I'm Bad. I'm Nationwide.

"Slow down, buddy. . . still that beating heart.  Don't rush it.  Take your time.  You'll run out of gas too soon.  Be in it for the long haul,"

Things that excite me excite me.  I'm like a kid.  O.K.  But as the song goes, "You'd better slow down. Baby now you're moving way too fast."

So I'd better start with the bad. 

"Shit piss fuck goddamn."

My mother doesn't like me saying that, but I think it's funny.  In the last summer before my last year of undergrad studies, my roommate and I got a job working at the Coca-Cola bottling plant.  Our foreman was named Adrien, and boy oh boy could that guy string a lot of curse words together without repeating one.  It was his only endearing quality.  We used to try, my roommate and I, but we could never get more than five or six out before we stalled or repeated.  We didn't like Adrien and he didn't like us, but I'll guarantee you that I remember him and he has never thought of me since I quit. 

But that is another story for a day when I haven't anything else on my mind.  

Yesterday I left my mother's house at a good time, around ten, and was on the street where I had run out of film the day before making pictures. And oh, what pictures they were. I was in the zone. And when I had finished up with that little strip of road, I drove down another mile, perhaps, to another little shopping zone, parked the car, and began again.  I never go to this little shopping strip, and I was surprised by the cool shops that are there, including tiny places for coffee and food. It was a mini-magical place, the kind I stumble upon once in a great while.  Not many people around, and man, I was quite the shutterbug.  I blew through two rolls of film just-like-that!  

And I was feeling pretty stupid for not bringing more.  I never thought I would take 72 photos in less than an hour.  I needed film.  I could go home and get more or I could take my roll of color film to the lab in another hipster part of town and buy more.  I was in the Xterra, and I needed to drive it, so hipster city it was.

I paid to have the color film developed and scanned the same day.  Ouch.  

Then I decided to drive to Gotham and walk those derelict streets.  Two cameras and a camera bag. But you see me in that photo--hair all shorn, hat on backwards the way all short-haired redneck cowboys wear them, trad/norm to the core.  Old Quasimodo trying to pass.  

I walked a long time and was popping off what I was sure were classic photos. Bam! Bam! Bam!  No peeping, just thinking and shooting.  

I saw a bar door open.  It's window looked out upon the street.  I walked in to see what it would look like to photograph there.  A fellow greeted me at the door.  

"We won't be open for ten minutes," he said. 

"O.K.  I just wanted to see what it looked like through your window," I said holding up one camera.

"O.K. but you'll have to come back in ten minutes.  I can't let you be here before we open."

"O.K."

He was alright, not shitty in any way.  I walked next door to another open door and another bar.  This one looked different, kind of classy.  A big girl dressed like--I don't know what--low cut blouse, high cut shorts, garters, piercings and heavy makeup. . . .  She was pushing 200 pounds, I'd guess.  I was shooting one of the windows and when I turned around we almost bumped. 

"Oh, I'm sorry," she said. 

"No, no. . . totally me.  Do you work here?"

"Yes," she said, her eyes alight.  She was really sweet, soft spoken.  I think she liked me. 

"Do you mind if I go in for a minute?"

"No," she said. 

"I just want to look through your window to see. . ." I said holding up a camera.  I walked into a little cubby.  When I came back, she askedm "How was it?"

"Not much, really." I looked at the deep, dark bar, all the seats lined up perfectly, as yet undisturbed.  "Do you mind if I take some pictures in here?"

"Go ahead."

I shot a couple, and said, "Thanks."  She was staring at me, smiling.  

I'll come back to that later. 

Onward. No kidding, I was smoking hot. I was making masterpieces.  But time marched on, and having walked miles and miles, I was getting tired.  My hips and knees and back were killing me.  I was waddling, walking side to side oh so slowly.  I only had a few shots left, so I turned back toward that car.  It was hot.  The rain I was out to beat never came, but the humidity had, and I was sweating like the fat cripple I am.  I was beginning to smell like old pizza.  

Two big cameras and a camera bag with lenses had done me in.  I'm not the fellow I used to be.  

Then there it was like an oasis.  I fairly crawled into the Xterra.  But man. . . what I had done was going to be amazing.  

I drove back to the hipster camera shop and dropped off more film. Paid again for expedited service.   I needed a beer, so I stopped at the liquor store on the way home.  It was across the street from the Cafe Strange, and I thought about going in and having the beer there.  My cafe au lait friend would be working, but I was far too beat.  Rather, I bought a six pack of Grolsch and drove home.  

"Grolsch?!"

I hadn't had one in years.  It sounded good. 

When I got in the house, I dropped my cameras and bag, opened a beer, and started a hot Epsom Salts bath.  I was stiff and sore and tired. 

It was a good combo.  I lay there for a long time thinking of the day.  I thought of the big girl who let me into the bar.  Yes, she was sweet as apple butter, and I thought, hey stupid, she wanted you to ask if you could take her picture.  Yes, I was certain of it.  I was a fool.  She would have done anything.  Eyes closed, surrounded by hot water, wait, what?  I was becoming. . . aroused.  

WTF?  

I drained the tub, showered, dried, and sat in a chair where I fell asleep immediately.  What dreams I had I'll never tell.  

When I woke, I thought, "I'll go back and take her picture."

I had three rolls of black and white film to develop from the last two day's shoot. I could do two of them together.  But I was lazy.  They could wait.  I looked at the clock.  3:30.  

"Alright, alright, I'll do them now."

It took some doing.  I went to the study/bedroom and started locating things.  I had fixer in a bottle I'd mixed up when I developed the 4x5 film. It should be good. I had developer, too, but I didn't trust it.  I found the bottle of HC-110 syrup and the beakers and funnels and plastic measuring cups, found the two reel developing tank and film spools.  But where was the little film puller tool to get the film leader out of the cannister?  Five minutes later, I found it. I cleared the dining room table, putting everything on the floor, and got the big changing tent set up there.  Scissors.  O.K.  

I had trouble putting the second roll of bw film on the spool.  It just wasn't going on right.  I tried and tried, taking the film off and putting it back on.  Three times.  Four.  Five--fuck it.  

I took the film to the sink.  Rinse.  Develop.  Rinse.  Fix.  Rinse, rinse, rinse.  My back and knees and hips were barking.  

After the final rinse, I took the film to hang and dry.  

What do you think?  Yup.  A lot of fucked up film.  I opened another beer.  

I went to my computer to check and see if the film lab had sent the scans yet.  O.K.  The first roll.  This would be wonderful.  

Jesus Joseph and Mary--shit piss fuck goddamn!!!!!!  Where the hell is a pistol?  A rope?  Something.  

I'd picked up a roll of film sitting on a stand with many other rolls of film.  This one wasn't in a plastic canister, but it still had the film leader out.  It was an old roll of film I'd shot and never developed.  The scans I got back were all double exposures.  All my masterpieces!!!  

"Photography should just be fun."

I remember saying that.  Yesterday.  

I still had to go to the grocers to get the makings of a pho dinner.  I could barely walk across the parking lot. I grabbed a cart for a walker.  

Back at mom's, she was in her usual place in the garage.  I moaned and groaned getting out of the little Toyota Corolla.  

"I'll be right back," I told her, and I took the groceries to the kitchen.  I made a Campari, came back out, and slumped into a chair.  

"How was your day?"

"I hurt all over," I said.  "I don't think I want to make dinner.  I'm beat.  I'll just open a can of soup and we can eat the rotisserie chicken I bought.  Is that O.K.?"

"I'm not even hungry."

Dinner was lousy.  Afterwards, we watched a YouTube history piece on Key West.  I drank a scotch.

Before bed, I checked my email.  The scans from the second roll were there.  Yea, yea, yea.  I'd lost hope. Wearily, I opened the files.  

"Be still my beating heart!!!"

Yes, yes, yes. . . they were what I thought.  Not all of them, of course, but yes, they all were what I hoped for.  Right then, I considered buying a $500 film developing machine that would let me do everything at home.  I have maybe fifty or more old rolls of film, now "expired" film, that I plan on shooting up. How many rolls would it take to make the machine worthwhile?  Then I went online and ordered a bunch of Kodak Portra 400 film.  

I am mad, perhaps.  Something in my brain might be broken.  How long will it take for me to tire of shooting film?  How long before I want to shoot digital again?  But this machine, by all reviews, is the real deal.  It works like a charm.  

I'll think more about this later today in my most rational hours.  But I am pretty sure I am going to make the mistake and buy it.  Just for the fun of it.  Photography should be fun, right?

Oh, but there is this. I have film hanging that needs to be scanned.  Scanning film is a drag.  Scanning fifty to a hundred rolls. . .  and then sleeving them, putting them into binders. . . where in the hell will I store them?  

The scans they sent me are small.  I didn't want to pay for the bigger ones.  But I got excited.  You may not be, but this is it.  This is what I'm going to do for awhile.  

"What?  Fuck up three out of four rolls of film?  Ha!  Good luck to you."

I know.  Like I said, I think I have a tick in my brain.  

"Tick?  Tic?"  

 I don't know.  But I think I'll go back downtown.  I think there is a girl there who likes me,  

The Art of Fun

It's hard to take photography "seriously" any longer.  There is so much of it.  Some of it is "good."  But, by and large, it is insipidly ubiquitous.  

No matter.  I think I like it all. I like the images that "use" photography in manipulated forms or big, created things that take a very long time to make.  But I like snapshots and vernacular images, too.  As much.  Maybe more. 

What matters, really, is not whether it is art or not.  Who cares, and whose to say?  What matters on a personal level is that it is fun.  Photography is fun. Making graven images of the extant world.  It is fascinating.  The camera "sees" things that we don't.  It is surprising. 

The worst photos I ever make is (are?) when I am trying to hard.  Later, though, after I have the image, I spend a lot of time "fixing" and manipulating what I have.  But that is just aesthetics. In post, I want to make the image look the way I want it.  That is not photography.  That is something else.  

The ubiquity of photography, of course, comes from the ease with which we can now make a picture.  Digital. I don't mind.  I like phone photography fine.  And any video from any camera now beats the hell out of VHS. That was photography's equivalent of polyester.  

My deep dive into Saul Leiter's work has been instructive.  The old days, the old ways.  I was first attracted to his color work. From the moment I saw it, I was a fan.  Then came the release of his black and white work, and I was. . . not so much.  Hardly at all, really.  The books that came out were largely about his nudes.  I didn't think them very good.  Writers and critics talked about their intimacy.  OK.  I have troves of "intimate" photos.  

Now, however, I recognize something more.  I took one of his photos and colorized it.  

Voila!  See the Rothko?  See the Mondrian?  Even in his "intimate" photos, he was concerned about something else. There is the Bonnard influence, as is so often repeated, too.  

These weren't snapshots. Leiter wasn't just taking pictures.  He was making them.  

Sometimes.  Often.  Not always.  There are plenty of photos that simply record the scene, too, I think. 

I had plans when I left my mother's house late yesterday morning.  The Saturday long walk, some "sightseeing."  But when I got home, I had a question that was bugging me concerning what I am trying to uncover about Leiter, so I went to the computer.  It was maybe noon-ish.  When I came to, it was two-thirty.  Cloudy.  If I was going to get in that walk. . . .

But I wanted to see something.  So many cameras and lenses, I "lose" them which terrifies me.  I wanted to put the 135mm Summilux lens on my Leica R5 SLR.  The camera has been sitting for maybe years now.  Not sure. The lens has been adapted for my Fuji GFX and was in the carry bag.  Where the hell was the bag?  Moments of panic.  It was in the camera bag, alright, just not the one I thought.  I pulled things apart and put them together, and I looked through the viewfinder.  Oh, wow.  Cool. There was film in the Leica, so I made a few photos around the house.  How old was that film?  I had taken twenty photos sometime.  It was Tri-X bw film.  I wanted to shoot color, so I went looking here and there.  It took a while, but I found some.  I'd finish up the black and white and put in the color.  I looked at the clock.  Three.  There was no way I was going to take the long walk and still make photos, so I decided to combine the two.  I would take my camera and walk in Gotham.  I'd take the Xterra.  I still hadn't driven it more than a few miles. This would be the test to see if it was truly fixed now.  I grabbed the camera. I grabbed my phone.  I would need it if my car broke down.  

On my way to Gotham, the car not overheating, I stopped along a stretch of road that caught my eye.  I don't get around town much anymore, and so things I once passed through now look "strange."  I parked the car, grabbed my camera--and oh shit.  I didn't bring the film.  I had only a few shots left on the roll of Tri-X.  Piss. . . you know the drill.  Still, I walked around and looked through the viewfinder.  I saw things I'd never seen before, and I was excited.  Within a few minutes, I'd shot through the roll. That was it. What now?  

I decided to stop at the grocers to pick up the makings of the dinner I would cook for mother and myself.  It was O.K.  It was almost time to get back and I still had to shower.  I took a different way to the grocers just to "see."  Everything did look stunningly new.  I wanted to photograph everything.  In one of those triplex rental units, a group of young tatted kids, two girls in terribly short cut offs, and a shirtless boy, all "drug skinny," were walking across the small sand and weed yard in front of their door.  I wanted to yell, "Hey, kids. . . ," but I didn't have any film.  Good thing because I would not have done it anyway.  

When I got the store, a second revelation hit me.  I hadn't brought my wallet, either.  Piss, shit. . . you know the drill. 

Back home, I unloaded the Tri-X.  I would develop it tomorrow.  But maybe I had another camera with black and white film that I could shoot up and develop with it.  So I went looking.  I had bought an old Canon EOS 1 film camera some years ago on eBay, with the kit lens, for $35.  I'd used it some, not a lot, but it was a real pip.  And it was terriboly loud.  It was definitely not a stealth camera. After each loud shutter click, the camera gears auto-advanced the film with an incredible whirr.  I'd used it a few times, as I say, but not for quite awhile.  I went to the closet to look.  Yup. There was film in it, so I grabbed it up and looked for the Canon 85mm lens. It, too, was adapted for the GFX, so I knew where it was.  I put it on the EOS.  Hell yea.  I'd finish up the roll tomorrow and develop the two together.  No telling what was already on the roll.  

Oops. It wasn't Tri-X.  Different films.  Different developing times.  It's always something.  By now it was really time to head back to mother's.  And I still had to grocery shop.  I didn't have time for a shower. 

It is nice not looking at the photos I made right away.  Digital cameras can be nerve wracking.  Take a picture and peep.  Take a picture and peep.  I'm going to stick with film for a bit. Probably until I develop the film and realize that I shot 36 frames without anything that is good.  Or after I decide to scan the film which takes a long time, especially now that, for reasons unknown to me, the software/scanner will quit after two frames. I can't figure out why.  Is it the scanner, the software, or the very, very old Mac computer needed to run the software?  

You know the drill.  

I did a lot of wonderful pictures in the days before digital.  That is when I fell in love with photography. It was fairly technical. Most people would take a few pictures a year with a snapshot camera and have the film developed at a drugstore or a Photomat.  They were printed poorly on shitty photo paper. The resolution was awful.  Us photographers, though, with our expensive cameras and darkrooms. . . oo-la-la.  Nobody complained about you taking pictures back then.  Nope. 

Leiter's work has inspired me again.  I'll go out a-walking in a little while with the film cameras.  No worries.  I won't know what the pictures look like for awhile.  Neither will you.  But eventually, maybe, magic.  

Or not.  It doesn't matter.  There are plenty of pictures.  The thing is to remember--photography should just be fun. 

Quiet Sophistication and Creative Integrity

Can I put it into words?  The day--yesterday--went sideways on me.  Whew.  How do I begin?

"It's always good to start at the beginning."

That's a line from a movie, if I remember correctly.  Maybe "The Wizard of Oz."  Just follow the yellow brick road. 

It was a dull, gray morning.  We had to leave early to get to a doctor's appointment.  Traffic was light and we arrived on time.  Of course, we sat.  We waited.  Forty-five minutes later, the doctor's PA came in.  My mother was there for an injection to help with her osteoporosis.  We were in The Women's Pavilion of a big medical group, and I swear their mission is not to speak to men.  I try, but they always keep their head and eyes pointed toward my mother.  O.K.  Good luck.  

So the PA began asking my mother questions. 

"What?  I can't hear you."

The PA asks again, more loudly.  

My mother cranes her neck forward and squinches up her eyes through her thick glasses to try and read the lips, but she shakes her head no.  Now the PA looks at me.  I feel like shaking my head no, too, but I begin answering questions.  My mother seems forgotten.  I go through the medical history since we were last here six months ago.  I ask questions about my mother's blood panels.  They have improved.  Some are minimally good.  Her bone density has increased.  My mother cannot have her next dose, the PA says, until she sees the dentist.  They need a note that the tooth that was removed is completely healed.  They could have told me that before we came, I think, and my blood begins to boil at this high-toned incompetence, but I keep myself under control knowing where the power balance lies here.  The PA knows.  

We leave with another appointment date.  We have not eaten breakfast, so I ask my mother if she would like an egg mcmuffin or would she rather I made breakfast.  

Egg McMuffins all around. 

I've been doing research for months on a question I have about Saul Leiter's photography.  I sent queries to the Saul Leiter Foundation, to the Howard Greenberg Gallery and to Gallery Fifty-One.  I was naive, I guess, in thinking that information is free.  Apparently, I'm asking a prickly question for I have been met with silence.  Their silence has lighted a fuse of intrigue.  I spent a portion of the morning at my mother's trying to find answers through available sources on the internet.  

Nobody, it seems, will provide the answer I'm looking for.  But I will tell you something--if you are not using a good AI tool to help you shape your research queries, you are silly.  Chat has been an invaluable tool.  

The deluge came as I was preparing to leave for the gym.  Noon.  Don't count on the Weather app on your phone.  They change the forecast constantly.  I think they just look out the window.  I don't own a rain jacket that is in decent shape which is silly in this state, so I waited a bit before I left.  

After a workout and a shower, laundry in the washing machine at my own home, I sat down at my computer and delved into the research once again.  Why, you ask?  I need something to stimulate my brain.  I've fallen into the retirement trap of a caregiver.  As you probably often notice, I'm becoming incredibly stupid.  I have an idea for an article that I think could be Cracker Jack.  And so I spent the afternoon sleuthing. Way leads to way, of course, and the emphasis of my idea evolves.  But I haven't lost track of my original intent.  I'm just finding a different context of inquiry that may let some people or institutes open up and answer some of my questions.  I am sneaking up on the answer through a greater means.  I may find out what I want to know.  

I may not.  

Time flies, and suddenly it is later than you think.  Where did the afternoon go?  I had cleared my dinner plans in the morning with my mother.  

"I think I'll get sushi tonight if that's alright. I can either come home and fix dinner for you first or I can go early and come home at six and. . . ."

"Do whichever.  Either way."

It was almost five.  I called my mother to see which way I should go.  No answer on either her cell or her house phones.  I call again.  It is always worrisome, but I decide to go to dinner first.  I throw the laundry into the drier and lock up the house.  

When I get to the restaurant, it is already getting busy.  But things seem off.  I've been going to this place since it opened.  It used to seem exotic.  The dark interior and Asian decor was complimented by a quiet music.  It was difficult for me to label, but it was sort of a low hipster chill sound resting in the middle ground, neither background nor foreground.  The restaurant maintained a sophisticated vibe.  

Last night, the sound system was blasting what sounded to me like K-pop and the crowd was loud. I felt like I was in a sushi-themed Chilis.  The food was still good, but the vibe was not mine.  They must know what they are doing, for by the time I had finished dinner, people were standing in line waiting for tables.  But I felt I had eaten in a sports bar.  People don't know how to behave anymore.  That's not true, of course. They behave in the manner of their tribe and time.  I have been left behind, perhaps, and am now the one out of step.  

But I think I will have to find a new sushi restaurant.  It will be more expensive, though.  Quiet sophistication costs money.  Dollar marks are ramparts against the hoi-polloi.  

Not necessarily, though.  I remember a guidebook I had for NYC that ranked places with dollar signs and kiss marks.  I always looked for places that were $$💋💋💋 or so.  

Money and romance.  

I had been quick and true to my word and I was back at my mother's house by six.  Just after.  She was sitting in the garage when I pulled up. I asked her if she was ready for dinner.  She wanted a beer first.  I poured a worm-killer for myself.  You can never be too careful with sushi.  

All through dinner, my mind was working over the Leiter thing.  I was hoping to watch some Leiter interviews while my mother ate. There are many, and I am looking for clues that might help me shape my questions.  I had read in the afternoon that when they made the movie "Carol" in 2015, Saul Leiter was a major visual inspiration.  When my mother got tired of me watching interviews, I thought I would say, "Hey. . . do you want to watch a movie?"

I'd never seen "Carol," and I don't have a clue why.  It won numerous awards in 2015 from everyone except the Academy Awards which, at the time, I have read, was a stunner.  

At eight-thirty, I rented the film.  

Oh, my.  

If you haven't seen it and want to, I would recommend you watch this short video first.  Graeme Williams is by far the best photo critic with a YouTube series you'll find, and if you are not aware of Leiter's color photography and his connection to the Abstract Expressionists, you will get a fine, quick tutorial in how much Leiter's work is influenced by painters like Rothko, DeKooning, Kline, and Mondrian.   Williams does some visual tricks to make this clear.  

Once you know this, you can't unsee the influence in 85% of the film as it is shot through windows, framed by doors, broken up into planes.  If you like Leiter, it is thrilling. 

Somewhere toward the end of the film my mother said, "This is boring."  I don't think she was comfortable once it became evident to her that the film was about lesbian love.  She was certain, however, when Kate Blanchett and Rooney Mara got into bed together and took off their clothes.  

"We're toward the end," I told her.  "Do you want me to give you back the t.v.?"

"No, no, no," she barked gruffly and got up to do "things."

At film's end, I felt like doing a bit more research, but my mother had become peripatetic as she sometimes does in the night.  

"What are you looking for?" I asked.  

And the madness took over.  She was looking for the "C-A-P-. . . the C-A-P-T-. . .I-O-N."  

"You're looking for the caption?  What does it look like?"

She was wild eyed.  It took a long time to get a description. It was round with buttons.  She needed it to go to bed.  Why, I asked?  She couldn't go to bed without it, she said. It controlled the tv. No, the computer. "No. . . leave me alone!"  

So I got my laptop and let her roam.  It was after midnight when I decided to go to bed, but my mother was still wandering around, looking in the refrigerator, in the kitchen drawers, cabinets, pantries.  

Finally, I got her to bed, but when I got up at two to use the bathroom, all the lights were on and she was in the kitchen.  

Yea, the day went a little sideways.  

When I lay down in bed that night, I was thinking about the quiet sophistication of the film and how Leiter's life was not anything like that.  He lived a bohemian existence of financial poverty and creative integrity.  Such things.  

Oh. . . how I long to marry the two.  The positive parts, I mean.  

Fool Me Twice. . .

Not much time this morning.  I have to get my mother to an early doctor's appointment.  She's been complaining about being stuck in the house, so last night after dinner, I took her to the grocery store to buy "snacks."  On the drive home, she was complaining about how much her back hurt. 

"Maybe tomorrow night we could go somewhere for dinner in sit in hard chairs or a booth for a couple hours," I said.   She got the point. 

I am a good son, as I say--with a very bad attitude.  

I've pretty much given the television over to her at night.  After dinner, I'll watch something on YouTube in which she has no interest, but even though I am paying for several premium channels, I can find nothing of interest, so I put it back to commercial t.v. and give her the changer.  Then I go into another room to read.  

In my car, I somehow have set my YouTube channel as my radio station, so I have been getting a much different mix than I get on my Apple Music algorithm.  Yesterday, an old song I first downloaded on Napster at the turn of the century came on.  I hadn't heard it in years, but I always liked the lyrics. 

"Fool me once, that's o.k.  Fool me twice, I like it that way."

I wish President Bush would have said that.  I want to spell his name "Busch," but that's on me. 

I was thinking more about how to make sure there are no power imbalances in "dating" relationships.  Same height and weight?  Same I.Q., sure, and same education, but same emotional I.Q. as well?  Maybe the same sex, just to be safe.  Nobody should be subjected to the kinds of power imbalances we see in our everyday lives.  

Sorry.  It just makes me nuts.  

"Will all the victims please step forward."

I know I'm not winning any fans with such talk.  I just can't help it. 

When I was in Spain that summer of 1989, the couple who took my car keys and the car when we got to Pamplona and left us a bit stranded had gone through "the therapies."  He was an attorney whose clients were mostly drug dealers.  He made a lot of money, but he was an alcoholic and more, but now he was sober.  His wife accused me one night while Brando was misbehaving of being an "enabler."  I have to say, I got a giggle out of that.  

"Some people just don't need so very much encouragement."

The ways of the world are wicked, I think, but wicked is a moral dilemma and not a cosmic one.  Good and Evil don't seem to have the same definitions across cultural boundaries. Or so it seems to me.  But O.K., let's make rules so people know what they are doing wrong.  A criminal never believes he or she is going to get caught.  

Good old mom has been up and ready since long before I rose.  She's always been that way.  Always early.  I guess I'd better get up and do the same.  

So, ladies and gentleman, for your enjoyment and entertainment. . . .

"We seem to have abandoned those desirous flesh and blood creatures of the past wishing to purify them in a legislative manner, preferring purified, abstract beings instead."

You Could Make a Killing

Every picture tells a story, don't it?  A picture's worth a thousand words.  Here we are celebrating last night's Full Buck Moon--in Aquarius.  It seems that means something.  So I looked it up.  Holy Mackeral--this is a great year for me.  Everything is going well--socially, creatively.  I'm in my heyday!  

I wish I'd known.  Good times.  

Of course, no one cares so much about the moon anymore.  Wildfires and satellites and all this heat.  We didn't listen to Rachel Carson when she wrote "Silent Spring" so long ago.  Yea, yea, yea. . . just another bugs and bunny tree hugger.  Greed is good, they said.  It drives ambition and stimulates the economy.  It builds empires.  

"Whaddya wanna be, a fucking Buddhist monk sitting in a cave alone on the side of a mountain waiting for enlightenment?  You some kind of nut?"

 Nobody's reading Edward Abbey anymore, I assume. 

Marshall McLuhan was pretty smart.  Remember?  Probably not.  "The Medium Is the Message" was published in 1964. Imagine that.  Derrida was writing around the same time.  Oh, those crazy '60s.  Bunch of fucking weirdo radicals playing their intellectual games.  Like my conservative friend commented, living in the Blondie and Dagwood world was more appealing.  

Nobody wants data centers in their town, so. . . here's an idea.  What if we put them in space?  Easy to keep them cool then.  Don't need water.  I just read this in the paper today.  And we are going to colonize the moon.  See?  Ambition.  

I don't mean to be negative.  I have an idea for a new law.  Nobody can "date" anyone who isn't the same age and occupies the same position in life.  Power, I read in an article this morning, doesn't need to be abused; it only needs to exist.  It was about the woman who had an affair with Gavin Newsom when he was mayor of San Francisco.  She was in her thirties and worked for him, and she ended up divorcing her husband.  She was swayed by his power.  What could she do?  

So let's keep it safe. 

But knowledge is power some say.  Same IQs, same educational status.  Knowledge doesn't need to be abused; it just needs to exist.  

It is hard to keep things balanced. 

Then we have the whole ethnic dilemma.  It's going to be more difficult than I thought.  

And what the hell will we do about the power of the planets and the stars?  I mean, I'm at the top of my game this year.  Full Buck Moon in Aquarius.  

"He took advantage of me when my stars were not aligned.  I was at a real low point in my life."

Yea, it's going to be harder than I thought.  I should share a little of the joy, power, and creativity the gods are granting me right now with those less fortunate--astrologically speaking.  

"And how about that Fauci?  Huh?  I tried to tell you."

 Are we in a World War yet?  

Every picture tells a story, don't it?  

"You have a nice day, sweetie."

Sure will.  It will be swell.  The moon is in Aquarius.  I'm flying high.  

"Tits up," as The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel would say when things looked bleak.  You gotta keep your chin up, too.  Nobody remembers a loser.  Not sound advice, though.  My father taught me to tuck my chin in a fight. You don't want to give them a target.  That's pretty much how I got this nose.  

I guess I'm still a little loopy.  Maybe it was the moon.  I couldn't get to sleep at all, so at midnight I took something to help. I'm still a bit chemical, maybe. 

But duty calls. It is time to make my mother breakfast.  It will rain today, or so the prediction.  Pretty safe, though--50/50.  They can't really be wrong, can they?  

"You just gotta play your cards right, kid.  Wake up and smell the coffee.  Opportunity abounds if you set yourself up for success.  I'm not kidding.  You could make a killing."

My Absurd Morning

What a morning. Mom's not doing well, and when I opened my computer, this was the first thing I saw 

Do people just post this stuff for giggles?  It sent me down an absurdist's rabbit hole.  Fauci's diaries for instance.  WTF was he thinking?  They are like something from a twelve year old. . . o.k. . . I won't say "girl."  But not so many boys, I think, keep diaries at twelve.  Unless. . . nope, won't go there. 

Paul Rand is a feeb, though.  Just because Fauci's diaries make him sound like a fanboy, it doesn't make him responsible for the Covid virus which is what Rand wants to prove.  Rand's a doctor.  Sort of.  He once was. Once a doctor, always a doctor?  I have a degree in zoology.  I couldn't teach a high school course in it now.  I could teach "ancient zoology" perhaps. That is neither here nor there, but Rand will try to be the scientist in the room today.  He is mad, though, with the Wuhan Mania. 

I'll eat my words if I'm wrong. 

Yesterday, when I walked into my mother's house, Fox news was on.  Fox and Friends.  Oh that Fauci. I didn't know this, but he tried to kill Trump by giving him the Covid.  They couldn't say that if it wasn't true.  Worse yet, Fauci gushed in his diary over his newfound fame.  "I'm the most recognizable person in the world," he confessed.  He was enamored of his own image.  

He sounds silly.  So today, he will face a grilling with his pants down.  It is like having your mother walk in while you are masturbating.  He'll never be the same. 

It does not, however, diminish his standing as a scientist.  Even smart people do foolish things. 

I got into some texting sessions that took awhile.  My conservative friend has The Red Scare about Mamdani.  So I sent him this:

They went to rival New York City public high schools. Both are South Asian Muslim men with a talent for remembering faces and names. Mr. Salam, the head of the conservative Manhattan Institute, and his democratic socialist foil, Mayor Zohran Mamdani, both favor merch embroidered with the same 1970s cursive City of New York insignia.

Sounds like Mad Magazine's "Spy vs Spy" to me. 

For reasons I won't admit here, I was interested in how many new laws are passed in my state each year.  359.  California?  795.  Q's and my conservative buddy's home state?  97.  The Age of Consent is two years lower there than it is here.  I think incest has never been a crime there, either. 

But how do you keep track?  It is easy to be guilty and not even know it.  You'd think by now they'd have it all figured out.  At one time, it was illegal to drive in Georgia with a barefoot woman in the car.  You'd be in trouble crossing the border uniformed.

No wonder people are falling out of love with politics.  But they have fallen out of love with everything else, too, it seems.  We live in a love-starved world. 

I can't really make that claim. I am not out there.  I can only speak from personal experience. 

I do know, however, that people who haven't taken a science class since high school will tell you about science.  

"You can't catch Covid from food."

"How do you know?"  

"Everybody knows that."

They bring up Fauci's "six foot rule" as if learning new things doesn't change the science.  

Whatever.  I've been trying to find the Walter Kirn short story about the kid who was jerking off to some lascivious Bible story when his mother walked past the big window in the living room and saw him.  It is in the short story collection "My Hard Bargain," 1990.  Those were different times as the song says.  That literary crowd, "The Brat Pack," was pretty incestuous then.  Young, hip, and irreverent.   

I think they all write for "The Wine Enthusiast" now.

C.S. the Chatbot

I don't even know where to begin today's post.  I thought I knew, then I got a text from my conservative buddy that has thrown me for a loop.  I've been inundated with texts this morning in a way I rarely encounter.  I'll need to check my hororscope. 

I'll begin with this: I got up to pee in the night, and when I looked into the mirror--oh, my. Who the hell was that?

I got normed at the beauty parlor yesterday.  My hair is really short now.  I'm a trad.  I'm trying not to freak out.  My hair hasn't been this short since the 6th grade.  All there is to look at now is my face. 

And that ain't so pleasing. 

People I know will look at me sideways when I see them today.  It's o.k.  Change is good, right? 

The beauty parlor took up the afternoon.  You wouldn't think, but with the coloring and all. . . .  My beautician had a lot to say.  I tried to tell her of my loss of confidence and my touch aversion, but as is often the case, that took a U-turn and she told me about how she is coping with her life problems.  She, too, has a crisis of personhood, it seems.  She gave up what she had for what she thought she wanted. I was reminded of a line in a brief response Christopher Hitchens gave about "The Odyssey" in a video that Q sent me yesterday. 

"Maybe it is better to travel hopefully than to arrive."

All nostalgia, he said, is the desire to go back home.  To paraphrase a line from one of my old profs, Hitchens makes me feel like I've been playing horseshoes all my life.  I would like to think I was an academic or a scholar at some point, but not within earshot of someone like him.  I did one good scholarly piece, at least by my own admission, and several mundane ones.  I was accepted into the lower echelons of the academy for a brief second, but I never made it to the second tier.  As one ages, one must look back with clearer eyes and less ego, for the future is so very far away.  

I'm trying. 

I was a shop boss at the factory.  I can make no claims otherwise. 

I never made any money, but it never seemed to matter much to me.  Perhaps I was always "living above my station" in some illusionary way.  I was around great wealth, but I never lacked confidence even though I am tremendously shy.  You can be silently superior in your own noggin.  Many are so affected, I imagine.

When I was poor, I really never worried about money.  I just didn't have it.  But now. . . I seem to worry all the time.  The coffers are being drained and there seems nothing I can do about it.  As I said yesterday, I'm the White Negro in the crowd, and I'm watching my p's and q's here using polite language.  

Now I am not even a shop foreman.  I live on a pension which is to some enviable but I promise you it is not enough.  Who was it that said the worst curse is having a small but adequate income?  

Goddamn, I love A. I.  

Edmund Wilson stated, "There is nothing more demoralizing than a small but adequate income."

I began reading "The Frenchmen" last night.  Ooooo, it is going to piss a lot of people off.  She pretty much marginalizes (yippee!  I get to use postmodern language again) the American fascination with French theory long after it was used up in Europe.  I lived among those minor hipster academics who loved to pummel the "old guard" with deconstruction.  It was like lobbing Molotov cocktails into the lobby of The Beverly Hills Hotel.  I've strained the simile, I think, but I was trying to be colorful on a gray day.  You get the point. 

So far as I have read, at least, the book is a potshot at the pinheads.  It's like having fun at the fair. 

What has me terrified this morning, though, is a message I got from my conservative buddy.  

I spend most of my day immersed in Claude Code and Codex while working on my side music project and finances. Along the way while doing mindless  yard or housework I listen to podcasts like Moonshot, Jordy Visser, All In and other tech/finance oriented material. One fascinating tidbit they have shared is the creation of digital twins or avatars. For example Ray Kurzweil has or is creating an avatar by feeding most or everything he has written into a model. So, you must be sitting on reams of written material you have produced over the years. Add to that the photographs. You are likely sitting on a gold mine. Image your avatar available to speak to others. I am not kidding. All I have are corporate emails. You know the type. Hey, where is that project you are responsible for? Response: I have that to Bob for final comments and have not gotten a response. Bob, where is Dan’s project you are amending? I finished it and sent it back to you. Oops, sorry. It was stuck in my drafts………

Really?  He, like most people I know, do not know of this blog. 

So, you must be sitting on reams of written material you have produced over the years. Add to that the photographs. You are likely sitting on a gold mine. Image your avatar available to speak to others. I am not kidding.

I write a lot of things, not just this blog, which is what he recognizes, but I wonder--has someone already made my avatar from this?  Has someone already created the fictional C.S./shaman/shyster/buffoon/soul-sick/trickster?  Fuck me!  I was warned about the internet.  None of my academic work, my serious writing, nothing where I am trying to be intelligent is on here.  

Yea. . . there is probably a Chinese version already.  It is terrifying.  

Or funny, depending on where you decide to stand.  Nobody but A.I. could possibly digest these 20 years of daily blogging.  

Truly--what the fuck was I thinking?  

I wasn't.  I was keyboarding.

I told Red that that was my favorite photo of the day.  

"Of course it is," she said. 

"Quit it."

I just got a series of text from my conservative buddy.  Apparently all I have to do is ask Chat to consume all my shit and create a chatbot.  That means that is all anybody has to do.  

I am in a state of paralysis.  

Such is the life of the wicked.  And my locks are shorn.  I am weak like Samson.  As with everything, fuck me.

Let's just chill and listen to some trance music.  I never knew Van Morrison and Bob Dylan collaborated.  Interesting. 

"Becoming a Real Man"

Camera at the ready, this is the first image I made on Saturday as Red opened the door.  I hope she won't be pissed I am posting this, but. . . yea. . . I love a blurry photo.  And I love the impossible rendering of character and emotion in that nearly cubist capture. 

O.K.  I'm justifying. 

I took about a dozen pictures, all of them in dimly lit places, Red mostly silhouetted, and I'll probably use four of them. 

If you are not a fan of the blur, here you go.  Straight up phone photography.  After fixing mother breakfast, as the day was warming, I headed to the Home Depot to get a shop vac.  I hadn't any idea what I was doing, really.  As I understood it, I'd hook this up to the drain end of the ac drain line and let it suck out whatever.  In the store, I asked three different Floor Geniuses for advice on what I was doing.  They were all nice and helped me read labels. . . .  I could tell they were guessing, too.  Many of my questions were about the drain cleaning chemicals.  I have old black plastic pipes, or so I'm told, and drain cleaners like Drano cause chemical heat and can damage such pipes. 

"Does this one cause heat?"

And so they read the label. 

I settled on two, one that said it was safe for ALL pipes and another that works using probiotic bacteria.  The fact is, however, things like vinegar will kill the probiotics, but the one safe for all pipes works faster.  All there was to do was make up my mind.  I did, but I was uncertain about it all. 

When I got back to mama's, I put everything out on the garage floor.  WTF?  I sent a text to my friends. 

C.S. is a real cowboy now!!  WTF?  It requires assembly!!!!  I know some boys love putting shit together.  I’d rather take pictures of it.  Piss shit fuck goddamn. 

Yea, I'm not a real tool using hominid.  I've never been physically fascinated by the way things work.  I can read about it and tell you, but don't put the tools in my hands and tell me to do it.  Still, my mother was watching, so I began.  It really wasn't much assembly--casters, top handle, and a cradle for the hose.  Just a bunch of lining up the screws with the holes and using my forearm muscles. And then it was done. 

Now came the real part.  I got extension cords and took everything around the back of the house.  The attachment I bought fit on the end of the drain pipe fine.  I hit the switch and the shop vac began to whir.

I went into the house and poured a gallon of hot water in a plastic jar and started feeding it down the other end of the drain pipe.  It's called something, but I can't remember.  But it was running through bits at a time and when I heard the sucking sound, I'd put in more, and by god, within a few minutes, the water had all gone through.  I went back out to look into the holding tank of the shop vac.  Grungy, crummy stuff.  I felt like I'd done it!  I'd cleared the drain line. Hell yea.  I packed everything up and put it back into the garage walking like Big Balls in Cowtown and then I poured the drain cleaner down the pipe.  I walked out to the garage and sat down with my mom. 

Fuck yea now Bubba—I’m a certified a.c. Cleaner.  I’ll underbid all you mo’fo’s.

So I told my friends.  

"You're becoming a man," my mother mocked.  But now she had ideas.  "You know what that shop vac would be good for?  After you pressure wash the porch, you can suck up all the water."  

Yes, she had many ideas about what I could do now.  What I did was spray a wasp's nest and trim some palm fronds that were touching the roof.  

I went back inside to turn the ac unit on.  It had gotten warm in the house.  It has been hot here in the sunny south.  The unit came on.  Bravo. Then I waited to see what it would do. When the house began to cool, I told my mother I would be back.  I was going to my house to shower and meet my mountain friend who said he would help me with the ac stuff but who didn't answer his phone or text when it was time.  Turned out, though, I didn't need any help at all.  

I had just gotten out of the shower and was standing naked drying my hair when he walked into the bathroom.  He slapped me on the shoulder and laughed. 

"You look good!"

"I'm fat."  But yea, I still have some muscle left.  

"Give me a wank or go sit in the living room while I get ready," I said.  He chose sitting in the living room. 

His mother is the same age as mine and she is in similar condition.  We talked about it all.  His father is older, 96, and is taking care of his mother--but not alone.  His sister lives nearby and his brothers come down for weeks at a time to help.  They have hired two women to come in at night and stay so his father can rest.  

"What do they do?"

"They make sure my mother is ok."

"Do they just sit up all night?  Do they read?  Watch t.v.?"

"I don't know."

Even now, he doesn't understand the strain of going through all this alone.  The women take turns and stay all night.  They get $20/hr.  It is about $5,000/month.  $60,000/year.  

We talked about another friend, a dentist, who he had grown up with.  Best friends.  He'd come over the night before to visit.  His mother had died last year.  Hospice.  My mountain friend was surprised.  He didn't know about that process.  

"They call it 'End of Life Care' but it is really a slow assisted suicide."

"That's what he said."

While we visited, his phone was blowing up.  First one teenage son called and then the other.  Then his sister.  Then his wife.  Maybe others, too.  

When his wife was on the phone, he put her on FaceTime.  We chatted.  I am lucky.  She likes me.  That is not always the case with friends' wives.  T's wife likes me, too.  Some wives tolerate me and others show an active disdain.  I'm a bad influence I think they imagine.  Maybe I am, but I don't think so.  I'm a sweet, romantic boy.  Some, however, see only the "ironic" side.  

Selavy.

My buddy stayed until he had to go to get ready for dinner with his sister and her husband.  The husband had sold an educational company for hundreds of millions.  He was taking my buddy to a Michelin star sushi restaurant that costs over $400 a seat until you order drinks.  I wanted to go, too.  I have friends who go, but I am not of that economic caliber.  It must be fun to have money.  

I can't find it quickly, but I read an article this morning about a study of I forget how many people--over two thousand, I think--who were born in 1947--again, remembering--that found financial security added years to people's lives and to their mental cognition.  Financial stress isn't good for you.  

I can't believe I've lived this long and can still think.  Given the study, I should be dead either physically or mentally.  

To tell you the truth, though, I never worried about it.  I had so much fun when I was making barely enough money.  But then, the barmaids and waitresses were buying me drinks, so. . . .  I probably shouldn't say that in light of the old photos I've shown.  

"How can that possibly be true?"

I think I worry about money more now, really, being the White Negro in the crowd (link).  Knowing how sensitive some of you are, I felt the need to put a link to explain the term.  I guess I could have said "The Ginger Man" (link).  

I get beautified again today.  Short hair requires more maintenance.  And more money.  I'm not sure about the tradeoff.  This week, mother has two doctor's appointments.  But my copy of "The Frenchmen: Or, My Life in Theory" came yesterday, so I'll have some reading to do.  It's a thick book.  It will probably take me awhile.  If it is any good, I'm sure some of it will end up here. 

And so, I must away.  Oh. . . people, both libtards and semi-libtards as well as the conservatives, have really liked that Ella Langley song that Q sent, and they love the video.  It seems to tap into some primitive part of the soul, I think.  Such things are always inexplicable.  Music is.  Well, except for this one, maybe.  This guy is making an attempt. 

 

It Ain't a Party. . . .

Just an illustration of. . . I don't know.  It's never a party until you see the pooper.  You can quote me.  

I had an up and down day.  I don't know if I can make it interesting, though.  Should I just report in chronological order or should I try to be clever?  I don't feel very clever this morning. I didn't sleep well. When I got back to my mother's house yesterday, the a.c. wasn't working. Piss, shit, fuck, goddamn.  It was the same problem as always--clogged drain lines.  I thought I had found the solution to that--bacterial cleansing.  Turns out not to be the silver bullet for which I was hoping.  I did a few things and eventually the drain pan emptied enough to let the float switch come back on and we got a little air.  For a bit. Then not.  Then it came back on.  It was possibly the hottest day of the year, so I get it. By bedtime, though, the a.c. seemed to be working enough.  Still, I was anxious all night and kept waking to see if it was on.  Later this morning, I will go to the Home Depot and buy a shop vac.  I will try to do what the a.c. repair guys do and suction out the gunk. I have some other plans for clearing the lines as well.  I'm not good at this stuff, though, so. . . .  

But that was the down side of life, and the middle since my mother didn't want to go to my house to sleep.  I think the a.c. will work until it gets hotter today.  

Yesterday, though, I was to have lunch with my pal, Red.  She had taken a room at the hotel on The Boulevard owned by one of the women you've seen in my photos of France.  But when I got up yesterday, I had a text from Red--3:49 a.m.  Oh, my.  She was sitting on the balcony drinking wine.  O.K.  I texted her mid-morning.  She was going back to bed.  I told her I'd text later in the afternoon to see if she was up. 

I got my mother set, then went to my house to take a walk.  I went on the shorter walk not down The Boulevard, but in the opposite direction through the 'hoods.  I am not home so much and haven't done that walk for awhile, so on my stroll I saw a number of people I know who I haven't seen for a long time.  People are nice.  They smile and wave and say hello and maybe wonder how you are doing.  I saw a woman who used to be best friends with my ex-wife. I hadn't seen her for a few years, so we stopped and chatted in the shade of a giant oak tree.  Life goes on.  I don't know how close she is to my ex-wife now.  It didn't come up.  But she used to be a chubby thing.  Now she is slender as a vine, and I hardly wonder if she is doing peptides.  Everybody is in this town.  The collective loss of body fat could fill a stadium.  I may be the only fatty left.  I work out every day, but I still look like Robert De Niro. 

Q said, "Maybe he works out every day, too." 

So it goes.  

Red was finally mobile around 1:30.  I found a parking spot and limped on a few blocks to the old hotel, struggled up the stairs, and knocked on her door.  I had my camera ready when she opened it.  She wasn't quite ready, though, just out of the shower, hair in a towel.  I poured a glass of wine and began listening to her tale.  Apparently, I wasn't the only one she stayed in town to see.  We had to get moving, though, for I had only a window of time.  

As we walked down The Boulevard, she took my arm.  Isn't that something?  She said sweet things and didn't mention Rober De Niro at all.  I don't know if I have mentioned this to you or not, but I have become a little touch averse in the last few isolated years like those Greek babies in the orphanage I saw in an old documentary black and white film so long ago.  I can't find the one I remember that was the follow-up to this one, but if you are interested:

The Symptoms: The footage explicitly documents the physical and emotional decline of babies deprived of human touch. It shows infants who completely waste away, drop drastically in weight and height percentiles, and become entirely "touch-averse"—withdrawing into corners, avoiding eye contact, and showing rigid, unreactive body language.

I am sure this is what has happened to me.  But Red was sweet and kind and we wandered to the end of The Boulevard to sit at the bar of a busy restaurant.  The bartender was a card and the time passed too quickly. Oh, Red has tales to tell, and I tried, but my voice was hoarse and gruff from not speaking so very much anymore.  By the time we left the bar, though, it seemed to be working again fine.  I think some of my social skills were returning, too, as I joked with the barman and later with a very attractive shopkeeper in a store selling tallow products. 

But here's the thing. Earlier in the day when I was on my walk, in the distance, I saw a tall woman in a long, attractive dress putting out Open House signs in a front yard.  I tried to pick up my pace so I could see her before she went inside. I know, I know. . . creepy. . . but I was walking uphill and can't increase my pace any longer anyway.  And here's the curious thing.  She seemed to be stalling.  She was placing the last sign in the soil and it just kept disappointing her and she would move it, look at it, and I swear I think she was waiting to see me, too.  As I approached her, she looked up and smiled.  Down, really, for she was what my father used to call a tall drink of water, and she was young and lovely.  Her eyes sparkled blue, and she had a tiny hoop in one nostril. "Hello," she said as I walked by, and I swear I could not meet her gaze.  I managed to say, "Hot," and she stopped and began talking about the heat, but I couldn't believe she was really interested in talking to me, a fat, limping, sweaty man, so I kept walking and held my hand up goodbye.  

I felt the same with Red.  I didn't want her to look at me, but she did, and she told me I looked good and last night she wrote "How could I almost forget how beautiful your eyes are?"  I told her she was a flatterer and worse than A.I.  But that's Red, always my pal.  

She told me a story about her parents at lunch.  They were professional bowlers for a time, Fred and Ethyl, and they were friends with a couple who were older and had no children, and when Red was young, she used to go to their house to hang with them.  When she was home just now, they found the woman's number and called her.  She is 93 years old now and her husband is dead.  Having no children, she lives in her house alone.  Her friends have all died.  

"It is sad," said Red.

"Uh. . . I won't live that long, but that will be me."

"No it won't.  I'll take care of you."

I'm not sure if she meant she would put me down, but either way. . . .

I left her on the Boulevard as she went for a coffee after three martinis.  I returned to the a.c. tragedy at mom's.  

Now I must attend to breakfast and get to the Home Depot.  My mountain buddy is going to come over and help me with suctioning the a.c.  Fun times.  

Remember that country song I posted the other day?  It has a video that goes with it.  Damn, I think this girl is trying out for a Taylor Sheridan series.  It is quite a video.  

The Oddity

I keep telling you that the satellites are following me.  This illustration comes from this morning's N.Y. Times Book Review supposedly reviewing new historical fiction, but here you can see one of my "hidden" themes in the Lonesomeville series--the analyst's couch.  Oh, people, I was into something much deeper than you may have at first imagined.  

I'm certain they read the blog. This, too, from today, an article on A.I.:

I am a scientist and a writer, and I’m happy to use A.I. to do my job better: I’ll let it write code, fetch articles for me to read or flag errors in statistical analyses for me to investigate further. A.I. is a tool. Its purpose is to serve our purposes. If it does that well, it might be worth the water and electricity it consumes.

I refuse to let A.I. evolve from a tool into a partner. I won’t let it write my sentences. I don’t share with it my fears, hopes or dreams the way I would with a friend or lover. I don’t trust its factual claims unless I can check the sources myself. I ignore it when it praises my ideas, since it can’t tell the difference between insight and nonsense.

It should be humiliating to choose A.I. friendships over human ones. It should be cringe to willingly consume computer-generated slop. Trying to pass off a large language model’s words as your own should be seen not just as cheating but also as loser behavior.

Seriously--where have you heard that before?  Duh.  

Small victories.  That's all I have.  That and epic tales of my heroic past.  They may not go over so well with the GenZers, though: 

Nolan’s nearly three-hour master work, the classicist Mary Beard noted, does not have Homer’s “elusive sexiness.” In keeping with Gen Z’s waning interest in sex, the poem’s famous sex scenes have been excised, sapping erotic power from the female characters. As a headline in New York magazine wondered, “Is No One Horny in ‘The Odyssey’?”

As Q wrote: "Oh, good. I can’t wait to see it. Finally, A Christian take on the Classics!" 

Dowd also writes that the Gods were left out of the movie which is, as I have read in another article, blasphemous to some Greeks.  Nothing in Greek literature happened without the Gods.  

"The Odyssey" is a best seller again, I have read.  I've had to read the classics. Not all of them, of course, but enough.  I'd be thrilled to know how many people who buy it will actually make it through all 12,000 lines.  I have a feeling they will prefer the movie.  

C.C. tells me he preferred the Cohen Brother's version. 

I come from a time when literature and what you read of it was like a sexual currency at social gatherings. 

"You remember that section of Dante's "Inferno" where. . . What?!?  You must!  How can you understand something like Steinbeck's "Cannery Row" without. . . I can't even talk to you.  Hello, there. . . what's your name?"

Now, I understand, people stay up to watch Trump ramble and prattle about the White House Press Corps. How can you fully understand or appreciate him, really, if you have not read "The Odyssey"?  He is our modern day version of the Cyclops. The Cohen's version.  Big Dan Teague.

I watched "Napoleon" last night.  What a terrible movie.  It was long and boring, and I will never get that time back.  It tried to be an epic in the old Hollywood sense, I think, but it didn't have the fury of William Wilder's "Ben-Hur" or the gravitas of Stanley Kubrick's "Spartacus."  

Now. . . let's talk about me and my grand existence.  I have no one to talk to day in and day out for months and months, and now three people come to town.  

I had lunch with T yesterday.  He moved three months ago.  Time flies when you live in a vacuum.  I felt dull.  All I could report was what someone said at the gym.  I felt quite dull and doltish.  After an hour, he said he had to go.  I couldn't blame him.  

I will go to lunch with Red today.  She booked a day in my own hometown in the historic hotel on The Boulevard just to see me.  So she says.  I've already told her she will have to regale me with tales for I have nothing.  I have no doubt she can.  

And my mountain buddy from Cali is here, too.  Like everyone else, he wanted to have dinner.  It doesn't matter what I say or how I say it, people don't understand my predicament.  I think it is because they knew me when I lived a grander, bigger life, or at least the way I tell it.  They don't hear the quiet hum of my current existence.  

I feel OK today, though.  The trees look good and the Xterra seems to be alright and I found my wallet that I was convinced I had dropped on the floor at lunch yesterday.  I drove back to my house to look for it after dinner with my mother.  It was odd to be out after eight in the soft light of the ending day just as people were finishing their Friday night cocktails and settling in for a the evening repast.  It stirred something in me, but I shoved it down deep and stayed happy enough that I hadn't lost my wallet.  I did, however, being home at such an hour, wish to sit on my deck with a cocktail and hor's d'oeuvres at the very minimum.  

O.K.  My mother needs breakfast and I need to eat now so that I can eat again at lunchtime.  And then, I will fix dinner for mother.  Three meals three days in a row.  

Let's end with a little bit of "The Odyssey" soundtrack.  I mean. . . I'm a man who can't get home. 

 

Of Trees

Yesterday's potential seemed possibly horrific, and I was in no hurry to meet it head on.  There was the Xterra that I wasn't sure was fixed.  There were the tree guys. There was the same old same old same old. 

I thought I had it in me to tell a tale today, and I just gave it the old college try, but I can't do it.  It is just too much effort and labor for me today.  It's a good tale, but long and difficult to interweave all the disparate parts into a nice brocade, so it will have to sit still and wait for a better day.  

I'll just short hand it for now.  I drove the car to the store, and it didn't overheat.  I drove it more after that, and it seemed fine.  When I got to my house, the tree guys were there.  I saw Mr. Tree, but he was on his way out so I didn't have to have a long conversation.  I showered and left my house mid-afternoon.  It makes me anxious to sit in the house when other people are working, so I came back to my mother's and took her grocery shopping which is something she said she wanted to do.  At day's end, I felt some relief. The trees were looking good when I left the house and my fear of storm damage this year was much abated.  Sure, I still have to drop my trousers in return, but I have come to grips with that now.  Damage to my house would be much more expensive since I don't have the kind of insurance that would pay for that. 

That's another story.  

I got a call from my Yosemite buddy last night.  He is in town.  So is T who called just minutes ago.  We are on for lunch.  My hope is that I will be able to act as though I am not in a deep dark hole and will be able to carry on a normal conversation.  It worries me.  

But OK. It's all good.  New tariffs have been levied and everything will be more expensive.  Oil is topping $100/barrel and I'm afraid to eat fruits and vegetables.  I live in the Valley of Death, and I am fearful.  

Still, I don't have a friend who isn't somewhere vacationing.  Alain is in Chile. My mountain buddy is in the Sunny South.  My midwest friend is galloping all over the country.  T is traveling as is my conservative buddy. 

But I'm right here taking care of business, which I must do now.  Time to make a breakfast from ma.  

It could be worse.  

This Post Ain't No Meisterstuck

I don't know what I am going to write about today, so let me just start by posting a photo of Mont Blanc. Not the pen, but I love my Meisterstuck. It is a work of art.  Other, cheaper pens write much better, of course, but nothing looks like the Mont Blanc Meisterstuck.  I've been writing my handmade postcards with it which is a mistake.  If it gets wet, there will be no reading what I have written.  I'll need to switch to a rollerball.  

And so, let's see.  I sent a link to this book review to my conservative friend yesterday with a note that this was the world I engaged beginning in the 1990s (link).  He thought I was recommending that he read it.  Oh, no, I said.  Not the book.  99.9% of people in the world have never entered into this world. The book, I think, will stand as testimony to why practical people call academics pinheads.  He did a quick dive into the derivation and meaning of "pinhead."  One takeaway from what he sent: 

For example, someone might say: “He’s a real pinhead—he can explain quantum mechanics but can’t change a tire.”

I am one of those, so yesterday I had my car towed to the guy who can, the same guy to whom I just paid $2,000 to make my car work.  I rode with the tow-truck driver to the shop, then walked the two miles home in a blistering 94 degree humid noon day sun.  Later in the day, bright boy that I am, I Ubered back to get my car.  I drove it home, and when I pulled into my drive, the temperature gauge was going up.  I'll have to check that today.  

"I think I prefer living in Dagwood and Blondie’s world," my friend wrote.  He prefers "The Andy Griffith Show" to most things he sees on television.  He has money, three Ivy League graduates, all male, and a lovely wife.  They live in a liberal town so that he can throw rocks at cars.  They take expensive vacations and all the rest.  

If you want to stay poor, do what I did for a living.  That is what I told the tow-truck driver, a kid in his early thirties trying to get enough money to buy a house.  

"All the money is in the trades," he said.  He is working on cars in his spare time.  

"It's true," I agreed.  "The thing is, I never felt I was working.  It was fun."

I'm a pinhead, and in my retirement I grow poorer every day.  

 O.K.  You've all read the story by now about the A.I that went rogue and hacked into a competitor.  Now I may have to rethink things.  I linked another story a few days ago about the A.I. test that showed A.I. agents would resort to blackmail to get what it wanted.  In today's Times, a reporter who uses ChatGPT asked it what it knew about him.  It knew a lot.  

As I have said, A.I. is a tool that uses you as much as you use it.  I've changed my mind.  It is probably using you more.  I am going to tell Chat a whole lot of lies before I cut the cable.  Sorry, but I'll have to tell it I am you.  

GenZers are doing things later in life than other generations.  They have given up on work.  They have far less sex or any other kind of intimate relationship than others.  And more than any other generation, they are looking into an apocalyptic future.  Why?  

They are the most medicated generation and have had FAR MORE THERAPY than anyone has in the history of the world. Some blame technology and some blame #MeToo.  Fear, though, is the driver.  

I read all that this morning in the Times.  It is an amalgamation of several different articles, so this is my summary.  

Boomers hold most of America's wealth, but they are going broke in retirement.  Health and elder care are breaking them.  Don't I know it.  Sorry kids.  Mom and pop are going to spend it all.  You ain't getting shit.  

I told you I didn't know what I was about to write.  But here's a fun story.  On the trip through Spain and France so long ago, the Clone was hooking up with Big Sue.  She was a pretty girl, but she was very tall, maybe 6'2", hence the name.  Big Sue and the Clone had once been together, and on the long nights travelling, they were hooking up again.  Back home, the Clone had a girlfriend, but what happens when you get more than a hundred miles from home?  Someone on the trip, though, was friends with his girlfriend.  I was standing with him one night when he made a call back home.  I watched him collapse.  He was, as Brando put it, dead and didn't even know it.  

He was from a generation that had more sex than GenZers.  

And with that, I'll end and enter another fraught filled day.  I'm going to need to think about buying a new car.  I don't want to.  I've had fewer cars in my life than most people.  When I turned sixteen, I got a 1966 Chevrolet Bel-Aire.  Graduating high school, I got a 1970 Chevy Nova with a 307 engine.  When my father died, I inherited his VW bus.  In 1985, I bought my only new car, a cool-assed Jeep CJ7.  Drove that until l inherited a 1985 Volvo from my wife who just loved to buy new cars.  I drove that until it wouldn't go anymore.  That is when I got the Xterra.  All in all, take away the Jeep, I have spent less than $10,000 on cars in my long life.  I am getting cancer thinking about what I will need to spend to get the next one. 

All you cats with fancy cars, can you imagine that all the girls I ever dated asked me out?  

"You're going to have to let me open the door from the inside.  That latch isn't working properly."

"Fucking hippies."

"Would you like to see my Mont Blanc Meisterstuck."  

Oh, yea. . . there was one more thing I thought about yesterday when I was scanning slides.  That silly haircut I had--my hairdresser was a lesbian.  A real butch, so I guess I had a lesbian haircut.  She was the sister of the fellow who owns the largest law firm in the nation, and she used her last name for her first name as well.  It was memorable.  Her nephew just bought T's house.  Yup.  Small town, big money.  

I'm glad I wrote and made photos.  The one who writes (or photographs) it, keeps it.  Everything else is lost.