I'll Stick With Google

I just learned that it's no longer cool to say "Google it" because young people no longer use Google to find out things they don't know, which is pretty much everything on Earth and in our solar system and the entire galaxy.

Instead they use ChatGPT or Gemini or whatever search engine they heard about five minutes ago on TikTok, so saying "Google it" makes you seem/sound old.

Well, guess what. I am old, and thank God for that. I just came back from the bank where I made a cash deposit of $45.00 into an account I rarely use. The teller, a young woman of about 25, took the money and first went through the bills and made them all face the same way. Then she counted the bills three times. Yes, three times. Two fives, a ten, a twenty and five singles. After counting them three times, she asked me, "Are you depositing $45.00?"

I'm pretty sure she doesn't use Google.

Floods In All the Wrong Places

I have slowly come to the realization that this place we call home is run by Satan. There is simply no other explanation. So I'm guessing that Heaven is run by God. This makes me happy as I think that almost all the people I know who have died are in Heaven now, enjoying their deaths.

How else to explain the recent flood in Nepal that swallowed up thousands of peaceful villagers and tourists in mere moments? Or the more recent flood in the Grand Canyon that came after half an hour's rainfall and swept through the canyon, killing more innocents who were out for a good time, hiking and camping and not hurting anyone?

Why are there no floods in bad neighborhoods full of warring gang members and drug dealers who run amok, killing and maiming for no reason other than violence for the sake of violence? Or maybe a flood in Russia that takes out the Kremlin in one fell swoop, ending the death toll in Ukraine? That would at least be understandable.

What Are We To Do?

My husband went to the Y to swim.  A friend called and she said she made 29 meatballs. (She's Italian.) My son is teaching teens how to drive. And I am doing nothing of any import.

It's Sunday so that means we did the New York Times crossword puzzle in the magazine. It was ridiculously easy, as usual, since these days the-puzzle creators are less intelligent than those who made them in years gone by, so instead of it taking us several hours, off and on, we finished it in under half an hour.

I went in the hot tub. That took 20 minutes. I am considering cleaning my closet and making a pile for Goodwill. I could paint but I'm not in the mood, and once again I wonder what for anyway.

So I'm writing this blog, wondering what people are supposed to do on a Sunday if they are not clergymen, firemen, surgeons, ambulance drivers or new mothers.  I wish people would read this and leave their suggestions, just not the crazy lesbian who I think I finally shook.

Dr. Dolittles

The state of health care today would be comical, were it not so tragic. 

Yesterday I experienced high blood pressure numbers during the afternoon. This was not unusual since I've taken medication for a condition called labile hypertension for 20 years. But this time was different, as the numbers on my BP monitor kept going up despite my usual tricks for turning it around. When they hit 228/108, a doctor friend who I trust implicitly told me to go to the closest ER. Fortunately my husband could drive me since I was afraid to move lest my head explode, or whatever happens with unchecked high blood pressure.

The triage nurse, an affable chap who reminded me of a young Bill Murray, spouted words straight out of a slapstick comedy. He said there was no need to come to the ER, because "We treat symptoms, not numbers." Since I was not having any symptoms except for the growing anxiety that I might stroke out any second, it was "no biggie." In fact, Bill -- let's call him that -- said to "throw away your blood pressure monitor, never check it at home, it will just make you crazy." So, even though he said I was free to go, Bill led me to the inner sanctum where all the curtains are to meet a doctor named Jake who would assess my situation more thoroughly.

After waiting some time Jake never materialized so we decided to leave, but then another doctor arrived who asked a lot of questions. Her advice was to ask my cardiologist to increase my medication. Still, my high BP numbers, which by now had come down considerably after taking some extra meds, were fine with her. She said it would be okay to go out to dinner with friends, something we had planned to do that night but were no longer up for. After about 45 minutes I was released, with nothing at all having happened to me except for racking up a huge bill.

My emergency turned out to not be an emergency after all. So we went to Five Guys and got a burger and fries.

Tony Soprano Is Dead To Me

I first watched The Sopranos back in 2005. I remember because it was the year my son was a senior in high school, when some of this closest buddies all but lived at our house. One or two of them would pop in to the den and sit for a while, transfixed, as was the entire nation, by the addictive series. At the time I thought it was the greatest thing I had ever seen on TV. So not long ago, my husband and I thought it would be fun to watch the whole thing again. To our surprise, it was like seeing it for the first time, given our spotty memory as older adults. 

At first we loved it. Of course James Gandolfini was the best thing about it, but all the acting was superb. And the photography is certainly stunning. But despite enjoying certain aspects of each episode, we slowly became horrified by the repulsive and abusive behavior of almost all of the characters. What a bunch of lowlife animals! Even Tony, who I loved so much the first time around. He's possibly the worst one, cheating on his wife with any woman who looks at him twice and whacking close friends and beloved relatives without a second thought.

I won't make it through the whole series this time, as last night's episode was so nauseating I decided to call it quits. For some reason, watching people get beaten to a pulp with an iron bar, or shot in the face 22 times, or dismembered in a bathtub, or run over by a car, or strangled with piano wire, or kicked and punched in the stomach, or slapped around by a group of hoodlums is less appealing at 80 than it was at 59.

Peanut Butter

The best peanut butter available is not JIF or Skippy. It is Teddie's. Maybe there is a better peanut butter sold somewhere, like at a farmer's market or obscure natural foods store. But as far as what is available commercially everywhere, it's Teddie's and that's that. I prefer the Smooth, but it also comes in Super Chunky. Taste it once and you're hooked.

Liars

A few months ago, my husband and I did some political outreach for a Maine gubernatorial candidate who ultimately lost in the June primary. It involved driving to distant neighborhoods and dropping off literature about the candidate door-to-door in several Maine counties. We would probably have done it for no pay, but the promised wage of $25 per hour made it much more attractive, seeing as how it was during a hot spell with temperatures in the 80s. Nevertheless, we did it for two days and were happy to help.

The person who contracted us to do the work told us after a week that, "The check is in the mail." When no check arrived after another week passed, we inquired and were told again that, "I mailed it myself just yesterday."

The phantom check never came, despite the guy repeating the same thing over and over. Finally he said maybe he had the wrong mailing address. He didn't. Then he said, "Oops," promising he would be mailing it again, immediately. He obviously didn't.

The check has still not arrived. Lies, lies, all lies.

My Husband's "Art Project"

My husband has had a vegetable garden for years. It keeps getting bigger, and thus producing more of everything. Tomatoes, carrots, green beans, beets, green peas, onions, broccoli, eggplant, cucumbers, radishes, yellow squash, zucchini, peppers of many varieties, potatoes, lettuce, kale, spinach, basil, dill and cilantro. Sound good?

Here's the problem: There are just the two of us living here at the moment. We have only one dinner at night, and some nights we eat out. Therefore, we have too much stuff. We give some of it away, but here in Maine everyone with a piece of land has their own garden.

I ask Mitch every year to plant less, but he claims it's his "art project" and that he grows it for how it looks, and that I don't have to eat it. But every time I see the guy he's offering me a carrot or a radish or a tomato or something, whether it's mealtime or not. I remind him it's an art project and that I don't force him to eat my paintings. He shrugs.

Still, those veggies keep coming. 

Film Review: WILD INSIDE

Even the worst documentaries are at least educational, which is more than you can say about most bad Hollywood movies. But the best of the genre opens your eyes to worlds you never knew existed. Wild Inside is one of those. Just released, it tells the magical true story of Falco, a male Eurasian Eagle-Owl that escaped from the Central Park Zoo in February of 2023 and spent a year of delicious freedom -- the first in his life -- sightseeing in New York City.

From the moment a passer-by spots him on a city street, just sitting on the pavement looking wide-eyed and completely lost, we are in love with Falco. Soon enough the entire city was too. He was on the TV news, in magazines and newspapers, and all over the internet. A huge following of bird nerds soon sprung up and spent their nights tracking him, filming him, photographing him and thrilling over his every move.

Flaco himself is a beautiful and wondrous creature. Seeing him learn to fly and fend for himself, after 13 years of captivity in his tiny zoo enclosure, is enthralling. Afraid he will starve without his curated meals from the zookeeper, we celebrate his first kill -- a rat -- and revel in his survival skills. Go Flaco! 

Equally compelling are his human followers, a group of sensitive souls (with some heavy-duty camera equipment) who we meet through interviews, each of them showing their growing love for the giant bird. Spoiler alert: It's a sad but happy ending, definitely worth your time.

Shame On A.I.

Last night I attended a performance at a local theater. When I got home I studied the program, reading with interest the bios of the cast members, which often include a personal note at the end of their acting credits. What jumped out at me was a line that had been blacked out with a marker. Still, holding it up to the light I could make out the words, "An avid sex fan and sexaholic." Really? Either the man had chosen to include that in his resume or someone on the staff was up to no good.

Interested to find out more, I emailed the theater and learned that it should have said the actor was "an avid Sox fan and Soxaholic," but their electronic proofing system had missed it. So 17,000 copies (!) had to be redacted by humans at the box office. And still, it was legible to anyone with an eagle eye, like me. 

As a former editor and proofreader with years of experience, I would have caught the error for sure. Just another example of how people are better than machines.

The Lesbian Said About It, The Better

Not long ago I wrote a post describing my recent car accident wherein I crashed into a mailbox after momentarily blacking out at the wheel of my car. It was a bad experience, to say the least. In the post I mentioned that the owners of the mailbox are two women who live as a committed couple. The official term for them is lesbians, a word I used once in the post.

Since then this blog has received "hate mail" from an anonymous lesbian over the fact that I used the word, I assume; I can't imagine why else. She said some awful things which were not only mean-spirited but incorrect, rife with erroneous assumptions about what had and had not actually happened.

Since then, the readership numbers of that particular post have skyrocketed to heights never seen by me before. (She said she hoped my "bigoted blog post" would be read by a lot of people.) Conclusion: Lesbians are very touchy.