I Reject This

If you build your religious and cultural identity on such messages, I want no part of your religion or your culture.

As a descendant of the huddled masses on both sides of the family, I reject this message.

And I reject your use of a symbol of freedom and a poem written to embody that symbol as tools of your hatred.

Go to hell, sit on a hot coal, and rethink your terrible choices. This is all I hear:

And now I'm seeing this picture in other forms.

. . . Stupid Sheep Movie Making Me Cry . . .

So tonight we watched The Sheep Detectives with Hugh Jackman.

Oh my goodness. I knew I was going to laugh, but I didn't expect to cry that much. Not that it takes much to make me cry at a movie anymore, but wow. Niagara Falls, Frankie Angel.

I won't spoil things. But Hugh Jackman hit this one out of the park, and he's dead for 2/3 of the movie. Reminiscient of James Cromwell in Babe for an understated performance.

But this is an ensemble cast, and they shine.

A few familiar faces and voices, but to me mostly unknowns, and I think that made it work. (When I say unknowns, it's really unknown to me, and I'm an out of it fud, so if that hurts your feelings, sorry.)

Location is ambiguous, and maybe so intentionally. Certainly an odd mix of American and European autos, and that village certainly had many more neon signs than you'd expect from something quaintcountrysidesque.

Definitely a movie that made me cry, right to the end, and I was almost robbed of that second happy ending I knew had to come but there it was.

Clong Bong Doyoyoing

I have, of course, been drawn to novelty music since my older brother Jeff introduced me to Weird Al Yankovic and my mother introduced me to Spike Jones.

Since those young days, though, I've gone through several odd sound rabbit holes and found something fun today: A collection of odd noises from the BBC.

Now we Americans have our fair share of odd noises, but to hear the odd noises of a different culture is fun.

The "clong bong doyoyoing" is, if I'm honest, a little disasppointing, but you don't want to miss the "Irish Nightingale."

"Several Men Coughing," however, is downright disturbing.

Porch Rail

When I rebuilt the porch steps a few years ago, I pondered whether I should build a rail. I decided at the time a rail wasn't necessary, though a few people suggested I might want one in the future.

Well, today was the day.

This is mainly in place so when Michelle's Dad comes to let the dogs out when we're gone he has a rail to help get him up and down the stairs. Fair enough; he's approaching 90 and is still mobile, so we should do what we can to keep that mobility going as much as possible.

I used some redwood I had left over from the steps project, but had to go to Ace Hardware to buy $30 worth of fasteners. Eight carriage bolts at just shy of $3 each; not cheap.

And I managed the typical flaw -- one of the nuts I brought home was a fine-thread out of the course-thread bin and wouldn't work with the carriage bolts I had. But luckily enough I found a nut that would work in the garage, so I didn't have to go to the store again.

It does make it a little bit harder for Dottie to go exploring - and pooping - under the stairs, so maybe that's a good thing.

It's sturdier than I dared hope. Behold, as my meaty hand and pimply voice demonstrate:

I hope it passes muster when Michelle gets home, but I feel good about it.

I Have Several Problems with This

Who on God's green earth decided that several means more than one, but even more ludicrously "more than two but fewer than many"?

What does that even mean?

Where, pray tell, is many's lower limit, and while we're at it, where is the upper limit of several?

I'm still grappling with the difference in meaning between will and shall (hint: there is none, and I cannot be convinced otherwise), and now you're shoving this several malarkey in my face?

Terry Pratchett's trolls have a better grip on numbers: One, two, many, lots. At least their system - and that is their nomenclature in total - makes more sense than this "more than two but fewer than many" business.

Anyway, this is what fills my mind as a distraction from my real task of standardising how dates appear in the reference section of a document, my latest effort in protecting the Snake River Plain Aquifer from democracy.

And lest you think I'm not properly anal, I pointed out as I rectified the dates in this particular voldrani that 2025 was not a leap year; thus the date of February 29 had to be an error.

This is what it feels like:

Not Quite 24 Hours Later

 

Critter No More

Critter in the craft room window well tonight. Whether a mole or a vole or a mouse, I can't tell.

But it's chewing into the sill board underneath the window.

Or at least it was. We put in some ramps to see if it would climb out, then thought better of it and started to get a bucket trap set up, but then I saw where he was - I was already in the well - so I stomped him flat.

I'm sorry, little critter. I deliberately took a life, and I feel like an ogre. But maybe that's better than dying - drowning, really - in the bucket trap.

I'm going to bed now. And then probably to hell.

AI Truck? [Chef's Kiss]

Found this in the wild today.

AI, of course, abounds.

But the best part is the truck. In the video linked above, it's backing up.

Behold:

Anything Fun?

My sister came over yesterday so she could print some stuff for her teaching job, and afterward we chatted for a bit. We got to talking, of course, about the fact that most of my family is in Island Park at scout camp, finishing up staff week and preparing for scouts to come in a few weeks.

That talk included her asking what I'd been up to, and I went through the ordinary litany of weekend chores, which this weekend included fixing a leak in the sprinkler system, trimming and burning branches from a few trees, and weeding the raspberries.

She asked the question: So, are you doing anything for you, for fun?

Honestly, I didn't have an answer.

I realized I've turned into Dad. The chores were actually pretty entertaining.

As of now, I've got most of the raspberries done -- I'm running the sprinklers for an hour to give them some water and to soften the ground up where I've got a patch of thistles growing.

I can run the water because I fixed the sprinkler system leak -- it feeds a spigot we use in the garden for watering.

And while I don't have all the tree branches trimmed, I have cut up and torched all of the branches I've felled along with all the old raspberry canes Michelle yoinked out of the garden a few weeks ago.

I have been taking breaks, intermittently working on a lesson for Sunday School tomorrow, and watching a little YouTube and playing a few games. Altogether, a relaxing and productive weekend, which is always good.

Yes, it's work. But it's work I want to do, and work I regard as valuable, So it's relaxing and important to see it done.

A University of Idaho Connection in Idaho Falls

This week I've really enjoyed reading Connie B. Otteson's "Unsung Heroes and Settlers of Bonneville County, Idaho," a local history book published in 2005.

It was a lucky find at a local thrift store, where I've found a good number of local history books. Now around here, we don't have a lot of history at least for whitey, going back if we're lucky only about 150 years.

Today's reading started out with a familiar story of the city's Village Improvement Society (which still exists, I found out) and a drive to import hardwood trees from back east and plant them all over town, notably on the numbered streets and in a park that would come to be known as Kate Curley Park, after one of the VIS' prominent boosters who was really tired of dragging the hems of her dresses in mud and horse doots.

While the VIS imported the trees from Iowa and Illinois, they wanted to find a more local expert to help them arrange and plant things, particularly in the park.

They found Charles Huston Shattuck, late of the University of Idaho's College of Forestry, where he was dean, and where he'd laid the groundwork for the tree cover and landscaping at that campus, including the Shattuck Arboretum, which of course bears his name.

I went to the university of Idaho and spent some time wandering through the arboretum, as it was between my first residence hall (the building in the lower right corner of the photo above) and the campus. It was crisscrossed with trails. Honestly, I thought it was just a bit of forest that the campus had preserved, it looked so natural. Come to find out it was just a weedy patch of bare ground before Shattuck started his work on it.

As much as I don't want to live on the numbered streets in Idaho Falls, I do love that the VIS had the foresight to bring in hardwoods and take the effort to plant trees in what was otherwise a sandy, wind-blown desert. And I'm glad they found an expert who produced the prettiest university campus in the state to help with the effort.

We came close when I was a kid at living in a house kitty-corner to Kate Curley Park, but it never came to fruition. I don't know why. But it's certainly a pretty neighborhood.

FOOD

One of our weenie dogs might be just a tad motivated by food.

Greener Pastries

It pays to self-edit fast in our family group chat, because if you don't, they'll jump on ya.

To be honest, I'm not sure what greener pastries might be either. Maybe something for St. Patrick's Day?

Aw Shucks, Part 2

So I found "The Will Rogers Book" at a local thrift store and figured I'd give him a whirl. He's a name kind of on the edge of my realm of knowledge and I knew he was lauded as the cowboy philosopher.

As I read the mini biography in the book, I initially scoffed at the claim that he was a major movie star. Then it hit me -- major in the silent era, with much of his filming happening in the 1920s and 30s.

The more I read his story and his writing, the more it hit me: He'd fit right in the social media age. His quips are short enough for Twitter, his personality homey enough to feed the Boomers on Facebook and his slick embrace of the new and unusual enough to make the crypto bros look at him for maybe a few seconds. He might have even minted his own LassoCoin.

He even died relatively young, crashing with pilot Wiley Post in the newfangled airplane shortly after they landed in a lagoon near Barrow, Alaska, when they got lost in a storm and stopped to ask directions.

Or maybe not. That's most likely me looking at his cornball through a modern lens.

And he is a bit cornball, echoing some of the crackerbarrel philosophy anyone who read Sinclair Lewis' books would be familiar with. He might be a star today, but certainly with the older folk, though some of them might call him woke.

So the book was okay, if definitely sounding a hundred years old.

Aw, Shucks . . .

I'll bet if I posted this on social media, I'd get some attention from certain folks:

We might be the wealthiest nation that ever existed, we might dominate the world in lots of things and because we are richer than all our neighbors or that anybody else, that dont necessarily mean that we are happier or really better off. The difference between our rich and poor grows greater every year. Our distribution of wealth is getting more uneven all the time. We are always reading "How many men paid over a million dollar income tax," but we never read about "how many there are that are not eating regular."

I'm certain I'd be told by some that I'm some sort of commie or libtard or whatever other junk epithets fly around today.

Except this was said by Will Rogers, likely sometime in the 1920s when he was at the apex of his fame. And shucks and by golly how much his home-spun common sense wisdom we need today, except of course for this commie crapola.

Because he'd be chased off social media these days. Maybe he was scorned back then; I think our ability to scorn people whose thoughts and attitudes that differ from ours aren't any different now than they were a hundred years ago, except that every stupid opinion is amplified online.

Anyway, have fun cherry-picking. That's all we're good at these days.

Eight-Legged Elephants

I got a peek today of what adult Sunday School might be like come September when our teaching time is cut to 25 minutes -- and it came because I substituted in Primary.

Twenty-five minutes is not a lot of time to teach one of our Come Follow Me lessons. I knew that going in, but figured this audience -- a bunch of nine-year-olds -- deserved a good lesson without any fluff.

We discussed the major points of the lesson: God allowing Israel to have a king to maybe convince them through poor kingmanship that God was the better leader; our callings being from God; and God looking not on the outward appearance, but on the heart, in that twenty-five minutes.

The spirit was strong in that room, and I know the kids felt it. They participated. They asked questions and made meaningful comments. They got a buzz from the object lesson of optical illusions as a fill-in for God looking on the heart and couldn't believe this elephant had eight legs.

They paid attention, even the kid I'd pegged as being the one most likely to be distracted.

It's gonna work, folks. Because God is in charge.

My Parents Raised A Complainer, Not A Quitter

Summer.

I remember summers being fun. Well, there was work, of course. Dad was a bricklayer, and as teenagers it was expected we'd go to work with him.

Some mornings were easier than others. I recall, with some guilt, feigning sleep one morning in the bedroom I had at the back of the garage until I heard Dad's truck roar to life and disappear. Then my day began. Nothing was said when he got home, but I knew I'd done wrong. So days like that were rare.

I'm beginning to have days like that now. Just like Dad, I get the Sunday Scaries and don't want to go to work tomorrow.

But . . . 

I'm the only line of defense between our family and poverty. I don't say that in any way to complain; it's just how things are at the moment. Michelle has been offered a salaried job with a local nonprofit for about $40,000 a year, which isn't much compared to our needs, but it certainly would help us make a dent in things. I don't know as yet what decision she's made on the job, but will support her whichever direction she decides to go.

I have at least ten years until I can retire. I keep checking our retirement accounts to see how they're doing, and they're growing slow but steady, which is what you want to see in such accounts. Still, part of me wishes they were growing faster so I could retire faster, but I'm going to have to stick things out.

I often think the cure is time off work. But though I take a day off here and there -- not all that many of those -- it doesn't help. I feel like I need a good block of time, minimum two weeks, to get a reset. I'll get a little bit of a break for about seven weeks starting in August when the online teaching gig takes a breather. and while that's welcome it often doesn't feel like enough.

Yes, I did just whinge about this. It's a constant theme in my life.

More AI Stupidity

I promise. I thought this was the stupidest AI screw-up I was going to see this week.

Well, AI went and topped itself. Behold:

The irony of their statement at the bottom: "Sometimes the most interesting facts are the ones nobody ever thinks to check" leads me - slightly - to believe this has been posted in an ironic way, but there's so much of this folderol around I can't even tell anymore. Again, part of the cognitive overload we're all dealing with as AI spreads further.

It is true Missouri has eight letters in its name. It is also true that Missouri borders eight states. But you know there are people out there -- even US citizens -- who are going to think it borders Mississippi, or that Arkansas, Kentucky, Illinois, and Iowa look like that. Or that any of these states look like that. I *think* they got the shape of Missouri right, but other than that . . . 

A Non-Tom Holt Tom Holt Novel

Something unexpected tonight: I finished reading a Tom Holt book that didn't read like many of the other Tom Holt books I've read.

While there was a love story - seems common to his stories, even if the lovers are numpties - there was none of the following:

1. An uncannily capable hero.

2. An uncannily capable hero who should have been a fish out of water but who instead adapted remarkably well to the circumstances.

3, A television reporter keen on getting the big story but generally there to flit around like a ninny.

4. Any mention of Dounreay Nuclear Power Station.

Those elements are as common as the letter E in all the other Tom Holt books I've read, but were absent in The Portable Door. Which made the story that much more enjoyable.

Paul and Sophie are the numpty loser central characters, hired by an old, mysterious firm to do what appears to be useless busywork that would make the Terrible Trivium from The Phantom Tollbooth blush.

As they stumble through organizing spreadsheets and scrying photos for bauxite deposits, they soon learn the secrets of the firm they work for and their putative powers that will probably remain putative.

The story's a slow burn; the eponymous portable door doesn't make an appearance until halfway through the book, and doesn't get used until there are only about a hundred pages left. True to form, it's used numptily.

The climax of the story spools out quickly, which was fantastic for a Tom Holt novel.

The copy I had, early on, had the naughty words crossed out, but as I kept reading the censoring disappeared, probably a sign that a former owner gave up on the story. I could do without the words myself, but I liked the story (I'm kind of a numpty myself).

Cognitive Overload

A note to my students today:

In the early days of the Internet - I'm old enough to remember life before Internet - New York University professor Clay Shirky wrote a few forward-thinking books about the good he saw the Internet creating. One of the books, "Cognitive Surplus," focused on people and institutions saw using their free time and intellect to create useful tools on the Internet.

He's now Vice Provost for AI and Technology in Education at NYU and might be thinking of writing a follow-up to his book, called "Cognitive Overload."

I have no idea if he's got such a book in the offing. But when I read "Your AI Use is Breaking My Brain," by Justin Koebler at the 404 media website, I felt the pain Koebler expressed in decrying the cognitive overload he's feeling in trying to sort artificial intelligence from human intelligence on the Internet.

Koebler - an Internet-based journalist - penned this as the closing of the linked article, and I think it's apt to my experience as of late on the Internet:

"What’s driving me crazy, then, is not the idea that AI exists or that people are using AI. It’s that I have a finite time on this earth that I mostly want to spend interacting with other human beings. I don’t want to be the person arguing with a robot, or wasting my time reading something that a real person couldn’t be bothered to write."

You'll have to surrender your email address to the website if you want to read the article, but it's otherwise free (since your email is the price you pay).

I bring this up not because I'm seeing a lot of AI use in class, but because I thought it was interesting. I'm feeling the fatigue Koebler expresses in trying to sort fact from fiction on the Internet, something that has been increasingly taxing over the last few decades, not just because of the advent of AI.

For any of you writing on AI use for your bibliography and final assignment, I'd highly consider using this article as one of your sources.

So Stupid it Hurts

This piece of AI slop is so stupid, it hurts.

Nevermind that we lost the Owyhees on this map. We are, to AI, Texas.

So it begs the question: Is OP ignorant, or illiterate? Hard to tell.

Suck it Up

I was within just a few clicks this morning of deciding to take the day off work.

Monday was rough, roughened even further by events within the last hour of the day. I went home in a foul mood.

Complained the whole night that I didn't want to go to work in the morning.

So the oldest - who does not have a job himself, being a full-time student - told me I'd have to suck it up and go. So instead of staying home this morning I sucked it up and went to work.

And was pleasantly suprised by how well today went. It wasn't fun by all means, but it certainly wasn't as bad as it could have been. Sucking it up - who knew that worked?

What?

 

I don't know what you want us to do, or what you expect to happen.

Maybe you didn't turn comments off. But if the admins did, may as well just delete the post.

Seeing a lot of crap like this on Facebook lately.

Just delete the post.

I'm Getting A Little Tired of This

I begin to detect a pattern.

An assignment is given. An iteration of the same assignment was given to others earlier in the year - twice in this case - but it's on my iteration the reckoning comes.

Many changes that could and should have been made prior. Why they're hitting now? Don't know.

But it happens a lot. Or at least with a frequency that makes me wonder why the reckoning always comes when it's my turn.

Scenarios, of course.

Maybe I'm the most compliant. Or the easiest to push around. Again, I don't know.

But I note it all.

I'm going to get the work done as directed, because that's what I do. And maybe that's why it hits me all the time. It's a little wearying.

No is No

My response below to the following question in a Scout forum I follow on Facebook:

We are in Scouting because we want to help the kids and enjoy doing what we're doing. We are not in Scouting to solve everyone else's "I need a volunteer" problem.

"Help me out for once" doesn't negate the other work (volunteer or paid) you're doing in or out of Scouting. As has been noted earlier, it's a knee-jerk statement meant to get a yes as a result of emotional manipulation.

No means no.

If they persist, this is what I'd say (putting my details into the scenario):

I work a full-time job and have a part-time teaching gig. I'm advancement chair for a troop and am involved in weekly scout meetings. I have a yard and household to take care of while my wife is away all summer working as a climbing director at scout camp. I teach every other week at my church. Which of these do you want me to give up so I can help you out?

If they have the audacity to pick one (and they probably would), I'd tell them I've already made commitments to the above and cannot take on any more obligations at this time.

In other words, no with embellishments.

The 100 Hats of Officer Jones

Spotted this in an episode of Barney Miller, and by this I mean the brochure, "The 100 Hats of Officer Jones" pinned to the bulletin board behind Fish:

Because I like to look up esoteric information I spot in the background of TV shows and movies, I looked this up.

Apparently, I'm very late to the Officer Jones party.

IMDB.com spotted it and talks about it.

The New York Times and The Gothamist will, of course, tell me about it for a fee or if I sign up for their website, which I ain't gonna do.

Even Goodreads has heard of it.

It came of a 1974 campaign to show the public (and police) how many different roles police had at the time, or things they could do to help the public. Interesting.

Last of the Fly of Despair

Today's last mad dash to get Michelle and company to camp for the summer:

First, get the jeep out of the trailer, get the battery installed and see if the whole things works again. I asked the boys to get it out of the trailer last night, but that didn't happen. I did get it out, got the battery installed (added a twig to the little bag of tools needed to install the battery) and it runs. Michelle had to start it -- I don't drive the thing so I don't know how -- and then Isaac tested it and it seems to be running fine, which is a relief.

Second, shopping. That wasn't on my list of things to do, but it was on Michelle's so I tagged along. Good thing I did as we ended up filling two carts of groceries for her COPE and climbing crew's training week.

She had more shopping to do, but plans on doing it on her own.

Third, the trailer the jeep was in needed new tires last year, so we took it to Big O for new tires. I stayed there while the boys took Isaac's truck to Kevin for another look at the transmission. He and Michelle were hauling the camper up to camp Wednesday night and made it as far as St. Anthony before he discovered his transmission was really hot and leaking. So we'll have to see what's going on with that.

Tires done, we took the trailer home, loaded the jeep, and then got some of Michelle's food for the week packed up along with some other gear, and Isaac is off to camp for the weekend, while Michelle finishes up a short work day and then will head up tonight. Isaac took the jeep trailer, making that two trips for the 21-year-old Honda Pilot up north for the week.

I hope all goes well. I hope they settle in and have an enjoyable summer. I hope all I hear is good news. I hope a lot.

Nailed It

Tom Holt, nailing the width and breadth of male relationships in two meaty paragraphs 

From his novel "The Portable Door."

The text:

In a way, it felt though all his adult life -- ever since he'd realised that girls weren't irrelevant alien creatures who only cared about inane trifles like hair-toggles and glittery nail varnish (instead of vitally important things, such as making balsa-wood aeroplanes and painting 1/72 scale model soldiers) but were in fact beautiful, terrifying creatures who never seemed to notice he was there -- all his life, he'd been pulling and heaving at a door that led into an enchanted garden, and quite suddenly he'd noticed that in face it opened inwards and all he had to do was push gently with the tips of his fingers.

That said, he hadn't got a clue what he was supposed to do next. Presumably at some point he was going to have to say something toe-curlingly embarrassing, and if that went okay there'd be kissing, and, well, stuff like that. Obviously he was all for that, just as he'd always really fancied owning a big yacht and sailing it single-handed to New Zealand. Now that he was at least part of the way along, he had the unpleasant feeling that his yacht was an open boat, and he was adrift in it in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. On the other hand, he assured himself -- after all, it couldn't be too difficult, could it? He considered his relatives; Uncle Trevor and Cousin Darren and Cousin Lorna's husband Eric, men with the personal charm of dustbins and just enough intelligence between the three of them to power a traffic light, and yet they'd all contrived to attract, woo, bed, and marry females, often not in that order. If they could do it, so could a lawnmower or an answering machine or a tin-opener or a small rock, and so, by implication, could he. In theory.

PLEASE! FIX MY HOUSE!

I'm a little tired of fixing things.

But I have to fix this -- replace it, really: the tee to one of our Camp Chef stoves. We have two, and neither one works. This one got boogered up in storage, with the bare nipple's threads getting pretty stripped. So I have to figure out how to replace it.

Looking online for spare parts is a dead end, as Camp Chef the company seems more intent on selling new units than letting owners of older units maintain or repair them.

Then there's the main floor toilet -- yes, another toilet problem.

The flusher handle rusted through, so I have to buy and install a new one. Not a huge task, mind you, but I'm a little weary of having to fix things. And I haven't even turned the lawn sprinklers on for the year.

UPDATE: The toilet is fixed.

UPDATE #2: I contacted the manufacturers of Camp Chef cookers, on the hope they'd have the parts. The guy I talked with first didn't recognize the parts at all, then said, in effect, my cooker is so old they don't have any parts nor do they manufacture them anymore, so good luck.

GET THE ARK

I mentioned earlier we've gotten a bit of rain today as I struggle to get the camper ready before Michelle takes it to camp next week.

The 1.29 inches of rain that have fallen today have certainly given the roof a test, and as far as I can tell, no leaks.

When it rains like this, parts of the neighborhood flood. This video shows Matchpoint drive just a block or two south from where we live. We usually get floods on just one side of the road, but we've had enough rain today that the two puddles joined, overwhelmed the sidewalks and started creeping up the driveways of a few of the houses. It's kind of a mess.

Update: 1.39 inches of rain.

Success. Maybe.

That's the sound of a camper water pump pumping.

What I don't see or hear is any leaking. I'm hopeful.

I won't be able to be sure until it stops raining buckets outside. But I do know the camper roof doesn't leak.

Damned Camper Leak

So this might be part of why the camper is leaking.

This morning I spotted some moisture along a bead in the threaded bit at the top, which connects to the fresh water tank. I hoped that was the source of the leak I spotted last week, but, alas, it was not.

Still it looked corroded enough to be replaced, and when I got it out and realized it was galvanized steel and rather corroded on the inside, it was clear it was only a matter of time before this part failed, so I opted to replace it, but with brass fittings less prone to corrosion.

Next up is refilling the filler neck and air pipe, which I could see were leaking when I filled the tank again. That, and the fact that at a certain water level in the tank the leaks stopped lead me to believe I've finally got the problem identified. Ran out of light today to get things done today because I had to go to Home Depot twice for parts because the first time I eyeballed it and got it wrong. That was dumb, but I've got the proper parts now.

Hoping tomorrow brings better news and a dry camper. Later this year I'll have to do something about the drain cock, as I think it's bunged up because it wants to drain into the camper now. That's not good.

Update: Stan Confirmed in Bloom County

Here's Stan getting his pencil sharpened, in the storyline where Trump buys the strip and fires everyone and we follow Steve Dallas trying to find a new comic strip job.

Ol' brain's still got it.

Hallucinations Continue

Help me take artificial intelligence more seriously, because as far as I'm concerned, the hallucinations are continuing.

For reasons, today I needed to verify my memory that the phrase "Let me sharpen your pencil, Stan," appeared in a Bloom County comic strip.

I know Berke Breathed, like many artists, is strict about keeping his comics off the Internet, but I knew there had to be somebody out there at least discussing this particular strip, because this is the Internet and everyone is there talking about everything, as Clay Shirky has led me to believe.

Of course the first thing that pops up on any search nowadays is an AI summary. This one I found to be comical.

Google's AI, shown below, denies any connection between the phrase and Bloom County, but pastes the comic use of the phrase on Garry Trudeau's Doonesbury, particularly on his character Joanie Caucus.

So wrong.

Also included, textual proof I had not mandela effected myself and that the phrase was indeed used in Bloom County.

But I thought I'd give AI the benefit of the doubt. I don't know my Doonesbury as well as my Bloom County. But searching for the link brought up bupkis, and, interestingly, denials from the same AI that the phrase has any connection to Doonesbury at all.

If I am in fact wrong and the phrase is used in the comic, I stand corrected. But this is clear proof to me that AI as far as searches go is still pretty much making things up as it goes along.

Including, maybe, character names. While I know of Joanie Caucus, internet searches for a Doonesbury character called Stan Mills come up empty.

This is definitely a low-stakes search. But how much hallucination is going on in searches with more substance?

Clearly, everything AI says ought to be taken with skepticism. And trying to verify information just leads you into another rabbit hole.

Nunya Business

File this under Things That Happen

Me: Alexa . . . [Notices TWO piles of dog doo by the back door even though I just had them out] Dammit dogs why'd you do that! I'm tired -

Alexa: Sounds like you're having some trouble with the pups. Do you want to hear -

Me: Alexa, shut up. Nunya business! I don't need you spying on me!

I Want My Spandex Jacket

As I finish reading Peter Stark’s “Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson’s Lost Pacific Empire,” I’m impressed to make a few comparisons to our day.

Astor was, of course, a businessman. A businessman with an expansive vision, which pushed his enterprise, with some support from the United States government, into untractable wilds in search of wealth for one and a cultural and political foothold in rich, disputed territory for another.

It’s difficult not to compare him to Elon Musk who, with his dabblings and vision (I’m not going to discuss the “rightness” of either his or Astor’s vision here) embarks on similar enterprises today.

As Astor looked to the Pacific Ocean for wealth, Musk looks to Mars – lately, the Moon – with similar ambitions. In both cases, there appears to be tacit approval by government, but, as Astor found out, not a lot of material support behind that approval. Maybe Musk is finding differently, at least in government contracts. In Astor’s time, the fledgling United States government, led by Thomas Jefferson at the onset of Astor’s adventure, then by a more cautious James Madison at the end, was too young and immature to do much of anything but look at the maps and dream.

Today’s government, with vastly greater resources, seems limited not by resource, but by resolve and is distracted by a thousand banalities to the point even life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness seems more limited in scope than in the past.

There was, of course, great risk in establishing “empire” on the Pacific Coast. Lewis and Clark had only completed their initial journey from the East to Fort Clatsop and back a few years prior, and left enough acrimony among those along the way that those who followed had to take even greater risks to make the same accomplishments.

At the end, Astor managed only to plant a seed – his fort, successfully established at Astoria, sold under duress to the British during the War of 1812. But by mid-century, Americans were on a steady flow to Oregon overland, and political disputes were settled in 1846 with England ceding the southern portion of Oregon Country to the United States.

Whether Musk is planting any Moon- or Mars-bound seeds is open to conjecture and likely years in the offing, if at all, as government-supported exploration of anything beyond Earth orbit by manned spaceflight has evaporated since the 1970s. (Yes, Artemis did a Moon flyby in 2026 with a manned landing mission planned afterward, but whether anything will come of those efforts is also lost to the vaporous attention of government and man, Musk included, as his own SpaceX is now boasted as 93% an artificial intelligence company.

As a kid, I fully expected the option to work and live on the Moon as an adult. As an adult now, I can see that’s not likely to happen to the common schlub within my lifetime, nor likely within the lifetime of my own children, as even the greatest adventurers and entrepreneurs and governments seem bent on recreating the same stupid mistakes made in the past rather than looking united toward a better future.

On that train of graphite and glitter,

Undersea by rail.

Ninety minutes from New York to Paris,

By ’76, we’ll be A-OK . . .

Dreams of utopia from the 1950s, it seems, are as far away now as they were then. And the little government and little businessmen with little visions aren’t likely to carry us there anytime soon.

I want my spandex jacket.

Camper Plumbing: My Least Favorite Noun/Gerund Combination

Spent a good portion of my day crawling around in the camper, checking and replacing various plumbing-related parts, trying to identify the part that was leaking -- a new problem the camper faces.

We knew we had some problems to tackle.

We needed a new kitchen faucet:

And a new bathroom faucet:

But as I filled the holding tank before replacing things so I could indeed verify that things were dripping, I discovered a new and exciting leak that was jut dripping water out the back corner of the camper.

So I did the following:

1. Checked the connections on the water pump (I have to remove it every winter to keep it from freezing; we lost two pumps that way.

2. Checked the plumbing lines.

3. Checked the filler port.

I removed the filler port, cleaned things out, then reattached everything, this time putting the port on perpendicular to the camper wall. I don't remember installing the other one with a slant, but there it was.

Then I replaced both faucets, because I knew they were dripping because Michelle told me they were last year and why would she lie about that?

I also -- horrors -- disconnected the toilet so I could check on the valve to make sure it wasn't broken. It wasn't. But that meant I had to reinstall the toilet, and that meant rolling around on the floor in a little flood water until I could get the two stupid bolts tightened. However, it went a lot faster this time because I knew what to expect and was able to use the noisy cricket adjustable wrench Michelle got me the last time we had to wrestle with the toilet.

Honestly, this is how it feels for me, not a small man, to work in this camper:

My friends, per usual, are having a fun time with my adventures on social media, bless them.

And it Exploded.

 

When you have an old man potty accident at church, you know you can rely on your sons to being:

1. Humor 

2. Help.

The gif in the first text is from this scene of Galaxy Quest: