PASSWORD PERPLEXTION

In days of old, when men were bold and sheep were very, very concerned, we're told that people had less leisure time because everything was a protracted pain in the fundament. Want to clean your smock ?? Then you'll have to walk six miles carrying a pail of water back from the village well. And that's before you've tackled the laundering process itself, which consists of three hours laboriously scrubbing your soiled garment against a washboard and wringing it through a mangle. By the time you've finished, it's bedtime. Did you remember to clean your pyjamas ?? No ?? Then it’s another trek back to the village well for you, then, son.

But in many ways, the rustic serf of yesteryear had a better quality of life than the modern man-about-town of the year 2015. Computers have freed us from hours of drudgery with one hand, but introduced an equal amount of slightly different drudgery with the other. These days it's commonplace to do everything online, from designing the layout of your kitchen to locating a stranger who can rearrange your furniture, or your face. Tasks that would have taken years to organise and achieve can now be accomplished in the blink of an icon …

… or they would be, if you could only remember your flippin’ password. Can't remember it ?? Is it because you chose it so very long, long ago - maybe two, three days before ?? In the intervening period you've had to dream up another six passwords for another six websites, programs, accounts and/or email addresses. In this age of rampant identity theft, where surely it's just a matter of time before someone works out a way to steal your reflection in the mirror and use it to commit benefit fraud in an alternate dimension, we're told only a complete and utter imbecile would use the same password for everything. Now you do, so in a sense, your identity's been stolen anyway. In the meantime, having demanded a new password for the 28th time this month, His Lordship Your Computer proceeds to snootily critique your efforts. Certain attempts shall be disqualified immediately, without even passing judgment. Less than six letters ?? No numbers ?? Access denied.

This is more complicated than trying to do long division on an upside-down Chinese calculator. Whilst blindfolded. There are more rules than the Formula One technical regulations manual. No recognisable words. No punctuation marks. No hesitation, deviation or repetition. Pass the qualifying round and it gets even worse. Most modern password entrance exams grade each entry as you type, presenting you with an instant one-word review of your efforts. Suppose you glance around your desk and pick the first thing you set eyes on, such as a child’s My Little Pony pen. You then begrudgingly shove a random number on the end.

You try out your hand-crafted digital key for the first time, typing it into the silicon lock. With a soft click, the mechanism turns. Access granted. Congratulations, you are now part of the smocklaundry.com community. Three weeks later your smocks are returned, late and still plastered with hideous stains. You revisit smocklaundry.com to protest. But you just can't remember that darned password. And in the intervening period you've had to dream up another 42 passwords for another 42 websites, programs, accounts and/or email addresses. Now you face the ignominy of clicking the password reset button for the 58,000th time this year. 

And so, you trudge dolefully toward your inbox, waiting for the dreaded help e-mail to arrive, the cruel laughter of His Computerised Majesty ringing in your ears, cackling manically like Davros.

You have failed, human. You have failed.

GENERAL IGNORANCE

Everybody generalises. Everything you say about people is a generalisation, unless it’s about a named individual and then it becomes gossip. Breakthroughs are made by scientists who ignore this rule and go for big general theories, such as relativity, leaving footnotes to others. It’s the same in real life. Glorious generalisers in search of broad truths are followed by legions of nit-pickers.

The ability to generalise is what separates mankind from the animals. We have big ideas of no relevance to the immediate search for our next meal. That’s why philosophers steer clear of supermarkets: it’s impossible to generalise when you’re grubbing for a copy of GQ and a packet of Smarties. Ants are a very successful species indeed because they ignore their individual needs and continually generalise about the greater good. You’ll notice that they have lots of worker ants but there’s no room for nit-picker ants or Health and Safety ants.

The more you generalise, the simpler things get. It’s impossible to generalise about something that makes the picture more confused, except for weather forecasting which attempts to give a detailed general picture. The highest order of generalisation simplifies everything into a featureless cosmic semolina similar to thinking nothing at all. A bit like being a contestant on "Celebrity Big Brother", perhaps. These days, accusing someone of generalising is tantamount to calling them a liar. But generalisations are only so-called by people who don’t agree with them. Generalisations you really like feel like self-evident truths.

Interestingly, all generalisations start with an individual point of view. When you say that all Thursdays are rubbish, the manager of Aston Villa doesn’t seem to know a goal line from a clothes line and every single song in the singles charts these days sounds worse than listening to a tortoise breaking wind through a cheese grater, it’s based on your own personal experience.

Other people with similar experiences will agree with you, and even people who haven’t will begin to think that Thursdays aren’t so good. Eventually everyone will come to know and expect that Thursdays are the low point of the week. Speaking of which, it’s now impossible for the British to say “Have a nice day” without the long shadow of sarcasm passing over the conversation. In this country we presume that the day will be bad if we haven’t been savaged by a Bengal Tiger on the way home from work or if the bus didn’t suddenly veer off and nose-dive into a canal, whereas in America, nice days and the having thereof are written into the constitution.

You get really good days only about once a year. That’s when everything in life conspires to be in your favour. Some people worry so much that it will come to shuddering halt that they simply don’t know how to enjoy the day when it’s there. Just accept that, sometimes, it really is your day. Caution is shrink-wrapped fear. The quickest way to do yourself a mischief on an escalator is to be too cautious. It’s the same in life generally, although with life you don’t have to carry dogs and stand to the right. Caution is what happens when you follow your liver instead of your heart. It’s a non-stick emotional surface for the bad things that life throws at you.

Nice days are ones that make happy memories. One nice day can extinguish the memory of 13 bad ones, which is handy because this is normally the ratio you get on two weeks’ holiday with the family. It’s also the day you forget the batteries and spare memory card for your camera. Nice days can happen spontaneously. You get out of bed on the right side, with a spring in your step and a song in your heart. You may even come up with a way to save the world.

That’s how big ideas get started, generally speaking.

THE RANTING BRUMMIE'S SEARCH FOR HAPPINESS …

I'm searching for modern happiness in 2015. That retro, old-fashioned kind simply takes just far too long. That sort of happiness requires patience and I don't want to wait for it. I want upgraded happiness. I want beta release patch 4.02, the "new and improved" version. This is meant to be the 21st century, the era of hot and cold running digital television and remote controlled bathwater and I demand instant gratification.

Once upon a neanderthalithic time, when men were [hairy] men and deer and sheep were worried, you had to wait to eat your meal. Even when the Mammoth Burger walk-through was open, they offered only self-kill meals. And when you brought them home, you still had to ask Mrs Neanderthal to get the fire started.

"What ?? Mammoth burger AGAIN ?? How you cook ??"

"Ugh. Start fire for cave lady."

"Hah. You probably burn cave down."

"Hah you. No can burn cave down. Buy insurance policy."

"How you start fire ??"

"Rub twigs together. Make big flame. Cook mammoth burger."

"Last time you burn fingers."

The thing is, nobody lights a fire these days. People don't even light their ovens anymore. It takes just too long to heat up a meal. It takes just too much patience. I'm hungry now, not 40 minutes from now. That's why God gave us microwave ovens. Just pop the food in and … whrrrrr … BEEP … out it comes, nicely warmed for immediate consumption. That's how I want my happiness … toasty warm and right now !!

"Ooh. No more burn fingers."

Consider the Internet. You type "electric toothbrushes". You hit "enter". Google responds: "Search took 1.02 seconds." You think "Google is ready for the geriatric ward". You click on the first result – something about an electric eel eating a balanced breakfast – and a blank screen appears. You wait. And then wait some more.

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TRIVIA QUESTION: 

Did you know that William Shakespeare once waited almost twenty seconds for a web site to appear, so he could find a word that rhymed with cardiologist ?? The web site finally appeared in 1997, but he had given up waiting by then.

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Five seconds pass. Time's up and still no site has appeared. Your instant gratification cells are offended. You surf to another site.

"Ugh. No get Mammoth Burger web site. This thing no work." Go to Mammoth Burger walk-through instead".

I don't want to walk to get happiness. I want it delivered now. Not twenty seconds later, even if it does rhyme with cardiologist. Not 1.02 seconds later. I want happiness NOW. Remember when you had to extract your posterior from the couch to change TV channels ?? That took such a monumental effort that most people sat through whole nights of television without bothering to change channels at all. Of course, that might have been because the other channel was playing Columbo.

Back in the four-channel universe there was always something on. Now we flip through 5,472 channels, which keep us busy while fishing for something worth watching. Thanks to the remote control, we can now flip channels at a relaxed pace of 15 to 20 per minute without even breaking into a sweat. It’s also pretty much the same when you buy your fruit and veg these days. No more popping down to Fred the Greengrocer, then over the road to Keith the Butcher followed by a wander up to Mike the Chemists, it’s all available under one roof at Morrison’s.

Last week I had to pick some up extra sundries and ended up asking a question that I’ve never previously asked before in my entire life … "Where are your bananas ??". It seemed like a logical question to ask. For all of my thirty-three trips around the sun, bananas were a key item to place in the shopping trolley. For the first time I could recall, the banana basket was empty. So I asked a store worker where the bananas were.

"We don't have any," he replied. "We'll be getting some in tomorrow." It took me a few moments to absorb this information.

"What do you mean, you don't have any bananas ??" I thought. "Every store has bananas." True, sometimes they are green enough to pass for bent cucumbers and they occasionally appear to have lost an arm-wrestling match with a watermelon. But there are ALWAYS bananas of SOME sort in the store … aren’t there ?? And this was where it struck me. We expect our machines each day to break yesterday's speed record. Our cars seem to be slowing to a crawl because more and more people are squeezing onto the same bit of road space trying to go faster and honking their horns louder (because we all know that cars move faster when their horns get honked LONG and LOUD, right ??).

And I expect bananas on the supermarket shelf even when it is snowing outside and they’re still hanging on a tree somewhere in Barbados. Happiness, though, is not like a microwave oven. Nor like the Internet. Not even like a remote control. Happiness does not run on the instant gratification system. Happiness takes time and patience.

Dear Lord, please grant me the patience I lack … and I want it right now !!