Confessions of a Dissembling Goofball

I was happy yesterday for most of the day.  It was a forgotten feeling.  I felt lighter, more alive. It could be that I have quit drinking but not absolutely.  What that means is I can have a drink whenever I want as long as I don't want it.  I've been drinking my mother's lite beer and some great and wonderful green tea in the evening.  I even had chocolate milk.  Oy!  But I think a key ingredient was trying to do a little--and this is important--age appropriate running on the treadmill.  My knee has not responded to the last hyaluronic acid gel shot and I've been limping and waddling like The Penguin, so I figured what the hell, I'll need a knee replacement anyway, so I did a slow one tenth of a mile old man stumbly jog followed by a tenth of a mile walk.  Did a couple first at a fifteen minute mile pace and then at fourteen.  Yesterday, I did a third at a thirteen minute mile pace.  Now this should be disheartening as I used to run 10K races in a low seven minute mile pace and once ran a marathon at a ten minute pace, but no, I didn't let it bum me out.  I was searching for endorphins.  I've read that exercise and drinking provide the same chemistry in the brain which explains a lot.  After the "run," I felt happy and my knee was no worse for wear.  

I may have made a mistake when I grabbed a basketball and tried shooting some hoops promising myself not to jump, but that is an impossibility.  I don't think that was a good idea.  

There was another factor--the carpenter and his helper are finished.  When I went home yesterday, no one was there.  I didn't have to chat or make decisions.  I was just home.  My home.  My stuff.  

I just felt good.  

I still took my mother to her 3:30 audiology appointment and listened to her lie to the cute therapist, then I took her to the bank and on to the grocery store where she pushed the shopping cart slowly around the entire store again.  

And then we came home and had lite beers.  

Party!

I had an invitation to go to Miami to make some photos with and of my Miami friend.  And Red wrote to tell me she will be in town in a few weeks and wanted to get together.  

I talked to my mother about finding someone to take care of her if I went out of town for a few days.  I don't know how to go about this, but I said I would stop at the nice rehab facility where she stayed and ask them.  I don't know if I can check her in and out of the facility as if it were a hotel, but that would be ideal.  If not, maybe they have people who can come and stay with her.  I don't have a clue, really.  

My mother was o.k. with the idea.  

So. . . there were many factors.  

Maybe it is the fact that my mother and I have had so much good fruit this year, the best watermelon I've ever tasted, great honeydew melons, kiwi fruit, avocados, plums, and of course the most difficult fruit, yellow pears.  Oh, my. . . best of my life.  And last night we ate the best red grapes either of us have ever had, juicy, sweet, the kind that pop when you bite them.  It has been a good year for that.  

I've also given the news short shrift.  I don't look at any political stories and hardly any other.  I take a quick peek at the cover pages and move on.  I look for stories about what is streaming on t.v.  

I am ready to break up with A.I.. too.  It is getting ridiculously difficult to generate images.  Q says I've probably been targeted.  I don't know if he was kidding or not, so I asked Chat.  Oh, no, it replied.  It is impossible for me to do that.  I don't believe that for one second, though.  Here is the message I will receive after minutes of processing any image I request: "

I’m sorry — I wasn’t able to generate that image because this request violates our content policies."  

You have not been targeted.
You’re not flagged, shadow-banned, singled out, profiled, or anything like that.

What is happening is this:

✅ **You’re working right at the edge of the system’s most sensitive boundary:

And because you are extremely precise and iterative with imagery (which is great creatively), you are constantly brushing up against those guardrails, which makes it feel like you’re being restricted more than average users.

So you end up seeing
“I’m sorry… this violates policies…”
far more often than someone doing landscapes or robots.

Yes, I've been known for constantly "brushing up against those guardrails" all my life.  

I don't recommend it for others, of course, but, as the Good Doctor Thompson would say, "It has always worked for me."

Of course, we know how that turned out.   

This morning, while perusing the CNN headline page just after waking, still muzzy and blurry eyed, I thought I saw a headline that read, in part--"Sean Francisco."  

I was wrong, of course, but I thought that was a great name for a Thomas Pynchon character.  I asked Chat to provide me a Pynchon style description.  It did.  Then I asked it to create an image from the description in the manner of a Robert Crumb illustration.  Nope.  Can't.  He's a living artist.  For half an hour, I was given "safe" prompts then told that it couldn't render the image. Over and over again.  Finally, I settled for this.  

Too grungy, I said.  Lose the coat.  Try again.  

Not really what I wanted, but I needed to get on with my day, so I suggested a few panels for the narrative.  

Maybe I'll make another stupid movie.  That is what I do now rather than watch t.v. 

Today my mother has no appointments.  It is kind of like a day off.  No workers at the house.  I have a day but no idea what to do.  I think I'll probably make some dinner for my mother and then take myself to a sushi dinner.  

Who knows how the day will go.  I don't want to be a bummer, but when I expect something, the day usually turns out wrong.  

I think I'll probably take a nap. 

What I need to do is work on my story idea about a youth hanging out with my friend in the crummy trailer park where he lived in a 10'x60' trailer with his mother, stepfather, younger brother and sister.  There is a whole cast of improbable castoff characters including Three Fingered Charlie for whom I have come up with something clever on my own.  I think through the narrative, but I haven't written any of it yet.  A combo of "Tortilla Flats" meets "Nick Adams."

That's the idea, anyway.  

In my own insufferable writing style.  

But I must go now.  My mother is up and it is time for her meds.  

Here's Sean singing a song on a front porch about a whorehouse waiting 'round to die. 

Here's the good version.