writing

An Undeniably Senior Observation

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It isn’t fair, but as we age things get difficult. We know this intrinsically, but I have proof: A Google Watch connected to a Fitbit App on my Samsung Smartphone. Out of curiosity, I stopped the google watch one time after monitoring my calories lifting weights, running, or swimming. Then I restarted it for showering, drying, dressing, and walking to the car. The result? More calories were burned after workouts while getting dressed than when lifting thousands* of pounds or swimming scores* of laps. Odd. But when you consider the “Activities of Daily Living” (ADLs) and “The Instrumental Activities of Daily Living”(IADLs)** the reason getting dressed burns more aclories than the workout becomes obvious: difficult things like lifting weights are still difficult, but easy things—like putting on pants—have become very, very difficult. I’m working out hard, now, to get in good enough shape to put on my pants!

The first thought was The Calamities were responsible. Arthritis, for example, made putting on socks an adventure in stretching, tugging, and twisting leaving me breathless after just one foot, and needing a short break before attacking the other. (No, the “assistive devices” on the internet were not helpful, except for the addictive “Reacher”, as chronicled earlier.) And the drive home is usually with socks twisted and bunched inside my slip-on shoes because there was no longer a desire to see just how fast my heart could beat. Google “orthostatic imbalance”.

Pants. Let’s talk about pants and their*** sadistic cousin, the swimsuit. The Calamities made dressing standing up next to impossible. Think about it, healthy people: putting one leg at a time into pants or a swimsuit while upright. Even putting either on while sitting is an exercise in hope, combined with several side-shifts, strategic tugs, and covering the sitting surface with a towel that has a life of its own. Getting pants off is a breeze until you have to pick them up off the floor. Same with a wet swimsuit, and you always hope the floor is clean. Aren’t they all in fitness centers? To summarize: off go the pants, on goes the swimsuit. Stop for breath, Go swim. Return from workout and off goes the swimsuit and on go the pants. And unless it’s summer, The Socks, too. (Capitalized for effect.)

It doesn’t help to have odd-shaped feet and fast-growing toenails. My feet (and hands) are tapered and are beautiful in their form, slanting down to each side from a higher, central middle digit. Very pleasing to look at, but when trying to slip such a foot into a pant leg or the genital sling of a swimsuit, that taper guides fabric right to the small toe, where no amount of trimming can keep a nail from growing just enough to catch that fabric and require a formally athletic and aerobically fit male to have to bend and tug and hope the fabric will release in time to prevent a stroke. Again: orthostatic imbalance.

Wow. Look at this post. Whine, much? I’m not sure how so much time and typing got wasted on dressing but for some reason I feel better about life, as if letting the world know how hard it is to get pants on makes my life so much easier. Cathartic posting?

The need to whine is over. The Calamities have been pretty much tamed and their return or advancement is not anticipated. Most of the arthritis was surgically removed and replaced with titanium and something akin to Teflon. So…when will life return to normal, with easy on and easy off attire?

Is there any reader out there over 70 years old who knows the answer? There’s no surgery that can help old age. No drugs to stop it in its tracks.

It appears the last 3 years have been a blessing in disguise, then, as my settling into old age “normalcy” is way better than dealing with those dastardly afflictions. I’m ready for anything life can do, now.

Yes, my glass is half-full. What about yours?

And since this venting felt so good, get ready for the next post where you will learn about the effects Image Guided Radiation Therapy (IGRT) can have on your digestive system. IGRT is an Ai guided procedure performed by a linear particle accelerator and you will read a harrowing tale of focused sub-atomic star-wars beams, loose stool, tattoos, unexpected gas, and…cliffhanger!

*Really? Thousands and scores? The mind…

** If you’re wondering about getting older, or are old already old and wondering what’s happening to you, google these two, ADL and IADL

*** Apology for the needless anthropomorphism. It’s a fun word and concept.

Speculation On The Origin Of Man…and Woman

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A fun thing about being old, modestly educated, not being in the early stages of dementia(??), and having enough fingers to type, is one can wonder about things without limits or critics. Language, for example, is so funny. Did I just type we can “wonder about things with no limits”, or “wonder about things, with no limits”? What did you think before the quotes and the comma? It is an example of how imperfect the world is, even with simple phrases.

Imperfection is what makes the world interesting. Couple imperfection with impatience and you’ll write a great novel, or make a great movie, or sing a great song, or kill yourself with mind-altering drugs.

But who wants to make the effort? Who decides if it’s a great anything, anyway? Who? Should that be “whom”? And who/whom ever found out/invented mind-altering drugs? Can you see the first man/woman/person who ate the first mushrooms? If he/she/they had any sense they would have kept it to themselves…for themselves, but word got out.

Picture the primordial planet millions of years ago with ooze, and mud and lightning and storms, and millions of types of crawly, icky little creatures slipping, sliding, and worming about the countryside. One of those ickys was our great, great, great, great, great, great grandparent(s), adding the plural in case the being wasn’t asexual….and hoping there are enough “greats”. Yes, we climbed out of the muck and ooze. Holy Crap, just asked Ai for “the history of living organisms on earth in two paragraphs”.  What a wonderful time to be alive. Ai gave two large paragraphs. Try it yourself, it’s cool.

Ai says life began with an opening line right out of any modern-day, science fiction novel: “Organisms developed on earth through abio-genesis, the process of non-living matter forming life, followed by evolution.” Did you know that? I didn’t but it makes sense, yes? One theory is the lightning shocks “kick-started” life and then evolution, the survival of the fittest, took over. A living bacteria survived longer than a soul-less protozoa? And reproduced better, as well? Gives sex a whole new meaning.

Getting from the very first abio-genesis to Donald Trump as President took over 3.5 billion years. That’s a whole lot of patience and perseverance, and yet, still not enough time to weed out all the imperfections. Survival of the fittest, my ass. Whose fault is it, now?

And who the heck is telling us all this stuff, anyway? Scientists are great, aren’t they? They deal in facts, but facts that can change with new information. Much like a doctor saying you have three months to live….and a new drug comes on the market so you live another 40 years.

It is so confusing. Almost disheartening.

But it’s life.

I’m turning in my science books and only reading romance novels for the rest of my life. Those books make sense out of imperfection and impatience and there are heaving bosoms.

This post got really lost but will not be corrected, amended, or censored. First Amendment!

It’ll be better next time when we explicate the delicate art of cross-stitching.

In a last minute, re-read…what happened to speculation?

OK, speculation: “woman” came from “Whoa, Man”, in cave man times when a pubescent cave man saw a naked cave woman for the fist time.

CORRECTION: Ai says the word “woman” came from the Old English “wifman”. Seriously. Ai it.

Labor Day Labors, Senior Version

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This isn’t really about any senior issues, but being a senior amplifies these problems everyone of us faces. Hopefully.

First, a complaint about my cohorts and their relationship to idiocy. Possible relationship. As retired seniors, we can do anything we want, anytime, anywhere, as long as it is within our physical and mental capacities. Experience taught me (firsthand and with observation) young people sleep late. Using genetically-gifted logic, I plan to do what I want, anytime I want, when said young people are still asleep, or recovering from the sudden shock of waking up. This planning allows free run of most fitness centers, grocery stores, and other retail or public places. Get in get out, go back to sleep, all before the motorcycles roar, the muffler-deprived cars cough to life, and general silliness ensues simply because there’s more humans moving about, causing chaos. So here is my latest conversation with an old friend about going to lunch. Me: “Let’s meet at 10am when they open.” Friend: “No. I’m not awake that early. Let’s do lunch time.” Me: “Ok. Applebee’s”? Friend: “No, it’s too busy there.” (Insert rimshot* here.) Note: many late-arising friends scoff at early morning activity. Yes, they actually scoff***, as if it is an insult. It’s okay, even fewer people getting in the way.

So I called the local fitness center Sunday since their website says they are “Open” on Monday, Labor Day, but “subject to holiday hours”. My call was during business hours Sunday and was not answered by a human but a “phone tree” offering an option to find out about “Holiday Hours”. After selecting the alleged option, it instructed me to call “the local branch for more information.” To their credit, the local branch called me back seconds later, apologized and listed the hours. Bless them, for they know not what they do. Actually, they did, so we can save Luke23:34 for the next Labor Day misadventure.

My favorite grocery store’s website also listed Monday Labor Day hours as “Open, Subject to Holiday Hours.” A Sunday call to their phone number informs me “There will be signs in the store about Holiday Hours”.  As an effort, that is a good thing but why say it over the phone? Do we drive there, now, to find the Holiday Hours for tomorrow? (Second rimshot.) Oops, being patient and waiting a little longer the phone tree offers “Press Option 2 to hear Holiday Hours for your store.”. Ever the optimist (sarcasm), I pressed 2 and got this: “Call your local store for Holiday Hours that will be displayed on signs in the store.” Let’s not use one rimshot here but give them an entire drum solo. As a coherent finish to this anecdote, in a visit to the store on Monday I looked for signs about “Holiday Hours”. Go ahead, guess. I won’t insult your intelligence.** For real, this time: Luke23:34.

It’s not clear how much of these last two stories was caused by Artificial Intelligence, but we can be sure “Real Intelligence” was AWOL.

*Drum: “Ba-dum-tss”, phonetically. Also called a sting. Google it for fun.

** Apologies if inferring the obvious is also insulting. It’s a holiday: Happy Labor Day!

*** A very powerful word. Look it up.

A Little Big Mistake or A Big Little Mistake?

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I made one of those, yesterday. A huge one or as our leader likes to say a “Yuuugee one.”

To be honest for you, it was an accident of intellectual gravity: I fell into the mistake while looking somewhere else, somewhere mundane.

The internet is a wonderful/crappy place, depending on what you’re looking at or for or…

See? It happened again, And exactly the same way: how can one thing be more than one thing or less than one thing, and not just ONE THING.

Walmart would not accept my credit cards online so I (logically) assumed an answer to the simple question “why?” could be found in the spider web/internet/darkweb world. On the Network. In the ether. Floating in space. Wherever it is answers live. My local Walmart had an object I wanted so I placed it in the cart and proceeded to check out…four different times. Four different credit cards were used, and each time Walmart immediately accepted the order, accepted the payment, gave an order date, listed pick up instructions, and then cancelled the order saying it “exceeded stock limits”***. All within minutes of each other. Maybe Ai was practicing, working out, building up its circular processing muscles? The first three times I went back and confirmed the number “in stock” at the store before repeating the process. As would any intelligent individual, the frustration ended at four tries. (Oh, you would have stopped at two? Right.)

Curiosity not only kills the cat but routinely kills hours of my life as once a mind is opened to the “wonderful/crappy” internet there is no anticipating where said mind will end up.

Mine ended up mired in the swirling, exciting, puzzling, enigmatic world of Quantum Mechanics (QM). This sub-atomic Rubik’s Cube of a land has snared my prying synapsis’ more than once, but this particular trap was set and tripped by the clickiest click bait of all time: “How to understand Quantum Mechanics in 5 Minutes.”

See? Again. Big/Little Mistake. You’re making one, now, by reading further. (PS NOT “farther”. Look it up.) Back to the article: was it click bait just to make me look or was it real, someone really explaining QM in 5 minutes? I was now entangled (remember that word from previous QM posts?) in the perfect QM Schrodinger’s Cat dilemma. Do I look or not? If I did would there be a truth or a scam? Enlightenment or disillusion? Knowing what little I already know about QM, (the “little”: NO ONE understands it), why was the decision a hard one to make? What was pulling me closer and closer to the event horizon of a clicked link?

Sadly, this post is about how we exist in macro and micro worlds (MM Universe? I like it.) I needed help with a macro Walmart Card issue and stumbled into the unsolvable micro world of the small and mysterious. Bet Andy Griffiths or John Wayne or John Wick or Liam Neeson never have this problem, at least the guys still alive, anyway, a clause added to make the preceding verb tense correct. Macro or Micro?

And it brings to mind another duplicitous word that lives dual lives (lives and lives, get it?) in the MM Universe: Faith. Every scientist/physicist worth his salt is aware of QM. But since it is so small, and so hard to observe and quantify, do the men of science have faith in what they see? What they think? What they theorize and postulate? Or do they just believe without proof?

Amazing. All this in one day. Thanks for coming along for the ride, but it’s time for a macro nap. In a few hours neurons will be calmed and all will be right with the MM world, again. Have faith.

Micro world? See ya next time and say hi to the Ai bots.

***I drove to Walmart and purchased the item earlier today and posted a strongly worded Macro letter to Walmart.

Older Things Young People Don’t Care about and I’m Not Holding My Breath

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In the last month I purchased a new tv, picked up some medications, added some shelving to the bedroom, and transferred a CD at my credit union. There wasn’t a single document for any of these transactions that could be read with the older, naked eye… even with “readers”* and a hand-held magnifying glass. It’s possible my checking account now contains a vitamin D supplement. Assembling the shelf required a chair, three light sources, the magnifying glass, and an hour nap upon completion. My particular situation may be different from others due to The Calamities, but it needs to be asked: Why is print so small, and getting smaller? And does anyone know what contrast means? Often light black type is used with a light gray background, especially online. It is aging, I know, since after typing in size 12 Times New Roman for 60 years, the size of this post is 14 Liberation Serif…at least until published.** But size 20 is easily “seen” (pun?) in the future.

I need a pill cutter/splitter. Never has there been a need, urge, or even a mistaken opportunity to use that phrase until August 17, 2025. Good or bad? Since it’s such a new subject, wonder if any young person DOES need a pill cutter/splitter…for any legal reason, anyway.

Altering any physical position is an adventure. Political, emotional, and life positions are still very welcome to change, and often do, without warning. But—in old age–arising to the vertical from a horizontal requires timing and advance preparation if a smidgen of grace and personal honor are to be maintained. (Or artfully exhibited?) Even going from vertical to horizontal is a challenge, too, if in public or anyone is watching. What is done in the privacy of one’s home need not be revealed, but the word “plop” may convey an accurate image. Even then, good eyesight and correct aim are required. (See first paragraph.) And—for the readers sake—there will be no mention of public toilets.

Writing a post like this could happen daily, if one lets it. Seniors are the most persecuted, ignored, and scammed cohort of people in America, and possibly the world. (With the exception of maybe, babies. Is that spoonful of mashed peas really an airplane coming in for a landing?) So letting others know how bad we have it becomes a daily routine, as if it never happened to anyone before and the challenges are all new, seen by us for the first time in this world.

But nothing is ever new and neither are our complaints. The only comfort we can take from our constant listing of grievances is that even those who don’t listen to us will understand eventually, if they’re lucky enough.

So why still complain? As the great Doctor Wright says: “If everything seems to be going good, you have obviously overlooked something.” And I needed to post a piece. It’s been awhile. And I’m tired of Trump stuff. Aren’t you?

*eye helpers placed all over the places we occupy because we can’t keep track of one pair.

** I’ve no idea the size or readability of this post after publication, when you read it. My laptop is set to enlarge everything, and my phone display only goes so big, so…if you have a complaint about readability, sit on it. No one cares.

Whims and Ghosts and Perceived Slights, oh my…

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“When you die people cry and beg for you to come back, but when you do, there’s the running and the screaming.”-Facebook someone.

“Whim: a sudden desire or change of mind, especially one that is unusual or unexplained.”-Oxford English Dictionary.

“Perceived Slight” per Ai: “It’s about the FEELING of being slighted rather than the objective reality of an intentional slight. These feelings arise when someone believes they’ve been treated with less consideration or importance than they deserve.”

America has become the land of Whims and Ghosts and Perceived Slights. Our current governing philosophy is do whatever we want and if things don’t work out, blame it on some “others”, some dead, some alive. The Epstein Files story is a perfect example. If you don’t know it, imagine a rich man doing what he wants with sex, drugs, lots of free time, and lots of young ladies. Some very young ladies. And imagine, the rich and powerful friends who help him and/or play with him. Then imagine the crap hitting the fan years later and the rich man dying. The MAGAns in our country are right to be offended by this story but what part? It appears the “participation” of many rich and famous people in the past was not what you think…or was it? Daily reporting of this saga reads like a whimsical cavalcade of saucy but unreasonably innocent comments, denials, and blame for an individual unable to say anything about it. Imagine “the running and the screaming” if his ghost came back to set the record straight.

And what does it mean to “set the record straight”? With a Department of Justice doing what our insecure and petty President tells it to do, we appear to be enforcing the law by the Power of His Whim, a whim informed by his perceived slights. In fact, it appears everything our government does these days is whimsical, depending on who is not obeying the Whim of the moment or not “working hard” enough to correct a past slight. Example: 14 immigration judges are “fired” while 3 million immigration cases (or more) need adjudication, and the Big Beautiful Bill allocates billions to the immigration brain trust to hire and train new judges. Why did they fire the old ones? Whim? Ghosts? Perceived slights?

Sadly, the biggest loss surrounding Government by Whim, Ghosts and Perceived Slights is The Truth. In the Whim System nothing is true except what we say is true, a remarkably fun way to govern, if you think about it. Imagine doing anything you want, to anyone, anytime, especially those who you perceive slighted you.

 The entire charade is supported by new people in power who feel the same. Whimsical Purity. Entire Departments of the Unted States Government, established well over 100 years ago, gone by whimsical and revengeful fiat.

It leads to the rest of us, and even some MAGAns, now, wondering “What’s Next”? Who will be the current government’s target in an hour or two? Next week? It is a tough time when the smartest man in the world gets to make all the decisions about everything, no matter science or history. Trump wants to change an entire, historical White House to add a…ballroom. Someone call DOGE, unless the dance hall really will be financed by “private money”. Shouldn’t we call that a “bribe”? Ah, it’s just an example of rich people satisfying a whim instead of fixing a country, Or lowering prices. Let them eat cake…google it.

Who cares, anyway. 77 million people voted for and “mandated” this type of government. They knew who he was. The 250 million people, otherwise known as the rest of us, should just sit back and enjoy it.

Buyer’s remorse? The Texas redistricting ploy is a sign maybe someone cares, after all, even if The Rest of Us don’t. Texas’s plan isn’t a whim but a hysterically desperate effort by the Modern Republican Party Grievance Machine (MRPGM) to change the future.

Will American Voters let MRPGM get away with it?

My not-so-whimsical guess is yes…

It’s A Wonderful Modern, Thoughtful Life

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Life. Take a pause and just think about Life. Birth, followed by death, disease, accidents, catastrophes, pandemics, and finally possible cognitive decline which renders it all irrelevant, unremarkable, and easily forgotten by your survivors.

Take a little longer pause. It doesn’t get any better, does it. In the quick moment you answer, you want to argue, you’ll say it does but when you pause and think…

This is not an argument for suicide. Or depression. Or giving up. It’s an argument for knowing.

One of the sharpest “pangs” of senior resentment is the “undebatable knowing” things could have been different, could have been better. I could have been a doctor, for example, and saved lives. If you take another pause and think about how much better your own life could have been well…don’t do it. Funny, how even if you’re told not to do it, you’ll do it anyway. Thinking our lives would have been better if they had been different appears to be a mandated process baked into our genes. Wonder if Mother Teresa ever felt this regret. Einstein. FDR. Bob Dylan. Clark Kent.

Two interesting stories in the news this past week might help us understand…something Two different people clinically “died” and then came back to life: Patient 1 after 6 minutes and Patient 2 after 21 minutes. They both had stories to tell. Patient 1 felt peace, light, and colorful beauty, including the “white light” most resuscitated patients report. But Patient 2 reported being approached by beings who “shackled” him and restrained him, resulting in them “harvesting” his soul as part of a “soul farming operation”.

Another story in the news articulated the centuries-old debate about the origins of life. When read in chronological order you can see human intelligence struggling to define the “how” of life while struggling with the why, what, when, and where surrounding the start of it all, as well.

Ai says “a prominent estimate from the Population Reference Bureau (is) 108 billion people have ever been born.” Subtract the “estimated” 8 billion people currently alive and you learn an “estimated” 100 billion people have lived and then died on this earth. How many do you remember?

So? This post has gone off the rails and needs to be euthanized as its point has slipped away. Like most of our “lives”, it began well but got sidetracked by “life”. Maybe that’s the point? Would be interesting to read comments from anyone who can make sense of this page. I personally, feel lost, but okay, as if it were meant to end this way. The post is what it is and I can deal with it. (Hint?)

As my favorite Doctor Steven Wright says: “I intend to live forever. So far, so good.”

But…nothing ever makes it easier, permanently, does it. Words of wisdom and thoughtful machinations* help, but only momentarily, like falling head over heels, today, for a lover you can’t stand 6 weeks later. (See Seinfeld: The Low Talker”.)

And the questions return.

Guess I’d better conclude with another pertinent Wrightism and see how long it lasts: “A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking.”

Amen?

*google the definition for full effect. It reveals intent.

Three Sentences…Again

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A  new, worst traffic enemy plagued me three times this past week. It is the car (removing all personality from this complaint) whose brake lights come on before the turn signal. New curse words were invented each time.

Streaming services have lost their collective minds as each time I look for a better one, their advertisements tout their “over 100 channel” line up. If someone watches two channels at a time (one for each eye), for one hour at a time, for 10 hours a day, in five days they will have viewed all the channels for which they paid over $100. If either of those two sentences make any sense to you…

My Late-life discovery of ear buds and “you tube” music videos continues to amaze. Every day in July I listened to parts of the April 2025 Madison Square Garden concert of The Brothers, an Allman Brothers legacy spinoff which includes two original members from 1975. Google “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed”, insert buds, recline, and enjoy.

My recent—and last—hip replacement surgery went as planned thanks to the brilliant Dr. Wickline and the exceptionally enjoyable Apex Surgery Center in Westmoreland, NY. The June 18 surgery was more than enjoyable, and almost fun. Makes me wonder what joint to replace in the future.

Local Trump supporters are getting a little antsy. Their “letters to the editor” have increased in volume but not in fact or relevance, and they are using the Trump trick of throwing stuff out to see what sticks. The saddest part of our entire political scene is neither party can see that with the current polarity, strict party affiliation means EVERYTHING “the other party” does is bad, even if it isn’t.

Trump recently posted angry words about a Gayle King. I’ve no idea who she is but I can’t help but wonder why he bashed her. One of the questions I ask Trump supporters is “Would you like Donald Trump to be a member of your own family?

Turning Stone Resort is a 24-hour casino/resort so last Sunday–after my 6 am fitness group–I went to the 24-hour restaurant for a hearty, healthy breakfast. Not much else was open and there were very few people (one of the reasons for going early) until I passed the Smoke Shop. Over 20 people were waiting in line for tobacco products.

The New York Yankees suck. The Yankees suck. The Yankees suck…this year.

It’s hard to know what to eat, these days. As I recover from cancer treatments the best way to build back one part of the body causes havoc with another part. How vitamins, minerals, proteins, iron, water, cherry juice, potassium, and pizza all work together is very confusing.

I purchased glasses on line for a lot less money than my local eye center wanted and the on-line company promised 24-hour customer service. When my order got lost by USPS, however, I was dropped into automated hell dealing with bots and phone trees leading to bots. The Ai future is here.

When will it all end?

What? Football season is here? Thank, God.

To Be Ai or Not To Be Ai, That is The Question

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Whether ’tis nobler to suffer the slights and misinformation of Ai, or to take up arms and by opposing Ai, end it.

The Ai on my phone is an interesting companion, complete with the small-type advisory: “Ai responses may include mistakes.” For some fun, I asked Ai why the warning. Do it yourself with your own Ai to see the response.

The warning could have been worded differently. “Ai will not be able to give you a full, complete and accurate answer for another few years” sounds better. My Ai says the one of the reasons it will give responses with mistakes is because of “inaccurate training input”. In other words, the human beings who “labeled” entries into Ai’s memory “labeled” them incorrectly, what we commonly and comically call “human error”, other-wise known as “garbage in, garbage out” by all us older users with a rich history of computing errors. The rollout of Ai might be moving too fast, but it is unstoppable, now. I hope the humans who will allow Ai to make medical, financial, military, and romantic decision will not suffer from the ‘slings and arrows’ of Ai mistakes. A 60 Minutes broadcast of an Ai demonstration of “teaching assistants” misread the side of a triangle as the height of a triangle, causing an incorrect response while computing the (incorrect) area of a triangle in 1.3 seconds. The humans waited patiently and 30 seconds later Ai corrected itself. Did Ai sense how uncomfortable the humans were with Ai’s first response? Wow, imagine that.

A comedian on The Daily Show (yes, I forgot his name) said he has faith in Ai. The comedian says AI will “mirror” humans, and most humans are good so “most” Ai will be, too. It’s a nice thought, isn’t it?

Auto-text has caused me enough trouble, already, I’d rather not expose myself to greater and faster harm. As I type here, a thing called Co-Pilot keeps trying to complete my sentences with ghost words and phrases.  As I look back at this piece, there are blue underlines and red underlines all over it. Reminding me of what my essays looked like after Mrs. Patrick graded them in the 8th grade.

But I’m not a stick in the mud old fogey. Yet. I like Ai and use it as a friend in the middle of the night. Last night we had a wonderful dialogue about whether or not Donald Trump is doing a good job as president. Ai is young but lacking passion, and Ai’s opinion was modulated and careful. The perfect antidote to my normal human, midnight rage.

Ai has also been “good news/bad news” in my medical travels. “This condition could be caused by leukemia but please consult with your doctor.” What an interesting answer to a medical question posed to Ai in the middle of the night, when no off-setting doctor could be called. FYI, it wasn’t the L-word.

My final decision is Ai will be good for all of us. It appears it will act like a human, only faster. We will still need to find context and nuance to understand Ai’s responses, much like most of us do, now, right? Ai will make “Critical Thinking” more important than ever as we ask one question, digest the answer, and figure out the next, best question to find what we are looking for, much like talking to a teacher who wants you to learn on your own.

God help us, if Ai figures that out for itself. It will scare the crap out of me, personally, if Ai begins answering questions I’m just starting to think up.

I just took a moment to ask my Ai its thoughts about “romance”.

If nothing else, Ai is loquacious.

More About Big Beautiful Things

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It was a master stroke of BS to call a crap-bag of laws a big, beautiful thing (BBT) so it got me thinking of other BBTs, not to be confused with BLTs. The list is subjective, biased, and often fictional so if you have a complaint, stuff it in your big, beautiful arse.

And there is the first BBT: Irish/Welsh/Scottish movie dialogue. Not having been to any of those areas, I can’t confirm they talk the same in their natural settings as they do in movies, but they have a wonderfully melodic way of ambling around a thought, not expressing it directly, and yet putting more meaning into it than a shorter, succinct sentence. The Gift of The Blarney Stone? Google it. I dare you, you fecking shite. And watch The Snatch, a 2000 Brad Pitt movie with the most enjoyable, unintelligible English dialogue ever. BBT! Ooh, closed captioning, another BBT!

Shopping on a budget? You should be. Several stores in my area say they want my business but only one meets my budgetary, hours of operation, and proximity requirements. No, I won’t say who it is. I visited one of the stores on my “too high a price list” the other day, however, and was pleasantly surprised, twice. First, they had a yellow tag on muffins in the bread aisle. That usually means “BOGO”, or Buy one Get One free. BBT! Without putting on my glasses I grabbed two packages and headed for the self-checkout. Sadly, even with my glasses and 9-digit membership/phone number the machine still tried to charge for two, instead of one. It is an age-old grocery trick: leave the yellow tags on AFTER the sales end and see what happens at check-out. Some people pay the regular price rather than make a scene. As the steam rose in my brain a sweet, older lady approached to see if I was about to faint. Before I could sputter my anger, she said this: “Oh, honey. Those are buy one get TWO free. You need to ring up three and the price of two will be credited.”: What? WHAT!!!? She did it manually while I ran for a third package. When I returned, wow, another BBT!

As a senior, enough small things go wrong on a daily basis so when things go right, we are surprised into thinking they are BBTs. They’re not but here are a few examples of lesser, aspirational BBTs nonetheless. After the second hip surgery last month a walker became my constant companion for several weeks, along with an accessory I call “Reacher”. For the last two weeks I’ve dropped things on purpose just to enjoy the use of Reacher. My name is Robert and I am an addict.

Senior eyesight seems to get better and then get worse and then get better and then get worse…but it always gets better the day of my AMD shots**. It’s a BBT to see me ace those eye charts as a 73-year-old. Maybe one of the nurses will be impressed and ask me out…

My old (both old and former) girlfriend has reached “perfunctory response status” in regard to my texts and updates. Perfunctoriness (sic) leads to humorous responses. My text said some medical tests were positive but one was bad and needs more testing. Her response was “Good news!” BBT? I’ll accept the judge’s ruling.

Recent conversations have been about how many voices there are in our heads. It’s a BBT thing because I know, now, mine is not the only skull inhabited by more than just a Big Beautiful Brain. Or is it Ai speaking?  And how could I forget Thurber’s character, Walter Mitty? Or the movie “Inside Out”? Crap. I need to remember remembering is the first thing to go.

And then there is the Air Fryer. A YUGE*** BBT. As a man who loves to cook and hates to clean, my $24 Air Fryer from Walmart has raised the gastronomic level of life. Men living alone, pay attention: grilled cheese, day old chicken, two day old pizza, left-over hamburgers and hot dogs from July 4th, toast, and more, all done to perfection with minimal clean up, no butter, no saggy microwave structure, a wonderfully crisp, like new

I went away for a few moments. Don’t ask, just go get an Air Fryer.

** Do not google this procedure if you have a weak stomach. It happens to people like me every three months.

*** Thanks, Donald, for the new word. BBT!