I was sitting outdoors at a Starbucks in the big TO when this Porter shuttle pulled up and people spilled out. It gave me a giggle to see Discover Massachusetts running along the top of it. Were the travelers disembarking expecting to discover Boston, The Beaches, The Berkshires? Or was that for embarking travelers? Who can say?

I love taking clicks of everyday ordinary urban living. And since I’m going to be yapping about all things bizarre today, it seemed appropriate.

Cue eerie music…

These are two recent events in our household.

G-Man woke up one morning and said he woke the night before to Auld Lang Syne playing in the bedroom. I hadn’t come to bed yet. I gave the opinion that he was dreaming. I did not hear Auld Lang Syne. He was adamant.

I don’t think so.

It was a differing of opinion standoff. The best kind.

Several days later, I needed a nap. More. Than. Anything. So I hied up to the bedroom and slid under the duvet and was quickly in the nap zone.

About 20 mins later, G-Man got a loud text message… Some effing thing is playing Auld Lang Syne!

It played twice more.

I was in The Twilight Zone, man. Napless and grumpy.

Fast forward a few days. Rocking epic bedhead, I stumbled downstairs one morning to slurp decaffeine until brain cells started firing up in my head. It’s my morning routine. While I slurped, G-Man confessed that I hadn’t turned off the flat screen the night before. Confession is good for the soul, especially if you’re confessing someone else’s sins. Just a first-thing-in-the-morning-decaffeinated-opinion.

I said it was possible, but I don’t think so.

Shortly thereafter, I went off to my writerly room over the garage to contemplate flat-screen ways. Really, I wrote a few blogs and stared out the window at the squirrels playing peanut hockey in the street. Nothing happens here after the first school bell of the morning until the crossing guard rolls in just before noon. The streets are safe for peanut hockey.

When I thumped back downstairs for a late afternoon lunch G-Man said, that flat screen turned itself on four more times while you were gone!

Huh.

Guess it wasn’t me.

Hearin’ the…. twilight zone.

Let me just say, we have no smart appliances… that we know of. No Siri. No Alexa. No whatevs.

Here’s how it played out.

The first scenario involved a light/date & time/nightlight free-standing wand gifted to us by our car dealership at some service appointment. It has a charger. Apparently, it also has an internal battery for the date & time and when that battery dies, the date reverts to January 1 the time to 00 and the device plays Auld Lang Syne. Huh.

My brain is all gobsmacked.

The second scenario resulted from resetting the flat screen after it went all pixilated. No. Not pixelated. Those of us who live with a pixilated screen have to do that from time to time. We can only assume that it didn’t reset properly, because once G-Man reset it again, it stopped turning on by itself.

Our little scientific investigations sucked the twilight zone right out of these stories. I prefer the former to the latter.

Do-do-do-do,

do-do-do-do,

do-do-do-do.

Here be Hump Day.

Single file to Thursday here.

Elen

Note: There were two revivals of The Twilight Zone television series. 1985-89 and 2002-2003.