COLUMN: Alexa Spying

In today's evolving tech world, we're more connected to one another than ever before. Thanks to social media, we can share our lives, our likes, and our feelings at any time with basically anyone we've ever known -- including Britney Spears, who strangely follows me on Twitter. I'm sure she cares about my life a great deal.

We're often guilty of OVER-sharing. I can hop on Facebook right this second and learn what three of my friends ate for dinner tonight. I bet I can find over 100 photographs of snow posted in the last day. I can watch home movies of families I barely know. I can see the President discuss "hamberders," then witness a dozen of my friends supporting him and 200 of my friends hating his guts. People share EVERYTHING on social media.

But as we move more and more from a world where "sharing is caring" to a world of "I don't care, I'm gonna share," we also seem to be growing overly preoccupied with privacy. This seems to run contrary to the whole concept of social media.

Don't get me wrong -- security in the internet age is important. I had a credit card stolen online once, and it sucked. Thankfully it was caught early when some idiot used it at a Best Buy in Indiana and my bank called right away to report suspicious activity. Online security is paramount.

But what I DON'T get are people worried that the massive companies of the internet are spying on them for nefarious purposes. You hear the accusations all the time: Your Amazon Echo listens to your conversations. Google is tracking what sites you visit. Facebook wants to own all your content and the only way to stop them is to publically post "Dear Facebook, you may not own all of my content. Sincerely, me." Come on, people.

Look, I have no idea whether or not internet giants are spying on us. I also don't care. It would take a massive boost of self-importance for me to believe that any billion-dollar company cares the slightest about me. I suppose we're entering a grey area that could pave the way to a Big Brotherish dystopian future, but for now, if Mark Zuckerberg wants some pictures of my cats, he's welcome to them. If Jeff Bezos wants to eavesdrop on my friends and I making fun of "Riverdale," he can tune right in. If I wanted my content private, I wouldn't have posted it to social media in the first place.

And yes, Google DOES track what websites you visit. They use it to deliver relevant offers to your screen. It's called targeted advertising. I go to a lot of music sites, so I get a lot of music-related ads. I'm cool with that. If I have to be subjected to constant promotions, I'd rather it be something I care about and not "Hey, Shane, stop leaks before they happen! Use Tampax!" 

I'm generally okay with a moderate amount of corporate Big Brother snooping on me. But sometimes it CAN get annoying.

My cable box, for instance, allows me to watch videos on Youtube. The other night, I got suckered into checking out some clip promising "Undeniable Proof That UFO's Exist!" Spoiler: It didn't. In fact, it put me right to sleep. But whilst I slumbered, Youtube kept on playing hours and hours of the most nutbag videos imaginable. And now every time I turn on Youtube, it recommends videos to me like, "HILLARY CLINTON CONTROLS THE REPTILIAN LIZARD ILLUMINATI!" Youtube now thinks I'm a basement-dwelling conspiracy theory lunatic. Awesome.

But the most disconcerting example of technology gone amok may have happened to me the other morning. I have to share this story, as embarassing as it is. I was watching a show on Netflix that featured a super cute and funny actress who I thought I recognized from somewhere, so I decided to pause the show and Google her to see what other shows she'd been on.

And yes, I'm fully aware that it's borderline skeevy to do an internet search for an actress young enough to be my daughter, but I'm a pop culture nerd, so don't judge me. And you don't HAVE to judge me, because my Amazon Echo took care of that for you. Keep in mind I'm by myself, the show is paused, there's dead silence in the house except for me typing on this very laptop, when out of NOWHERE, Alexa's voice comes booming out of my Amazon Echo: "THE WORD 'UNJUST' REFERS TO AN ACT THAT IS CONSIDERED MORALLY OR ETHICALLY WRONG." Like possibly researching an actress half my age. I was waiting for Alexa to start ringing a bell and yelling "SHAME!" like Game of Thrones.

I think it was just a random error. I hope it was just a random error. Or maybe somewhere Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg are deeply concerned about the alien-obsessed pervert in Illinois who checks the iTunes music charts five times a day. Who's to say? All I know is that for now, I'm okay being observed by corporate America. After all, if my bank hadn't been monitoring my account Big Brother-style, that jerkwad who stole my credit card could be cleaning out Best Buys across Indiana on my dime as we speak.

Frankly, there are better things to worry about -- like this week's episode of "Riverdale." DON'T JUDGE ME, ALEXA.

COLUMN: Cleats

I don't want to sound morose or anything, but it's a simple fact of life that each of us has a finite number of minutes on this planet. Mine seem to be allocated thusly: For 30% of my earthly minutes, I'm sound asleep. 10% I spend eating. Another 30% I spend in this office staring at a computer screen. And whatever remains are mostly minutes spent worrying about whether I'm going to slip and fall on the ice.

This week, I'm celebrating five years since a routine trip to take out my kitchen trash turned into a broken ankle and an unplanned six week staycation on my couch. As I was walking my trash to the curb that night, I didn't notice the trail of frozen water draining from the gutter of my garage. I'm guessing my ankle didn't see it coming, either.

Once upon a time, I loved sliding around on the ice, building snow forts, and pouring water down sled trails to make them good and icy. If I fell? Big whoop. Laugh a little, pick yourself up, and fall down all over again. I don't have perfect recall, but I'm pretty sure that falling down used to be FUN.

These days, however? Not so fun. If I slip even the slightest fraction of an inch on any ice, all I can picture is my ankle snapping like a twig, which is interesting given that I didn't even witness it snap like a twig five years ago. The view at the time was somewhat obstructed by my butt landing on it. Have you ever been so mad at someone that you've wanted to shove a foot up their...? Well, DON'T. I am proof positive that IT COULD BREAK YOUR FOOT.

If there's even the slightest glimmer of ice on the ground, trust me to find it and almost die. So now I'm pretty much terrified of the outdoors, and the only thing worse than an uncoordinated klutz is a PARANOID uncoordinated klutz.

So my heart dropped last week when I woke up and heard a weatherman issue my least favorite words in all of meterology: BLACK ICE. Black ice is the scientific term for ice that is evil, malicious, and black-hearted. It's ice that HIDES and pretends to be pavement. It's ice that keeps the LifeAlert people in business: "HELP! I'VE FALLEN AND I CAN'T GET UP!"

But not for me. This year, I was prepped and ready for the blackest of ice. When I went home for the holidays this year, my parents gifted me a pair of stretch-on cleats. Simply attach to the bottom of your shoes, and if any black ice comes between you and the ground, your cleats impale it with extreme prejudice, the evil menace is thwarted, and you continue about your merry way in an upright fashion.

Perhaps stretch-on cleats are nothing new to you. Maybe they've always been for sale at all the places normal people go who aren't weirdo shut-ins that buy everything online. For me, this was new terrain. Despite my macho physique and athletic prowess, I am shockingly inexperienced at cleat-ing. Maybe that's why I was surprised when I took them out of the bag.

I think I have an average shoe size. Yet based on what fell out of the "one size fits all" bag, I either have freakish Sasquatch feet or my folks bought the children's model. There's no possible way these could fit a normal adult human foot, is there?

Well, it turns out they ARE one-size-fits-all, provided you have the dexterity and virility to stretch them around your shoes. I suppose the sort of people who frequently wear cleats are the sort of people with the necessary arm strength to implement them. As for me, it took a five minute workout to stretch the things in place. At one point, one of them flew off my foot like a deranged slingshot, nearly using up one of my cats' nine lives.

Eventually I got them on, stomped to the car with the confidence of anyone wearing metal needles on their feet, and headed to work resuming my daily autopilot routine. This involves the morning ritual of stopping for coffee and a pre-work snack. Remember when I said I'd never worn cleats before? I have to restate this, because it's the only explanation I can offer as to why I just strolled right into the gas station with cleats still attached to my feet.

I guess my mental powers at 8:15 a.m. were not enough to realize that tile floors are every bit as susceptible to cleat punctures as black ice. Don't worry, though, I didn't actually get the chance to aerate their floor. That's because the gas station had laid out cardboard to alleviate customers tracking in snow ick. I took one step and PUK-THWAP PUK-THWAP, my cleats went clean through the soggy cardboard which was now attached to my shoes and I went surfing down the aisle like a one-man cardboard regatta. My fear of breaking an ankle was instantly replaced by a fear of doing the splits headfirst into the Slurpee machine. I don't speak punjabi, but I'm pretty sure I could still catch the drift of what the clerk thought of my performance.

Soooo if you happened into a gas station and bore witness to the world's worst breakdance routine followed by a sheepish solo sock hop, many apologies. It turns out there ARE worse things than falling down. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to take these spikes off my shoes, pretend this never happened, and hide in a corner until spring.   

COLUMN: Britpop

As far as parents go, I pretty much lucked out and got the best ones on the planet. As a spoiled only child, my folks were fairly over-protective of me, but that never applied much when it came to my exposure to pop culture. Within reasonable boundaries, I was pretty much allowed to watch and listen to whatever TV or music I fancied.

I can only recall three times when my parents tried to censor the music I grew up listening to. I remember them coming home from a PTA meeting saying I shouldn't listen to Blondie because they glamorized drug use, but then I caught my mom humming "Call Me" days later. My folks are both proud veterans, so they REALLY hated Paul Hardcastle's "19," the early electronic song that sampled news clips from the Vietnam War. They went so far as to ban it from the house, which of course meant that I procured it within 24 hours and would secretly play it over and over again, because if your parents hate something, it HAS to be awesome.

And I can distinctly remember my mom recoiling in disgust the first time she heard David Gilmour belt "we don't need no education" over the FM dial. Honestly, that time I mostly agreed with her. Of course, I was too young to realize that I was listening to a small fragment of a conceptual masterpiece exploring the themes of abuse, abandonment, and isolationism. I just thought it was a guy named Pink Floyd who hated school, as evidenced by his poor grammatical choices.

I disagreed with Mr. Floyd. I was one of those weirdo kids who kinda liked school. I've always enjoyed learning things, or at least the things that interest me. Sadly, the things that interest me the most are usually TV, movies, and music -- topics that aren't always a priority in higher education. I loved my time at Augustana, but I'd get jealous whenever I'd read about some school offering a class on Twin Peaks or Madonna or some other cultural zeitgeist. I'd love to take a college class on pop culture. The only thing better would be TEACHING one of those classes.

I'm about to get a taste of just that.

Don't get me wrong, I'd make a lousy teacher. I'm not a very patient person, and I'd freak out the first time some know-it-all student dared question my great authority. Plus, I have a near-crippling fear of public speaking, so I'd be sweating through my shirt by recess.

I have no desire to be a teacher. But it might be fun to be one for an hour.

Every month, the Bettendorf Public Library hosts an event called "Trax from the Stax." On the third Thursday of the month, they invite a presenter to host a music listening party with the goal of exposing folks to music they might not be familiar with. This month, that presenter is ME. I'm pretty sure I'm qualified, considering I host music listening parties for my cats nearly EVERY night.

It's actually not my first time in this particular hot seat. I dusted off my first Stax of Trax about a year ago. Apart from a few stammers and a possessed laptop computer, it went fairly well. I was nervous as all get out, but hopefully I unveiled some new music to a few people, which I'm pretty sure is my real purpose on Earth. Getting somebody to like one of my fave bands is worth every sweat-soaked shirt and stammer it takes.

This one, though, should be fun. You see, before a certain newspaper strangely agreed to let me write about nonsense every week, I used to co-manage a music blog created to unite weirdo fans of obscure music like me. And it just happened to coincide with an interesting time in pop music.

In the mid-90s, the dour phenomenon of grunge rock was taking over the world. But in England, a handful of rebellious bands came together to reclaim the UK airwaves with a sound that was anything BUT grunge. Armed with the influence of vintage English rock of yore, they created a revolution that was unashamedly upbeat, audaciously anti-cool, and uniquely and unapologetically British. The press dubbed the movement "Britpop," and for a fleeting moment, it was the most exciting music in the world -- except the U.S., where much of the scene went completely unnoticed.

So if you're up for hearing some banging tunes and Cockney accents, come to the Bettendorf Public Library this Thursday, January 17th, at 7 p.m. in the Norman J. Kelinson Room. At best, you might fall in love with some great bands you've never heard of. At worst, you can point and laugh at a sweaty stammering newspaper columnist.

I'm sure my folks are proud. My mom would probably be prouder if I was lecturing about Barbra Streisand, but that's her fault for letting me listen to GOOD music when I was a kid.

COLUMN: Dips

(Not the real dip. The real dip looked far more vomity.)

Well, that's it. Farewell, holiday season. We'll see you again come mid-September when we as a nation again begin the three-month shopping orgy of Thanksmasoween.

The lights are down, the halls have been un-decked, and the Lifetime channel has gone from movies where handsome men teach the real meaning of Christmas back to movies where handsome men are double-life-leading rapists who prey upon your teenage daughters. All that's left now are the memories.

With loads of free time around the holidays, I wasted more than a few hours binge-watching shows stacking up in my Netflix and Hulu queues. But what to choose? When you're single at Christmas, watching sappy romances can cause a needless pity party. And I don't care what Andy Williams says, the most wonderful time of the year seems like a bad time for scary ghost stories. Instead, I settled for my mounting queue of cooking competition shows.

I know nothing about cooking. I can make about twelve different entrees competently, and I'm okay with that. I can bake chicken and fish, boil pasta, work a grill, and I'm quite skilled at adding Helper to hamburger. Beyond that, I'm contentedly inept.

The chefs on TV, on the other hand, are anything but inept. The stuff they make is less food and more edible art. They use ingredients I've never heard of before. They use cooking techniques I've never heard of before. Everyone "sous vides" everything. I don't even know what sous vide is. I just had to look up how to spell sous vide. I don't think it's something you can do in a microwave.

Still, I enjoy watching these chefs make magic out of a pantry. But there's a downside. Those shows make everything look TOO easy. Easy enough for a stupid part of my brain to go, "Well, that doesn't look TOO hard. Maybe I CAN cook." For the record, I cannot -- but shows like this occasionally make me forget. And the false confidence I took from this binge-watching session was JUST in time for my annual New Year's Eve party.

Don't be alarmed, I'm still a realist. It's not like I tried to serve my friends bouef bourguignon or something. But rather than the usual chips-n-salsa cuisine that usually awaits my party guests, I thought I'd try some dip recipes I pulled off the internet. How tough can dips be, right? Throw some stuff in a bowl, stir it up, and presto: delicious goop. I felt confident. Some of you might have even seen me pushing a cart through Hy-Vee with a metric ton of cream cheese.

The first recipe I thought I'd try was some decadent goop called Monster Cookie Dip that's a can't-lose combination of cream cheese, peanut butter, and loads of sugar and chocolate. The recipe says, and I quote: "In a mixing bowl, add ingredients and blend with electric mixer until light and fluffy." Or, in my case, until your electric mixer gets stuck, makes a noise like "grooooonk," and starts puffing out a cloud of noxious black smoke.

But I was determined to not let one tiny near-fire ruin my new year, so I moved on. Next was a meatless taco dip as a token offering to my one vegetarian friend. This seemed to go fine until the part where you have to dice up onions and jalopenos. I hate onions, and jalopenos straight up terrify me. I can't even look at one without hearing my mom warn, "DON'T TOUCH YOUR EYE!" Which of course made my eyes immediately start itching. "WEAR GLOVES!" said my inner mom, who probably instead should have said "BUY GLOVES!" because I lost mine years ago. But if you've ever wondered if it's possible to quickly de-seed a jalopeno while wearing winter mittens, I can now provide a definitive answer: No.

I decided the best course of action to avoid blindness would be to chuck the onions and peppers into an electric chopping product I own that shall remain nameless, except that it looks like a bullet and may or may not be magic. With mitten hands, I carefully loaded the bullet, pressed down, and just like magic, it moved most of the contents to the side walls while turning a very small amount into a toxic onion-jalopeno death-pulp, which I carefully deposited in the crock pot and said a small prayer. I apologized for the dip prior to anyone touching it. People said it was good, but based on the amount of leftovers, they lied. I now have a full container of the stuff in my freezer for that future day when I get a hankering for a really lousy taco dip.

I sought redemption in an easy queso dip with only three ingredients: sausage, cheese, and tomatoes. The quick assembly boosted my confidence, and I poured the mixture into the crock pot with the pride of accomplishment. Then I looked to the left and saw the crock pot. I had instead just poured hot cheese and sausage directly into the heating element. Somewhere I could hear the voice of Padma Lakshmi going, "Shane, please pack your knives and go."

I am no Top Chef. But despite my best efforts, the party went off without anyone getting burned, electrocuted, or pepper-eyed. Maybe by the time I drag out the holiday decorations again, I'll be a MasterChef -- just remind me not to WATCH MasterChef right before New Year's.