Spam Spam Spam Spam Unlovely Spam

I get a ton of email. Of course, I have four active accounts. That undoubtedly uh, accounts for much of it. But if I were to guess, I'd say between them all there's around 100 or so new emails each day.

They're nearly all junk. I get messages from websites that I likely had a vague interest in yet they pester me as though their business depends on mine. Many of them are book promotion entrepreneurs, all of whom assure me I'll have the next Amazon best seller with a blockbuster movie deal if I simply give them mucho dinero. A lot are for senior products, unsurprising given my age. Many are from companies I dealt with once yet can't let go of the hope I'll buy from them again one day. The sales firm where I bought one heater for the old barn in 2017 comes to mind.

About the only email box which rarely explodes of a morning is my business one, which I guard closely exactly because of that. I don't want to neglect a client or prospect merely because they get buried in numbers.

But there is a point to which I'm happy it's all emails. I'd be swimming in paper if it were all traditional snail mail. The vast majority of email solicitations I can simply delete. I could build a funeral pyre if it were all print copies of nonsense. All that would make is a great send off one day. 

On Time For My Non-Appointment

I had a doctor's appointment yesterday. Well, at least I thought I did. 

I received a text Wednesday reminding me to be at the doctor's office at 8 AM Friday. Try as I may, I couldn't find the paperwork for it; I typically get a sheet telling me who I'm seeing, what's to happen, what to bring, and so on. So, okay, I must have lost it. I resolved to be at the Detroit Medical Center Friday morning.

Having been informed through the text to arrive twenty minutes early, I walked into the lobby at about 7:35. I was told by security, "You can't go up to registration (which was on the second floor) until 7:45." That makes it kind of hard to be 20 minutes early for an 8 o'clock appointment, but so it goes.

Allowed upstairs promptly at 7:45, I was called by a clerk to her workstation. I presented my driver's license as I.D. Typing into her computer the woman remarked, "Um, you just had a sonogram of your heart January 9, Mr. Cosgriff."

"Yeah, I know that," I replied.

"This says you have one scheduled today. I can't imagine why." She paused. "Maybe I should check before processing your appointment."

A few minutes later she returned. "I'm very sorry, Mr. Cosgriff. We scheduled this appointment inadvertently. Your sonogram was great and you don't need another." She paused again. "The med tech said she called and left you a message about it."

"Oh, I must have missed it, I suppose." I took my cell from my coat pocket, where I had left it on silent to not disturb anyone during registration or while seeing the doctor. Pulling up the call log I noted that the med tech had indeed left a voicemail. At 7:46 that very morning. 

Why even bother by that, uh, time? You're calling me at that late point to tell me I don't have to show? Where do you think I'd be fourteen minutes before an appointment that I was expected to arrive twenty minutes ahead of (even though I couldn't register until fifteen minutes before)? Just tell me when I get there. It's what happened anyway.

So while I had no necessary appointment, my heart had a workout just the same.

Pacino? Really?

A reviewer was kind enough to say the following about my book Michael's Story:

I liked it. A lot of original thinking in here. The color coding -- although that doesn't begin to explain it -- was a unique touch. And reading the prose I didn't get the impression that it was written by a machine. Recommended.

A lot of original thinking? I'm really not sure that's the case, but thank you. It doesn't seem to be written by a machine; I must say I'm very glad to hear that! Charlie Gehringer was Detroit's true Mechanical Man, not I. Recommended; thanks again! Yet perhaps the most interesting observation this reviewer had, and I cut it from the actual review so as to hold it back for effect, "The book is like Al Pacino: short but intense." An interesting quip, I must say.

Is Michael's Story actually like Pacino? Find out here for Kindle or here for print copies.

Penny For Your Thoughts

I had to be out early the other morning (you know, the other morning), so I went the drive through route for a quick breakfast. My change was to be $7.30 after I gave the attendant a twenty. "I don't have any pennies. Is that okay?"

"Fine," I replied. I don't why she felt she had to tell me that, though, seeing as the quarter and nickel she handed me for the thirty cents literally, uh, foot the bill for my change.

She probably has gotten used to telling that to most everyone I'm sure. Perhaps management insists upon it. Still, the instant she apologized about the lack of cents (a pun!) I did find myself thinking, what's that to me, given the circumstances? Oh well.

The Best Time

I'll admit up front that I was a bit cranky yesterday. Okay, I was a lot cranky. Being under the weather didn't help.

Yesterday was not a good day. Everything which could go wrong, as the saying goes, did go wrong. Consequently I wasn't in the mood for intellectual lightweights.

So of course one called. I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name. 

The conversation began easily enough. "Can I come in tomorrow morning and buy some cables, Cosgriff?"

"Sure. We open at 9."

"So what's a good time to come in?" Cloyce then asked.

In exasperation, my head dropped to my chest; my eyes closed. I took a deep breath. "Anytime after 9 is fine, Cloyce."

He persisted, "So what time, Cosgriff?"

"Ten Thirty-Two and Fifty Four seconds," I mouthed off, off the top of my head and into the cell, perturbed.

"What time?"

"10:32:54."

"Oh. So tomorrow about Noon?" 

I wanted to hit my own head with a mallet. Several times. "Yes. Noon is fine," I answered, gritting my teeth.

He better get here.

Ill at Ease

My apologies, friends, but I have some kind of bug and am having trouble making myself blog. Yet I don't want you to worry, so here's my modest effort today. Hopefully there'll be more, and better, tomorrow!

New Theater, Old Movie

I went to the Senate Theater in Detroit last night. It's an older neighborhood theater on Michigan Avenue in the southwest side, and is being rehabbed by a group of volunteers. I was simply curious to check it out, it having been around since 1926. Old architecture is always interesting.

The evening began with an organ recital on the massive instrument which originally was to accompany silent films as they ran. The music was indeed spectacular, in a carnival sort of way. That's not an insult; it was fun. But the music was a bit over the top.

Then came the feature: Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Stanley Kubrick directed. It has its moments, but, like the organ recital, was decidedly over the top. 

I suppose that was part of the point. Yet I can't escape the feeling that it's the sort of movie we're supposed to like because we're supposed to like it. A 1960s bit of Hollywood telling us what to think, it seemed. I walked away thinking that Strangelove was a film with a reputation which is beyond its real value. Think Psycho. Not Hitchcock's best, but a showy piece of cinema.

Still, I think I'll go back again. They're offering Buster Keaton's silent Our Hospitality on April 11, with organ accompaniment. I've never been to a silent with the full treatment, so I figure it's worth a look.