Noir No More

O.K.  Forget what I said yesterday about "Spider-Noir."  I watched Episode 2 last night.  Boring.  Silly.  I'm over it.  

Probably.  

This is Chris Craft.  So he said.  I went on a photo walk yesterday.  Got a late start.  It was hot and humid and sometimes a bit drizzly, and my knees were barking, but I thought if I was going to walk, I could walk anywhere, and I could walk with a camera, and so I went to a little village across town to walk its Main Street.  It is another old part of town that is growing, as all things around my little hometown are, with a proliferation of bars and restaurants.  But this Main Street still has some funky little shops, too, not the big chain stores but little mom and pop places that aren't as put together and shiny.  And since I wasn't going to be on a street with big crowds, I took my larger medium format digital Fuji camera because it just makes the most beautiful digital files.  I wasn't looking to be stealthy.  I wasn't going to be shooting from the hip.  I wasn't sure if I would take any pictures at all.  I just took the camera with me. 

I parked at one end of the street with the intention of walking a mile, mile and a half, in one direction and then back on the other side of the street.  I parked a few blocks from the old high school and walked nearly to Jack Kerouac's house just up the street from my old, dead friend's house who lived on Shady Lane.   

Right away, I was stopping to take pictures.  Bold colors caught my eye, and later, big empty spaces.  Shop windows were great on a cloudy day, the ratio of translucence and reflection seeming to be about right.  I made a lot of photos of shop windows.  I wanted to take photos of people eating, but I didn't have the confidence I would have needed for that.  People can tell by your posture and demeanor whether you are just creeping around or if you think you are doing something of importance.  This day, I just didn't have it.  But there surely would be a lot of pictures of reflected me.  

Halfway up the street, I saw a guy cleaning the big glass windows of the biggest, oldest, bike shop in town.  

Oops.  I kinda got caught.  Well, nothing to do now.  He was staring at me as I approached.  O.K.  I was deciding how I would handle this one.  

"Hey--were you in a band?" he asked as I got close.  O.K.  Alright.  I'd been recognized.  He must be someone who used to come and see us play.  As always, I was surprised that anyone could still recognize me.

"A few," I smiled.  

"Which ones?"

I named the most popular.  

"What did you play?"

Wait a minute--he didn't recognize me.  He just saw some aging hipster walking down the sidewalk and thought to start a conversation.  

"Lots of things, but in those bands I played guitar.  The band was really popular, but in truth, we weren't very talented."

He began talking guitar talk.  He'd played in bands.  He named off a guy who was in one of the big bands of the seventies.  He'd played with him in a band in high school.  

"Alright," I said.  

He launched into a schtick about great guitarists.  He went on and on about Stevie Ray Vaughn.  

"He had strong hands," he said playing air guitar behind his back.  I really didn't have much to say about guitar players, so he went on naming musicians from the sixties and seventies.  So, me being me, I thought I'd push him over the edge.  

"Yea, those guys were good, but you know who put them all to shame?"

"Who?"

"Prince. He could outplay them all."

Oh, I knew the response I'd get, and I was right.  Why I do such things is beyond me.  It's just fun to turn the room sideways sometimes and watch the furniture fall.  

"Alright, man," I said after awhile, "I got to keep moving.  Here.  Let me take your photo before I go."

Now the thing I missed, I just wasn't ready, was him hitting what is known in bodybuilding as "the most muscular pose" (link).  

"Seventy-five, baby."

By the time I had my camera up, though. . . well, you see what I got.  

"Chris Craft, just like the boat.  My band was called Chris Craft and the Cruisers!"

I left him with his headphones and his window washing equipment and limped on down the street thinking you never know what will happen when you leave the house.  Just another little domestic adventure.  

By the time I got back to the car, I'd taken a pretty fair number of photographs.  I was dripping sweat and was oh-so ready to sit down.  I rarely take my phone with me when I'm walking.  I'm not someone who likes to listen to music through earbuds, and I don't care to be available for calls or texts.  When I picked up my phone, I had a message from my mother.  I'd forgotten to leave her two o'clock meds.  It was one-thirty.  I was half an hour from her house.  Shit piss fuck goddamn.  

By the time I got back to my house, the day was slipping away.  I needed to do laundry.  I checked my mail and picked up the packages Amazon had left on my porch.  I needed to shower.  And of course, I wanted to dump the day's pics into the computer to see what I had.  

Mail and packages opened, laundry going, I slid into a hot shower.  My hair, now much shorter, is fun to wash.  Easier.  Quick.  Cheap.  I trimmed my beard, did my duties.  It only takes a minute now with the hair dryer.  I put on clean clothes and went to the computer.  I dumped the card expecting nothing.  I've learned.  Everything seems like a good photo when you are taking it.  Later, nothing does.  Results are always disappointing.  But. . . hey now. . . these weren't all terrible.  I decided to work on Chris Craft first as I knew in the morning it would be the only story I had to tell.  I'm out of practice.  Don't do this enough anymore.  Chris Craft did what people do when you raise a camera.  They smile.  Why did I not take his smiley pic and then tell him to just look at me without the smile. Why?  Because I was nervous.  Because I forgot.  

I was just glad he wasn't yelling at me for taking his picture before.  Relieved, you might say.  

Of course, I did a quick take on one of my window pics.  See those black corners?  That's because I'm using a lens made for a smaller sensor on my bigger sensor camera.  But the lens is lovely and I already had it and only needed to buy an adapter to use it.  I could have cropped this a tad more, but whatever.  I didn't have time to do much at all.  It was time to get to the store and buy groceries for dinner.  I never have time.  Good god how much I wished I could just get takeout, pour a drink, and work on the rest of the images for the night before sitting on my big leather couch in a darkened room and watch some show before bed.  That's not a lot to wish for, but it is wishing for the impossible.  And yes. . . I'm complaining.  

I may take my camera out again today.  Tonight is the Blue Moon.  Once, you had to rely on me to remind you, but now, the news outlets, as always, have followed my lead and they announce the full moons, too.  They steal from me ceaselessly.  I guess I should take it as a compliment, but. . . I should be getting paid.  

Selavy.  I won't see the moon tonight.  The clouds are endless here in the once Sunny South.  Before long, they say, people will be living on the moon.  That will, for me, change everything.  

Have you heard about the sonic booms rocking the east coast?  The government acts like they don't know what's causing it, but we do, don't we?  Aliens.  No shit.  What else could it be but some supersonic spaceship visiting us from beyond, here to see the last of a dying planet?  

Unless it is some Chinese super spy plane that goes so fast it cannot be detected by our radar systems.  

I'm not sure which of those two I pick.  But it is definitely one of them.  Definitely.  

Wait.  You'll see.  The Times will be saying the same thing soon.  They are always watching this site.  

O.K.  Let me give you a little coffee and champagne music for a sleepy, cloudy Sunday morning.  A mellow take on Duke Ellington tune.  

You're welcome.

Noir

I was looking for a photo to post today, but I haven't taken anything worth a darn and I was sick of looking at the second and third tier photos I have in a folder on my little computer here at mom's, so. . . I took one of them into Chat and transformed it into something noir.  Why?  Last night, mom and I watched "Spider-Noir," with Nicolas Cage.  And holy moly, I got hooked.  It is a series on Amazon Prime, so I look forward to Episode Two tonight.  I don't know if it would be your thing, but you are definitely not as bored and seeking some distraction as I.  Not even close.  So don't take this as a serious rec, but yea. . . for what it is, it is really good.  The N.Y. Times reviewer referred to it as "What if Humphrey Bogart happened to be Spider-Man?" 

That's pretty accurate.  Cage looks weatherbeaten and worn.  There is no attempt to make him pretty.  In a world where Brad Pitt never ages and I do, I'm down with Cage, Penn, et. al,--hey, wait a minute--they were both in "Fast Times at Ridgemont High"!  

I envy Pitt, don't get me wrong, but I gotta hang with the fellows who, like me, have aged like old fruit.  

Like real people who can't afford Goop do.  

But. . . I'll confess. . . . 

A buddy of mine, one you've read about here before, has an appointment with a plastic surgeon who is renown for his work with eyes.  One of the gals at the gym is very open about the work she gets, and at fifty, she still looks like a kid.  When I got my hair cut, she was very complimentary, so I said, "yea, now I gotta do the eyes."

So she told me to go to this fellow who did hers.  Just the under eye.  She has another person for the above the eye work.  

So I told the other fellow, and he said he was thinking about doing it.  Yesterday he told me he had made an appointment for a consultation.  

"Let me know," I said.  

But, in truth, I'll stick with the old fruit look just the way God, in his wisdom and glory, intended. 

Oy!

Oh--you can watch "Spider-Noir" in either black and white or color.  True dat.  They made it both ways.  I watched the color version last night.  

What a world, right?  

"It was the best of times.  It was the worst of times."

Other than this, I have nothing.  I'm lost and can't find my way home.  I get the occasional story from Red, and I woke up to a text pic from my Miami Friend, but they are living and I have become a zombie.  When I left my mother's house yesterday afternoon, I couldn't think of what to do other than my usual routine.  I'd already gone to the mall.  Really?  I'm pathetic?  I had planned on driving to the Farmer's Market in the town half an hour away, but it is raining.  So I will make breakfast for my mother and then. . . and then. . . ?  

I'm running out of Xanax.  

Here's a song for a rainy day to put you in the mood for noir and a double Old Fashioned. 

Selavy.  

Red and the Pinhead

We'll just start off with a little fun.  That's what I had making up various "cards" for Red's birthday.  It was fun, but also cause for reflection.  Being an old pinhead living with and caring for his mother twenty hours a day, year after year, I don't have a lot of interaction with other people.  The gym and the sometimes cafe are just about it.  There was a time when I needed to get away from people.  I grew up an only child and imaginative, creative time had become part of my DNA.  And before I was a pinhead, girls liked me.  I've thought about writing those tales down, but it would sound like "Tales of Swordsman in the Valley" sort of shit, so I don't.  Not that I was a swordsman.  Ever.  I was always sweet and shy and never, ever asked a girl out on a first date.  For all my vanity, and there was a fair bit--at the time, I never passed a reflective surface without looking, unlike now when I instinctively turn my head away--I never had confidence.  I was always the boy at parties who went to the room lacking people, standing alone, looking out over the scene as in a dream.  I've been thinking about all of this over the past few days as Red and I have been in textual conversation, something I once had in abundance. 

I don't wish to belabor the point.  I won't go back to my college days, nor my twenties and thirties, and barely my forties.  Not yet at least.  But after my divorce and into decade five, my dance card was filled with "attractions."  It was in many ways one of, if not the, most interesting time of my life.  It was the turn of the century and things were humming.  Monica was dating her father's friend, her old dentist, on "Friends."  Monica Geller and Tom Selleck.  

Just sayin'.  

At night, I'd write emails.  And I would get them right back.  There were notes.  There were letters.  

But pinheads living with mothers are not on people's minds.  Nobody writes emails any longer, but even the thirteen word text messages have dried up.  So I realized this week writing with Red.  And I have had to wonder--where did they all go?  Don't they ever think of me as I so often do of them? 

Making up the birthday treats, I had to go back in time.  March, 2012.  She was a kid.  I don't throw anything away.  There were the emails, the very first.  I copied and sent them to her.  She had recently graduated with a degree in art.  We spoke of working on encaustic images together.  Creative shit.  Fun stuff.  I was a year from decade number six.  Not even.  She never knew that old me.  So I put us together, she early twenties, me late thirties, early forties--I can't remember.  Just younger.  Just to flatter myself. 

Wait a minute--who was I doing this for, her or me?  

Obvious. 

It's all a little bullshitty, though.  We were always pals, never lovers.  Oh, there is love, but the kind that accepts the other person at face value without criticism or judgement, without needing to try to correct the other's obviously flawed life.  I mean, lifes are flawed, and we often do the wrong thing, enter into flawed relationships, and there are plenty of people who will tell you so, who want to give you advice, who will criticize even the people that you love, and those are not people to suffer.  So. . . the circus theme quite suits Red and my relationship.  Life is a cabaret and we are Old Chums.  

O.K.  I just spent too long putting this video together, and I have pinhead duties to see to, so. . l I'll just leave you with this, a little tribute to a longtime friend,  

Selah.  

Mad World

I was excited.  I asked my mother if she thought she could do a ride to the beach and she said yes, so yesterday I looked around for condo rentals at the nearest seashore.  On the average about $1,500 for the week.  Yesterday, back at her house, I told her what I found.  She looked stunned.  

"Oh. . . I couldn't spend a week there."

Deflation.  

"I could spend a month or more," I retorted.  "I'll start making dinner."

Feeling all summery, I'd bought a bottle of Vouvray.  It seems the perfect summer wine, light, sweet, crisp, and a little fruity.  It goes well with the salad life.  So I made a big salad for the two of us and used up the half pound of ground beef I'd gotten on Memorial Day, cooking it up with ground garlic and ginger, cumin and chilis, tomato sauce and a can of garbanzo beans.  Since I found this recipe, it has become a favorite.  

I have to succor myself with good foods and Vouvray and forget about travel.  Except for this morning.  My mother needs to go to the bank to renew more CDs.  

Maybe I'll get another French soda this afternoon.  

T called just a bit ago.  Drive time call.  He was on his way to the gym, but nothing is close to his property.  

"I got to get you up here," he said.  

"Sure.  I'll bring mom."

"Yea. . . bring her!  We'll set her up on a porch. . . . "

Nobody gets it.  I guess you'd have to live through it to really understand.  

Red texted me some video.  She missed her flight out of Detroit, so she booked herself into the Detroit Club.  Living the Dream.  Tomorrow's her birthday.  I only know that because she recently told me, and even then, I had to go back in the text stream to look it up.  I am HORRIBLE about birthdays.  

"When is my birthday?" I asked.  Of course she didn't know.  And of course I wouldn't tell her.  Birthdays are a burden, I think.  But she is hitting one of those landmark ages, one of the ones you dread in your heart of hearts.  I knew her when she was a kid, so I sent her the very first photo I took of her when we met.  

And the second.  

That was a long time ago, 2013.  I'll send her a birthday card tomorrow.  I should have made a postcard to send to her, but truly, I forgot her birthday was coming up.  

I did send some out, though.  T got one yesterday. 

Looks like it got a little beaten up in delivery.  I sent two.  The second one hasn't arrived, he said.  I told him that it is probably tacked to the post office wall in some Tennessee hick town.  I wish I could send the Lonesomeville series.  Oh, boy. . . that would get me some trouble.  

I made some images and videos of me in my thirties and other people who are now older.  It was funny to me.  Red loved hers. Of course she did.  Others didn't enjoy them as much.  Selavy.  Some people only enjoy me in deprecation, self or other.  

I think I do enough of that just by posting every day, but also. . . .

You have to have a sense of humor, I think.  Here I am, an old pinhead.  Tell me A.I. ain't grand.  

Or maybe it isn't A.I. at all!

I am getting a late start.  I can't sleep.  My right knee keeps waking me in the night.  I called the ortho's office and am scheduling another injection hoping it helps.  If not--they say you know you need a new knee when you can't sleep.  And then the drive time call with T.  Now I need to care for my mother.  I'm a pinhead, but I'm a good son.  So they say.  

Heard this at The Fresh Market.  Was nice with my salad.  

Malled

'At's right. . . I did that.  Took me a trip to the M-A-L-L!  

WTF? 

I heard that malls were dead.  Empty.  Being converted into homeless centers or something.  

I got what they used to call back in the 'hood, "a wild hair."  I don't know.  I got to the gym early.  I needed to get home and do some things before the cleaning crew came.  I needed to shower.  I needed to go to the bank, too, to get them some money.  And that all went swell.  I finished the last thing just before they texted.

"Be there in thirty minutes."

They are good like that.  

So I headed off.  It was just after noon.  I had made my mother breakfast but had skipped my own.  I had been eating like a fat fool all weekend and needed to change my ways.  I wanted a good salad.  You know, the way people used to eat--in movies about Hollywood.  Rabbit food and fancy water.  

I ran through my memory bank of local restaurants, though, and couldn't remember anything like that on the menu.  No Caesar with chicken, no Cobb.  I really didn't want to go to a restaurant anyway, but isn't it odd how we've fallen away from the big salad?  

Then I had a bright idea--Fresh Market.  They made good take-out food, but they also had a little court to eat it in.  Just the thing.  

I got a great salad with balsamic chicken and a strange half and half green tea and watermelon juice drink.  And that, my friends, was an unexpected treat.  

I sat and ate slowly and watched the customers come and go sizing them up in my head, paying attention to the details of their clothing, their body shapes, their gait.  I don't do such things anymore.  It felt like vacation.  

I had an idea.  I wanted to get out of my own hometown.  Not far.  Just past Gotham.  I never leave town, never go more than five miles from home.  This would be huge.  

I'd go to the mall!

It was a little scary, though.  The interstate has changed much since I was last there, more interchanges, more lanes, not all off ramp on the right hand side.  Jesus.  I was driving slowly.  No hurry.  The sun was shining.  The music was playing.  Cars were flying, speedsters switching lanes over and over again.  And there was me, hunched over the steering wheel, leaning close to the windshield looking for my exit.  

Fuck!  It had all changed.  The mall used to sit in the open all by itself.  Now you couldn't see it for the building that had gone up around it.  This was a shopping and dining Mecca now.  I'd expected a ghost town.  Years had gone by.  Lanes had changed.  I creeped along until I saw something I recognized--the giant Ikea store.  A quick right.  Around the back where nobody used to park.  Rain Man style, I always used this entrance.  Bloomingdales!  

It was ninety-five degrees in the parking lot.  Opening the door to Bloomies was like entering the oasis.  And the fragrance--I'd forgotten that.  Bloomies has its own fragrance. Surely they pipe it in through the vents.  

A quick left into the Men's Department.  Things were still in the same order.  First Ralph Lauren, then the suits--Armani, Boss, Canali, etc.  I walked through the aisles just looking.  I was feeling really underfunded.  A plain Ralph Lauren button up was $160.  Emporio Armani--not the good Armani--had nice pants for $480.  The real Armanis are four times that.  Nice shoes.  I was just picking up ideas, I told myself.  I moved on.  

I walked through Abercrombies.  Teens, some with parents.  It's good to know what kids want.  I liked the new cropped shirts for boys, short hems, sort of like old Guayaberas.  Nice.  

I stopped at the Mont Blanc store to see what a new nib would cost.  The nice lady told me how to clean the one I have.  

On and on.  The mall had gotten more upscale.  Chanel.  Ferragamo.  Versace.  Hermes.  Dior.  Tiffany.  Gucci.  Balencia.  Prada.  You work your way down to the Tommy Bahamas and H&M as you wander closer to Macy's.  Somewhere between, the mall widens.  On the right, the nice restaurants, on the left, a food court.  It is like crossing the tracks and you get to athletic shoes and gaming stores.  

Climb the stairs and wander back.  

I got sucked into a Western Wear store, Tecovas.  

"Which side is the men's boots?" I asked.  Turns out I was looking at the women's.  

"But I can show you those, too, if you are interested."

"Thanks," I stumbled, catching myself.  "I mean. . . I don't want to be so binary."

The woman laughed.  

"These are the exotic leathers--shark, crocodile, ostrich. . . ."

"Do you have shrimp skin?"

"Uh. . . what?"

"Just kidding."

"Have you ever worn cowboy boots?"

Oh, shit.  Here we go.

"Nope.  Only Beatle boots."

I had her grinning now.  

"I haven't been to a mall in years.  I'm just wandering around."

I looked in the window of the Ray Ban store.  I saw something.  I tried them on.  Holy shit--this was totally me.  Round metal.  $220.  

O.K.  O.K.  I was just collecting ideas.  

The idea was that I wanted to live like a Hollywood movie star but I was a poor-assed dirtbag better suited to surf trunks and cheap Chinese shorts.  

I wouldn't kick about the price of a $50 t-shirt anymore.  

Stepping back out into the heat, the scent of Bloomingdales clung to me.  I hadn't stayed in the mall long.  It was still mid-afternoon.  What to do?  

I headed to the cafe.  

When I walked in, I saw that the woman at the counter had cut her hair.  So I said.  

"We're twins," she laughed.  

We talked about how little shampoo and conditioner we had to use now.  Summer savings.  

"What will you have?" she asked.  

I was feeling all vacationy.  I remembered decades before in Palm Beach, I'd gotten an egg cream.  

"How about an egg cream?"

She looked at me for a second.

"Just kidding.  I saw that you had the Italian syrups and it made me remember them.  I can't remember the ratios, but it hasn't any eggs in it.  It is syrup, seltzer, and milk."

She thought and then said, "It sounds like a French soda."  She pulled out her phone and Googled.  "Yea.  I can do this."

H-O-L-Y  S-H-I-T!  It was delicious and perfect on a very hot day.  

"This is my new summer drink!" I gushed.  

I sat down with my French soda and pulled out my notebook.  I'm happy that I still write in notebooks because all the research is showing that hand writing is good for the brain.  Typing on a computer, not so much.  There are different neural connections, and studies show that students who type notes do not remember as much as students who take notes by hand.  

So I wrote and drank and was happy.  Then I had an idea.  What if I could take my mother to the beach for a week.  Could she do it? 

When I got back to her house, I asked.  

"Do you think you could ride in the car that long?"

"Yes."

I was excited.  I think she'd be fine.  Maybe I could get her in and out of the pool.  This was a stirling idea.  

I'll check out some condos this week.  It is scary.  I don't remember how to do this stuff anymore.  

And so--The Mall!  It started with the salad.  I needed to change the routine, get out of the rut. 

The bad thing is, though. . . I really want those glasses.  

On the way back, I heard a song.  It is just the kind of Europop that makes me happy.  Maybe you will like it, too. 

A. Aiyeeee.

You might not know this, but I like A.I.  People who are contentious about it, it appears to me, are those who speak about it in terms that humanize.  A.I. is like a calculator with a bank of stored information.  It is amazing.  As I have said many times, I don't fear it, I fear the people who control it, the people who decide what it can and what it cannot share.  

"Information wants to be free!"

A.I. reveals the flaws in human conventions.  I read today that the number of "home grown" lawsuits by people using A.I. has begun to flood the courts.  I used ChatGPT to write some legal documents concerning the violation of my victim's rights per this state's statutes.  In seconds, I had three documents with the names and addresses of where they should be sent.  They were brief and succinct.  When I told my famous judge buddy, he winced.  We both knew what an attorney would have charged me to do the same thing.  He said the documents would be fine, but nothing would happen.  The State Prosecutors Office would never respond to the docs.  

I never sent them.  But it is bullshit that they let the guy who stole $22,000 worth of camera gear off the hook with probation without informing me of the hearing.  I had the option to get restitution from him.  It would never have happened, sure, but he would have been on probation until restitution was served.  

Selavy. 

I got lost there.  My point is that A.I. is showing up the flaws in our current legal system.  Everything is a lawsuit now.  Morgan and Morgan, et. al.  

The same goes for medicine.  In studies at Johns Hopkins, A.I. outperformed doctors a majority of the time in diagnosing patients.  A.I. isn't a doctor, it is a tool to be used by doctors.  

Want to make your own suitcase nuke?  Uh-oh.  Now we're running into trouble.  Who should control that bit of information?  Now, sure. . . we run into a dilemma.  But somebody knows how, just not you.  The information is there, though, and A.I. has it.  

The Pope. . . well you know what he just did.  He weighed in.  Here's the part that broke me up.  I took this straight from the N.Y. Times:

"With the heart of a shepherd and a father, I ask everyone to abandon the construction of yet another Tower of Babel and to join forces in building up the common good, so that humanity will never lose its beauty, and the world once again will come to recognize the human heart as the place where God desires to dwell" (Pope Leo).

The biblical story of the Tower of Babel recurs as a touchstone. The account appears in the Book of Genesis, and describes a world in which a unified human population that speaks only one language decides to build a tower “whose top reaches to the heavens” in order to exert its own power and domination.

In response, God scatters the people across the earth, in what serves as an origin story for the existence of different languages and cultures.

Leo uses the Tower of Babel as an illustration of the pitfalls of pursuing uniformity and standardization, and the limits of ambitious undertakings that appear able to compete with the claims of religion. As many aspects of global culture homogenize, and technology becomes a kind of universal language, Leo’s call for humility and diversity stands in contrast. It’s also a reminder that many of the seemingly new ethical and social challenges posed by A.I. have ancient roots (N.Y. Times).

Yea. . . O.K.  Uh. . . what?  Really?  

So. . . I can't get out to make pictures much anymore.  It bugs me, but I still like to fool around.  You might be aware.  As I've said, I've been making postcards and sitting down at my new desk and handwriting notes and mailing these to friends.  Each card and stamp costs me about a buck, and I have to drive to the post office to mail them because there are not public mail drops anymore.  I asked why, and the lady at the post office told me that people kept robbing them or putting "stuff" down the chutes of the boxes.  

The image at the top is one of the photos from my "A Few Days One Summer" surf series shot on the little toy Holga camera oh so long ago.  2009.  Wow.  I used A.I. to morph it into the postcard you see.  I've already printed some up and sent them out.  I hope you don't mind the image being morphed because you will probably see more of them here in lieu of the photographs I am not taking.  I would like to take the series up again, but I don't think people would pose for pictures anymore.  Things have radically changed.  People are more guarded and suspicious now.  I just read some statistics about children and teens not being allowed to leave their yards.  It is crazy.  The media, the article said, created a mania about kidnapped children using bad numbers.  The truth is that most of the missing children they reported were runaways, and that, in fact, there was an average of six child kidnappings per year.  

"I always took candy from strangers" (Keith Richards).

So, yea. . . I don't think I would be allowed to do that anymore.  OMWC syndrome.  

Still, I can recycle.  

I did try to make photos for a bit yesterday.  Drove around looking for any kind of MD celebration.  Found nothing.  The streets were dead.  I assumed everyone had gone to the beach.  So I stopped at Fresh Market and got fixings.  Gourmet hot dogs made by the butcher.  Blue cheese angus steer sirloin hamburgers.  Slaw and beans.  When I got to my mother's house and started to cook, though, I realized that the packaged hot dogs you buy at the store are pre-cooked.  Holy shit--I'd never cooked a raw dog before!  

I cooked them for a long time.  Hot dogs and hamburgers and beans and slaw and beer.  And watermelon.  

And not a picture to show.  

After dinner, my mother asked me, "Do you think that Californication show is on tonight?"

Holy shit!  What have I done?  I've corrupted my 94 year old mother.  She tells the neighbors about the show.  

It does make me laugh.  Something needs to.  

The Hissing of Summer Lawns

The Hissing of Summer Lawns

It's unofficial, but. . . yea.  Get out the grill.  Hot dogs and hamburgers, ice cream and watermelon, lawn mowers and beach chairs, and of course, the summer's reading list.  It's what we all long for.  Groups of friends playing badminton and horseshoes, outdoor showers where sandy feet get rinsed, the glowing tan from summer sun.  

The fantasy has many times nearly killed me.  And yet, I still believe in it the way I believe in the Dick and Jane version of American life.  

Ain't I something?  

Married life had been much like that.  The year I got divorced, I was determined to continue on.  I bought an ice cream maker.  I fired up the grill.  I kept cut flowers on the table.  I drove to the coast regularly to go surfing.  

Alone. 

This year, though, it will be ma and me.  Yesterday I took her to the grocery store for "a little outing."  I swear to God, I am a good caregiver.  She is doing better all the time.  She pushed that shopping cart around without jamming up traffic nearly as much as once upon a time.  We bought some kind of crazy, rich donuts with a cream inside.  Fruit.  So much fruit.  Cut watermelon was BOGO.  Blueberries.  Apples.  Navel oranges.  Bananas.  Kiwi fruit.  But we were there for shrimp.  I bought a pound of pink shrimp from our own coast.  Yellow rice.  Sliced pimento olives.  

Cookies.  

It was on the cookie aisle that we ran into a woman from the gym.  The first one.  She is older than I and bent with scoliosis.  Everyone at the Club Y asks daily, "How's your mom?" But this is the first time anyone has seen her.  

"Mom, this is my friend from the gym.  We walk on the treadmill together."

Jane was lovely and told my mother, "You have a wonderful son."  

"Yes. . . he is."

Onward.  A pretty, tan, young blonde girl with a great figure and little gym shorts cut to show the bottom of her glutes and just the beginning of her vaginal crevice was talking to a taller blond boy.  As they walked away. . . oh, those little shorts were climbing.  I looked at my mother and she began laughing.  

"That's what they do," I grinned.  My mother shook her head, still chuckling.  

"It's just like the t.v. show we watched last night."  

It was the one with the blonde high school teen getting naked with her boyfriend.  My mother nodded in agreement.  I think this girl could be the same one as the one on t.v.  Interchangeable.  They have the internet.  They all look like that. 

We were headed for the beer aisle.  Coors Light for mom.  "I haven't had this for awhile," I said picking up the Dale's Pale Ale.  A woman, perhaps my own age, perhaps a little younger, was looking in the cooler.  It was hard to tell.  She was big up top with swizzle stick legs, wearing a pair of short shorts and a blouse.  

"What kind of beer," she grinned.  

"Dale's."

"Oh. . . my husband used to drink that.  I divorced him.  Then he died."

"Do you think it was the Dale's?"

"He never cared what I wanted to drink."

We wandered on down the aisle, the woman still looking after me and smiling.  

"I think she wanted to drink some beer with us," I said.  

There were only two checkout lines open.  I told my mother to get into aisle 6 while I took back something she didn't want.  But when I got to aisle 6, my mother wasn't there.  I looked around and spied her at the opposite end of the store.  As I went to pick her up, the beer lady passed.  

"You're not getting into this line?"

"I gotta get my mother."

"She's fast, that one.  She's been all over."

"What are you doing, ma?"

"Huh?"

"I said aisle 6."

"Oh, I didn't hear you."

But she had done her grinning and nodding of her head in affirmation the way she does when she hears but doesn't. 

We got into line in aisle 5.  It was shorter.  But the beer lady was ahead of us.  She was trying to pay with a card that wasn't working, and she was being a bit quick with the cash register girl who has something physically wrong with her, her face half paralyzed and twisted, but she seems to be o.k. mentally if just a tad slow.  Just a tad slow is almost twice as quick as most of the others working there, though, and she is the sweetest girl.  I often make her laugh.  

The beer lady tried a second card, but that one didn't work either.  The young boy who was bagging tried to help her.  

"It still didn't go through," said the cashier.  

The beer lady looked at me and said something about the credit union being all screwed up.  

"I'll just pay cash," she said.  The bagboy schlepped her things together and the cashier said, "I still owe you money."  

As the beer lady was leaving, she turned to me and said, "I know you."  This was the second time she had said this.  I really didn't have a reply.  

"You don't remember me.  I used to work out at the Y."

"I still do," I beamed.

"I remember you." 

I just stood a moment, grinning, my head moving in a small circle.  

"Well. . . it's good to see you again."

I must admit, I'm always surprised that anyone can still recognize me.  Cool.  

My mother had a lotto ticket worth ten dollars, so we stopped at the help desk so she could cash it.  The nice boy working there got the walker he had stored for her.  I gave my mother the walker and took the cart.  Outside, Jane from the Club Y said, "I'm going to have shrimp and yellow rice tonight, too.  I'm glad you said.  That sounded good."

"Sliced olives are good in the yellow rice," I said.  

"Ooo. . . o.k. I have some.  I'll try it."

Back home, we cracked two beers and sat in the open garage porch.  It was hot, but a breeze had picked up, just enough to move the air.  

"I saw a kite yesterday.  They are quick.  It was here and gone."

I love watching the kites with their distinct V-shape.  I thought they were the fastest of raptors, but I was wrong.  I looked it up.

No, kites are not considered fast birds compared to other raptors. They are instead famous for their incredible agility, grace, and endurance in the air. 

While a true speedster like the Peregrine Falcon can dive at over 200 mph, kites are built for effortless gliding and tight, acrobatic maneuvers rather than pure straight-line speed.

Yes, that makes sense, I guess.  They are truly fun to watch.  

In a bit, I went in to start the rice.  I decided to make a Campari and soda rather than the Rum Negroni I have gotten addicted to.  I took the drink back to the "porch." I sipped it.  Yes, this was good.  I would leave the Rum Negronis alone.  This was fine.  

I went back in to put the water and apple cider vinegar to boiling.  Once the shrimp went in, it would only be a couple minutes.  I prepared a bowl of ice water.  I went out and called to mom.  I mixed up my homemade cocktail sauce in little ramekins, heavy on the horse raddish.  

We ate the entire pound of shrimp.  I think my mother was peeling faster than I.  When there were just two left, I handed her one.  

"I can't eat any more."

But she did.  

At the end of dinner, I wished I had the ice cream maker.  I think it is still in my garage.  But we had watermelon that was juicy and sweet.  

And that, my friends, was our almost kick-off to summer.  Today will be the usual Memorial Day dinner of hot dogs and hamburgers, etc.  

Maybe I should have saved that Sly song for today, but there are plenty of summer songs.  I'll find something for you kids.  See you on the sound.  Don't track sand into the house.  Rinse your feet.  

Everyone Is Elsewhere

I couldn't write yesterday. Don't know if I can today.  I have nothing to say, really.  Life, mine, is a dull, repetitive act of doing exactly the same thing every day without any hope of breaking free.  Some people do this voluntarily, I know.  In their case, it is by consent.  I see it up and down my mother's street.  People live without much imagination, comfortable and content with familiarities.  

Or so it would seem.

I should say, mine is by consent, too, but somehow it seems more situational.  I COULD just walk away, leave my mother in some facility, I guess.  That is what people do.  It is happening to the woman she travelled much with just now.  Her sons and daughters have abandoned her to a nursing home.  They don't go to see her.  

I can't do that.  I am a humanist.  A humane romantic.  A melancholy fatalist, maybe, built to be forlorn.  

I tried shaking myself out of it yesterday.  Nope.  I'd been taking photos and I dumped them into the computer to see.  Not one even remotely good.  So I made some fake videos and sent them off to Q.  In the first several, I took a younger me and paired it with the present him.  I made him my uncle, I guess.  That was fun.  Then I took another version of me and another version of him set in a Mexican whorehouse.  Now I was having fun.  Then I took a version of me that would have been the same age that he is now.  I paired us with a "worker" in her briefs.  The A.I. engine didn't like that much.  It kept rejecting every suggestion.  But I got a few things.  Sent them off to Q.  Nor response.  Zilch.  Bagel.  

I'm hoping he doesn't sue.  

I took a long afternoon walk.  It was hot.  My knees and hip and back hurt terribly.  My broken and metal ribcage is getting worse.  I limped along for miles.  It didn't cheer me up.  I'd have a difficult time walking the streets of NYC, San Fran, L.A., Mexico City, let alone those great and wonderful Sierras.  

I decided to buy some summer, full-legged, loose, blousy linen pants.  I've tried before, but they are all "beachy" and not at all that Italian sophisticated I desire.  I looked online, but then I had a thought.  I'd write to my friend who spent her life as a fashion editor for men's magazines.  I wrote her an email.  Then. . . well. . . I've been written out of that narrative awhile back, and though she would have responded, I demurred and deleted.  

Still, those pants would make me feel wonderful.  I decided to look up some from the fashion designers.  

Oh, no.  Uh-uh.  Dior linen pants for men?  $1,500.  WTF?  Armani?  $1,700.  

No wonder those fuckers look so wonderful.  I was prepared to go "expensive," but I hadn't any idea what I was talking about.  

I was glad I didn't send the text.  I was also lamenting that I didn't marry the rich girl.  Those are the kind of things her family always wore.  

Selavy.  

Travis texted me from Charleston where he and his wife are setting up one of their sons for law school.  Oh, Charleston.  What a wonderful place.  He sent photos from lunches and bars.  I longed to go.  I sent him information on The Pink House on Chalmers Street, "built between 1694 and 1712, it is one of the oldest surviving structures in the city and once functioned as a colonial alehouse and suspected brothel for passing sailors and pirates."  I was there earlier in this century and was able to enter the small downstairs bar and walk the narrow stairway up two floors to see the tiny bedrooms where trades were plied.  

Can't do that now, I guess.  I read it is now a private residence, and all I could wonder is how they got the smell out.  

Now that I think of it, Q may be in Chicago.  He said he was going, but I don't remember when.  

My mountain buddy texted.  

Hanging out this weekend at the Strawberry music festival it feels liberal.  Holy shit dude. They are young beautiful hippie chicks everywhere. There’s a lot of guys walking around that look like you too I don’t stare at them very long.

 And then, a text from Red. 

In Detroit today to dance the weekend.

I told her about The Detroit Club where Ili and I stayed for a few nights in 2019, back when we were travelling.  

Oh it’s not far from here. Fly up and stay there Tuesday night with me 😝.

When I got up this morning at six, I had another text she'd sent just a half hour before.   

 Sorry kid, but even if I were free, I couldn't hang.  She scares the shit out of me.  

My midwest friend is everywhere, and my best lesbian friend is begging me to go on a photo safari with her.  

Everyone is somewhere else.  

Four o'clock.  Time for me to get back to mother.  I'd made us two filet mignons for dinner the night before.  I cooked them perfectly.  You could cut them with a fork.  But I was not in the mood for making a meal last night.  I picked up a pizza from the hippie joint.  

I drank light beer.  I think the nightly pre-dinner cocktail is killing me.  I narcotize myself every night with wine and hard liquor knowing that the night will be like the night before and the night before that and the night before that. . . . 

I finished the Salter lectures that Travis gave me after dinner.  

"I mentioned earlier the freedom of art.  I mean by that the freedom not to be bound by common ideas of morality or by any catechism.  I mean also the freedom--really the need--to break through any mediating things.  There should be no prohibitions on what you are allowed to think or imagine."

After watching a t.v. show lacking in imagination, after mother went to bed, I picked up a book of this year's Pushcart Prize winners.  I tried one story after another, but nothing grabbed me.  Maybe writing has taken a turn for the worse.  Or maybe it is just it suffers from comparison with something like Salter.  Whichever way, I was severely disappointed.  

Not in those writers, of course, but in myself.  I find I have allowed myself to be constrained by a conventional moral order.  

I went to bed only to wake in a sweat.  The sheets were soaked through.  I got up and then went back to bed.  Every hour for the rest of the night.  

I'm guessing Red was feeling better about the night than I was when I read her text this morning.  

Unofficial

I just found out that it is Memorial Day Weekend.  That caught me by surprise.  What surprised me more, though, is that it will be the heaviest travel weekend in history.  That's what they say.  The only conclusion I can draw is that people are full of shit.  They moan and weep and wail about the cost of things, gasoline in particular, but it doesn't effect the way they live.  People have not stopped eating out I've read.  Everybody "poor mouths," sure, but in the end, everyone seems to be doing better than I.  And much better than people in the past.  Did you hear about the agreement with the hotel workers union in NYC?  They will now make an average of--and I am not making this up--$100,000/year.  

The average salary for a teacher with a bachelor's degree in NYC is $71,000.  I just looked it up.  

Now I know I'm a little bougie.  I buy Chacos flip-flops, for instance.  They are now going for $70 a pair.  HOWEVER, I've been wearing mine for like a decade now.  The things just don't wear out.  Running shoes are the painfully expensive part of my life.  Hokas.  I just bought a new pair online from REI because they were running a discount sale.  I saved around $25.  Still, the fuckers cost $125, and they won't last long.  

I should run barefoot like the African marathoners used to until recently.  Now there is a new cheater shoe that gives runner faster times than ever.  

Everything changes.  When I was a kid, high-top Chuck's were the top of the line basketball shoe.  I can hardly walk in them now.  I ran in them until I bought a pair of Adidas running shoes which were to running what Chuck's were to basketball--something a step above being an athlete in your street shoes.  Then, in college, we all had to have these. 

They were built on the idea of the foot imprint left when you were walking in sand.  They had a dropped heel, the opposite of the way shoes are made today.  

Do you know how much parents pay for kids to play school sports now?  It is insane.  Do you even know how many baseballs a college team goes through in week?  A coach told me that the kids will toss away a ball that has a scratch.  When I was in high school, I think the stitching had to come loose before a ball was relegated to the practice patch.  You should have seen the balls we played with in the neighborhood.  

Basketballs, too.  

Whatever.  My whole point is that we are a bougie culture, and those Somali pirates in Minnesota took advantage of that . 

Just like Trump.  WTF?  And people go along with that shit.  Now his DOJ wants to arrest Castro for shooting down a plane.  Trump's people blow ships out of international waters for the fuck of it.  

"I'll tell you what.  We'll make a deal.  We take Cuba, you take Taiwan.  You're getting a better country, but we'll settle for that.  Russia's already down.  We let them have parts of the Ukraine.  Crimea.  The rest is on them.  So what do you say?  Deal?  Shake on it."

He's made sure of one thing--history will never forget Trump.  He'll be no Chester A. Arthur, that's for sure.  

"Who in the world is Chester A. Arthur?"

I showed my little Jazz Night video to my mother at yesterday's Happy Hour.  

"That girl sure likes to smoke," she said.  "She doesn't inhale, though,  Is that someone you know?"

Broke me up.  

"Not well." 

I mean, I can use people I know. 

This was just before I committed her to Ward 7.  For some people, there is just too much of a good thing.  But maybe that is all of us, now.  The world is an asylum run by inmate elites.  The rest of us are just in for the hosing.  

O.K.  That's all I got.  It is Friday.  What to do?  I guess I'll make breakfast for ma and ask her what she wants for dinner.  That's the way I roll.  Party!  

Since this is being referred to as "The Unofficial Start of Summer," I guess this is apropos.  It is one of my favorite songs. 

Soultrane

Man, republicans are hardwired. They STILL overwhelmingly support Trump.  Maybe they think they are going to get some of that Trump money.  

Remember Little Marco and the NEVER TRUMP movement?  

I can't even say "whatever" to this stuff.  I'm guessing it is the Authoritarian Personality thing.  You know I'd look it up. 

Social scientists do not categorize authoritarianism as a simple "yes or no" condition, but rather as a spectrum. In the U.S., surveys suggest that about 20% to 25% of the population holds highly authoritarian views, while another 20% to 23% lean toward these dispositions. Authoritarianism is a psychological worldview characterized by submission to perceived authorities, aggression toward out-groups, and a strict adherence to conventional norms. Rather than being fixed, these traits are often "activated" by fear, instability, or political messaging.

And that would pretty much make up the number of republican party members.  

Here's what's surprising to me, though--social scientists see this as a negative personality trait.  I'll let you look up the reasons why, but if nearly 50% of people have or lean toward this trait, it is hard to see it as an aberration.  I'm pretty sure that science is neutral on moral issues.  

Maybe.

But then again, it is "social" science.  

The girl at the top of the page probably does not have the trait.  But who knows?  She might be Ann Coulter's mother.  

I can tell you without a qualm that I have an anti-authoritarian personality.  I resist authority at every turn.  It has been the hallmark and often the bane of my existence.  I can't imagine, for instance, being in the military.  I would have been court martialed on the first day.  Maybe the second.  And if it could happen to Olaf, it could happen to me (link).  

I must admit that I have never read e.e. cummings "The Enormous Room."  Apologies.  

This one might be.  She seems a little more intense.  No matter, though. . . I have lots of republican friends.  That's not true.  I don't have lots of friends of any type.  I'm pretty much a loner, so I use the term "friends" loosely.  But I get along with people of all stripes.  

Maybe it comes from being an only child and spending my early years in very rural America.  I had to be good at entertaining myself.  I learned to read early.  My grandmother took care of me while my mother was at work, and she taught me.  She probably inspired my interest in pictures, too.  She had me cutting out pieces from magazines and pasting them together with the homemade glue she made from flour and water.  I would put them together and she'd ask me what story they told.  

As an only child, though, I am used to private time.  That is something hard for me to get now.  I couldn't sleep last night, woke up at four and rolled around in bed until I could stand the inside of my skull no longer.  Got up at 4:45.  Put on the coffee.  At five, my mother got up.  I hear her and I get anxious.  My cortisol spikes.  My entire body tenses and won't release.  My hands shake and I want to scream.  

"I just want some fucking time to myself!!!!!"

I don't want to be alone ALL the time, of course, but much if not most of it.  I do a lot of "free thinking," and that ain't happening with someone else around.  Oh, I still think, but it is not helpful.  

"What do you think about?"

"Oh. . . just stupid shit."

"Like what?"

"Like is wish you would shut the fuck up."

Unless you are this girl.  Then I will sit and listen to you for a bit.  But. . . it would be best if you kept your own place.  

But good god, we could have a whole lot of fun.  I've been told.  Early on, anyway.  At first.  But then. . . I think too much, want to be on my own. . . and the shit hits the fan.  

"Why do you look at all the girls?"

"I know.  It's bad.  I can't help it."

"Do you have to moan?"

"A little."

I guess I do have a little Hank Moody in me.  Or did.  I never asked a girl out in my life.  I don't think that is going to work out so well for me now.  

Last night my mother asked me to turn on "Californication."  I was a little shocked.  She likes it.  We've been watching it for awhile.  

Does this seem disjointed?  It should.  I started working on this at five.  It is now 8:43.  I've been dealing with mom in between little bits of writing.  Cleaned the kitchen of the mess she made last night.  Got her meds.  Made her breakfast.  Tried to chat away my guilt.  This is the result.  

I don't know why i do such silly shit, really. . . but here is the whole song, too.

Talent, Skill, and the Inherited Moron Gene

No surprises.  Music is learned by children just as language is.  Singing notes, humming, etc.  Learning to read music, like learning to read words, takes instruction.  

So I was thinking.  I had a minor talent for music when I was young.  We had a piano, and I learned to play it without any instruction.  I figured out the major and minor chords and progressions on my own when I was about twelve.  Same with the guitar, I think.  Somebody must have shown me chords, but I don't remember.  

I never progressed much beyond that, though.  

In my first band, I played drums.  Sixth grade.  I sang, too.  

I took band in the 7th grade and learned to read music.  Flutaphone.  In the 9th grade, I took chorus.  

I learned to finger pick on my own in high school.  Some band guys learned from me.  

And of course, I played to crowds in the thousands as a grown up adolescent.  My band had a following.  

The thing is, I was never very good.  I didn't learn enough about how to play guitar and my voice was never any good at all.  I wanted it to be, but it just wasn't.  

On the other hand, I grew up with an impoverished, hillbilly language.  People's vocabularies were small.  But I was an early reader, so maybe that countered that somewhat.  

I liked intellectual puzzles, but I hated physical ones.  Other kids wanted to take their bikes apart and modify them.  I had no interest.  Later, they did the same thing with cars.  Not me.  I am not good with tools.  And I never had quick fingers on the guitar.  I was lazy and didn't like to practice.  I knew guys, however, who would sit with their guitars all day.  

I could do that with books, and in all my classes from first grade through grad programs, I was clever.  

I was always bad at coloring books, and I can't draw.  I do a horrible job of setting up still lifes, too.  

I guess what I am thinking of is what we call "talent."  

Well. . . as always, I just looked it up.  

Talent is a natural aptitude, instinct, or inherent capacity to do something exceptionally well. While it often feels like it comes naturally or easily, true talent is generally understood as a combination of innate genetic potential and the underlying drive to develop those qualities through practice.

Although people often use the words interchangeably, there is a distinct difference between talent and skill. Talent is the natural ability or behavioral tendency. It is your baseline capacity, how your brain is "hard-wired". Skill is the learned, practiced application of that talent.

Core Components of Talent
Natural Aptitude: An inherent ease in learning or performing a task.
Trainability: The capacity to rapidly absorb instruction and improve.
Drive/Passion: An internal motivation or instinct that draws a person to repeatedly engage in an activity.

Types of Talents
Talent is not limited to the arts or athletics. It can manifest in any area of human endeavor, often categorized as:
Cognitive/Analytical: Problem-solving, quick decision-making, or pattern recognition.
Creative/Artistic: Musicality, visual expression, writing, or design.
Interpersonal/Leadership: Empathy, persuasion, adaptability, and teamwork.
Physical/Motor: Coordination, speed, balance, or spatial awareness.

The Nature vs. Nurture Debate
The concept of talent often sparks debate regarding whether it is innate (born with it) or developed (learned). Modern psychologists and researchers argue that it is a mix of both. While genetics may provide a baseline advantage (e.g., natural physical attributes or neurological wiring), research consistently shows that unpracticed talent rarely leads to expertise, and dedicated practice can significantly compensate for a lack of natural endowment.

I could have saved myself some unwarranted embarrassment, I think, if I had looked this up to begin with.  But there you go--in a nutshell.  

Maybe I could use a life coach after all.   

Here's what happens when talent and skill come together.  If you don't like this, something is wrong with you.  But that's o.k., too.  Just call me and I'll help you out.  I have The Google!  Not the first one.  That's just me fucking around.  But man, Ike Quebec. . . wow!

A.I., Language, and the Brain

Michelle Goldberg has an article in the N.Y. Times today about the hatred Gen Z has for A.I. (link), but I think, if Goldberg's article articulates the problem correctly, that Gen Z is confused.  It is not the technology they hate, it is the uncontrolled corporate greed and political "undersight" that is causing them problems.  It is unhinged capitalism.  

I fear A.I., of course, but it is not really a fear of A.I. but of the people who control it.  I know they will use it to put us all under their thumbs.  "They" do it with every technology.  

But "they" will do it in different ways.  

I think about the fiasco of the Trump/Xi summit.  You had the ruling class of two extreme ideologies face to face--individualism vs. collectivism.  

I prefer the Nordic way, of course.  

When Putin meets Xi this week, it will be a different matter.  The question is who will be the big spoon and who will be the little one.  If A.I. would let me, I'd show you.  

I don't care anymore, really.  Gen Z is the dumbest, most beautiful generation.  I shouldn't say "dumb."  They just can't read or write or do math very well according to those who measure such things.  But they can talk.  They sure can.  

Which brings me back to something I was saying a few days ago about language acquisition.  Children simply learn to talk.  It is one of the most evolved part of human existence.  It is crazy.  

But. . . they don't just learn how to write.  They have to be taught.  Now isn't that something?  Consider that for a moment.  Different parts of the brain, both on the left side.  In looking that up, I learned something new:

Interestingly, typing on a keyboard activates a slightly different network than writing by hand. Typing primarily relies on the motor regions controlling your fingers and prefrontal areas for spatial organization, whereas handwriting requires much more complex integration of visual, tactile, and language centers.

I wonder how much that matters in creative endeavors.  Perhaps I should try writing my blog posts by hand on one of those tablets that digitizes handwriting.  Then I could upload it here.  As I've already said, though, about writing by hand at my new desk, it seems much more difficult as I can't easily change a word or sentence.  Everything has to be thought out as in a chess match, many moves ahead.  

There have been some interesting studies on the connection between reading and writing.  In one, three groups of students were studied.  One group spent all semester writing, one reading, and one split 50/50 between the two.  At the end of the study, which group do you imagine showed the biggest improvement in writing?  

I'll let you sit with that a moment.  

Early reading is associated with higher I.Q.s.  What is not known is whether early readers have higher I.Q.s or whether early reading raises I.Q.s.  What is known, however, is that reading and I.Q. are connected.  

O.K.  Ready?  The group that spent the entire semester reading showed the greatest improvement in their writing skills.  

I have no idea how they measured that.  I just remember the results of the study.  

So, trying to tie all this together, A.I. is a language based system.  They are trained on massive amounts of texts to give human-like responses.  

Just sayin'.  The group of people who most hate A.I. are the ones with the tanking reading skills.  But like I said, they sure can talk.  

And by God, they are prettier, too.  

My mother doesn't seem to understand the connection between any of these things, though, for whenever I read or write, she has to interrupt me, as she has all morning.  If things are disconnected here, blame my mother.  

Now I must go attend to her needs.  She's been banging around like a madwoman since rising.  It is recycling day.  She is making me crazy.  

My I.Q. is tanking.  

I think I'll do some reading about music and the brain.  I'll keep you informed.