Machine Language

So the wife travels to Boulder, CO to visit family and maybe do a little purchasing for the retail co-op she’s part of. She ships 3 modest size boxes back by the United States Postal Service. Now, this woman knows how to pack cups and saucers and bric-a-brac. I have seen it. Two to three generations worth of crystal stemware and real china have followed us to the places where such things break, and yet none ever have. So with double reinforcing shipping tape all around, it entered “the machine”.

Somewhere between there and here the machine takes apart the box, tears it down the middle, removes much of the tape, oddly enough, unwraps the bubble-wrap around each piece and then breaks most of the contents. Evidence suggests that the machine then had a moment where it acted out its urge to become even more human by showing remorse. This manifested itself in the decision to take an assortment of toys, and a cheap candle and some other crap from someone else’s package and stuff it into my wife’s package, forget to re-wrap the individual items, throw some tape around the box and send it on. While it was stuffing it forgot to slip in the sheet of paper describing what happened. Finally, the machine delivered the package to our porch like this…

When the wife called the machine’s handlers at the local Post Office, they quite naturally blamed the machine. Darn technology. Without question, the machine will be fixed.