it mocks people, while what the French find funny wouldn't be amusing in a New Yorker cartoon. And Dane Cook is never funny to anyone anywhere. People who lead hard lives need a lot of funny to unwind; both the Greeks and the Romans had a grand comic tradition, and Elizabethan England with its plagues, wars, and pestilences had Shakespeare and his hilariously funny comedies.
   So cavemen, who led lives ten times harder than the most abject Roman slave, had to have some kind of humor. What would they have found funny?
   I don't think satire would be a big hit with cavemen, which means irony would probably be right out. No Ben Franklin or Mark Twain for guys wearing bear furs. Since they didn't really have political institutions (that we know of) then there wouldn't have been a caveman Stephen Colbert . No witty rejoinders a la Oscar Wilde or Dorothy Parker, no clever cocktail party talk since they didn't have cocktails. Or probably parties for that matter.
   We're left with really broad humor, Three's Company kind of stuff, where Og shares a cave with Nee and Maa, two curvy, bouncy cave girls while putting one over on Old Man Nuk who only lets Og stay in the cave because Og pretends to be gay.
   Doubtless cavemen would have found face-slapping amusing, so the Stooges would have been a big hit. Also Gilligan's Island, although they might have found the premise more of tragedy than a comedy. And they probably would have killed Gilligan the first time he cost them a trip off the island.
   Maybe I'm selling our caveman ancestors short here, but I think they would have found farts immensely funny. I know I thought farts were funny when I was little and they're still hilarious to this day, so I don't think cavemen would have taken the high ground on this one.
   Did cavemen have limericks? 'There once was mastodon from Nantucket...'
   See? This is why I need a time machine, so I can solve this kind of question. Let's get the egghead scientists cracking on this one.

Lost In The Sands Of Time

The other day I was cleaning out a closet - more like rearranging it, really - and I found a small can of paint. So I got to thinking, somebody must have invented paint. Somewhere, some time, some dude thought that it would be a good idea to coat a piece of wood in a layer of stuff that would keep it from getting wet or keep bugs away. But that had to have been so long ago, thousands of years. We know who invented the light bulb, but there's no way we'd ever know who invented paint.
   Thinking further, I wondered what other ubiquitous things had to have been invented by people we're never going to know.

Forks
   Soap
Mayonnaise
   Thread
Coasters - the kind you put under glasses
   Ink
Boat oars
   Fences
Hammers
   Erasers, either chalkboard erasers or the ones on the end of a pencil
Buttons and button holes
   Wire

This is the kind of thing that occupies my day.