Simplify

Simplify. Interesting word. Simple comes from the Latin word simplus, meaning one or single. Simplify, divided, is simple and -ifj. -Ify meaning, "to make," in this case, to make simple. This word is also interesting to me because to sim­plify seems to me iffy. Iffy being slang for, "too many ifs complicating the matter."

Let's simplify this writing by ridding it of all the ety­mologies. We all want simple lives, but we rarely do any­thing to simplify. Many times we only complicate things. Three things in life are this way, explanations, computers, and Spring-Cleaning.

I will start with explanations. I have had a desktop com­puter (computation device that sits on a top of a desk) for over a year now. It crashes (locks up, not able to continue computing until restarting (hitting the restart button located on the front of the case)) quite often. As you see this last sen­tence, while trying to make it understandable and simple for non-computer oriented people, was actually quite com­plicated and lengthy. Explanations are this way and to sim­plify life, I vote we just skip them all together. Do explanations make the police officer any happier when you explain to him why you thought you could go sixty-five in a school/residential area in a stolen sports car with out-of­date tags? No, explanations tend to try his patience.

Computers. Sure the idea of spreadsheets, word proc­essing, and Atari emulators (computer programs that emu­late an Atari system (emulate, meaning to act as)) seem to simplify one's life. Tell that to me next time Windows crashes. When I have my budget for the year planned and I go to save it, I do not wish to have a blue text screen coming up on my monitor saying "Error on OCE73BAD3D," caus­ing me to restart and loose my information. Once more, when I have to restart, I do not need Windows telling me "Because you were stupid and did not shut down the com­puter properly, I must now spend five minutes doing a disk check. NEXT TIME GO TO THE START MENU AND SHUT DOWN!" Oh gee, I would if I could have, but once the "Blue" killer screen shows its ugly face on a computer, it's all over.

Maybe you have never met up with a Windows Killer Blue Screen; consider yourself lucky. You must be a lucky Mac user. I'd rather face the little bomb icon in the Mac than the Killer Blue Screen any day. If you have never faced ei­ther of these screens, you must not be a computer user. Con­gratulations. You, though you do every calculation, term paper, and solitaire game manually, have more time than those of us who sit in front of Satan's creation biting our nails and lashing out at the inanimate box. (No home appli­ance is. more talked to than the computer. More so than the car.)

Spring-cleaning. I just finished doing my laundry to­night. After I pulled the sheets out of the dryer, I folded them, brought them up to my room, and put them on my bed. I then proceeded to make my bed. After I made sure I could bounce a quarter off it, I decided to go to sleep. Here came the tricky part. I just made my bed. What the heck was the purpose of making a perfectly tucked bed and then messing up the sheets by sleeping in it?

So I decided I would sleep on the floor, which had some crumbs on it. I then proceeded to vacuum. When I vacuum, nothing is left untouched. Everything in the room is moved

out into the hall and every corner is cleaned. While growing up I was taught very well to dust after vacuuming, so even though it was late at night, I dusted my shelves. I was also taught never to dust around objects, so I then removed my books and knick-knacks off the shelves so I could dust.

Why dust? It will only reappear within a few days. Why remove something God put there? If all those little creatures in the rain forests have a right to exist, dust mites have rights too. Is it wrong to remove a natural habitat for dust mites? If it is wrong to clear out a rain forest and kill lit­tle creepy crawly things that are just as dangerous to our health as dust mites, then yes, it is wrong.

So I end with this note. In order to completely simplify one's life, you must live with nothing that was created to simplify one's life. The simple solution here is to get rid of everything. Since that is the simple solution created to sim­plify my life, I shall not abide by it. So I say keep the lan­guage, computers, and dust mites in your life. Getting rid of them only creates more work.