Monday, March 01, 2010
Fix the microwave and no one gets hurt
Ben Beagle
The aging, semi-hysterical retired reporter rides shotgun with the greatest station wagon driver of them all down the rocky road of life. Mondays in the paper's Extra section, steady as she goes.
Recent columns
Here is the aged, totally hysterical former reporter trying to live on this dying planet.
Listen. If you don't think this is a dying planet, just ask old Al Gore.
The other day, for example -- just after the TV died -- the microwave machine started smelling like it was going to catch on fire, and we disconnected it and learned that sensible people can't live without a microwave.
I mean, what's a cup of green tea if you can't nuke it?
And what are you going to do with the leftover chili? I ate it cold, and it wasn't half bad, but don't tell anybody at the Texas Tavern I said that.
This was also in the same time frame with Tiger Woods' famous apology to the whole country -- as if we didn't feel bad enough already.
I didn't pay any attention to it -- despite all those talking heads on CNN who were treating this as though it was major news.
Who needs an apology from Tiger Woods when his or her microwave has just been disconnected?
No Olympics thrill here
There was also the matter of the Winter Olympics, which tends rather to threaten my domestic bliss.
Which is to say that I don't care for the Olympics in any season, and the Greatest Station Wagon Driver of Them All really likes them.
This is why I don't say things like: "I'll watch this. Maybe one of the figure skaters will go bumpsy-daisy."
Or: "Boy. I'd sure like to look at some of that curling but it gets my heartbeat up too high."
I wouldn't be accused of being un-American for such remarks, but I'd be answered with the most chilling, disarming, diabolical remark ever made, as the Driver says it.
Which is: "Whatever."
Still without microwave
You can't argue with that response, and so I go to bed to continue rereading James Michener's "Chesapeake."
This is a book that starts crushing your chest after you get to the year 1701.
And then there was the Web site I clicked on as part of an attempt to get money back for anti-virus software that didn't work real good.
I got an attractive site that was in Japanese.
After one of those 800 calls that chill your blood, it looks like I'm going to get my money back.
But I don't know how to cook the bacon now that the microwave went south.
Ben Beagle's column runs every Monday in Extra.
