Stafford's Last Book.

Stafford’s Last Book

 By Frederick Key

Gerry wasn’t overly fond of neckties, but he wanted to select just the right one to make the proper impression. Everyone wore them—all the men at the university, the club, the computational society—and Jack had said that this would be an important occasion, although not formal.

He never liked the feel of things around his neck, though, and felt like a man choosing the noose for his hanging. Ultimately Gerry selected his gold bow tie, one that would go nicely with his pale blue checked suit on a summer afternoon. If in fact it turned out to be less formal an occasion, more like one of his and Jack’s Science Fiction League meetings, he could always remove the tie and slip it into his pocket.

Before he left his apartment, Gerry gave another flip through the manuscript sitting on his desk. He had been quite honored that Jack had asked him to read it, being that Jack was a successful literary agent and Gerry just an amateur, not even in the publishing field -- although his League newsletter, The Rocket, was complimented in fan groups across the country. Still, he was under a vow of secrecy about the manuscript. It was the last book by Stafford L. Grimes, his final novel before his death, and Jack had wanted Gerry’s opinion.

“When you come to the party,” Jack told him over lunch, “you may meet some people from the publishing house. I’m not sure why, but they have some concerns about this book. They’ll want your opinion.”

“I’m surprised,” said Gerry. “Grimes was a meticulous writer, not one to dash things off. I can’t imagine it is sloppy. Is it controversial?”

Superpuff!

I'm overarmed and overprepared for Halloween, because I don't want to have a repeat of years before -- dashing out the door as the candy supplies dwindle and the dog is going nuts and my wife frantically holds down the fort while I rush to the supermarket where only Christmas candy is available on Halloween night.

I've never had a kid with a teal pumpkin, but I respect that some of our plucky urchins have food allergies, and always try to have verified safe nut- and peanut-free treats available. Which is one of the reasons I bought the Justice League Candy Sticks. 

The sack holds forty little boxes, each one with pictures of the heroes of DC's Justice League -- Superman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Batman, Cyborg, Aquaman. That is, only the ones who appeared in the movie. Traditional members like Green Lantern and Martian Manhunter did not make the cut. 

Each box contains two little "candy sticks." But what are those? If you're an adult and you've been one for a while, these should look familiar. 

You got it -- candy cigarettes. Basically nothing but sugar with a little flavoring, not that the kids mind. They used to put a little red dye on one end for your "light." My wife actually called it before I even opened the little box: "That sounds just like candy cigarettes." She could tell by the rattle in the box.

We're counting on the kids to have no knowledge of history and just eat them, instead of walking around holding them in their fingers, pretending to be smoking. But who knows? These things are still sold as candy cigs, mostly in foreign countries where no one cares if you smoke, unlike in this Great Land of Liberty. You can buy them in the "cigarette" packs from Old Time Candy. 

These days, with governments frowning on tobacco but greedy for marijuana money, the kids would more likely puff them while pinching the candy to their lips, toking away like Mommy and Daddy. 

It's just weird, though, to see superhero-themed packages with candy cigarettes inside. I am old enough to remember when many of the adults around me smoked cigs, but even then, it was not something you'd see anyone in the comics doing except the bad guys. Well, maybe a few guys like Punisher or Wolverine or Constantine, but they were not particularly good guys. You'd certainly never associate smoking with Superman. 

...usually. 

Not dead yet.

And indeed, as posted in this cartoon I put together for Lileks.com's hearty band of Bleatniks last week, I am not dead. 

You had to be there.

Earlier this month I mentioned that I was having trouble with my right ear, something that had last come up in 2018, and at the time the doctor had no diagnosis for me. So it came back, and I got an MRI, and then waited most of the month to see the ear doc again. So, the good news: Not dead, and...

I suppose it's always good to not have a tumor. Except for the suicidal, or those suffering from another mental illness, I can't think of anyone who'd be thrilled to have one. What I have is another of what my wife calls the Irish-type illnesses, things that can ruin your life but not kill you. (Arthritis, sciatica, psoriasis, stuff like that.)

What is it? Well, it seems to be Ménière's disease, a disease of unknown origin that can cause hearing loss. It surprised me, because it also can cause extreme vertigo. I didn't think I had suffered vertigo, but then I remembered that not only have I had vertigo for unknown causes three times in my life, but I had blogged about it the last time it happened -- all the way back in... 2018. That was a banner year. 

Patients with Ménière's have a terrible time with vertigo, not just three attacks over two decades. But my doctor said the condition comes in many flavors, and it's not the same for everyone. 

Still, he's not 100% on the diagnosis. I have to go back next April. Meanwhile, I'll be grateful that it isn't worse than it is, I'll pray the vertigo does not return, and I'll watch out for the salty foods, which can exacerbate the condition. Like I said -- diseases that can ruin your life without killing you. 

This is zit!

I recently was asked to submit some writing for a possible project, and have come to the conclusion that I am the worst writer since ever. Watchumuken, history's worst hieroglyphician -- whose figures all looked like variations on the poop emoji -- was a better writer. 

It's all part of the artist's ego. You go around thinking you're pretty good, and then you have to look at your own work with the eye of the critic who will be evaluating it. Suddenly you see every flaw, magnified to gigantic size. Now you see the truth: The writing is completely dull except when it's being stupid, and then it's evenly split between stupid and dull. 

It's like seeing a tiny zit on a day when you really want to look good. It can make you nuts. If you have the time you may go at it, and soon enough instead of an unnoticeable zit, you have an actual injury on your face. 

 

I wish they made these for manuscripts.

I've never been very good at pep-talking myself; the best I can do at times like that is trust that if I thought something of mine was of good quality in the past, that my judgment -- honed over years in every end of the wordsmithing business -- cannot be completely wrong 100% of the time. 

The main problem with the current project is not that I'm not good enough for it (we'll put that question aside) but that the more I found out about it, the less I seemed to be the person they were looking for. In which case, they could think I'm the best composer of words since Watchamuken's talented brother, Imhotstuff, and still have to reject me. I'd be okay with that. 

It's a sad truth that all craftsmanship requires devotion, and all devotion requires the attachment of the heart, and the heart and the ego are bound up as one. Love me, love my writing is not the truth, but it always feels like the truth, and that's why writers are so grumpy all the time. 

𓀀𓀁𓀓𓀖𓀨𓀶💩

Less Misérables, please.

My wife has been reading Victor Hugo's timeless classic, Les Misérables, in translation from le français. And when I call it timeless, I mean that it takes for freaking ever to read. 

She's never shied away from long books. She has read the uncut Count of Monte Cristo multiple times, and that thing is a cinder block. On the other hand, War and Peace she never made it through. She liked the peace but couldn't stand the war. (This is not just a joke -- she isn't much interested in military history, and the Tolstoy wasn't kidding when he gave war top billing in that book.)

She hasn't given up on Les Mis yet, although if another freaking rebellion starts she might just. I think she's hoping that Javert will just shoot Valjean in the head and be done with it. THE END, ALREADY. "When you called the book Les Misérables, I didn't think you were talking about the readers!"

I feel sorry for her. I had a class in French literature in college, and while the teacher was very kind, she was really a professor of languages, not literature. So when she gave us two weeks to read Hugo's Notre-Dame de Paris (in English -- Quasimodo's book), she quickly realized that it was a mistake. That book is 448 pages long in the Dover Thrift edition -- and if you know Dover, you know they provide the books at bargain prices because the print is tiny. Saves paper. I did my best, but there is an enormous section early on where Hugo describes every square inch of the cathedral, and I thought it was going to kill me. 

Hugo is verbose, but we know that going in. I guess it is fine if you have a broader view of what you like in books than I or my wife do. That is, if the book is going to have a lot of military stuff, my wife's going to lose interest. If it turns into a love story where the drama is driven by everyone being stupid, I'm out. And I'm not just picking on French books here. Dr. Zhivago lost me in a scene where characters are arguing over political theory while digging a train out of the snow (if I recall correctly -- it was some years ago). But I and my wife both loved The Brothers Karamazov.

The big question you may be asking is: Did these guys get paid by the word? Or by the pound? And the answer is no. Well, Dickens got paid by the word, and sometimes it shows. Apparently Hugo did not, but his deal for the rights to Les Mis made him the highest-paid writer ever at the time, and so I'm sure he felt he had to deliver something weighty. And boy howdy, did he! 

It's funny that in the modern era, where we don't have patience for such big books, we also don't have interest in short stories. The short story form was very popular in the United States until the seventies, when it started to fade. General interest magazines stopped publishing fiction -- a 1950s Ladies' Home Journal is packed with short stories; a 1990s one, hardly any. I suppose television killed the short story, but it took forty years to do it. 

I don't wrote a lot of shoet stories, but I do have my novels. A reader may find them punishing, but never as punishing as Les Mis. Why? Because my books would never run 1,376 pages in a Dover Thrift Edition, that's why! Three times longer than the Hunchback! C'est de la cruauté!

Before the bomb dropped.

Soon after September 11, 2001, I was in a supermarket checkout line. I was looking at the cheerful covers of the magazines on display near the register, magazines written and printed and distributed before the attack. I was thinking that they were each a window to a more innocent world we had just left behind forever. 

Here's something funny. 

I got a couple of books out of the library, doing fact-finding research. One of the books hadn't been checked out in some time, I guess, and it looks like the last person to take it out didn't throw away the checkout slip. Maybe the reader had been using it as a bookmark, but if so, he or she got less than halfway through the book. 

There's some hard-core irony at play here. 

Due date: February 21, 2020. Ten days earlier the World Health Organization named the Wu Flu COVID-19, a name that would swiftly become burned in our minds for the rest of our lives -- lives that would also be shortened, in a great many cases. 

A couple of weeks after that due date, Italy would be the first country to initiate a national quarantine. Two days later the WHO would declare COVID-19 a pandemic. By March 21, ten thousand would be dead and the total number of cases about 250,000. And you know the rest. 

"Stuck indoors because of the cold?" Lady, you don't know the half of it. 

This definitely has a little frisson of seeing, say, a "Visit Lovely Pearl Harbor" postcard mailed December 5, 1941, or an "I 💖 NY" postcard mailed September 10, 2001 -- or a poster for the Supernova music festival put up October 1 of this year. A little less so because COVID was a slow-growing catastrophe, but similar in that government intelligence was ineffective prior to the event. Also, in the case of the vicious surprise attacks, the evil was front-loaded. In COVID's case, while I believe the virus was man-made with American funding (using shenanigans to contravene US law about gain-of-function research), I think the release of the virus was accidental. In that case, the evil was back-loaded, with the purposeful wickedness coming later. 

All this leads to a lot of finger-pointing, because there are always people who could have prevented or prepared but were stupid or evil about it. But it also leads to "if only they had known" thinking -- If only you, innocent library patron, had known in February 2020 what was coming your way! And that leads to What's coming our way now that we don't know about? thinking. And that's the worst.

Forgotten men.

After thinking of the vanished Little Pete a couple of weeks ago, I got to thinking about a few old men I knew early in my so-called career who have always kind of stuck in my mind. I thought I'd share a few with you, starting with a man I'll call Gabe.

When I was in college I worked a couple of days a week as a general flunky for a small office in midtown. I was never quite sure what they did, but it appears in retrospect that they held and managed real estate in different spots in the nation. One of my jobs was distributing the mail, and we would get newspapers from all over. On my breaks I would read the papers, see which funnies were running in places like Ocala or Kansas City. Everyone there was really nice to me, which was impressive, because I had some classic screwups in that job. Like throwing out cartons of flyers that were due to be mailed, and breaking a toilet while trying to put on a new toilet seat. (A little hole in the rim can become an attractive fountain when you flush!)

Gabe was the founder, I think, and had the only private office, one of those walled-off corner ones of the kind common then, where the walls didn't reach the ceiling. He seemed to me to be about a hundred years old. He would come in late, get greeted by everyone, take off his hat, go into his office, and -- do nothing, I think. His son was running the place. Gabe was, as I would come to find out, out of it. He didn't bug anyone, but he couldn't do anything. The man was senile, I guess, but he didn't cause trouble and he wasn't mean. 

Gabe (Dickens version)

One day he cornered me while I was sitting in my area -- the back room, where real estate flyers and the like sat in boxes on large metal shelves, or piled on skids, waiting for mailing. I may have been stuffing envelopes, something I did a lot of in that job and others in years to come. Gabe came over and sat next to me to tell me about his idea for a new business, one that was going to fill a niche, and bring some serious money into the firm.

His idea was to publish a new kind of business directory -- as he spoke we were sitting in front of a library of the (then lucrative) Thomson business directories -- and gave an example of how it would work. Say, if one were to be in the bicycle parts trade, you’d have a directory for manufacturers, suppliers, and customers. And from that point on I have no idea what he was talking about, because as far as I could tell he had just described exactly the books on the shelves next to us. He promised to keep me apprised of the situation, as good opportunities would come forth. I thanked him. It was the only conversation we ever had. 

It wasn't much longer before Gabe left this world, and immediately after sitting shiva his son moved into that corner walled office. It still seemed pretty cold to me, going in that fast, but I imagine Gabe’s son had put up with a lot in Dad's later years and just wanted to move on with things. 

All of it to say, we men can have an awful time letting go of work, even when we don't need to do it, even when the work doesn't need us anymore, even when we have nothing left to offer.

I've never forgotten Gabe, though, and he did teach me a lesson. And he gave me another thing about old age to be scared of. 

We'll revisit this topic another time soon. Meanwhile, Gabe, rest in peace. 

Tambourine: useless or annoying too?

This one made me laugh:

Usually songs about people singing songs are pretty annoying. It's like the songwriter was trying to come up with a song idea and that was as far as he got. But the one that probably bugs me the most is Nobel laureate Bob Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man."

I'm not picking on Bob in particular. I've admired several of his songs during his excruciatingly long career. And as I noted before, I don't blame him for getting a Nobel Prize, since he seemed to find it silly too. What I am complaining about is the concept of "Mr. Tambourine Man." 

Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me

I'm not sleepy, and there is no place I'm going to

Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me

In the jingle jangle mornin' I'll come followin' you

Because there is no more useless instrument for playing a song than the tambourine. It can't play notes. It just rattles. You can hit it; you can shake it. You can bounce it off your butt like Betty. 

That's it. You can't play a song on it. You absolutely cannot get a melody out of it if you torture it all day. Tubas and kettle drums are better instruments for carrying a tune. "Mr. Slide Whistle Man" would have made more sense. "Mr. Triangle Man" could have made more sense. 

I believe there's a backstory about the song that involves a tambourine player, but unless the guy could make the tambourine leap up and play "Yankee Doodle," I'm not buying it. I just get the picture of an insomniac bum wanting to hear some other guy bang around on a rattle, because that's just what I want to hear when I have trouble sleeping (?). 

Well, it was a tambourine era, I guess. The only reason I don't hate the Lemon Pipers' song "Green Tambourine" more than Dylan's song is that it has the benefit of being less popular and never being covered by the Byrds. Even the Archies never did a song specifically about tambourines, and I could have excused that as a gift to Betty. 

The nogged truth.

Well, this little meme is making the rounds, and for good reason. 

I finally dug myself out from under a pile of work Friday and got to the supermarket Saturday. No, they were not playing carols over the PA system yet -- I seem to get there during Greatest Hits of the '80s Hour most of the time -- but the dairy aisle was a different story. Put on your crash helmet, kiddo, 'cause this will shake your noggin:

Wall of Mandatory Cheer

Half a cooler full of egg nog, on October 14. 

I have nothing against egg nog. I like it. I used to buy a quart every yuletide for olde tyme's sayke, but then I looked at the calorie count. I don't like it enough to undo months of avoiding sugar for one glass of egg nog. Eight ounces has about 340 calories. That's about the same as a vanilla milkshake, and I'd much rather have the milkshake if I'm going to splurge.

I'm quite impressed, though, at the choices. Some have booze, some don't, but just the fact that there are ten choices in this photo alone boggles my mind. When I was a kid there'd be one choice -- your local dairy would put out an egg nog, plus maybe a larger dairy like Borden, and you wouldn't see it until a week before Thanksgiving. It'd be gone by January 5. If you wanted liquor, you had to add it yourself. 

Anyway, it's just another sign that the Xmas Blob as we celebrate it is creeping up over Halloween, having completely swallowed Thanksgiving. It's one thing to live like the reformed Scrooge, to "honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year." It's another to whip out the egg nog halfway through October. 

But all is not lost! We certainly still have displays with SPOOKtacular Halloween deals, and things like this: 

Yes, Campbell's Pepperidge Farm label made a deal with Dunkin' Donuts to make pumpkin-spice-doughnut-flavored graham-cracker Goldfish. My wife wanted to try them, so I had to relax the standards a little for the duration. Besides, graham crackers are health food, right? 

Verdict: Really good. Sweet but not too sweet, like Dunkin's non-iced doughnuts. And very fall-forward. 

Back off, egg nog! There are still leaves on the trees!  

Bloody sacrifice of the cash cow.

Once you notice it, you can't stop noticing it.

All the best and brightest around us who achieve high positions in any capacity feel obliged to follow this series of steps:

1) Examine the state of the organization.

2) Determine what segment of the market is outside its current reach. 

3) Viciously attack its strongest adherents in the hope of winning over the outsiders. 

We all know the term cash cow from marketing -- that beloved quadrant of the business that just keeps pulling in money, year after year, without very much tending, a segment that yields predictable if unspectacular dividends that can be used to fund more risky, more potentially wealth-generating projects. All the company has to do is feed the cow and not murder it. 

It seems that all the grads from the business schools get a complimentary butcher knife along with their sheepskin. They loathe having to work on a dull part of a dull company that just makes money. Blech! (People who blech! at profit are people who have never had to worry where their next meal is coming from.) They would much rather be social engineering!

Step one: Kill the cow. And the fastest way to do that is to insult its greatest adherents to the point of libel and make them angry every time they see your logo. The next step is to be shocked that people got upset, and then get panicky when the sought-after new audience segment does not flood into the doors and double the revenue. Step three: Write a book about your great accomplishment a fail upward into a new job.

Gilette. Bud Light. Disney (subsets especially include Star Wars). The NFL. These are only some of the prominent businesses that have suffered at the hands of their young geniuses. 

The United States is doing it to its citizens. The very people who love this country and the principles upon which it stands and would die for it are treated with suspicion and worse by its own government, which is run by people who would not suffer a rainy weekend for it. Meanwhile, noncitizens are welcomed, no matter how illegal their entry, no questions asked, and criminals are allowed to run the streets. 

And now, the Catholic Church?

Every devout Catholic I know is worried that the Holy Father, a.k.a. Hippie Pope Frank, has called the three-year synod to make some rash changes, like ordaining women (which the church has declared is not possible), encouraging more illegal immigration (but not into Vatican City), easing up on divorce, or blessing same-sex unions, following the lead of some apostate bishops in Germany. (Germany: Birthplace of Bad Ideas Since Forever.)

The stupid logo they commissioned for it fills me with dread. Rather than being focused on Jesus, God, or the Trinity, it looks like a pagan tree god sheltering the usual multiculti mob, which schleps forward into a future of tribalism and special pleading.

I know church membership is down since World War II, but that's true for all churches. The reasons are varied, ranging from scientism/positivism to the apathy of wealth to the sickness of Communism to worldwide PTSD from the war. It's not just because the Pope doesn't like the Pill. 

Protestant churches who ran out in front to rubberstamp everything people wanted lost attendance even faster. Why? There's no point to a church that asks nothing, because a church with no firm moral center can give nothing. A church that approves everyone's bullshit can neither inspire nor educate, and certainly can't compel adherence or the personal sacrifice that leads to spiritual growth. If they're just social service stations, who the hell cares? The government already does that and tithing to them is not voluntary.

Is the Catholic church killing the cow with the so-called synod? Is it Vatican III, "Just do what you want"? Which would utterly infuriate and demoralize the faithful, who have kept the joint up all this time. And the church would be following a modern heresy. 

Heresy is not what the atheists say; that's simple unbelief. Evildoers within the church are not usually heretics; they are evil bastards who would have been better off sunk with a millstone necktie. Heresy comes from focusing on one part and blowing it up to be the whole thing. Worship of poverty like Tolstoy or worship of spiritual matters as secret magic like the Gnostics are heresies. Love of people to the exclusion of the laws of God would be the greatest heresy to ever invade the church. 

If the pope is thinking of doing something nuts -- not ex cathedra level but still -- he will not bring any of the "lost sheep" and he will lose the powerful love and devotion of those he has. He may think he's being Christlike, leaving the 99 to go after the 1, but when he gets back with the 1 and finds the 99 have fled and then the 1 kicks him in the nads and tears off, he'll feel a little stupid.

If that's possible. None of these cash-cow-killer geniuses ever seem to regret, understand, or appreciate anything. You explain that people don't like it when you attack them and their cherished beliefs, and they act like it's weird that stupid people would have feelings. They fail to grasp the most simple ideas, and we're the stupid ones?

The people in charge of things hate the very people whom they need the most. Once you see it, you see it everywhere. 

Store-bot quality.

A couple of years back my preferred supermarket introduced Smiley for a trial run. As I noted at the time, Smiley was a robot, intended to scoot around the aisles at will, offering Snickers and other unhealthy snacks for purchase to shoppers like me who were vulnerable to impulse buys and maybe feeling a bit peckish. At the time I accused it of being a candy-wielding Dalek, but that was unfair. And inaccurate: Dr. Who fans know that Daleks, like some candies, are hard on the outside but soft in the center. Not really robots, in other words. 

Well, the robot takeover didn't work in the supermarket, but the wholesale club is the next target. 

This robot is named Tally, and it haunts the aisles of BJ's Wholesale Club, checking inventory. The Boston Globe ran a story about Tally in March. The paper wrote: "Tally’s job is to use its sensors to scan shelves and check that products are in-stock, shelved appropriately, and priced correctly, according to BJ’s news release. It sends the information it collects to grocery store employees, who can then make any necessary changes." 

It's interesting because it's doing one of those jobs that's stupidly easy for a human but must have been deuced difficult to program for the robot. A human can walk by and at a glance see if the products are placed properly in their spots, not messed up or busted open, and that there are no empty slots, but a robot has to read the codes to know that things are where they are supposed to be and somehow judge product condition. 

Tally moves about the speed of a person walking briskly. I guess it's not a bad job to relegate to the machines; no person is going to be employed just to do inventory checking, so the employees can do other things. Like follow-up on Tally's findings. BJ's said there will be no job losses due to the use of the robots. Of course, taking a duty away from the employees does mean there will be fewer new hires, but never mind. 

Tally came along the aisle at a good clip like a tall, supercharged Roomba, but the aisles are quite wide in the wholesale store and we did not interact. I wondered later what Tally would have done were I blocking the aisle, like one of those oblivious shoppers who likes to park the cart perpendicular to traffic while looking for the nutrition label on soap. Tally must be programmed to deal with these public nuisances. 

But what if I were more obstructive? What if I put one of those skids of Bounty in its way? Would it note the thing was out of place and go around it? Turn and go back? Ask me I was Sarah Connah? 

Well, I wasn't going to mess with the robot. This ain't no Walmart -- I could get my membership card revoked, and then where would I be? My wife needs that box of 75 Dunkin' Donuts K-cups, you know.

Ooky.

I'm sorry I've been out to lunch -- well, more than usual. Last week was nuts, mostly workwise, but also MRI wise and dogwise (he desperately needing a bath). This week could be just as whacko, but we'll see. 

Meanwhile, we're more than a week into October, about that time that anyone who is going to decorate for Halloween has at least started doing so. Let's see how it's going.

Very festive. The garbage can is a nice touch.

Enter... what? The house? The grave? 
Message unclear.

A jolly pile. But we all know this is a 
repurposed snowman. The factory in China
threw the switch from Christmas to Halloween
and they started to come out like this.

I think I first saw the tall one in 2020, the year of the world's
stupidest pandemic, and thought it ironic that the plague doctor,
one of the scariest looks ever devised, was meant for public safety. 
Well, he's being scary again. He seems to have scared
Pumpkin Child into fainting.  

spoooooookynah

I'll see you tomorrow for Indignant Persons' Day (observed), although probably not to comment on the holiday this year. Brace yourself for -- something different! 

Back in the tube.

My friends, those who have been around this blog for five years or more -- you with the patience of Job, the benevolence of St. Francis, and the breakfast of champions -- may recall that I suffered a moderate hearing loss in one ear in 2018. Many tests were taken, including shoving ol' Fred partly into the MRI tube, and some treatments were used, including an injection of corticosteroids in the eardrum, which is half as much fun as you'd think. 

Alas, no cause was found for my problem, and over the next five years -- while the world started to go to hell -- I seemed to get better. I barely noticed the problem, and it actually seemed to have improved. 

And then this summer it started to seem worse again. 

I was hoping it was a plain ol' wax blockage or a plain ol' ear infection. My annualish (because I don't get there every year) physical was coming up, so I figured I'd ask the doc to check. He thought he saw fluid but no infection, and recommended I try Flonase. Which didn't even help with the seasonal allergies, tell you the truth, let alone my hearing. 

So, back to the ENT, and then back to the tube. 

So what was the result? Beats me. I was given a CD of the images, and as much as I like to play doctor (I mean when I'm doing fact-checking work, Stiiv), I had no idea what I was seeing. 

Yeah, they took a scan of my head and found nothing, hyuk hyuk. By that I mean there was no big zombie-colored mass and an arrow saying TUMOR HERE. I'll have to wait for the radiologist's report, and will update you then. I don't see the ENT until the end of the month. 

The last time this happened I was annoyed that the doctor I went to at the time just gave up. What caused it? Don't know! Oh, well! We'd all prefer a Dr. House -- without the attitude -- who won't give up until the diagnosis is made. But that's not reality. Some things can't be diagnosed without expensive and/or invasive procedures, and if there's no life at stake, it's just not worth it. Sometimes -- and it's hard to accept this in the 21st century -- no diagnosis can be made. The human body is still weird and mysterious. My other ear was working all right. So, let's see what happens. 

Well, what happened was, five years and one pandemic and one "fortified" election and two-going-on-three impeachments and St. George Floyd and men playing women's sports and runaway inflation and a genuine threat of nuclear war later, here I am again, and I can only hope I'm doing better than every other dad blasted thing out there is. Will let you know. 

Cola... of the Future!

Okay, so what the hell is Coke up to now?

Y3000 Coca-Cola is literally being sold as the Coke of AD 3000, "Created to show us an optimistic vision of what’s to come, where humanity and technology are more connected than ever." Personally I think a lot of the problems we have right now can be traced to humanity and technology being over-connected, and I'm not just being an old fart about this. In the eighties no one was addicted to smartphones, no one talked about an epidemic of loneliness, obesity rates were much lower, psychosis did not spread like the cold or flu, kids had better ambitions than to become "influencers," and the United States had a lot more good-paying jobs that weren't all about servicing the computers. 

But what the ever-loving heck does any of this have to do with soda pop?

Supposedly the formula of this stuff is "the taste of the future," but what that future is supposed to taste like, no one knows. If you listen to the World Economic Forum, it's crickets, at least if you're not part of the nomenklatura. 

Well -- spoiler alert! -- this stuff does not seem to taste like crickets to me. I thought it was all right, a nice change from other soft drinks, but it did taste familiar. After a few sips I realized that it reminded me of tea. Orange pekoe, perhaps blended with some Earl Grey. This is my opinion, but it is completely honest. In other words, I'm not being purposely weird in saying that the "taste of the future" actually tastes like cola mixed with the same soft drink we've been consuming for almost five thousand years. 

I think they should have introduced it as Multiverse Coke, or Coca-Cola if we'd lost the Revolutionary War. "This Iced Tea Pop is quite refreshing, old man! Dare I say — it is the Real Thing!"

How did Coke come to decide that this was FutureTaste? They say artificial intelligence was involved, but in what way? "Hey, AI, give us the formula for the new Coke!" You'd think they'd be touting the details, at least whatever they could divulge without exposing Coke's super secret formula that no one will ever discover. But they are mum.

I have my doubts that artificial intelligence was involved in any serious manner. As an example of AI's current state, I asked an AI image generator to give me a future man drinking soda. Here's a couple of images. 

The future is ugly, as well as stupid. 

One last note: I didn’t find this Coke in the supermarket, but rather in the dollar store, where brand ideas go to die. I thought it tasted interesting, but my wife thought it an unpleasant combination of cinnamon and other spices that didn’t go with cold soda. Maybe it would be better served hot.

Give it The Face.

I gave this giraffe to my wife years ago as an office mascot. She's got a different desk now, so she returned it to me for my use. Naturally I am thrilled. 

Look at that guy! Bendable, unlike me. Love the face: What a perfect mixture of shock and confusion. Maybe some disgust as well. He has no tag anymore, but I think he may have been a product of the late, lamented Alex Toys, a firm based in New Jersey. Alex was a fun company; lots of clever hands-on stuff for kids of all ages. In the early part of this century they were making baby toys that usually had powerful colors like this giraffe, colors that scientists said babies could see well with their underdeveloped vision. Lots of red and black, as if the babies were training to be Stendahl scholars. That seemed very important at the time, but now we're in the boho baby era, and things are more muted. I don't know if that's why Alex went under in 2020 -- its assets were sold, and the name survives in Canada under the name Alex Global Products. 

Or it could he was from some other outfit.

I think I'm going to like having him with me as I work. I'll just let him respond for me. For example, if someone reaches out and says they have a 500-page book that needs proofreading by Wednesday, I'll just let the giraffe handle it.

And he could come in handy for other statements. Like, "You know, COVID-19 was totally not invented by the Chinese lab that just happened to be working on weaponizing that exact virus."

Or, "When we say 'fortified the election,' we don't mean it was stolen, we just mean it was... boosted, like with a supplement."

"Peaceful but fiery protest."

"The economy is roaring! There are rich people in every city!"⭐

"Dudes who play women's sports ARE women!"

You get the idea. 

Well, I think I'm ready for Monday. But if things keep going the way they have been, I may have to get a whole menagerie of these animals. I'd wear this guy's face right out in no time. 

🦒🦒🦒🦒🦒

⭐This was basically the argument on a recent GLoP Culture podcast, that America is not in danger because we still have rich people in all the cities. I think the hosts have been spending too much time on yachts (there was an actual Mediterranean yacht story) and not enough time with families using credit cards to buy groceries, but what do you expect? An Eli, a guy who inherited a magazine from his dad, and a guy whose parents were both machers in the publishing industry who (incredibly!) became a writer.