Conrad, Jerome K Jerome and How The Machines Are Out To Get Us.

If you observe my photo in this blog's background, you will observe that I am advanced in years - 51 - and not entirely sylph-like and sleek.  Not sure what I weigh but I am fairly hefty and come in XL Size.  Nor do I exercise - an unpleasant occupation that means not being able to drink pots of tea, pints of beer or sit and read books.

My employer, who I am still being coy about, had a day of events since today is 24/7/2013 and the charitable focus is on those who care for others 24/7.  One of those events was Anna's Boxercise class, which I had half-agreed to on our night out last week.

So, this hefty, idle and large individual managed 45 minutes of Boxercise class without fainting or dying, which I think is pretty frickin' impressive actually.  By the end I was glowing red, knackered and looked as if showered in a sweat fountain, but! still alive and hale.


How I felt afterwards

Three Men In A Boat
    Before all you dirty-minded illiterates start a-snickering, this is a splendid novel by JKJ, only partly eclipsed by "Three Men on the Bummel" - stop snickering at the back there!
     Anyway, it includes a wonderful account of what I would like to dub "The Insolence of the Inanimate".  The three heroes have brought along a tin of pineapple chunks on their boat trip, but have forgotten a tin-opener, and try other improvised means to open it.  Some of these are so dangerous they are lucky to remain un-maimed.  Eventually they resort to battering the tin with a rock, until they batter it into a shape that frightens them so much, they pitch it into the river.
     That shape, dear reader "horribly resembled a grin".
     Dear me, a long intro.  Anyway, I was reminded of this when I extracted my I-pod's earphones from my shirt pocket, where they had been neatly looped.  Inevitably, every single time, they snag on the pens in my pocket.  I have to scramble to avoid pens scattering onto the pavement.  Then, attempting to unravel the earphones, they turn into a horrid stringy mass of knots that have to be patiently unscrambled. 
     I ask you, how does this happen?  How?  HOW! 
     It's like the power cable for the mobile, all of half a centimetre across, and which I unfailingly and unerringly manage to park my chair leg on.  How does that happen?
     Clifford Simak wrote a short story about this, about machines coming to life in order to thwart their human creators.
     Philip K Dick* also warned of how the machines are going to club together and take over - his most resonating fear being that it wouldn't be a big giant monster machine stomping down Main Street, it would be the toaster that told you how things were going to be from now on -
     Tins of pineapple, earphones - join the dots, Vilhemina, we're going to be bowing to our machine overlords any day now ..
.
Note only 5 arms reaching - one obviously severed in the tin-opening process


Of course Dick isn't dead.  No, instead he - but that's a story for another blog