Sunday Rerun (from December 2016): Knowing Nothing or Hearing Everything

Two things kept crossing my mind yesterday while watching the morning news.

First was how the sad passing of Carrie Fisher once again made me feel sorry for her friends and family and fans, and how it makes me feel like I'm in a Lithuanian restaurant and everyone is speaking Lithuanian and the menu is printed in Lithuanian with no pictures and I have no idea what anyone is saying, and all I want is a hamburger and some fries and they can't understand me and I don't understand them.

That's how it feels to know NOTHING about Star Wars. I mean, I have not spent one second of this long life watching any of the 47 Star Wars movies, and that means not knowing what anyone's talking about when they intone, "Luke, I am your father," and what the Millennium Stalker is, or whatever that thing is, and what the point of it all was.   

The only way I can relate is to think of the people who say they know nothing about football or baseball and how it must feel to them when people start talking about football or baseball. 

Eddie, Carrie, Debbie

Carrie Fisher. When I think of her, I realize I know a lot more about her mother, Debbie Reynolds, and her father, Eddie Fisher, a very good singer from the 1950s whose womanizing overshadowed his great talent for singing a song. Debbie is still with us, fine comic actress that she was, and now Carrie is with her father.

There was another death being talked about on the news. A man died in someone's house, and now the police are trying to get "testimony" from his IoT (Internet of Things) device - that Amazon thing that sits in the house, and you say, "OK Ezra (or whatever the thing's name is) play "Box of Rain," or "What's the weather going to be like today?" and "Turn on the lamp in the study for Colonel Mustard."  All those commands to an electronic silent butler, and you don't think there are others listening in?

Maybe I'm suspicious, but when the cable company offers a system that puts cameras in the house so you can see what's going on there while you're at work or on the beach sipping a Mai Tai, I have to figure that someone somewhere is also enjoying unfettered video access to Mark - a - Lago, my luxurious mansion, and they're watching me scratch the twig and berries or something.  

And if the government forced us to install little black eavesdropping devices in our homes, we would not like it.  But make it something that we voluntarily PAY for, and we're lining up to buy them.