Happy New Year

2021 was undoubtedly a lot better than the media led us to believe, but there's still room for optimism for the coming year. Anyway, if not, there's always personal growth, which seems to be independent of the generally crappy stuff going on around us if not actually spurred by it. So here's to personal growth, good health, successful diets, published works, friendly dogs and tolerant cats.  And everybody's cars start. As a bonus, maybe Trump will be arrested and his head banged into the door opening as he is guided into the back seat of the squad car.  

Oops. There went some of my personal growth. 

Be safe. Notice the world, and remember you're almost never actually in a hurry. 

"See you on the other side, Ray."  -Dr. Peter Venkman

The Wheels Fall Off

 In a strange development, I sold my car back to the dealership where I bought it and intend to live without a car, at least for the next foreseeable period of time. It's not as bad as it sounds. My partner and friend and resident molecular biologist, J____, has a car.  We decided that we probably only need the one. As she pointed out, not once in all of last year did a situation arise where we each needed a car at the same time to go to two different places. Since we are moving to an urban situation (in just a few weeks now) we will need a car or cars even less, so the theory goes. We will be living one block away from a streetcar stop, and even without the streetcar, several restaurants, one hardware store, and about three grocery stores, a pharmacy, library, FedEx store, etc. etc. are all within easy walking distance. 

Of course there's no nearby Target or Best Buy or giant mall, whatever, but J___ has her little red car and, anyway, we're about two minutes from three Interstates going off in all directions. Any inconvenience is offset by three factors: no monthly parking garage fee, no car payment, no insurance payment.  Four: no depreciation-, and because the prices of used cars has shot up so much due to Covid related shortages, I sold my car for a little more than I paid for it new, (I only had it about eight months. If/when I need another car, the prices will hopefully have dropped back down to something more realistic. 

This will be the first time I have not owned a car in roughly five and a half decades. I like to point this out. My first car was a '50 Ford, and my last car (so far) was another Ford, 70 years newer, exactly. In between, there were no Fords, but that's another story that won't be told due to lack of interest. I like cars as a matter of principle and in part of my early life they were pretty tightly woven into my ego, my identity, at least in some ways. It seems just a little liberating to contemplate life without one, now, kind of like when I got rid of so much junk a few years back and sold my house. 

Anyway, I'll let you know when I get tired of this and buy another car. But, maybe . . . oh well. 

Usenet

 Every now and then I think about the early days of the Internet and how much the very thought of all this technology made everything so much more fun. I don't think that way now--now, I think technology has been apprehended and misused by the terminally shallow, and by that I mean little, self-aggrandizing personalities struggling to be the star of their own show on social media . . . wait . . . is that what I'm doing here? 

Anyway. the first social media seemed to be, or was for me, Usenet, a sort of public email arranged in chains, called threads, and it was immediately put to use as a method of ridiculing other people.  That's not fair, of course. But as something that made the wheel look pedestrian, the Internet fell short of being the salvation of mankind. I'll just say that. It was fun anyway. In my case, it was a way not only to put myself out there but to exercise my writing skills and hone my thinking processes. Writing to a hostile, critical audience, especially one that has a quick and easy mechanism to deliver scathing feedback, one learns to make their writing air-tight. This is a shame, in a way, because air-tight writing quickly becomes harsh and clinical and dry. 

So, eventually, Usenet became stressful. Not willing to give it up, I became philosophical about it, which was a nice quantum chunk of personal growth for me (not to imply that I always veer off in the right direction,) And my writing got better. Additionally, since I like to joke around and I get a rush from making people laugh, I worked on making funny replies to Usenet posts. Eventually I got to (think I) know some of the other people there--always struggling, of course, to remind myself they were just people like me, sitting somewhere at a desk in front of a bulging CRT computer screen typing away on some giant clackety keyboard connected to a big, whirring box by a thick cord--like I said, early days. There was probably also a modem whose speed was measured in baud rate--line changes per second, and since I worked for the phone company, not to be confused with bit-rate. Like, who even cares anymore. 

For all its good points, one being that it gave me something to do in the morning when I woke up before everyone else and another that it helped open up those neural pathways that enable writing in the first place, Usenet finally sort of died. It sort of went away.  It's still kind of there, but it has become truly silly and irrelevant since, it seems, all good things, if sufficiently and cheaply available, soon belong to those with the lowest standards. You could see it happening. 

But I noticed two notable exceptions.  There were two Usenet groups, or communities, that defied this almost inevitable entropy of intentions. I'll be damned if I can now remember the exact name of the groups . . . one had to do with photography in Newfoundland, and the other with Jewish culture. 

The Newfoundland group was great. While members of other groups concentrated on flaming and belittling and generally "pwning" other members, the good people of Newfoundland here were posting pictures and trading comments back and forth.  Not "get a life you loozer" but stuff like, "nice picture. I was there last week and saw those blue barrels and wished I had my camera with me." Super polite, and very supportive of each other, even if the posted picture was actually really, really bad. I stumbled across this group and as silly as it sounds, it was like a breath of fresh air. Real people, polite people. What a concept. 

I do remember the name of the Jewish group:  soc.culture.jewish.  Also not generally negative and hostile in tone, it was characterized by what seemed like a serious intention of relaying information and of discussion. I always found something interesting in there and I read that group often even though I never felt qualified to contribute anything. 

But one day I did post a question. I had recently discovered that Hebrew became the official language of Israel in 1948. I read that it was intentionally modified to modernize it a bit so it could actually be used in the then current era. So I asked the question, why was that done, and just how?  Two people responded to my post. Recognizing, apparently, that I was neither Jewish nor that well-informed, each of them submitted a satisfyingly lengthy post in reply that was clearly and lucidly written, thorough, and essentially helpful. These two Usenet people were kindly and consciously helping me. By the way, I could have taken either reply and turned it in as a college paper and, I'm sure, gotten an A+. And I was genuinely moved by the intent. Here is what the Internet is for, I thought.

Now look at it. 

Stupid Click-Bait Ads Below Internet Articles

I mean, this kind of speaks for itself, but let's talk about it for just a minute. First, from reading the caption, I think this is supposed to be about Millennials and Baby Boomers.  That is, Millennials and their parents. The woman pictured is obviously some Baby Boomer's mom. I doubt Millennials can't stand their grandparents.  Not most of them anyway. 

So, a picture that any Baby Boomer would recognize as a young woman who is, or was, a member of "the Greatest Generation," i.e. WWII era parent. I have to conclude that this ad is meant to annoy Baby Boomers, and, you know, it might, if it wasn't so stupid. 

Just for the record, I feel like I want to add that I really don't care what Millennials can't stand about me. This is so for two reasons: 1.) it doesn't hurt my feelings, and b.) I don't care. 

On Politics--A Coffee Fueled Rant

Care should be taken when thinking about something if the idea of opposites becomes part of the argument. For example, the belief that liberals are the opposite of conservatives will surely take you down the wrong path. Just because it’s not true. Not only that, it’s pretty much never true. 

Consider that hot and cold are considered opposites, but how could you say 32 degrees is the opposite of 105 degrees? For on a scale that goes from the freezing point of water to the temperature of the surface of the sun, say, the range from 32 degrees to 105 degrees is but a very tiny segment of the range of all possible temperatures. 

 Let’s do I.Q.s. What is the opposite of “intelligent?” Well, that kind of depends on where you are on that scale. (I’ve said this before.) On a scale of 1-100, where a rock is 1 and God is 100, where is Albert Einstein? Where is Lennie in Of Mice and Men? Is it possible that Einstein is a 37.3, and Lennie and 37.1? Where are you? 

 And in the midst of all this, we are “divisive” and “polarized” because we have Republicans on one side, and Democrats on the other. Conservatives here, and then Liberals over here. The Rabid Right and the Looney Left. But these two ideologies are not opposites. Not if you consider what the actual range of governing ideologies of human societies is. You might come closer if you name Attila the Hun and, say, Denmark. Just guessing, here. 

 We need to knock this off and figure out what needs to be done here.

Instagram Philosophy

The CEO of Instagram recently announced that IG will no longer be a photography, or "still picture" forum. They mainly want videos and "stories," he said. This of course is because that's what interests the demographic they are trying to woo. It is not what I want to do, and not what I want to look at. It's not why I'm there. I'm not really interested in being a "creator" or an "influencer," for that matter, either.

I'll skip the tirade about what photography is and why we do it. I'll say that IG, in it's old, original form, was an interesting, quaint way to share casual pics of interesting things of beauty we might have stumbled across, or to reveal details of each of our own particular environments. And the mostly imposed square format we had to work with was a fun challenge to compositions. And of course we could be forgiven for the occasional selfie or cat pic. 

As I navigated around IG's account settings in search of a way to download all my pictures in preparation for deleting my account, should my disgruntlement reach that tripping point, I discovered the database that IG has on me--it is for targeting ads--and it consists of pretty much every google search I've ever made. I don't know how they got it, but it's just another reminder that most of these platforms are massive, offensive invasions of privacy. That might be something I would readily accept if only Instagram were more fun. But it's not, so I don't. 

The Cafe

 How to describe E_______ Cafe? That's tough, for me, because I've been there too many times. It sits off the street in an area that used to be a vital little stretch of stores long since gone out of business and re-opened lately in the form of little art studios and a puppet museum, a Mexican restaurant, and a hair salon, maybe some others. 

E_______ Cafe has been there probably throughout all of this from the very beginning. A one story building in an L shape, with long windows and neon signs identifying the cafe and declaring it "open." There are a couple of entrances. It's not shiny clean inside, but just clean. The tables, the floor, the acoustic tile ceiling, the counter, the little kiosk where the cash register is, they're all old but serviceable. The food is good, if not healthy, strictly speaking. Gravy is involved. The pancakes are huge and hang over the edges of the plates they're served on. This is the Midwest. 

The waitresses don't wear uniforms--they wear jeans and tops beneath a variety of hair-dos. The customers are mostly regulars, and there's a lot of them. They talk across tables at people they know. Old couples, some with walkers, but most not. Men who work outside and are on break, or who stopped for breakfast on their way to the first job. Sometimes small families with kids. Everyone's wearing jeans. If it's winter, the men are also wearing flannel shirts and canvas Carhart jackets, probably, and give-away logo ball caps. These, the caps, stay on, walking in, seated, eating, talking.  In warmer weather it's T-shirts, some with messages printed across them. Don't read them. 

On the way in, you see a coffee can set on the sidewalk by the door with cigarette butts in it. Inside, in the men's room, at least, someone thought it appropriate to hang a "no smoking" sign. 

And the prices are reasonably low, the service impeccable if not elegant, and the food really is pretty good. Eventually, if you visit often enough, the waitresses know you and say hi when you walk through the door, and usually bring coffee the way you like it without first asking.