Losing Control

Losing Control
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday May 10, 2014

I am at war with my machines. This week, I am at choke point with the toaster. It cannot contain the crumbs from even a single slice of bread. Its crumb tray is like men’s nipples, a useless feature that should have been engineered out of the final design.

I’ve taken to upending my toaster over the sink and shaking it violently until I hear its innards rattle. When it cannot cough up another single speck of bread dust, I give it one last slap to remind it who’s boss and plonk it back into its corner of the kitchen bench.

Next morning, as I pull my machine out to toast my slice of kibble rye, I see it has dumped yet another load of sooty crumbs and flame-grilled raisins from some dark orifice.

I’m already cheesed off with the dishwasher  – a computerised princess who recently gagged on a pea. Or so the repair-man told me when he asked me for $180 to remove it. For three days, a fetid pool of bilge water had refused to drain from the bowels of the machine. To stem the smelly tide, I transferred cupfuls of grey swamp-water to the sink, then got down on my hands and knees and groped around in her murky fundament, hoping to release the blockage. The repair-man thanked me for doing the dirty work and sieved out a lone pea, swollen and grey, but capable of gumming up a sophisticated machine several hundred times its size. 

I’m afraid the house is ganging up on me. The doorbell has begun checking if we’re home by ringing itself at two in the morning. The first time it happened, I was startled awake by the loud peals echoing down the hallway. Suspecting a brazen burglar, my bloke leapt out of bed and began fumbling about in the dark for a weapon. He stumbled over teenage son’s tennis bag dumped by the front door. Fuelled by adrenalin and primed to inflict some racquet abuse, my bloke wrenched open the door brandishing a Junior Prince Warrior, rrp $59.  A cool breeze invited itself in and gusted down the passageway, slamming the hallway door and waking all three children.

Two nights later, our midnight caller struck again. There were phantom chimes during the day as well until my husband ripped the doorbell from its casing. (Visitors now spook us by magically appearing on the back veranda when their volleys of doorknocking go unheard.)

I keep reading scary stories about how our machines will soon do our thinking for us. Human evolution will stall as our gadgetry becomes superior. Bollocks! All my appliances are still hopelessly dependent. Their shortcomings might push my buttons but they won’t do a thing if I don’t push theirs.

We’re yet to get a robotic vacuum cleaner though friends say they’re marvellous. I’m all for handing over my gritty floors to a robo-maid who works tirelessly through the night. My husband says they’re a stupid gimmick and a Hoover needs a human to do a decent job. (This from a man who has never used one.)

I can remember when chess champion Gary Kasparov lost to IBM’s Deep Blue in that pivotal victory of machine over man. But that was twenty years ago and I’m not yet being chauffeured by a driverless car. My self-cleaning oven still won’t clean itself.

Boffins predict by 2030, computers will have all but disappeared from sight. They’ll be everywhere yet nowhere, ubiquitous yet hidden, just like electricity and running water, and my children at bedtime. Apple’s iCloud will follow us silently and seamlessly, absorbing our thoughts as we think them. (My dirty ones will stream live to iPorn).

Right now, my computer is attached to an overcrowded power board via a spaghetti junction of cables. The wi-fi regularly goes awol. It’s hopeless upstairs. Last week, I discovered my 13-year-old squeezed into the corner between his bedroom door and his wardrobe, crouched over his laptop. “I’m doing my maths homework. Really Mum! This is the only spot where the wi-fi works.” For once, I believed him.

The next morning at 6am, still half asleep, I nearly garrotted myself on the ethernet cable which teenage son had strung overnight across the stairwell. “What the heck?” I demanded, pointing to the blue cable looped to the walls with globs of Blu-Tack. “Oh, that!” he said. “I ran the internet cable upstairs to get Google.” (All the technology in the world means nothing if you have a teenage boy at the controls.)

For now, I’d like to think I’m still the boss of my machines. At least until my smartphone outsmarts me and incites a mutiny amongst my appliances. That’s when the phantom doorbell will give the signal, the freezer will have a meltdown and my coffee machine will serve nothing but decaf.  

Tomorrow People

Tomorrow People
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published Saturday September 7, 2013

Procrastination is the tiresome friend you wish you’d offloaded years ago. The kind of friend who needles you for being a hopeless ditherer.

Procrastination has been my snarky sidekick since I was a teenager. Back then, it was a slothful habit that turned exams into last-minute cramming sessions and assignments into all-nighters. Finally, high on adrenalin, I’d bash away on Mum’s green Remington until 3am, fingers stained a chalky grey from copious blots and smears of white-out.

Now I accept my ineptitude as a personality quirk. We tolerate each other, procrastination and I, in a spineless sort of way. We both know I still lack the mental grit to make my life more efficient.

I would have written about procrastination earlier, but it never seemed like the right time. Last week, during a sudden cloudburst, I sat down at my desk as the rain pelted down, determined to put procrastination in its place. I flipped open my laptop and up sprang a clean white screen. Through the window, a streak of sunlight skimmed the keyboard. I noticed a layer of dust collecting around the laptop’s hinges.  

An hour later, having dusted the whole house in a fit of pique, I sat back down. I typed five words on the page: Procrastination is my worst enemy. There! A start! But those words rubbed each other up the wrong way with their lumpy rhythm.  I pressed delete and stared morosely as the screen emptied.

Looking up at the bamboo outside my window, I noticed a small cluster of ants gathering at the knot where a leaf branched out from the green stem. I searched the other branches for ant clumps. No, it was just this one hosting peak-hour ant traffic.

Every few seconds, an ant would separate from the clump and begin trekking down the plant, doing the usual meet and greet with another ant making her way up. (Worker ants are always she, Google tells me. Male ants are only good for sex – they laze about in the nest eating and making a mess and getting antsy waiting for their ant-sheilas to get home.)

I killed another half hour googling the study of myrmecology. One scientist was claiming that the weight of all the humans on earth was the same as the weight of all the ants on earth. Ha! Not after I lose five kilos!

Given the chance, I can happily distract myself from serious tasks by trawling the internet. Google is a wormhole in the universe – time accelerates when you’re pfaffing about looking up things you didn’t know you were interested in. Suddenly, it’s lunchtime. How did we waste time before computers?

The next morning, I wake up a day closer to deadline feeling uneasy. I berate myself for wasting yesterday’s free morning on dust and ants, and vow to knuckle down and finish the piece.

Then I spot the laundry bench spilling over with washing to be folded, and two loads of dirty socks and jocks waiting on the floor. A pile of bills is stacked by the phone. What to tackle first? Should I get the house in order or write about procrastination? Determined not to be waylaid again, I wedge my laptop under my arm, march out the front door and head for my local cafe. I tuck myself behind the back table, order a pot of tea and a chicken salad and wait for inspiration to find me.

Why do we allow ourselves to create pointless delays? Delays we know will make us worse off? Procrastination never made anyone happy: it’s a vice, a completely irrational habit. We indulge in it against our better judgement. “For goodness sake, get to work!” I tell myself.

While I fire up my laptop, I notice a young couple in furious discussion at another table. They’re just out of hearing range but I’m fascinated by their body language. I can see she’s on the defensive because she keeps shaking her head and her jaw is clenched. She has her arms folded and is leaning back in her chair. Her partner is pressing his bulk across the table to make his point: he’s jabbing the air with his finger and spitting out his words. I start thinking about Nigella and Charles Saatchi and how mortified she must have been to have him grab her throat in public. Procrastination has me by the throat. Again.

Perhaps stress is the spark I need to ignite my brain. I can’t just switch on my creative neurons at will. I have to be in the mood: preferably last-minute panic.

On the other hand, procrastination might be a necessary evil: it gives us the chance to incubate ideas, to mentally prepare for prize-winning brilliance. It might not be a time-wasting habit at all.

My salad arrives and the waitress points at my computer: “Writer’s block?” she asks with a grin.

“Yep” I sigh, “but I’m planning to be spontaneously brilliant tomorrow.”