Wade: Cable Just Gave Me A Get Better Soon Card…

Kirk : Tell me something. Why was it so impossible to tell the difference between us?

Spock : *explains.*

Kirk : *lowers gaze. bites lips slowly*

Me straight after a mental breakdown suddenly getting an idea for an edit

A computer programmer goes to buy some bread.

On his way out, his wife says, “and while you’re there, get a carton of eggs”.

He never returned.

“What do you do in your free time!”

”oh uh-“

(Not mine just found it)

Today I was forced to do internet banking for the first time in like four years (sad) and they’ve put in a bunch of new security shit I don’t understand and all my info like my phone number and stuff was out of date, so I had to physically go into the branch and actually ask the teller “can you please help me do internet banking” like I’m some doddering old dear who doesn’t understand this newfangled World Wide Web thing and IT GETS WORSE, because they’re like ‘okay so the easiest way to deal with our security is if you have our app on your phone’ and I DO NOT WANT apps on my phone and I grumble about this in the most Old Man Way possible but they say it’s the easiest so fine, we can do that, only there’s an in-bank security step for authenticating the app so the lady helping me has to sit down and wait while I pull out my old scratched beaten-up dinosaur of a Barely Counts As A Smartphone, wait forever for it to wake up, and open the app store.

I do not know where the app store is.

Okay, this lady explains to me (she is very good at customer service and there’s absolutely no sign on her face that she is baffled how someone like me can even be alive, even though logically she HAS TO be thinking that), it should be in your apps. Look at your apps.

I do not know how to look at my apps. I use like 4 apps (call, text, photos, music) and I put them on the front screen thing ages ago. I push all of the buttons on the phone and apps do not appear. There’s nothing in settings or anything either.

Try swiping up, she says.

I try this a few times. My phone does not register the contact. On the fourth time, it realises that I want it to do something, and oh, there are the apps. We install the app. We do all the sign-in and authentification code shit and it does not work. We do it again and it does not work again.

“If I had a checkbook I’d be out of here by now,” I say. She laughs because it is true. We’ve been here for twenty minutes. I restart my phone to see if that’s the problem and grumble under my breath about how banking never used to be so complicated. As I open the app again, I ask how people do internet banking if they don’t have phones.

She seems puzzled by the question. “We have ways for them to do banking,” she says, “but most… most people have phones.”

She’s probably right. You probably need a phone to survive if you’re homeless these days.

The program loads now but catches us in an endless sign-in loop and the problem, we learn from a supervisor who’s wandered over (presumably to see how helping one idiot put an app on their phone could possibly be taking so long) is actually not on my end. There’s something wrong with the version of the app that the woman assisting me has put on my account on the computer (that’s her half in this operation), so we have to uninstall the app on both systems and reinstall it. Fine. I uninstall the app. Now to go to the app store.

I have forgotten how to access the app store. I push all of the buttons on the phone and apps do not appear. There’s nothing in settings or anything either.

Try swiping up, the woman says.

Oh. There’s the app store.

We install it and get caught in an endless loop again but I am computer savvy enough to know that if restarting and reinstalling doesn’t work then sometimes just trying the same thing over and over again will make it work for no reason, and it does, after I sign in three times in a row we can FINALLY authenticate the app and I can FINALLY use it for two-factor authentication and I CAN FINALLY DO INTERNET BANKING AGAIN.

“Thanks for your help,” I say.

“No problem.”

“I’m sorry it took so long,” I say.

“It’s really not a problem,” she says, and because she’s a professional it’s totally convincing, but I have helped people with tech before and I know how much it sucks. I look at this woman who, on any other day, would be a good few years older than me, but not today. For today, I am a doddering 96-year-old woman who wishes for a simple chequebook and does not like smartphones.

I get up, and I pick up my bag and my walking stick, and I leave the bank, thinking about the scarf I’ve been knitting and how much more work I have to do on it. I wonder if I should bake scones tonight.

I have already forgotten how to open the app store.

Mother Earth: And to you, Human, I shall give you great Endurance and a thick skin, remarkable mimicry and visual tracking skills, strong inner bones which heal back even stronger when broken, an omnivorous diet with acute palates and resistance to most poisons, a pack organization, skin-stealing skills and the ability to throw things with ease and accuracy using your upper limbs, so you shall reign the hot savannahs and deserts as the greatest pursuit predator ever. Also as primates you shall not be bound to mating seasons and with your strong self-healing instincts and great adaptability, you shall rise and be numerous as ever.

Human: Mkay but what's that nice little red fruit outta there

Mother Earth: ... That's a pepper. Do not eat it, as it contains capsaicin, and you're still a mammal. This is a fruit for the birds.

Human: But it look tasty

Mother Earth: I mean, unless you want to be curling yourself down on utter pain, you should not...

Human: *already biting it* tast y

Mother Earth: HUMAN PLEASE STOP--

Human: *already crying, curling themself up down and shedding tears of pain*

Mother Earth: I told you. Stay away from that fruit

Human: *takes another bite despite the pain*

Mother Earth: What the everloving Big Bang, HUMAN PLEASE STOP IT'S TO YOUR OWN GOOD

Human: *crying* T A S T YYYY

Mother Earth: *concerned motherworld noises*

another Goncharov 1973 thing I'm sorry