Friday, December 8, 2023

Like, Wow!

A Random Randomnesses Column

Image by Terre Di Cannabis from Pixabay

This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny  the Stickies — to advise 'em now, haunt them after I'm deleted.

Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC-65: Sexy Seasoned Citizens   

About 

Glossary 

Featuring {Dana}Persistent auditory hallucination and charming literary device 

“To inspire himself, he lit up a marijuana cigarette, excellent Land-O-Smiles brand.” -Philip K. Dick, from The Man in the High Castle


Dear Stickies (and gentlereaders),  

Like, wow. I've written several columns that use the now apparently ubiquitous discourse marker (aka a filler, filled pause, hesitation marker, planner, or crutch) like. 

For the record, I wish to point out that I was like, being sarcastic.

However, I've recently encountered the word here, there, and occasionally even over there, and spoken out loud and repeatedly, by seemingly intelligent and rational people. Given how rapidly f-bombs are becoming f-firecrackers I expect it's only a matter of time before I encounter a demure, genteel-looking woman of a certain age exclaim — like, FUCK!  — while rooting through her purse in search of her car keys.

{That's sexist and agist! You can't...}

According to Wikipedia, "Christopher Hitchens described the use of the word "like" as ..."a particularly prominent example of the 'Californianization of American youth-speak.'" 

Indeed. The Boomer legacy continues. 


The recent off-off-year election (that I wrote about not long ago) here in the Buckeye state went off without a hitch, unlike the inevitable cluster coitus next year's national election is already shaping up to be. The post-election hitches, unfortunately, are legion.

Let the litigation begin! continue! 

While weed is now legal in Ohio ya can't just show up at any of the existing outlets that already sell medicinal weed and cop some chronic. From the Akron-Beacon Journal: "The Division of Cannabis Control must first set rules on licensing, product standards, packaging and more." 

They have nine months to do so, so I figure it will be a year or so... maybe.

"The state can't dole out additional licenses for another two years." Enter the Social Equity Program.

"This aims to help business owners who are disproportionately affected by the enforcement of marijuana laws. That includes people who are disadvantaged based on their race, gender, ethnicity or economic status.

"The law reserves 40 cultivation licenses and 50 dispensary licenses for these operators and provides them with grants, loans, technical assistance, and reduced license and application fees. The Department of Development is tasked with setting specific rules for the program."

If I were a lawyer I'd be salivating. 

{What about the abortion rights amendment to the Ohio Constitution?}

Passed. 56.6% yea, 43.4% nay. 

Big BUT, there were already various and sundry related legal actions tied up in the courts  the infamous six weeks with no exceptions for minor problems like rape, incest, or the mother's health law for example  prior to the vote, and more are being filed even as I write. 

But in the meantime, the same law that was in effect before the current kerfuffle remains in effect. Abortion is legal with certain civilized restrictions (such as no partial-birth abortions). 

{Then why on Earth...}

On a possibly related note, statewide primary elections are just around the corner.


If two people with two last names get married, do their kids have four last names? I went a-googlin' and can confidently report that I have no clue. In my defense, neither does anyone else. 

As best I can tell, there are no legal restrictions. Like gender choice and pronouns, you can follow your heart. 

Perhaps this will serve as a wakeup call to all the hes, shes, and theys out there to think twice before saddling their spawn with bizarre first names, or even traditional ones with mangled spellings likely to lead to a lifetime of peer abuse, psych meds, and therapy. 

On a practical note, filling out a form when one's last name is something like Smith-Jones-von Pufendorf-Garcia is clearly potentially problematic.

{Congress needs to step up and do something about this!}

Don't hold your breath. Congress can't seem to deal with truly important issues, like whether or not we should get rid of daylight savings time or make it permanent. On the bright side, twice a year the endless controversy gives reporters and commentators something to write about on slow news days.


This just in... henceforth December 7th will not only be famous for being Mark and Ronnie's wedding anniversary, Aunt Brenda's birthday, and some other thing... Oh yeah, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Today it's legal to smoke weed in Ohio. 

Big BUT, a few days ago it occurred to our five-foot-tall governor that there was no place to actually buy recreational weed — well, at least no government-approved, licensed, inspected, all fees paid outlets —and he has sprung into action. 

At his behest, the State Senate passed a new law, on December 6th, to replace the ballot initiative the hoi polloi passed last month that, among several other things: 

Cuts back on the amount of weed adults can grow in the privacy of their homes, raises the sin tax from 10 to 15%, permits local jurisdictions to add 3% on top of that, and allows existing dispensaries selling medical weed to start selling to the public — 90 days after (and if) he signs the new bill, as long as they comply with some new Rules&Regs.  

{I smell a rat... wait, if he signs?}

That's the smell of a new strain called Ratso Rizzo, my priest stopped by this morning. 

Ohio also has a full-time House of Representatives who will consider the new bill next week and who knows what sort of mischief they might get up to. Cluster coitus is always possible in Columbus. Irregardless, I'll bet the current black market merchants of the Devil's Weed are partying. 

Poppa loves you,
Have an OK day


Scroll down to leave a comment, share my work, or access my golden oldies.   

I post links to my columns on both Facebook and the social media site formerly known as Twitter so you can love me, hate me, or lobby to have me canceled or publically flogged on either site. Cranky don't tweet (X-claim?).  

 

Friday, December 1, 2023

What Would I Do If I Knew I was Dying?

What would you do? 

Image by Lothar Dieterich from Pixabay

This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny  the Stickies — to advise 'em now, haunt them after I'm deleted.

Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC-65: Sexy Seasoned Citizens   

About 

Glossary 

Featuring {Dana}Persistent auditory hallucination and charming literary device 

"Dunbar was lying motionless on his back again...he was working hard at increasing his life span. He did it by cultivating boredom." -from the novel Catch 22 by Joseph Heller


Dear Stickies (and gentlereaders),  

I'm in no immediate danger of deletion as far as I know, but obviously I'm slowly but steadily dying, just like you. Actually, I know what I would do, and I'm doing it, but I don't have any advice to offer. Most people would find this particular geezers lifestyle rather boring I suspect.   

{You're doing it again.}

Doing what?

{We've talked about this. All the many writers and teachers out there who try to earn their daily bread by writing about writing advise crafting killer first sentences. It's the age of too much of everything so ya gotta reach out and grab 'em by the... throat in some form or fashion if you wish to succeed.}

"Having recently turned 39 for the 31st time it's occurred to me that at any given moment if the doorbell were to ring and I peered out my peephole to see who was standing on my stoop I might see a tall individual wearing a black, full-length hoodie with a hood that completely shielded his/her/their face, assuming he/she/they even had a face, and carrying a large scythe."

Better?

{Too long, H. sapiens devolving attention spans will soon rival the attention spans of goldfish, but it could be worse... What's a scythe?}

That large, scary-looking, curved blade with a long handle ("...an agricultural hand tool for mowing grass or harvesting crops") the Grim Reaper is always pictured with. The Grim Reaper's called the Grim Reaper because he/she/they use theirs to harvest human souls. 

For the record, I'm not speaking of the (almost famous?) heavy metal band called Grim Reaper formed in the 1980s who apparently have been breaking up and reforming ever since. I've never heard of them but when I typed Grim Reaper into the Googometer the first hit returned was a Wikipedia entry about the band.

{Just because you've never heard of them... wait, do you mean a sickle?}

No, a sickle is a small scythe, picture the symbol for communism, the hammer and sickle? In fact, my family owned a sickle (I assume it was originally Grandma Barbs?) when I was a kid. For the longest time, I thought sickle was how you pronounced the word scythe as I couldn't imagine how you would pronounce such an ugly word. 

{Were your parents communists?} 

No, Senator McCarthy, not to my knowledge, merely traditional working-class Democrats back when the Democrats were the party of the working class and it was possible for a privileged patriarch to support a family while simultaneously oppressing his stay-at-home wife. 

However, given he had seven kids to feed and had to paint a lot of walls and trim to do so, I suspect that neither he nor Mum felt particularly privileged. 

{They should've had fewer kids. Three is enough to keep the Social Security Ponzi scheme going and prevent the pending population collapse other countries are already starting to experience.}

You make a valid point but since I'm number five I confess I'm glad they didn't. Oh, and for the record, I don't have a doorbell or a peephole as all visitors to Casa de Chaos must first be cleared by security at the main gate. Just putin' that out there. 


Life's a bitch and then you die. How many times have you heard someone say that? Have you ever thought about the logical contradiction expressed by that statement? If life's a bitch isn't death an effective solution to the problem? 

I was taught by Sister Mary McGillicuddy that if I followed all the Rules&Regs she and the Roman Catholic Church were going to a great deal of trouble to teach me, by marinating me in them all day every day of the school year, that when I died I would live in paradise, forever and ever, amen.

And yet, various believers in various ideologies, religious and otherwise (Muslims and the multiple virgin thing springs immediately to mind for some reason), most of us (fortunately) don't have a death wish. 

Just the opposite in fact.  


I'm old, so I read the obituaries every morning in what's left of Hooterville's daily paper. I do this in case someone I have, or rather had, a connection with that wasn't close enough to result in the dreaded phone call has died. It's a sorta/kinda socially responsible thing to do. 

{Whatever you do, don't tell your gentlereaders about your unfortunate tendency to think, "Ha, beat-cha!" whenever you come across the obituaries of people born the same year as you or later.}

You realize, Dana, that I could start taking my meds again and you're outta here, right? Anyway, I've noticed two things about the use of my favorite obituarial phrase — _______ received his/her heavenly wings (or one of its celestial variations) — seems to be declining. 

Entered into Eternal Rest is topping the charts nowadays, at least in the Greater Hooterville Metropolitan Area. I confess I don't know how they do things in Cleveland. 

Also, I've yet to read an obituary that has used the word their instead of his or her. Too soon I guess.  

{Obituarial is an actual word?}

Yes indeed, as is obituarist, yet another career opportunity I would've been good at that never occurred to me to pursue when I was a callowyute.

Well, I gotta go. I'm off to the doctor's office. Nothing to worry about, it's probably just heartburn. 

Poppa loves you,
Have an OK day


Scroll down to leave a comment, share my work, or access my golden oldies.   

I post links to my columns on both Facebook and the social media site formerly known as Twitter so you can love me, hate me, or lobby to have me canceled or publically flogged on either site. Cranky don't tweet (X-claim?).

Friday, November 24, 2023

Artificial Intelligenci

Image by Andy from Pixabay

This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny  the Stickies — to advise 'em now, haunt them after I'm deleted.

Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC-65: Sexy Seasoned Citizens   

About 

Glossary 

Featuring {Dana}Persistent auditory hallucination and charming literary device 

"With artificial intelligence, we are summoning the demon." -Elon Musk 


Dear Stickies (and gentlereaders),  

I've been watching too many videos about artificial intelligence. I found a YouTube channel, Digital Engine, that has highly informative videos about the subject that predict we're about to enter the golden age of golden ages... or that the end of the world is neigh. 

Too soon to tell. 

I ordered my research department to conduct a sweeping survey of the worldwide web of all knowledge and to consult with various and sundry experts and get back to me ASAP with a comprehensive report.

Result: Too soon to tell. 

As best I can tell all sorts of stuff is happening and will continue to happen, at an accelerating pace. I... 

{Your keen eye for the obvious is obviously not in need of a corrective lens. Hey, ever wonder why monocles have never come back in style? Ya'd think that some fashion-obsessed hip group of the moment would've attempted to reintroduce something that's so distinctive by now.}

As to my...

{How about "smart" monocles? And faux cigarette holders that are actually nicotine/weed vaporizers. That would look cool. You could complete the look with tophats that contain all the electronics an (allegedly) woke capitalist needs for pitch meetings — with a tiny solar panel on top.}

Are you done? As to my keen eye for the obvious, Dana, what I was going/trying to say was that despite all the warnings of potential disaster being issued by the same techies who are racing to develop artificial intelligenci... 

{That's just CYB — cover your bum.} 

...So as to add another billion or two to their pile, the "experts" are now saying we're going to be shocked at how fast the tech is going to reach the point that major disruptions will start occurring. But who knows? I was 17 the first time I heard the classic definition of an expert: a bonkercockie artist more than 50 miles from home. 

{You should insert some relevant links at this point, links to experts contradicting the conventional wisdom of the experts mentioned in the previous paragraph.}

I don't know if you've noticed, but my current policy is to try and avoid links on matters of opinion and try to stick with links to stuff that would at least seem to be a matter of widely accepted fact so as to try and avoid Uh-huh/Nuh-uh syndrome. 

And before you say anything, linking to my opinioned glossary, as I just did, doesn't count. As Lesly Gore sang, "It's my column, I'll opine if I want to." 

{The Artificial Intelligenci will eventually help us to get Uh-huh!/Nuh-uh! syndrome under control, right? Even if it will never be eliminated?}

Too soon to tell.


The real-life Tony Stark, Elon Musk — a man I admire despite and because the neoestablishment is trying to render him de facto canceled (who is also a perfect example of why, if you can't rock facial hair, you should shave every day as I do) — is developing his own version of an artificial intelligence called Grok. 

He's concerned that AI tech might kill off us meat puppets or extend the powers of the neoestablishment. But he also believes that the technology, executed properly, could turn out to be even better than sliced bread. 

(FYI: For those too old/comfortable to remember and/or those of you too young to have been taught much history, we used to admire people like Musk in America despite the fact they were/are as flawed as the rest of us, for creating a world our ancestors could only dream of.

{How about some links?}

Again with the... fine, click on Grok if you're unfamiliar with the word. It was invented by writer Robert A. Heinlein. To grok means fundamentally to understand, intuitively, but has subtle shadings that mean different things to different people. That's the sort of AI Musk is trying to develop 

Links, aka hyperlinks, are a wonderful/terrible invention. They make it possible to send a reader to another source of information without having to write a paragraph (or several paragraphs) to explain something.

They're almost unavoidable given that the foundations of what used to be a more or less shared culture are being eroded by the Dizzinformation Ocean.  

But they also make it possible to send a reader down a rabbit hole from which they may never return, or supply the writer with income via firms who will pay him/her/them a few cents every time someone follows a link that turns out to be a product push.

There are people who make a living selling other people's stuff, via links, who may or may not alert the reader as to what they're up to. There are other people who make a living by supplying the links. There are yet other people who make a living by teaching people how to make a living by peppering their writing with links.

{Tell it keen eye! What's this got to do with AI?}

You created this digression by yammering on about links!  


Anyways... my gentlereaders have no way of knowing if I wrote this column, if an AI wrote this column, or both, so perhaps we've already crossed the Rubicon, excuse me, Rubicon. 

{Both?}

I use the free version of a spelling/grammar checker (Grammarly) as I'm a terrible speller. I've stuck with the free version which is, or at least was, mostly a spell checker as I don't hesitate to go rogue when it comes to grammar/usage rules so...   

{You're a wild man.} 

However, the free version now offers up suggestions about rearranging sentences that "it" thinks would improve my writing style accompanied by sales pitches for the paid version which I gather is chock full of artificial intelligence technology.  

I don't begrudge them for trying to sell a product; I mention this as an example of how fast the technology is spreading. Hopefully, my writing style is idiosyncratic enough that you're confident you're still reading the rants and ramblings of a garrulous geezer, dear gentlereaders.

Big BUT, how would you know punny humans?

Poppa loves you,
Have an OK day


Scroll down to leave a comment, share my work, or access my golden oldies.   

I post links to my columns on both Facebook and the social media site formerly known as Twitter so you can love me, hate me, or lobby to have me canceled or publically flogged on either site. Cranky don't tweet (X-claim?).