Binaries
by Cate Kennedy
from The Taste of River Water (Carlton North: Scribe, 2011)

In my parents’ lounge room, after Christmas lunch,
I am listening to my brother, the computer programmer,
explaining the principles of cyberspace.

“It’s basically a system of binaries,” he says,
“permutations of zero and one. So the data
may be stored as, say, zero zero one one one, zero zero one.”

My mother sighs, next to us on the couch.
She is knitting a cable-knit cardigan.
“You kids,” she says.
“I’ll never understand how you get your brains around it.
It’s beyond me.”

And she turns back to her knitting,
purl purl plain plain plain, purl purl plain.

I am so angry that there is no small phone any longer, and nearly none with a headphone jack. User-hostile design is fully dominant now.

today i was lookin at a girl because she had a piece of lettuce in her hair and she looks at me and said "i have a boyfriend.” ok lettuce head

— luis (@ShineMyGold) October 11, 2018

This sort of thing has happened to me numerous times (though not usually with lettuce). My stock responses are, “Me too!” or “Oh yeah, is he hot?” It really knocks down people’s presumptions and annoys them, which I am fine with. (Yes, I understand why women do this. It’s still annoying as all hell.)

The funniest similar incident was when I was at a boardwalk in Florida attempting to look at a bird. A woman was in front of me, leaning over. I didn’t even see her, because who cares when there is wildlife to observe? But then I realized she was absolutely glaring at me with pure unrestrained hatred. I realized that she thought I was looking down her shirt, which I was not — as I said, I didn’t even see her. I said, “I really don’t care about your breasts. I’m trying to see the bird behind you.” She gave me an even harsher glare (some women seem both offended if you gaze at them and if you do not, which I never understand) and huffed away.

Ok, then.

Going back to a topic I was discussing before, it also turns off many “middle” Americans (note: not centrists; this is a different and far more delusional breed) that many on the left seem to care far more about illegal immigrants and their affairs more than they do about actual Americans and legal residents.

Heck, it turns me off, and I am firmly on the left. That so much of the time on the left is spent wailing plaintively about illegal immigrants and their plight while at the same time they castigate and bemoan the deplorableness of the “deplorables” makes very little sense to 95% of Americans.

No, I don’t think we should be locking up those who cross the border into concentration camps. At the same time, most Americans and permanent legal residents are not much concerned (nor should they be) if some economic migrant gets tossed back across the border while their legal, American children barely have enough food to eat — and all the while some leftist cries about the injustice of someone not being allowed in who will likely be competing for that parent’s job.

As I also noted before, the left is world-class in Olympic foot-shooting. Here, to most, they show their true colors as they ignore the concerns of actual citizens to shove more people through the door for a pool of declining jobs. That doesn’t play well, understandably.