Bullet Thoughts // 10.09.08

• I’ve been thinking a lot about zombies these days.  Like, for instance, I realized that zombies don’t sweat.  It could be a hundred and two degrees outside and they would be as dry as November leaves.  Saunas and steam rooms will be wasted on them.  Antiperspirants will never be on their grocery lists.  (Deodorants, maybe; but never antiperspirants.)  Another zombie-related thought that pervades me every morning is that I always feel a horde of them is hiding in the shadows just outside my house, and are waiting to pounce on (and eat) me as soon as I lock the door from the outside.  You see, I leave the house fairly early, while it’s dark out.  In other words, the perfect recipe for a zombie-related disaster.  So, what do I do these days?  I look outside my windows first before opening the door.  So far, I’ve been lucky, and haven’t fallen prey to shadow-hiding zombies.  But it’ll take only one careless morning…
• You know when you’ve cut too much of a fingernail but you didn’t know it until the exposed cuticle of that particular finger gets wet?  Well, that happens to me.  A lot.  And often it’s on my thumb of forefinger — you know, only two of the most used fingers on the hand.  And the other unfortunate thing about it is that the problem doesn’t go away until the nail has enmeshed with the surrounding cuticle again, which could take some time.  So, meanwhile, you have to grin and bear the pain.  I wish they’d invent a nail clipper that would prevent (apparently stupid) people like myself from cutting off too much of the nail.  It could just stop cutting when it senses that the user would end up cutting too much.  Sort of like a gas pump nozzle that stops dispensing gas when it senses that the tank is already full, preventing overfilling.  Yeah, something like that would be awesome.
• I’ve been hearing on the radio and seeing on TV commercials about the one-dollar coin, and how using it could help the economy.  How. The. Hell?  With merchant services continuing to shift toward electronic commerce, which, obviously, takes full advantage of the fact that nearly everyone in the U.S. has some form of debit or credit card — and our journey toward being a cashless society — why would the government want to push the use of the coin?  It seems somewhat ass-backwards to me.  I mean, I know I don’t like carrying coins, which often end up in the ash tray of my vehicle and are eventually dispensed to roadside panhandlers.  And, most of the coin-operated machines do not take the one-dollar coin, what good is an advertising campaign encouraging its use?  It’s senseless and reeks of Bushidity, IMO.

Will Street Musicians Still Exist in a Cashless Society?

A Dying Breed?

A musician across the street is strumming his guitar and crooning something that sounded a little too much like Hootie & The Blowfish. His guitar case is open, a huge hand-painted cardboard placard rested atop it, proclaiming: “Please Stop To Listen, Enjoy the Music, Drop Some Change.”

As we move more and more toward being a cashless society, I wondered how these street musicians will make a living. Will they find a way to keep their tradition alive or will they simplly disappear?

I am at once saddened and piqued by this thought.

I wonder exactly how much the world will change once we arrive at the point when the bank notes will have no value whatsoever and commercial exchange can only be done by electronic means.  Some would argue that we are already at that point — what with debit cards, bankcards, and online purchasing.

What other changes — good or bad — are in store?

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