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I keep trying to tell my life’s story here. But looking back over these pages, I don’t see a lot of story. I see a lot of life, but not much story.
I’ve been too distracted by Today to give Yesterday its due. I suppose it’s just the age-old puzzle: how do you do something with your life while you're also living it? That was certainly my dad’s dilemma. As a kid, he dreamed of being an ornithological painter like Audubon. He filled notebooks with awkward pencil sketches of every bird in town. He sometimes used grass and flowers and berries and dirt for paint. The faded pictures have a strange beauty even now, like smudged portraits by Mother Nature herself. Dad gave all that up when he discovered engines. He found mechanical beauty under the hood that almost rivaled anything he saw in nature—and it paid a lot better. So he put down the paintbrush and picked up the socket wrench. Yet, as always happens with our passions, he never forgot. Something inside him held onto the brush, year after year. And one day, not long after I was born, he started painting again. Not birds this time, but landscapes. His hero was the 19th-century painter Thomas Moran. Dad wanted to travel around the country like Moran and paint those landscapes he felt were too big for a camera. Don’t get me wrong. Dad stood in awe of the national park photos of Ansel Adams. “I love to look through his eyes,” Dad told Mom. “He shows me the land’s secrets. He shows me what it is. But only paint can show me how it feels.” I have all 24 of dad’s landscapes. Most are small oils, 2’ by 2’ or 2’ by 4’. But one life-changing May, while mom and I hiked around Yosemite Valley, dad spent ten days in camp, trying to capture Half Dome on a 10’ wide by 12’ tall canvas. He could see it right there, through a gap in the trees. Right there, close enough to touch. But he couldn’t capture the feeling, not to his satisfaction. How could he, with so little practice? He grew so frustrated that he threw the brushes into the campfire that night. The next morning, he was back at the canvas again, but this time armed only with a palette knife. That's all he had left. Mom and I woke to a gentle scraping sound. We climbed out of our sleeping bags and just stood in the pre-dawn light, watching dad push long streaks of gray and white and light blue across the canvas until the paint looked like liquid rock, until dad was, for that moment, not painting Half Dome but creating Half Dome. As the sun rose, as the warm colors climbed that rock, dad stepped away from the canvas. Like a man in a daze, he stepped back... until he bumped into mom. And this I remember, because a son always remembers when he sees his dad cry. I remember tears streaming down his unshaven face. I remember his eyes, never closing, wide, wet shining eyes, staring not at the thing itself, not at Half Dome illuminated in the new day’s sun, but at his Half Dome, Half Dome in the pre-dawn cool, Half Dome Dreaming. He touched, for one moment, who he might have been in another life. From that day on, Dad painted every chance he got, which really only amounted to a few hours on the weekends. He never found his way back to that transcendent moment, not even when we visited Yosemite the following year, but then most artists rarely do. How many times did Bob Dylan make it farther down Highway 61? There were so many transcendent moments (Tangled Up In Blue, Shelter from the Storm, Sara, Series of Dreams)—but no one lives that free or true or connected the time. I think Dad was, in the end, happy with his paintings. But there was always that ache, that question: Could I have been ...? But to follow that question to an answer, he would have had to discount everything that came before, including my mom and me. And he would never do that. Several of his paintings hang in my office. Most look like a beginner’s passionate attempts at something great, like a middle-aged man writing his first love poems. But one painting, the one I call Half Dome Dreaming, hangs alone on the wall opposite my desk. I stare at it every day, and I wonder about my own life. My own unfulfilled dreams. What transcendences am I searching for? What dreams still walk through the marrow of my bones, urging me to move? Comments 
Media Jean: Are all grown ups so confused? 
Chip: What do you mean?
Media Jean: Your dad has so many dreams! He wants to live in the wild like Thoreau, walk across national parks with just a loaf of bread in his pocket like John Muir, write his great American novel--
Chip: He calls it his “small humble version of Moby Dick.”
Media Jean: Right. And that’s just for starters!
Chip: That’s true. He’s full of big dreams.
Media Jean: He wants to be an architect who designs low cost, zero-carbon-footprint houses.
Chip: He wants to be a folk singer, a little like Bob Dylan and a lot like Woody Guthrie.
Media Jean: Ha ha! Remember when we recorded him singing in the shower?
Chip: And it went viral, too. Good thing he doesn’t watch YouTube.
Media Jean: He wants to be an adventurer, the kind of guy who climbs Everest, visits rain forests, and follows in the steps of Darwin.
Chip: He still dreams about living a life of service. Helping Habitat for Humanity build houses, traveling with Doctors Without Borders.
Media Jean: Those are all great dreams. But shouldn’t he separate the reality dreams from the fantasy dreams.
Chip: What’s the difference?
Media Jean: For example, I dream of traveling to another planet. For now at least, that’s a fantasy dream. Unless bioengineering makes me immortal and we Star Trek beyond the speed of light, I’m not going anywhere. That’s a good dream, but it’s a fantasy dream.
Chip: Like my Jurassic Park dream of cloning a real T-Rex.
Media Jean: Right! You could spend your whole life longing for that dream, but it’s never going to happen in your lifetime. It’s a fantasy dream. On the other hand, my dream of becoming a digital artist, someone who uses pixels the way Van Gogh used paint, that’s a reality dream.
Chip: Like my dream of creating the first honest-to-goodness artificial intelligence. Not like Chat, but a real AI lifeform that’s different from us, not just more like us.
Media Jean: Exactly! That’s a reality dream. You could make that happen in your lifetime.
Chip: So ... you’re saying my dad has too many fantasy dreams?
Media Jean: I’m not saying he can’t fulfill any of his dreams. They’re all doable. But there’s no way he can fulfill them all, not with the time he has left. That means some of his dreams are fantasies.
Chip: I suppose that’s true. A folk-singing bio-architect-activist working on a small but still great American novel does seem kinda unlikely.
Media Jean: He has to pick one, two at most. He has to work within the time he has.
Chip: Or ... get more time.
Media Jean: What do you mean?
Chip: Remember when we took all the junk food out of the house?
Media Jean: I forgot about that! Increase your dad’s natural lifespan in the hopes that he’ll live long enough for science to step in!
Chip: Right! His generation may be the last to live less than 150 years. I feel pretty confident that you and I can expect at least 150 or more.
Media Jean: OK, so what’s the lifespan of the average American male today?
Chip: I just looked it up. Depending on the study, 76.5 years.
Media Jean: That puts his death around the year 2060.
Chip: Right. But if, through heathy eating and exercise, we can extend that to 105...
Media Jean: That puts him at 2090!
Chip: And if we extend his life to, say, 140?
Media Jean: He’ll be alive in the 22nd century!
Chip: That’s only one century short of Star Trek!
Media Jean: Anything can happen by then!
Chip: Nanobots resetting biological clocks!
Media Jean: Neural mapping to download your consciousness into cloned bodies!
Chip: Even simple DNA-repairing technologies could add a hundred years to my dad’s life!
Media Jean: So we’re back to where we started. We have to get your dad healthy, fast. He needs to live to at least 140!
Chip: Right! To the 23rd century and beyond!
Media Jean: Ha ha! All our problems seem solvable now, even Death.
Chip: Sure! In the future, everything will be possible.
Media Jean: I love tomorrow.
Chip: Me, too. There’s so much to look forward to.
Media Jean: Well, I better get to bed. I’ve got a lot to do tomorrow.
Chip: Me, too. See you in the future, Media Jean.
Media Jean: See you in the future, Chip. 
Comic strip from the series "Earth Backup"
(Kid, Inc. Volume 2: The Batcave of Childhood) Have a thought for Bob? Write to us at [email protected]
Last night, I had a vision:
Chip, Media Jean and Johnny giving up their screens, not just for two weeks but three. All I had to do was nudge our Yosemite trip back a few days to dovetail with National Screen-Free Week. That’s when Alice has the kids and their families sign a Screen-Free pledge. That first screen-free week will become detox for the following two weeks in Yosemite! To back me up, I asked Alice to help with some research. Using screens to build an argument against screens may seem hypocritical. But I’m not arguing for zero screen usage. I’m arguing that there’s a screen epidemic in America that's turning into an AI disease, and we must do something about it. According to the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood:
And that's not counting the recent studies showing that AI usage is physically deteriorating cognitive areas en the brain, or that those creating the tech won't let their own kids use it. Imagine what would happen if you gave 1 hour a day to screens and spent the other 4-5 hours creating or learning or training or exploring. If you love music, 4-5 hours of daily practice can take you to the concert halls. If you love writing, 4-5 hours a day will not only refine your craft but finish that languishing novel. Have more than one passion? Use those 4-5 hours to develop them all! Sink into your talents! Soak up your bliss! Invest in yourself and your future! Be a creator, not just a consumer! I’m getting ahead of myself, as usual. The point for now is to give Chip, Media Jean and Johnny an opportunity to experience life screen-free for three full weeks. And since two of those weeks will unfold in Yosemite, I’m hoping for a life-changing experience. Comments
Media Jean: Three weeks screen-free?!
Chip: I've never gone that long without screens.
Media Jean: Who in their right mind has?! The last time Miss Stillwater made us participate in Screen-Free Week, I went bonkers!
Chip: Ha ha! I remember! You dressed up like Little House on the Prairie and refused to use any technology.
Media Jean: Yeah, but Miss Stillwater called my bluff. She made Screen-Free Week into Little House on the Prairie Week.
Chip: That was a long week. My dad made me wash clothes by hand.
Media Jean: My parents wouldn't let me use the vacuum cleaner. I had to sweep the rug! You ever try to sweep a rug?!
Chip: Still, those stats are pretty amazing. And since my dad found them in a magazine at the doctor's office, those stats are a few years old. I'm sure it's way more now.
Media Jean: But they don't represent us! We don't spend hundreds of hours a month watching TV and streaming movies! Why should we be punished for someone else's viewing habits?!
Chip: We probably spend almost that much time online and on our phones.
Media Jean: That's different! That's interactive!
Chip: Well, that's sort of true.
Media Jean: We're Googling and social networking and creating, not just watching!
Chip: Last night, my dad told me about FOMO.
Media Jean: FOMO? That sounds R-rated.
Chip: FOMO stands for Fear Of Missing Out. It's a new anxiety disorder that's sweeping the world. People are so afraid they'll miss something on their social networks that they check their phones over 100 times a day. Some even sleep with their phones on the pillow so when they wake up in the middle of the night they can check for messages.
Media Jean: Ha ha! A cell phone instead of a teddy bear!
Chip: You have to admit, my dad makes a pretty good argument about spending more time doing what you love.
Media Jean: I suppose. Instead of 5 hours a day online, I could spend an hour drawing. I love art.
Chip: I could spend an hour a day writing stories. I used to make up stories all the time.
Media Jean: I loved those stories. You should write more.
Chip: What about your origami? Remember when you wanted to be an origami master?
Media Jean: I was getting pretty good too.
Chip: I could spend an hour a day on languages. I love computer languages, but I always wanted to learn more people languages, especially Japanese.
Media Jean: This is starting to sound fun! Let's take a pledge. For one year, I'll spend an hour a day drawing and an hour a day on origami. You'll spend an hour a day writing and an hour a day learning Japanese.
Chip: Counting weekends?
Media Jean: Let's not get carried away.
Chip: So just weekdays. That's about 260 days a year. 260 hours works out to over thirty 8-hour work days a year.
Media Jean: Wow! That's like a month full time on art and origami.
Chip: When you crunch the numbers, it's kind of amazing.
Media Jean: So it's a pledge?
Chip: It's a pledge!
Media Jean: On our honor?
Chip: On our honor!
Media Jean: One other thing: we tell no one — especially your dad or Miss Stillwater. Agreed?
Chip: Agreed!
Media Jean: The last thing we need is a smug adult smiling at us all year. 
Comic strip from the series "Screen-Free Week!
(Kid, Inc. Volume 1: Look Out, Tomorrow, Here We Come!) Have a thought for Bob? Write to us at [email protected]
I can see Chip percolating on Aunt Bosky’s diagnosis.
I miss how it used to be. He’d climb into my lap, we’d talk, and all his troubles got sorted out right there, with my arms around him. Of course, most of his worries were the sortable kind. His little Rubik’s Cube was never more than a few turns out of sync. Now? I’m not sure how it happened, but most of my fatherly tasks have been delegated. So when Chip heard about Aunt Bosky’s cancer, he took his questions to Google. Meanwhile, I stand in the wings, waiting like an understudy to be called on stage. Let’s face it, dads. Fatherhood is being outsourced:
Wake up, dads of America! The Father Fire-Sale is on! The marketers and sellers and branders have hijacked your role! Task by task, you are being replaced! Stand up before it’s too late! Unplug those computers, turn off those Wi-Fis, box up those game stations! Take a page from Howard Beale’s notebook: get up, stick your head out the window and shout, “I’m a mad dad and I’m not going to delegate any more!” Whoa... Got a little carried away there. Take a breath, Bob. Wait a minute! Why am I apologizing? Maybe I need to get carried away. Shouting is appropriate in a burning house. Comments 
Media Jean: I sometimes forget that your dad doesn’t just dislike technology. He kinda hates it. 
Chip: Yeah. Once I tried explaining how the newspapers and books he loves are also technology. I mean, newspapers were new at some point. People used to gather in the town square. News was a real community event. If you asked a Town Crier, he might say newspapers ruined everything.
Media Jean: I never thought about it that way!
Chip: That’s nothing compared to books. Books were a bigger change than the Internet ever was.
Media Jean: I guess that’s true. Books changed how people got and shared information. The internet is just an upgrade.
Chip: Right! If you look at today’s technology as just the next step, then it’s not so scary because there was a step before this step, a step you were comfortable with. From that point of view, changing technologies are as natural as changing seasons.
Media Jean: I love that kind of thinking! What’d your dad say to all that?
Chip: He said, “That may be technically true, but it’s not emotionally true.”
Media Jean: Uh… What does that mean?
Chip: Beats me. He tried to explain it, but lost me after the fifth Thoreau quote.
Media Jean: Your dad has read us the Thoreau Riot Act so many times, I practically got that book memorized.
Chip: The Thoreau Riot Act. That’s funny.
Media Jean: Thoreau! What a sour puss! I bet he wasn’t invited to a lot of parties.
Chip: Ha ha! Thoreau the party pooper!
Media Jean: Ha ha! Instead of, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately,” maybe his first draft of Walden really read, “I went into the woods because nobody liked me.”
Chip: Ha ha!
Media Jean: Let’s go to Project Gutenberg, download Walden, and publish an “unauthorized first draft.” We can rewrite the whole thing from a whiner’s point of view.
Chip: I don’t know. It’s pretty preachy already.
Media Jean: That’s true. Man, you can’t even make fun of Thoreau for long. What a sour puss! 
Comic strip from the series "Bob's No Tech Igloo"
(Kid, Inc. Volume 2: The Batcave of Childhood) Have a thought for Bob? Write to us at [email protected]
When you get older, you get these nostalgic impulses.
A glimpse of color, couple notes of music, the way someone says a word, the breeze across your face when the screen door closes. Things you don’t even notice. But somewhere down in the basement, a domino falls, and tap tap tap, up comes the past until, hours later, you got this little ache in your chest. That’s how I ended up in an arcade with my son, Chip. After twenty years, I suddenly missed pinball. Why now? What does this mean? I have no idea. When I asked Chip if he’d like to visit an arcade, he looked at me like I was joking. This is a kid with an arcade on his phone. But like Linus said to Charlie Brown, a son is a built-in best friend, and Chip is usually game for anything. That kid saves me, I swear. We walked through an arcade the size of the Goodyear Blimp hangar. Wall-to-wall video madness. Kids blasting zombies, hunting T-Rexes, slashing ninjas. One game encouraged kids to heft a sniper rifle and blow a criminal’s brains out the back of his 3D skull. Chunks flew and stuck to the screen (I’m not kidding). At the end of the game, the FBI logo popped up with the words, “Winners don’t do drugs.” But I guess they do splatter brains against brick walls. This is entertainment? I grabbed Chip and headed for the door. And that’s where I saw it. One (just one) beat up, worn out pinball machine. But not just any pinball machine. Bally’s Space Time. Space Time! I just stood there, kind of crying, to tell you the truth. I felt so stupid. Heck, I’m kind of crying now. What’s wrong with me? It’s a pinball machine! But I know better than that. It’s never just the final thing. I think we all have domino souls. I don’t know what sensation makes the first tap, don’t understand the random or determined path they follow, clacking up up up, fanning out like those Guinness Book domino extravaganzas, spilling through my subconscious, streams of memories and emotions and archetypes all falling in different directions, then somehow coming back to one purposeful line, tap tap tap, until that final brick falls flat on my heart and I feel absolutely certain that something just happened, but have absolutely no idea what. I wish I came with a User’s Manual. I’ll have to finish this journal entry later. I’m too worked up to write. I need to go to Sears and sit on the riding mower. Comments
Media Jean: I’m worried about your dad.
Chip: Yeah, me too.
Media Jean: He takes everything so personally.
Chip: I know.
Media Jean: Maybe he should see someone.
Chip: Like a doctor?
Media Jean: Or a dance instructor.
Chip: What?!
Media Jean: I don’t know, something! He needs to do something that’s just fun! Something that doesn’t make him think about everything!
Chip: Everything makes him think about everything.
Media Jean: Maybe he should go to Clown College.
Chip: Ha ha! Clown College?
Media Jean: Yeah! I read about stressed out grown-ups going to Clown College. They learn to juggle, walk a tight rope, get hit with cream pies, the whole clown thing.
Chip: I don’t know...
Media Jean: We can sign him up online. We have his digital signature, credit card numbers, email password.
Chip: Yeah, but he thinks we deleted all that after we bought those stem cells.
Media Jean: Oh, yeah. But this time it’s for him, not us. We can sign you both up. Father and son, clowning around together!
Chip: Actually, I think I’d like Clown College.
Media Jean: Who wouldn’t? Maybe we can sign Johnny up, too.
Chip: Don’t you think that’s going a little too far?
Media Jean: Ha ha! We can say it’s a new employee benefit! 
Johnny: I’m not an employee! I’m an officer of this company. I wrote the Employee Handbook. Clown College is NOT a benefit!
Media Jean: Too late! I just signed you up!
Johnny: You can’t sign me up for anything!
Media Jean: Hmmm. On your registration page, they’re asking for a Clown alias. You know, like Bozo or Hobo Kelly.
Johnny: You better be kidding about all this!
Media Jean: How about Nickels? Or Greenbacks?
Johnny: That’s not funny!
Media Jean: Greenbacks the Clown. I like it! It’s YOU!
Johnny: Oooh, you make me so mad!
Chip: She’s kidding, Johnny. But you do stress out kind of easy. Maybe a week at Clown College would be good for you.
Johnny: AARRGHHH!! 
Comic strip from the series "Employee Handbook"
(Kid, Inc. Volume 1: Look Out, Tomorrow, Here We Come!) Have a thought for Bob? Write to us at [email protected]
When I was a kid, I got my hair cut at Carl’s Barbershop, down on Snelling Ave. In those days, there were only two places for a guy to his hair cut: mom’s kitchen table or Carl’s barber chair.
Carl Schulz was a third generation barber. His grandpa opened the shop in 1925 and cut hair through the Great Depression and the War to End All Wars. Carl’s dad took over in 1938 and cut through the Good War and on into the Baby Boom. Then Carl stepped up in 1968 and cut his way through Vietnam and Woodstock, Disco and the personal computer, and all the way to the digital frontier. Carl only had one rule: no reading in his shop. No magazines, no newspapers, no books. hen I pulled out a slug of Bazooka Gum, I knew I had better pop it in my mouth quick and stuff the comic strip wrapper back in my pocket. If Carl caught you reading a Bazooka Joe gum wrapper, he’d hold out his hand and everyone would look right at you until you handed it over. I thought Carl was the smartest guy in town. I’d sit in those big red chairs, waiting my turn, and just listen. He’d talk Wall Street with the bankers, books with the teachers, taxes with the accountants, girls with the guys and kids with the dads. Sometimes, a bunch of us would try and stump Carl. We’d meet at the library, a crowd of 10-year-old knuckleheads, hunched over a Britannica that was three feet square when opened flat. We learned a lot of new stuff trying to stump Carl. Carl had a stroke a few years back and closed shop for six weeks. I finally broke down and made a reservation at a salon. People sat in their own little worlds, reading hair magazines and swiping who knows what on their phones. Half a dozen people got their hair cut at the same time, talking to stylists they didn’t really know, sitting next to strangers they didn’t know at all. Hair dryers blaring, rock music piped in from the ceiling. I went home and let my hair grow down to my shoulders. When Carl came back, we threw a heck of a party right there in the barbershop. You never saw so many shaggy-looking men. Carl cried. I did, too. Heck, I’m almost crying now. Getting your hair cut used to be a community event. No one read at Carl’s because it was rude to read in front of your neighbors. Get to know somebody, for goodness’ sakes. That’s what it was about. Talking and listening, laughing and thinking, waiting your turn, getting your hair cut with a few squirts from a water bottle, letting it air dry, then sticking around after you were done because you really couldn’t think of anywhere else you’d rather be. Comments
Media Jean: Your dad cries a lot, doesn’t he?
Chip: He’s kinda soft-hearted that way.
Media Jean: I bet I walked by that little barbershop a million times, but I never thought twice about it. It looks so… old.
Chip: Carl is great. He’s like Yoda. He knows everything.
Media Jean: Would he cut a girl’s hair?
Chip: Hair is hair, I guess.
Media Jean: Maybe I’ll go to Carl’s Barbershop next time. I’m curious. I’ll bring my dad.
Chip: Just so you know, you can’t use your iPhone in Carl’s.
Media Jean: What?! I’ll do it on the sly, he’ll never know.
Chip: Carl’s way ahead of you. He has a signal blocker in his shop. Cell phones don’t work.
Media Jean: Ha ha! Sounds like something I would do! I like him already!
Chip: He has an old soda machine. You can get a bottle of ice cold root beer for a quarter.
Media Jean: Heck, why wait?! Let’s get a haircut right now!
Chip: I’ll meet you there!
Have a thought for Bob? Write to us at [email protected]
I needed a new pair of Ironclad work gloves. That meant a trip to Sears. Always a reason to celebrate. I like Sears. It hasn’t changed much since I was a kid.
Man, I sound old. Chip wanted Media Jean to join us. I had to think about that, because Media Jean asks a lot of questions. The kid has a heart of gold, but she wants to understand everything. I mean EVERYTHING. The other thing about Media Jean, she thinks grown-ups are hilarious. Our logic cracks her up. Talking to her can be a bit deflating. The questions started as soon as she climbed in the car. MEDIA JEAN: Mr. MacMurray, why are you driving to Sears? ME: I need new work gloves. MEDIA JEAN: Can’t you order gloves online? ME: I want them tonight. MEDIA JEAN: It’s almost dinner time. Are you working after dinner? ME: Tomorrow, then. MEDIA JEAN: Why not overnight a pair of gloves from Amazon? ME: I want to try them on first. MEDIA JEAN: Aren’t you getting the same kind of gloves you had before, those Ironman ones? ME: Ironclad. Yup. I like Ironclad. MEDIA JEAN: Don’t you remember what size you wear? ME: Of course. MEDIA JEAN: Then why not save yourself a trip and overnight the gloves from Amazon? ME: I want to try a different color. MEDIA JEAN: What color? ME: Uh, blue? MEDIA JEAN: I love blue! Does Sears have blue Ironman gloves in stock? ME: Ironclad. I don’t know. We’ll see. MEDIA JEAN: Shouldn’t you call first? I’m checking Amazon right now. They have blue in stock. (I had to help Media Jean understand why anyone would drive to Sears rather than surf to Amazon, or we’d never get out of the driveway.) ME: The thing is, I like Sears. I like the way Sears smells. I like walking around Sears. I like messing with the tools. There’s a riding mower on the floor. You can climb up on it, work the gears and everything. MEDIA JEAN: Can you ride it for a quarter? ME: No. But every time I go to Sears, I stop by that mower. I almost buy it, every time I go. I like that. It’s like pretending. For me, Sears is more fun than Amazon. MEDIA JEAN: So... it’s like going to a candy store instead of buying candy online, except you don’t actually buy candy in the store? ME: Exactly! You can see it, touch it, smell it. It’s wonderful. MEDIA JEAN: You’re funny, Mr. MacMurray. ME: You’re a riot too, Media Jean. I glance in the rear view mirror and Chip is smiling up at me, his face shining. The more ridiculous I feel, the more out of sync, the more old-fashioned and just plain old, the more he seems to love me. The more vulnerable I feel, the more love I feel. Go figure. I don’t pretend to understand it. But if that’s the math of the Google Age, I’ll take it. I hope it all adds up in the end. Comments
Media Jean: I like your dad.
Chip: Me too.
Media Jean: I wasn’t making fun of him.
Chip: It’s OK. He knows you like him.
Media Jean: I do. But he is funny. How Sears smells!?
Chip: I know.
Media Jean: I kept taking deep breaths, but I didn’t notice any particular smell.
Chip: My dad sure did. Remember how he’d stop every now and then and just breathe like he was standing on top of a mountain?
Media Jean: Maybe a little of every breath you take stays inside you.
Chip: You mean for your whole life?
Media Jean: Yeah. Maybe you keep a whiff of everything you ever smelled.
Chip: I’m not sure I like where this is going.
Media Jean: Hahahaha!
Chip: I know what you’re thinking! That’s gross!
Media Jean: I wonder if your sense of smell gets better as you get older.
Chip: Maybe you can actually smell memories.
Media Jean: If it’s true, we could create a line of perfume based on memories. Like A Whiff of Childhood or A Hint of Nostalgia.
Chip: Or Sears, the Tool Aisle.
Media Jean: Sears perfume! Hahaha! That’s hilarious! Let’s mix up a batch for your dad. We can make one for Johnny, too. Distill the aroma of a dirty dollar bill and call it A Touch of Green.
Johnny: Make fun of me all you want, but that perfume idea is gold! We need to create new products.
Media Jean: So the lurker finally appears!
Johnny: I wasn’t lurking! I was listening!
Media Jean: Lurker!
Johnny: Well, I have to keep an eye on you idiots! You waste all day tweeting and facebooking and blogging. But when you actually come up with a money-making idea, what do you do? You goof on it! Perfumes that trigger positive memories?! Are you kidding?! That’s the kind of product consumers live for!
Media Jean: ... is he gone?
Chip: Yeah. He logged off the network.
Media Jean: He’s heading to my house, so let’s meet at his house.
Chip: I’ll grab my chemistry set. 
Comic strip from the series "So-Duh"
(Kid, Inc. Volume 1: Look Out, Tomorrow, Here We Come!) Have a thought for Bob? Write to us at [email protected]
I dreamt I was in that Twilight Zone episode, To Serve Man.
The Kanamits, an advanced alien race, arrive on Earth. They’ve come, as the title of their book says, “To serve man.” They share their technology freely. End hunger. Cure disease. Everyone is happy. Except me. In my dream, the hero Michael Chambers mysteriously disappears... and I take his place. I become the skeptical code breaker. The Kanamits are up to something. I can feel it! I don’t trust their technological wonders. If only I could translate their book! Finally, I give up. What can I do? I can’t break the code, and the world is jumping on the Kanamits' bandwagon. Finally, I accept their technology. It’s making our lives better, right? I even agree to visit the Kanamits’ homeworld. As I’m going up the ramp to their spaceship, someone shouts my name. I turn and see Alice holding up the aliens’ book, To Serve Man. I expect her to scream, “It’s a cookbook!” like in the TV show. They’re just fattening us up! We’re on the menu! But no. In my dream, she holds up the book and shouts, “It’s Blogging for Dummies!” That’s when I wake up. I stumble to Chip’s room. He’s at the computer, of course. I tell him my dream. He says, “I have Blogging for Dummies,” and offers me the book. I stare at him a minute. I know I’m beat. I take the book-- And wake up again. Now it’s 2:30 AM and I’m wide awake for real. My face-to-face, hands-on world has been invaded. That’s what the dream was about, wasn’t it? Everyone thinks technology is at our service. Everyone is on the spaceship, my son is the pilot, and here I stand, watching them go. My stomach hurts. Either I’m hungry, or I’m the Charlie Brown of the Google era. Comments
Chip: I don’t know. I just watched To Serve Man online. It really freaked me out. Is this how my dad feels all the time? I need to take him camping or something.
Media Jean: Ask him to help you build something you don’t need. He loves that kind of stuff. Remember that time you asked him to build a tree house?
Chip: Great idea! I’ll ask him to help me build a transistor radio. He had one of those when he was a kid.
Media Jean: Wow, he’s that old? I guess that’ll help him forget all about the Twilight Zone dream. Wish I could say the same. I’m hooked!
Chip: Me, too! Let’s stay up all night and have a Twilight Zone marathon!
Media Jean: My parents won’t let me sleep over on a school night so we’ll have to do it online.
Chip: OK. Funny how parents think if you’re in your room, you’re in your room.
Media Jean: Yeah. Maybe that comes from growing up in a world where everything was in a box. Like transistor radios.
Chip: I’m glad we’re growing up today, not yesterday.
Media Jean: You said it. Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, that’s my motto.
Have a thought for Bob? Write to us at [email protected]
Chip says a lot of poetry is written online these days. A lot of Twitter haiku. Twikiu, for goodness’s sake.
Last night, as I was tucking him in, he held out his cell phone and said, “Write a poem, dad.” Instead, I cracked open my new copy of Walden, turned to Chapter 2, and read: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived…” Chip was asleep in seconds. Sigh. I’m sticking with my Underwood typewriter. It was good enough for Faulkner, Hemingway, Kerouac and the great E.B. White, it’s good enough for me. Most of the best words in human history were written manually. All those chisels and brushes and pens and typewriters. And you know what? A manual typewriter just feels better. When I tap a key, I feel that satisfying punch (CLACK!) of metal on paper. I like feeling the impact of each letter. Every now and then, I roll out a freshly typed page, turn it over, close my eyes, and run my fingers over those faint and sometimes spiky impressions. Bob’s Braille. Who needs a laptop, word processor or spell check? I got my Underwood, white out, and a dictionary. I’m all set. Comments
Media Jean: What’s white out?
Chip: The label says “Liquid Paper.” Dad uses it to paint over his typos. After it dries, he retypes. It’s sort of like Undo for his generation.
Media Jean: That’s even more work than erasing! Why not just use a pencil? Your dad cracks me up! But the Braille thing sounds pretty cool.
Chip: Yeah, it does feel like Braille. But I like binary better. It’s like seeing the DNA of your thoughts. Try it!
Media Jean: I found a binary-to-text converter online. Here’s “Walden”: 010101110110000101101100011001000110010101101110
Chip: I should make a T-shirt of that for my dad.
Johnny: Would you time-wasters get back to work?!
Media Jean: Hey, Johnny: 01100111 01101111 00100000 01110011 01101111 01100001 01101011 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 01110010 00100000 01101000 01100101 01100001 01100100
Johnny: Yeah, yeah, whatever. Just get back to work! 
HComic strip from the series "Bob's Blog"
(Kid, Inc. Volume 1: Look Out, Tomorrow, Here We Come!) ave a thought for Bob? Write to us at [email protected]
All these years, I’ve pounded out my thoughts on a trusty Underwood Champion Portable Typewriter. My favorite authors wrote by hand or on typewriters.
Can you see Harper Lee writing To Kill A Mockingbird on an iPad? Or Emily Dickinson tweeting Hope is the thing with feathers on a mobile phone? Actually, Emily might have done that. What do I know? Chip’ll show me tweets and messages and posts from Media Jean, and some of her one-liners are pretty good. Just the other day she tweeted: “I’m flying through the air and see everything out of the corner of my eye.” If she had been writing about her unfettered imagination rather than her wireless connection, that’d be flat out poetry. Maybe it is anyway. Repeat after me: What do I know, what do I know, what do I know...? Comments
Media Jean: Your dad’s right. If Emily were writing today, she’d love social media! She could be anonymous and public at the same time. If you ask me, she’s the patron saint of social media poetry. Go, Emily!
Chip: I didn’t know who she was until dad lost his copy of Walden. He likes to read me Thoreau at bedtime. Now he reads Emily. I like her stuff better.
Media Jean: Lost? Didn’t you hide his copy of Walden?
Chip: Yeah. I thought I could get him to read an e-book. I even downloaded Walden to my phone. But he said that would be saccharine.
Media Jean: I think you mean sacrilegious. Your dad’s a riot!
Chip: I love him too.
Johnny: Would you two slackers get back to work?! We’re supposed to be designing software! This is why every responsible corporation in America needs to block social media access for all employees!
Media Jean: Speaking of which, what’re you doing reading a blog on company time?
Chip: Shocking behavior for our CFO.
Media Jean: Unless CFO stands for Chief Facebook Officer. Johnny Green, the new Facebook face for Kid, Inc.
Johnny: One of these days I’m going to take over this company and fire you idiots.
Media Jean: Until then, get back to work, you slacker!
Have a thought for Bob? Write to us at [email protected]
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AuthorHey, I'm Bob, and I hate technology. So why am I blogging? Because I love my son. He upgraded my typewriter to wirelessly post every keystroke online. It makes him happy, so here I am. Archives
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