Blind Finding the Blinds?

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God, through His subscription streaming service, Life, has interesting ideas about human existence and the years we spend on earth. For our senior years, for example, He has instructed the powers that be at Life to make our last years as challenging as possible. The point is to test us seniors and see which side of The River Styx* we end up on, and how high up in Heaven or how low in Dantes Circles we go. An example of this late-in-life testing is simply getting dressed. All of us remember jumping out of bed, throwing on some clothes. and heading off to work, play or party…when we were young. It might have been ten minutes from awake to turning the ignition key.**

If we tried doing the same thing this late in life, we’d eventually make a call to a close relative or friend to come get us up off the floor. And—because we get stubborn as we age–it would be a lot longer than ten minutes before we surrender all pride and get to a phone, even if we planned ahead and left it near us. Damn socks. Invent slip-ons, like shoes, dammit.

Senior life then becomes a life of leisure and disregard for the world’s major events, but with a close, annoying, aggravating, non-symbiotic relationship surrounding the Activities of Daily Living (ADL***).

As a younger old man****, my patience was lost on nearly every test thrown my way in my new Old Man career, with the resulting invective stream: “Dammit! WTF! Why me? Why now?” You may have read about some of these adventures in very old essays.

But a simple reading of the room—”commonly called paying attention” –revealed while annoying things were happening, they weren’t just happening to me. The pain is cohort-wide.

Now, with understanding and patience firmly tucked into the frontal lobe, I aspired to get replacement blinds for my apartment windows. This was going to be a long story, but the preface appears to have taken up most of today’s available space. The incongruous but—sadly–modern twists and turns of the War for The Mini Blinds will have to be delineated and explicated in a future essay. It’ll tug at your heart strings, whatever the hell they are.

But a warning, here, for anyone who thinks senior life is all napping, streaming, and ranting: It is, mostly, but we do face a life of paper cuts no younger person can imagine or would have the will to endure. We achieve patience by knowing it happens to everyone who gets the privilege of being “Aged”. We view it as a blessing. Ask any senior and they will tell you how happy they are to be so old. Ask, I dare you.

There isn’t much room left for anything but a quick joke. If I’ve told it before, sue me. And if you are offended, good. Its nice to finally get credit for doing something. Of note, my ancestors–and therefore moi–are citizens of the butt of this joke and do not mind you laughing, as long as its with us and not at us. We’ve come a long way as an Ethnic Group and are proud to be part of making someone else’s life a little brighter.

A Polish man locked his keys in his car.

It took him an hour and a half to get his family out.

Tomorrow, we pick on Italians! Another robust branch of the family tree.

*Yes, I know. I am Unitarian Universalist. Deal with it. Think “Literary License” aka “Poetic License”. Qualified immunity.

**We didn’t have push button start in those days.

***Real thing. Google it, especially young people. Best to learn about it, now, and be ready.

****You get that, right?

Ai, Ai, Oh No…

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Apologies to those who know the story and song of Old Macdonald’s Farm. He had all sorts of animals, but we never know if he is happy about it*. How could he be happy with all those animals to feed? He must have been a billionaire. Ai says there is no real ending to the Old McDonald’s Farm song, it can go on until the singer gets bored or tired or runs out of animals.

Life kind of feels like the song, now. Except for a new animal every verse substitute a new trouble, war, or unhappy event. As an essayist, it is harder and harder to come here and write something happy, something peppy, something uplifting. It is so easy to write WTF essays, “why is this happening essays”, and warning essays. Probably shouldn’t use the word easy, because writing about what is wrong in the world (in my opinion), is not easy, it’s annoying, and seems pointless. It’s not even cathartic anymore. There is a sense the turbulence of this world is not necessary, and that my golden years should be full of—at least—apathy, and not despair, unhappiness, anger, resentment.

I tried to sign up for DirectTv, yesterday but their website wouldn’t approve any of the 5 credit cards I tried. “Oops! There is a problem. Please try later.” The Ai chat bot took all my information, guided me to the website, and walked me though every step to get me to where I already was and then Ai asked: “And what does your screen say?” Oops. I asked for an agent and after a 5-minute wait one came into the chat and typed: “So how can I help you?” I typed “Oops! There is a problem. Please try later.” And the rep started by typing the same questions the Ai bot did. Hey! This is progress? This is better?

See how easy it is to complain?

 This essay will be an effort to not complain. I vow to find more positive things to write about, more good news to share, more ideas to inform or uplift, not brow beat or spotlight anger. Yes, most of the usual space has been used up already with the normal bleating, but there is still room for a few paragraphs of light.

The Rich have taken over the United States and will soon take over the world. And they don’t give a crap about anyone Not Rich. How can they be stopped?

Sorry. Old habit. As a retired person my days are my own to shape and one of my favorite times of those days is 2pm to 3pm. I recline on my favorite couch, put my tablet on my chest, and listen to NPR. The hour begins with 15 minutes of news and then the VoxPop show cuts in and a gentleman named Ray Graf opens his mouth. This only happens Mondays through Fridays, but VoxPop is enough to make a day better, and have that “better” last for at least the hours until VoxPop comes back on the airwaves. Ray has a way of yakking that is not only entertaining, but informative, and…bright. Happy. Content. Unhurried. Almost therapeutic. No more will be said except he is not available in all NPR areas. Wait, maybe VoxPop is, and can be heard over the wonderfully cluttered Internet of Ideas and Chaos. The station broadcasting Ray Graf’s VoxPop is WAMC, out of Albany NY. It’s unclear if anyone outside New York State can get his show, but try, and get back to me, will you? Google or Ai “VoxPop with Ray Graf” and see what happens in your area. I’ve not said much about the actual show, hoping the mystery will pique your curiosity and get to you look for it, so…do it. Now. It might get you off the snide** of current life and back into the gentle but challenging currents of real life. Real normal life, not Rich and Powerful Life.

Sorry. Old habits die hard.

*Or what tense of verb to use. Is Old McDonald alive? Dead? Mythical? The song does say he “had” a farm. Did it get repossessed? Fall into ruin? Or does he and the farm come back to life every time we sing about him? And where is this “farm”? And why the hell should we care?

**The Internet of Ideas and Chaos is often what we make it. Google snide, for example, and enjoy.

Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah

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Is that enough blahs for you?

When there is some dead space in my overactive life*, I Watch television. Sorry. Hope this doesn’t affect your vision of me as a hand-on-the-chin Rodin thinker, but television/media is the Window to the World.

Sidebar: Auguste Rodin’s “The Thinker” was meant to be a clothed, self-portrait of the sculptor sitting atop the Gates of Hell, admiring the Circles of Hell and pondering Dante’s poem. Rodin, to his credit, noticed the figure had a more powerful message and purposely stripped it naked. It is thought to be the first artistic expression of an intellectual with muscles. It was publicly unveiled in 1904. Yet, to this day we still think of brainy people as nerds and weaklings. Since intellectuals are so smart, how did they let that image proliferate? Or…is it an image they prefer, so they get underestimated? We all know, now, we can’t trust those intellectual types and their woke ideas, but are they playing us, leading us around by the nose? Take your clothes off, sit on an uncomfortable granite slab, and give it some thought.

I left Upstate New York and traveled south by car a few weeks ago. The trip began with long pants, solid shoes for walking in the snow, two layers of clothes, and gloves. 24 hour later—after an overnight rest—I was in shorts and sandals and cranking up the AC. Durham, NC is going to set a record today of over 90 degrees. When I drive home in a few days the weather in NY will be snow, sleet, and freezing rain. The range of climate is not the impressive part. What is impressive as hell is how easily we can move between these varying climates. We take it for granted. If it was Gunsmoke days, it might take weeks, even months to find a different biome. It is a wonderful world.

But not for News, and Information is slowly rotting, as well. The first problem with our news and information disseminating systems, is Capitalism. The ever-present need for profit means, these days, commercial time in our media centers is paramount, content be damned. Forget the need for a commercial every three seconds and note the timing, when something neat is about to happen or be revealed, your media cuts to an advertisement. We see you, you capitalist shites. We know what you’re doing. But can we do anything about it? The Window to the World is covered over with bumper stickers.

But hold on, what about that damned “content”? It is apparent** there is a lot of money to be made by…talking. Blah blah blahing. Spitting words. Mangling sentences. Mouthing opinions either believed or tailored for certain information silo consumption. News is now 5 seconds of fact and 23 hours and 55 seconds of talking heads, each with his own ass-inine(sic) take on some ass-inine(sic) subject. News  head: “America dropped $10 million dollars worth of bombs on the Middle East, today. Here to discuss it is our Talking Head Panel (THP) of experts.” Of note, there is always at least one female with the flowing tresses of modern fashion, and at least one man with a beard hiding his wattle. (Don’t pretend you know what a wattle is. Look it up.)

With our information silos, you can find any THP discussing any subject you want and offering any opinion you agree with or would like to argue against from the safety of your living room, you troll. And how about CNN actually including on-line comments in their news reporting, now? Should anyone care about the opinion of one lazy, partially informed, but supercilious listener/watcher/critic/snark? (For full effect google “supercilious.)

Thank, God, this essay ran out of room before something stupid got printed.

I’m going to watch me some Gunsmoke on Grit*** and hope the world goes on without me.

            *”Dead” is probably not a good word for a senior to use, but you all know what I mean.

**”At this point in time going forward to the future.” Ha.

***Or Rich Steves travel show on PBS. A true Window to the World.

Some Senior Things

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These aren’t complaints, just observations. If you’re old, they can help, and if you’re young, they can both inform you about what it means to be old* and give you a glimpse of your future…if you’re lucky.

Months ago, I recommended Dollar Store reading glasses strategically** placed all over the house and your car so you’d always have a pair at hand. My personal record is 10 pair. Of note, they are now $1.25 apiece. Damn you, Biden***. The Dollar Store has not changed their name, by the way.  They ought to. As a new hint, do the same with magnifying glasses. Not sure what they cost, now, but most corporations are run by perfectly sighted young people who seem intent on making important product information on labels as small as possible. A recent bout with a room air freshener concerned small black type over a dark red background. It was so hard to read I needed my Jewelers’ Loupe. Look it up, they are invaluable but won’t be found in the Dollar Store. Also, you won’t need 10 of them, two or three will do unless you do a lot of package content reading in the bathroom. And you certainly won’t need one while you’re driving.

To all of us, stop trying to tell everyone else about how bad our life is. I’ve noticed a disturbing trait, lately, among us old people: Condition Competition. As a veteran of malady management, myself, it’s hard to not want everyone to know how well you did, if you did well, and how bad you’re doing if you didn’t. Since young people never listen to us, we seem to be using each other for these reports. And as we solemnly detail our struggles, it hurts to hear back from the listener a litany of troubles worse than our own. Trust me. As I recently began regaling a conversational partner about winning skirmishes against cancer, AMD, and arthritis, he countered with a double-lung transplant at age 18, followed by the loss of both parents in an accident a year later. Well played, sir. My options were to lie or retreat to complain another day, and hope for someone less well-off. Remember, seniors: sonder.****

The Loss of Things is a never-ending affliction which can be managed if one remembers it is the natural way of life. I’ve been fortunate to lose things slowly and incrementally, the best way to lose them since you never really know they are gone until you sit down and write about it. See? This is healthy, right? Vision is the obvious thing to illustrate this phenomenon. As noted in the first paragraph, my vision is slowly and incrementally (SI) fading into the sunset. It’s hard to imagine going blind in one fell, swoop, so thank your lucky stars if SI is the way your best traits go. SI effects everything: hair, libido, athletic ability, mental acuity.  Everything except toenails. Note to young entrepreneurs: invent a way to stop toenails from growing or a liquid that makes them fall off. A liquid preferably applied with a long stick.

Always look for flat, level, ground. This is a hard one, especially with bad vision, but no fall is worse than the one you do in public simply because a small incline or decline suddenly appeared under your feet. Sad to admit it, but “Training Wheels” for seniors might not be a bad idea, if we could get seniors to admit–and commit– to using them. So far, my only concession to a sudden change in position is a google watch with a built-in fall sensor. If I drop and can respond in 15 seconds, there’s still a chance to regain some dignity. If I don’t answer in 15 seconds, it calls 911 and all bets are off. This is also helpful if you live alone and die. My apartment property maintenance man said this when asked how he would know if someone was dead in my beautiful but one bedroom apartment: “It would smell. Eventually.”

Maybe seniors shouldn’t buy any more air fresheners.

And make sure your google watches are fully charged.

            *Be nice to your Grandparents!

            **As opposed to haphazardly placed. Or willy-nilly placed

            ***And Trump, and Musk, and Bezos, and everyone else responsible.

            ****Ai it.

WTF? No, Really: WTF?

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 It’s (nearly) spring in 2026 America and we have attacked Iran. Like most current ideas, it is not really a bad one, but–like most ideas–it hasn’t been thought through all that well. There are enough talking heads plodding ponderously and profusely about the attack so there is a danger of too much talk and not enough action. In addition, the level of punditry is always in an indirect relationship with knowledge, so the less said the better. I’ll just ask questions.

Why now? You can find videos of Benjamin Netanyahu proclaiming—and I’m paraphrasing— “Iran will have a nuclear weapon in two weeks” since the middle of the 1990s. (See The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, June 16, 2025.) They put the videos together because The United States and Israel had just bombed Iran and “Obliterated”* Iran’s nuclear ability, per our President. That was 10 months ago. A question: If it was obliterated, and Iran is being sanctioned, how did Iran’s nuclear capability recover so fast in 10 months?

And what is Putin doing about all this?

And Xi?

Does our aggressive bombing of Iran, along with our “regime change” in Venezuela, mean its okay for all the larger, more powerful countries to attack all the smaller countries? Are we trying to imitate Russia’s Ukraine Policies? Will Xi see a justification for attacking Taiwan? Japan? Indonesia?

Several months ago, I attempted to humorously describe a Super Conspiracy (SC) to divide the world into three Spheres of Influence (SIA). Russia would get Europe and some of Central Asia, China would get the East and Southeast, and we’d get the Western Hemisphere. Our action in Venezuela played into the SC, but what is happening with Israel? Are they trying to make it a Four Power SIA conspiracy? They Want the Middle East?  Would the three superpowers be okay with that?

Does anyone find it odd the relative lack of posturing by both Russia and China? They have both done their “lip service” requirements, but isn’t Iran a partner of both Russia and China, selling oil and gas for drones and missiles? Are the United States adventures in Venezuela and Iran depleting our military resources and (possibly) making it easier for Russia and China to begin their own adventures in the near future? If, so, how long will it take to ruin the current world order and set up the three (or four) SIAs?

Okay, here are some tougher questions: How much does each exploding Tomahawk missile cost? How many dollars get blown up by using  one Bunker Busting bomb**? Will we ever attack a non-oil-producing country? Of note, we have attacked Iraq, Kuwait, Iran, and Venezuela in recent years. How much of their oil production do we now control and profit from? Enough to pay the constant deployments of US Armed Forces? Who’s counting?

Aww, shite. Nothing is happening here, except me progressing from mad to depressed to silly to a heartfelt, dismissive “Thank God, I’m old enough not to care.” It’s almost over.

OMG, WTF is wrong with this world?.

*See The State of The Union speech by Donald Trump on February 28, 2026 when he repeated this claim. Days later we bombed the “obliterated” facilities, again?

**Depending on the size, $3.5 million to $13 million per bomb, per Ai. For an oxymoronic comparison, that is about what Juan Soto of the New York Mets earns for one third of the baseball season. Obscene fact: he makes $289,351 per GAME. Per Ai. How much do you make in a year?

Is It Politics Or Something Else?

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I’ve written many times about how I don’t understand Donald Trump. He is a draft dodger, convicted felon, sexual assaulter, porn star user, serial marriager(sic), serial divorcer(sic), and so good at making deals he filed bankruptcy 6 times to get out from under those very good deals. So, is he the Second Coming of Something for certain people? Yes.

This is a case of that Duality of Life essayed(sic) about on February 19, 2026. The Hangers-On who profit from Trump’s presidency are easy to understand: they are making money off Trump, a true case of Trickle-Down(slightly) Economics.* The more Trump makes the more they make, so those people are Pragmatic Capitalists. But what about people who don’t make money off Trump? Little people like you and me? Why do they support Trump? A favorite economics phrase: “A rising tide lifts all boats.” But most of us can’t afford a boat.

I can’t remember directly “profiting” from any president. Ones who lowered taxes, of course, left me with a little extra, but we all learn early, the less you pay in one spot the more you pay in another. Research the fees, licensing costs, local taxes, registration costs, etc, in low- or no-income tax states. But in Trump’s case, with ballrooms, new jets, all the gold thingys, kickbacks; and payoffs going to rich people, what are poor people getting out of a Trump Presidency? Can’t they see what is happening? Trump historically says one thing and then does whatever makes him the most profit. Period. Are poor people living a separate, dual life through Trump?

A Texas professor, A. Michele Dickerson, explained the phenomenon on the Daily Show, Monday, February 23, 2026. She wrote the Book, “The Middle-Class New Deal”, but in her talk gave a clear answer about why Poor People are not revolting against Rich People, like the French Population did in 1789. No, I am not advocating for guillotines and head-lopping, but it is a wonder how anyone with less than two nickels to rub together would support the rise and enrichment of not one billionaire, but the entire billionaire caste.** The Professor’s answer, paraphrased: We have been taught to look sideways, inside our own castes, for the problems facing us. She calls it “Looking Horizontally”. We have been trained to look at people who are in our same lower- or middle-class situations as the very people causing the problems. Example: immigrants take all the jobs.

Meanwhile, the Upper Class, The Rich, gather up all the money and power with impunity. The solution? “Look Vertically” says the professor. Her point is a variation on Information Silos, Tribe over Truth, and the phenomenon of families splitting over adoration for one Rich Man or another. Why is this happening?

Because it works. In many essays through the years, I have stated if you blindly believe in ANY candidate from ANY party, at ANY time…you are being snookered. Had. Fleeced. Taken for a ride. Grifted. Conned.

Political passion has always been a part of every election, but the virulence of recent times is the result of Rich People controlling Mainstream, Off-Stream, Mid-Stream, and Legacy Media, with the occasional podcaster or loudmouth pilot-fishing*** a profit off the backs of the Rich Man’s Media Strategy. They have used their soapboxes to make us look the other way, the Horizontal Way.

Spread your news consumption around. Watch something new. Look for The Manipulation. Personally, I watch Fox News at least once a week to see if anything has changed because they are the best at supporting the “Horizontal Look” and ignoring the Vertical. But they are not the only ones. Do this: find a news place where you disagree with what you hear and never stay with media that tells you what you want to hear.

Last word? Think. Please.

*Ai: “David Stockton”.

**Yes, we have a Caste System in America. Ai it.

 ***Beautiful symbolism, if I say so myself. Look it up.

Things Not Understood

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Let’s get an easy one out of the way: Why does anyone support Donald Trump as president of this country? When talking with supporters, I usually begin with his 34 felony convictions in a porn star hush money case. Those are CONVICTIONS* by a citizen jury where Trump’s defense lawyers lost their case. They also lost a civil case for sexual abuse and defamation again, in a jury trial. He also admitted in 2016 to sexually assaulting women, saying “I don’t even wait. They let you do it.” Trump-owned companies have also filed for bankruptcy 6 times. Trump has married three women, divorced two and had a child with a fourth. These are all public, undisputed facts. There is also a trove of his sayings and writings where he insults anyone who doesn’t agree with him using slurs and words most of us would never use. When this summary is over, I ask my listener why they support him, especially curious for the answer from religious friends. The response? If there is anything but the shrug of a shoulder, it is: “Yeah, but what about Biden? Clinton?”

And so it goes.

Most of the world, the real world, has an innate duality un-understandable. The best way to describe it is by using the words “Macro” and “Micro”. Macro refers to The Big Picture, The Theory, while Micro refers to the small picture, the details. It’s easy to see this duality in the study of Economics: Macro Theory affects the whole world, Micro details are how we, as individuals navigate our financial lives. But duality is everywhere. In physics, we have the Macro, Classic Laws of Physics where planets roam and humans shoot rockets into space. But then there is the Micro, Quantum Mechanics world where everything disobeys the Classic Laws and things so small we can’t see them do whatever the hell they want. Better minds than mine—and probably yours—have tried to “unite” Classic Laws and Quantum Mechanics for centuries. Einstein, himself called some of the quantum world “Spooky action at a distance” and could not make it fit his General Theory.

And so it goes.

From personal observation the duality of life exists in all of us and runs our lives. Think about your Macro resolution to exercise more and then your Micro failure to get up the next morning. Getting Macro theory into a Micro life is difficult, but why? It is more obvious with religion. How many of us go to worship on Macro Sunday, then swear, lie, cheat, and disrespect others the rest of the week? In fact, religion is probably the hardest place to make the connection between Macro aspirations and Micro responsibilities. Who really wants to live a minute-by-minute, truly religious life?

And before anyone takes offense, this isn’t about you. It is a Macro Essay about how we all compromise Macro Intentions for Micro Utility. Every Day. It is the nature of us all. Period. Much like the saying often mentioned when trying to understand life: “From the minute you are born, you start to die.”** WTF.

One good way to help ourselves get through all this is to think. Think about it.

Yeah, right. Who has time for that, these days.

And so it goes…

*Please note the difference between being Indicted and being Convicted. Almost anyone can be indicted. Convicted? Harder.

**Ai research cannot say who uttered this statement first, but they give some suspects: Seneca (a Roman Philosopher), Manillus (a Roman Poet), and Eleanor Roosevelt, who used it to emphasize living life to the fullest. Common sense makes one wonder why Eleanor, who lived centuries after both Romans, was included in the list? Damn that DEI.

Odd Things Overheard or Stumbled Across

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Several universities and national defense departments are researching how to use Quantum Mechanics in guidance systems. Anyone with a smidgen of science knowledge knows our current navigation apps rely on Global Positioning Systems (GPS) that use radio waves and satellites to pinpoint location and travel. Radio waves move fast but not enough to combat “drift”, and the “accumulation of error over time”* as the waves must go out to the satellite then come back. It doesn’t help that sensors on both sides of the transmission have built in “noise”, creating minor errors. These errors wouldn’t bother 19th Century sailing ships, but our current electronic drones, aircraft and sea vessels could really use an exact location to “let loose the dogs of war”, so to speak. A Tomahawk missile flying 1,000 miles into enemy territory at 500 miles an hour needs nearly perfect navigational guidance to hit the target. Quantum Mechanics** may be able to give an object (nearly) exact location every second and remove (nearly) all “drift”. You can use google or Ai and spend the next few weeks reading about this or take my word for it. Or just not give a crap. GPS is enough for us.

A science show on NPR had a scientist who made a strange statement. He said, and I paraphrase “No one has ever actually seen the universe.” His argument is when we look at things, our eyes don’t really see things, but see the color reflecting off those things. He says there is no color in the universe and the color we see is the reflection of light. Each thing the light bounces off of absorbs or reflects certain wavelengths of the light, and we never see the naked planet or moon** or star we think we are seeing. I’m pretty sure that is how everyday life is, too. It sounds a bit Matrixey, but what if what we think we see, we don’t see?

I’ve had enough trouble in life understanding non-solid things like love, hate, faith, and religion. Now, the solids can’t be trusted?

As science progresses farther and further*** we have to wonder what we will find, and if we want to go there. Months ago, we learned time might not be linear and may move in a circle or other strange dimensions. Now, what if “real” isn’t really “real”? Continued scientific  research could find us going full circle back to birth, or the Big Bang, and what then? Do we repeat things? Overlap?  Share dimensions? Maybe Vonnegut’s Tralfamadoreans were actually  guides, not fictional characters.

As a young essayist, sophistry was a favored tactic during debates about all things major in life. Ai says “sophistry is the use of clever but false arguments, especially with the intention of deceiving someone.”

So…what exactly are all our scientists up to? Are they spouters of sophistry, changing facts with each decade with intent to…what? Should we make them cease and desist**** all scientific endeavors?

Or is sophistry being practiced, now, in this space?

Anyone need a beer? I’m buying.

            *Per Ai. Interesting fact: you are never really exactly where GPS says you are.

            **Thank you for not giggling at the idea of a naked moon.

            ***I stand by this usage by applying my literary license.

****The ever-humorous Ai describes “cease and desist” as a formal “knock it off notice.”

Bidets and Bemusements

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Mark Twain wrote in 1869: “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow mindedness, and many of our people need it solely on these accounts. Good, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”

It’s easy to read this quote and understand its practical, real-life application but it works metaphorically as well. Read on.

We have 232 American Athletes in Milan, Italy, for the 2026 Winter Olympics. Reports are that some of them don’t know what to do with an oval-shaped, probably porcelain, floor mounted, water spitting “accessory” on the floor of their Italian lodgings. Wonder how many of you readers know what a bidet is and what it is used for, mostly.

As with any device designed for one activity, it is never guaranteed the device will not find an alternate use.  In the case of the bidet and young people, especially young men, contemplating the alternate uses of the bidet will not happen, here. Do it on your own time.

Imagine the prejudice, bigotry, and narrow mindedness being “wiped away” (Pun. Hope you get it.) by our athletes’ exposure (Another pun?) to this device. Keep in mind it might not be a learning moment if they aren’t instructed in the original intent of the bidet, and enjoyed its alternate uses, only. Let’s hope there is one responsible, experienced adult somewhere near the athletes.

There is an ongoing controversy about whether Hip-Hop* belongs in The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Let’s forget for this discussion Hip Hope has its own Hall of Fame and ask: what is “Rock and Roll”? For once, AI has a great description: “It is a high-energy collision of cultures that defined the 20th Century.” It is a surprising remark from the usually staid and stuffy Ai but captures what this old man knew about Rock and Roll from its beginning’s way back in the 1950s: it’s a “Screw You, World” movement. Rock and Roll told us to have a good time while you can because the world is going to start trying to make sure you don’t. Fight it. Feck them all. We didn’t trust anyone over 30 and never imagined we would ever be that old. Until we were. Sigh.

What about Twain’s quote and the Hall of Fame Controversy? Hip Hop is an indirect descendant of Rock and Roll attitudes and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is correct in offering the Hall to anyone who wants to upend the world’s status quo.

But some old rock stars are disagreeing, hoping to exclude Hip Hop, and keep the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame just…rock? No Roll? One 70 year old rocker said: “Hip Hop doesn’t speak to me. I’m not from there. I don’t understand its language.”** He essentially was saying because he didn’t have the same life experiences, he didn’t “get” Hip Hop. One has to wonder if he had travelled to the urban areas, the inner cities, and outer cities where Hip Hop happened, would it have made the Rocker think differently?

Twain was informing us just because something isn’t part of your life, doesn’t mean it has to be bad, dangerous, or unworthy. Once you get to know someone or something, your mind may change. Even better, do not let YOUR ignorance*** of a “thing” get in the way of knowing the truth about it.

Sounds a lot like the 2026 Super Bowl Halftime Drama.

*If you don’t know what it is, google it. Add The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to your search.

**Cherry-picked paraphrase, not a word for word quote, so no attribute. I like the guy who said it and feel he may see things differently, eventually.

***The good, “accidental” Ignorance we all suffer from before we know or learn. Not the bad, purposeful ignorance of not caring enough or being curious enough to learn.

Interesting Stuff From The Innernet

ness23456 Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Yes, Innernet(sic). We’re going to start renaming things to make life more confusing.

Ski Jumping is a funny sport. Imagine the first guy who thought of it: let’s ski down the hill as fast as we can and jump off the end of a ramp at the bottom. But in these Innernet times, why are a man’s* genitals suddenly relevant? As the ski jumpers jump, they spread their legs for more surface area and more aerodynamic lift. As one current jumper put it: “We want to be like flying squirrels out there.” It appears some jumpers are sewing extra material into the crotch of their suits for “extra” surface area. Perhaps in a response to the new Ski Jumper Crotch Measurement team now tasked with using 3-D imaging to make sure the suits “fit” the anatomy, there is a rumor of ski jumpers getting “injections into their penises” to justify the extra crotch material. I’d say, “Only in America”, but so far, the scandal hasn’t affected our ski team. Were they picked for the team because the size of their…no…no way…right?

There are software/Ai companies now generating life-like memes and images of the dead. For a fee, of course. These companies will take video and audio recordings and transform the recordings into life-like, talking images of the departed that loved ones can actually engage in conversation. It sounds like a great idea and reminds me of a statistic from a population story: It’s estimated over 110 billion people have died during humankind’s history. Forget the details of how that number was determined and imagine if they all had made the “After Death Avatar(ADA)”**? Now imagine everyone, starting today, gets an ADA. The business potential is obvious but maybe in 100 years we can use all these ADAs to populate an artificial world?***

Imagine how history would be written and recorded. Boom goes the mind.

A Super Bowl halftime controversy is recently being enjoyed by all who care about it. Most of us true football fans go off to the bathroom and kitchen (not in that order) at halftime, so meh. But the rage about the 2026 Super Bowl show is interesting. After decades of English Language Super Bowls, the Super Bowl Powers had a Spanish Language Super Bowl. Hm. It has united left and right in xenophobic, linguistic bombasticness(sic). What will happen next, a Navajo language halftime? Irish? Swahili? Minion? The fact that for 13 minutes of American Television, lazy, single-language Americans had to endure the words of a language representing 20 per cent of the American citizenry and over 400 million people worldwide…OMG! For one second imagine how that 20 percent felt for all the other Superbowls, all 59 of them.

The Innernet has so many good stories getting lost in the algorithms, dooming them to being “gone” from eyeballs, forever. One that will live on for at least as long as this essay, is the story of two Greenland Scientists.**** They have found a way to convert a bad, manufacturing and water-treatment by-product, arsenic, into a product not only necessary in the making of electronic devices, but currently in short supply. Well, done, Greenlanders, for taking a deadly contaminant out of circulation and giving it a new, safe, useful life. Hopefully, by the time the electronic devices reach the landfill we will find a way to deal with arsenic—and other deadly shite– permanently.

Want to do a little good for the world but don’t know how? Click on better stories. Instead of clicking on stories about men’s crotches, click on stories like the Greenland recyclers. It will change the search algorithms and maybe change the world. It would be nice to have the Innernet news feeds send good stuff to the top of the page.

Don’t worry about me. I’ll find something else to ponder and pontificate about, like ending a sentence with a preposition.

  *Are females doing it, too? Hm.

 **For convenience and not to be confused with the real ADA.

***See “Upload”, as Amazon streaming series for how close that world might be.

****Huh. No wonder we want Greenland so bad.

PS: Having trouble with footnote locations. Don’t stop reading, we’ll get it sorted, as the British like to say.