Tag Archives: contraptions

ATM

ATM: (abbr.) An abbreviation for automated teller machine.dictionary with letter A

It is the trifecta of disasters.

  • First of all, anything that’s automated is only of value if it automates.

When it develops personality quirks and fails to deliver its automation, it is annoying beyond all curses of Job.

  • Second, it is a teller.

I don’t need machines lecturing me on my bank account, my balance or charging me fees because I find myself suddenly and haplessly in need of cash. Can there be anything worse than a self-righteous mechanism which knows too much about you?

  • And finally, machine.

There are two things I know about machines:

  1. They can be very helpful.
  2. They break down often and cease to be helpful.

So even though I am a user of these contraptions from time to time, they have also proven themsevles to be adversarial rather than being advocates for my well-being.

When I was younger, I was convinced I could trick them–to get $20 out of them when I only had $19.42 in my account. At that stage of the game the machines would not offer you $10, assuming that anyone who didn’t have $20 should not be pushing anyone’s buttons.

Being priggish, the machine would never give me $20 for my $19.42. The thought was, “Come back when you have money.”

The problem was, of course, I needed money now–so I could make more money.

The not-so-automated, over-telling, pompous machine … was unsympathetic.

 

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Thank you for enjoying Words from Dic(tionary) —  J.R. Practix

Adjacent

Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter A

Adjacent: (adj.) next to or adjoining something else.

It was a big chunk of three-story, square brick building, sitting right in the middle of our little town, holding within its confines a trio of completely unrelated businesses. The only thing they shared in common was that they were adjacent to one another.

The building looked like it had been constructed by about forty-five Amish men with only a break for lunch in between bouts of mortaring. It was simple.

My parents’ little loan company was located in the center, with a hardware store to the right and an optometrist‘s to the left. Our eye doctor fellow only showed up two times a week, driving in from Columbus to take care of the bespectacled in our community.

The hardware store was always open, but never busy. As a boy I often wondered how they stayed in business. It seemed the only commerce was the pop machine in front of the store, which was frequented by everybody on the block, since such contraptions were a bit of a rarity at the time.

Directly across the street was the town green, wherein sat another brick-chunk building, dubbed The Public Library.

For many days and in many ways, this little parcel of business and commerce was my stomping ground, playground and home, as I patiently waited for my parents to finish the dribble of business they did, often loaning money to people in our burg for anything from motorcycles to stud bulls.

Beneath this massive construction was a basement that connected all three businesses, and when I y worked up my courage, I went down to the spider-web-infested terrain, hoping to discover some treasure I might be able to sell, in order to acquire enough coinage to stroll up the street and visit the local Five and Dime for treasures often beyond my comprehension.

The town was so small that actually, everything was adjacent to everything else. And like so many pieces of my life, the older I became, the more it seemed to shrink and become insufficient to my expanding boundaries.

But Samuel’s Hardware and Bremen Optometry will always be in my mind the quintessential definition of adjacent.

Acme

by J. R. Practix

dictionary with letter A

Acme: (n.) the point at which something or someone is best, perfect or most successful: e.g., physics is the acme of scientific knowledge.

NOW it’s even funnier.

As I reflect back on the Road Runner and Coyote cartoon, understanding the definition of “acme,” the little dramas portrayed onscreen between these two adversaries gain a new hilarity.

If you remember, the coyote was continually ordering some product to destroy the road runner and it  always arrived from the Acme Company. NOW I realize that Acme means the best. Top of the game. Highest quality.

Of course, the irony here is that these contraptions which the coyote used inevitably failed, backfired, and usually ended up squashing HIM into the ground.

Nevertheless, they were often quite intricate and cleverly devised, which is a lifelong warning to all of us–that putting ingenious products into the hands of imbeciles not only makes us question whether the invention was quite as clever as we thought, but also opens the door to these innovations striking back to bite us in the ass.

So it gave me pause for thought. Maybe my computer is REALLY perfect–just being operated by a hairless monkey.