Uncategorized – Page 2 – If there is something

Local man cool with kids walking across his lawn

It was one of those delightful summer Saturdays with cloudless blue skies, buckets of sunshine and comfortable warm temperatures. Due to recent severe weather activity with accompanying high winds, many in the neighborhood were out gathering fallen branches and debris and stacking it out by the curb for the street department to pick up. Traffic was scarce with the locals opting to walk or ride bikes. Children played on the sidewalk and groups of aimless teenagers slunked around the neighborhood.

As I worked in the yard, one such group of foot-draggers emerged from the alley next to my house. Unused to performing ninety degree right turns, this cohort opted instead for a softer forty-five degree angle across my front lawn. From my vantage point in the bushes where I was pulling weeds and gathering debris, I could have barked at them to “Get off my lawn!” and scared the living daylights out of them. However, as tempting as that was, it’s just not my style and it just wasn’t one of those days.

It was a day for taking it slow, for hearing laughter in the wind, for observing streaks of sunlight flickering through the trees, for unexpectedly intercepting the aroma of a distant backyard grill. There is truly something surreal about days like these. Time slows. Space is deep-focused and static. Noticeably absent is the relentless barrage of stimuli that mark most afternoons. Even the temperamental teens had pocketed their phones and were just enjoying each other’s company. It could have been 25 years ago. It could have been 50 years ago. Hell, if there weren’t a bunch of shiny metal boxes sitting in the street, it could have been over a hundred years ago.

However, somewhere beyond the tranquil scene lay an unseen realm. If at that moment I could observe it, I’d probably notice unremitting algorithms passing over my head, demanding care and attention. I would hear sniping voices, users getting ‘owned’ and people presuming the worst and often getting it from one another. An illusory world casting a dark shadow over our psyches, while increasingly vomiting its madness into the real world.

Thankfully, I was far away from that chaotic place, and all I could think about was how remarkable and strange it is to be alive and standing beneath the sun and these trees in this perfect moment of stillness and peace, while a group of foot-dragging teenagers walked across my lawn.

Strange scenes in the alley 3

Anyone familiar with Strange scenes in the alley 2 might remember that a few months back I had to run off a couple of amorous young people attempting to have sexual relations in my driveway. Why they wouldn’t realize that parking in someone’s driveway is bound to catch the attention of the property owner and prompt an immediate inquiry is a detail I still can’t wrap my head around. However, lucky for them, I’m one of those “cool” cranky old guys, so instead of calling the cops as my wife had urged, I just knocked on their car window and berated the shit out of the lovestruck pair, causing them to go from on fire with passion to frightened scattering rabbits in a couple of milliseconds.

So, a few nights ago, I woke up at 3:30 in the morning to use the bathroom, because I’m 56 years old and that’s the way I roll, and what do I see out my back window but a car parked in front of my garage. This time I didn’t need to investigate to have a pretty good idea what was going on back there: that randy young ram was again tupping his fair ewe. Doubtless, he was in the car bragging to the young lady, “I’ll show that grouchy old sack of excrement that I can screw in his driveway any time I feel like it.”

It being 3:30 in the morning, I was in no mood to go outside and interrupt their carnal congress. Defeated, I went back to bed, resolving that if by daybreak they were still back there humping in the dawn, then I’d go out and give them a bit of the old ultra remonstration.

Of course, I laid in bed thoroughly vexed. What do I have to do to keep a couple of young people from copulating in my driveway? And why my driveway? It’s a tiny patch of cement, between my garage and the alley, barely big enough for one vehicle. There are like three other garages back there with much better park and hump options than mine. Why of all the places in this city to pull over and make the beast with two backs did they choose my drive? I wondered if this was a topic of discussion on the neighborhood Facebook group: How to keep young people from having intimate relations on your property.

Perhaps I should cut the younger generation some slack. From what I’m reading about Gen-Z, out of control intimacy is not a big problem with that cohort. Instead of being the cranky old man yelling at clouds, telling kids to get off my lawn, and shooing highly amorous young folk off of my property, maybe I should try being a little more understanding and accommodating. I just don’t want my tiny driveway to turn into a Gen-Z shag pad.

How many more falsified documents are out there?

As the nation breathes a sigh of relief that a serial document falsifier has finally been brought to justice, some are starting to ask, “Why did it take so long?” The 34 falsified documents that we know about happened eight years ago, begging the question, how many documents have been falsified since? For eight years, this now convicted felon has been allowed to be in the same room alone with documents, hold documents in his tiny hands and even keep them in his mansion overnight. What unspeakable lies has he committed to paper? What diabolical alterations has he made?

So far the only documents he’s been charged with falsifying have been in the state of New York. Thanks to the tireless work of prosecutors there, the convicted felon will no longer be allowed anywhere near documents and will forever carry the shame of being a registered document offender. But in the past eight years this man has traveled extensively and has resided in Washington D.C. and Florida. Prosecutors in these jurisdictions owe it to the public to reinvestigate every instance of a falsified document to see if they can be traced back to this man.

The verdict just read, Americans are bracing themselves for the rioting and mayhem that is sure to follow. News outlets like Reuters, MSNBC, The Independent and others are sounding the alarm as supporters of the convicted felon pour into the streets, like in a Batman movie, to unleash chaos on a peace-loving, non-document falsifying public. Even now these hooligans are no doubt planning to commit billions of dollars in property damage, rip the heart out of our democracy and swallow it whole while it’s still beating. Good thing we have a defiant media standing by ready to shine a spotlight on their misdeeds.

Ryder Cup and the spirit of Seve

After making things interesting for a few hours during Sunday’s singles matches, the United States Ryder Cup team once again experienced defeat at the hands of their European counterparts. Unlike previous years, you can’t say that “on paper” the Americans had a clear advantage over the Euros. Rocking a top three power trio of Jon Rahm, Rory McIlroy and Viktor Hovland, the Euros posed a massively formidable challenge on their home soil. Commentators pointed to match ups and course set up as tipping the playing field slightly in the European direction, but Golf Channel commentator and former Ryder Cup captain, Paul McGinley, kept returning to one strategy that he felt really made the difference. Time and again McGinley pointed to engaging the heart as the most important strategy for eliciting the finest play out of the European squad. And the primary method of engaging the heart was through invoking the spirit of Seve.

On opening day, Seve’s presence was loudly proclaimed when fans unfurled a colossal Seve banner that covered an entire section of bleachers next to the first tee. On Golf Channel, McGinley revealed to his fellow commentators that one of Seve’s old Ryder Cup jerseys hung in the Euro locker room to further inspire and engage the hearts of the players. If these invocations of the spirit of Seve were not enough, McGinley revealed that on the reverse side of the European logo adorning the left breast of the player’s shirts was an image of the great golfing Spaniard. The image of Seve literally covered the player’s hearts, as if his spirit was speaking directly to their hearts. When McGinley spoke of the significance of engaging the hearts of the player’s, he was not just paying lip service. For some, all of this may have seemed a bit melodramatic, over the top, or even a bit loony.

Yet no one could argue that the European team didn’t come out on fire. Inspired by the spirit of Seve, they were performing signs and wonders. They were chipping in and holing long putt after long putt. At times, they were literally chuckling and shaking their heads in disbelief at how well they and their teammates were playing. This is not to say that the disembodied presence of Seve Ballesteros hovered over the golfers manipulating them into great play like they were golfing marionettes. However, whether you call it group mind or collective consciousness or “being on the same page,” the European team designed, assembled and harnessed a spirit of greatness and excellence, symbolized by Seve, that became manifest in their exceptional play. At times, it all seemed shockingly pagan.

When the match ended and the Euros were victorious, most of the players pointed to playing for their teammates, not wishing to let them down. Playing for their country, for Europe, for past European champions, for the tradition of the Ryder Cup, all of it came to be symbolized in the spirit of Seve and they felt it in their souls. They played not for individual glory but for completely selfless reasons, for a spirit that brought out their best and allowed them to achieve something that none of them could have attained acting individually.

It is not unusual for people to talk about spirit when they talk about sport. They talk about team spirit, or the spirit of the game. Outside of sports, though, what are we all playing for? In this era of deconstruction and dismantling, are the spirits that animate our lives ones of cooperation, tradition, striving for a higher purpose and bringing out the best in one another?

Looking at the thing you assume to be there

Scrolling through some old notes, I stumbled across one that really stuck out to me. A man, who is not a guru and whose name I wish I’d written down, was explaining how we perceive and engage with our surroundings and with one another. He was saying we create in our minds sufficiently useful low representations of the world. The thing you see in front of you, or the person with whom you are speaking, is almost always a representation that is a consequence of your memory. Instead of looking at the thing itself, you look at the thing you assume to be there. The thing you see in front of you is almost always much richer than your apprehension of it. There’s always more there than meets the eye, and God only knows how much more there is.

The preceding is my insufficient representation of the thing he actually said. The point he was making goes much deeper, but my memory seems only capable of apprehending this much. On one level, what he is saying is obviously true. We are constantly bombarded by stimuli. We can’t take the time to fully appreciate each thing, each moment we experience. We rely on our memory to apprehend and put the moment in context, and then we move on to the next. But, of course, in doing so, we could be skipping past so much.

The thing you see in front of you is almost always much richer than your apprehension of it. Sometimes, as we’re stuffing mundane moments into sufficiently useful low representation boxes, a glimpse of the richness slips through. Here’s another note I made: Sometimes, the thing you thought you were conversing with is not the thing you thought, and that manifests itself in error, and that’s where you get the transcendent.

Clearly, my notes were insufficiently useful to bring that last point into clarity. But I guess what he was saying is that sometimes, either purposely or by chance, we experience the depth of a thing, or something novel about it breaks our cartoonish memory of the thing, and the resulting experience is transcendent.

I feel like I didn’t nail down that last part. But one thing that seems clear is that if we stopped relying so heavily on our memory of things to make sense of the world, and started letting the richness emerge, it would literally feel like a transcendent experience. How often do we put people and experiences in boxes and write them off as purely one dimensional representations that we’ve encountered many times before? Not to mention, what are we doing to ourselves when we look at the thing we assume to be there instead of trying to apprehend it more fully? There’s always more than meets the eye, and God only knows how much more there is.

Media clairvoyants intuit hidden meaning in viral country hit

Unbeknownst to most pop culture consumers, members of the elite popular media are in possession of exceptional powers of discernment that permit them to identify a particular pop culture phenomenon and expose the often hidden or obscured meaning behind the seemingly straightforward message presented.

That’s how the press was able to alert everyone that the low-budget indie movie Sound of Freedom was actually a QAnon conspiracy flick that failed to depict a strictly factual and dispassionate account of the problem of child trafficking in favor of a more dramatic and sensational rendering of the subject. Because why would a Hollywood movie take such liberties?

Then these remarkably observant media scribes succeeded in identifying an obscure country song that had slipped under their radar for several months and exposed it as a dog whistling call to violence.

While all this was happening, most of us probably didn’t realize how this song and this movie were dividing our country. If not for the heads up, fast action of the elite media, these pop culture hits had the potential to literally tear our nation apart.

Now along comes the latest viral sensation that is not only sweeping the nation, but also pitting neighbor against neighbor. “Rich Men North of Richmond: The hit song that has divided the US” a BBC headline proclaims. Despite sensing a palpable tension in the air almost everywhere I go, I’ve been unable to put my finger on the source of unease that seems to be gripping the nation these days, that is until this informative article enlightened me. Sometimes it takes an astute observer of American culture from across the pond, like journalist Caryn James, to alert someone to what’s going on in their own backyard.

Although I’d heard the Oliver Anthony song a few times and seen the video on YouTube, I was unaware of the hidden meanings, the imperceptible dog whistles and the mysterious circumstances surrounding the song’s creation. I just thought the country hit was the product of a poor, rural, working-man, pouring his heart out about his economic struggles and laying the blame for his troubles at the feet of the rich and politically powerful.

Once again, I’ve been royally duped. As Eric Levitz of New York Magazine points out, the song conceals some subtle racism that can’t be recognized unless you have ears to hear. The line “people like me and people like you” to the untrained ear would undoubtedly refer to folks who work for “bullshit pay,” like Oliver Anthony himself. The overworked and underpaid clearly seem to be who the song is for and about. Not so, says Eric Levitz, there is something far more sinister at play here. Levitz writes, “The sphere of the virtuous that includes Anthony and his target listener might not be racially defined…. But it is not unreasonable to wonder whether a color line divides those who deserve more to eat from those who deserve less, at least in the song’s account.”

Again, I’m made painfully aware of my shortcomings as a music listener and consumer of popular culture. Rather than give the song a direct and reasonable interpretation, I should instead engage in some “not unreasonable” speculation about what the songwriter actually means, despite the songwriter’s failure to provide any reference that would push the listener toward a “not unreasonable” conclusion. Therein lies the power of the elite media scribe. They possess remarkable abilities to intuit meaning where it has been so thoroughly obscured as to render it invisible to mere mortals like me.

Staying with “not unreasonable” interpretations for a moment, take another clairvoyant like Matthew Cantor of The Guardian. He points out that Rich Men North of Richmond punches down because of one strange line that seems to call out welfare recipients. Media professionals like Cantor always know which direction the blows are flying. Nevermind the song title and the clear references to the rich and politically powerful, for media elites like Cantor, the song is an anthem to beating up on 300 pound welfare recipients.

Additionally, Cantor, as well as a number of other elite journalists, seem to have a problem with Oliver Anthony “punching down” on mega-rich, now deceased pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. “Still, a reference to politicians ‘looking out for minors on an island somewhere’ – apparently a reference to Jeffrey Epstein’s ties to elite figures – has also prompted speculation that Anthony could be nodding to QAnon, the far-right conspiracy theory positing that Democrats and Hollywood stars are drinking the blood of children,” Cantor writes.

Inside each of these media clairvoyants, a QAnon alarm goes off everytime the subject of child trafficking, or the name of a known child trafficker is invoked. Legions of right-wing bobble heads nodding to QAnon suddenly appear in their imaginations. “‘Rich Men’ also nods to conspiracy theories and grievances that are deeply rooted in far-right circles. (QAnon believers often cite Epstein as proof that a global cabal of elites has been trafficking children.)” The preceding nod is brought to you by Anne Branigin of the Washington Post.

Clearly, my critical thinking skills are desperately in need of recalibration. What I would interpret as a fairly straightforward populist protest song is actually a racist, QAnon conspiracy drenched beat down of the poor. Presently, I’m not even going to touch on the astro turf conspiracy posited by these media elites that claims Oliver Anthony is not organically grown, but rather an artificial construct, the creation of right wing media figures like Matt Walsh or Ben Shapiro or some other mustache twirling conservative working behind the scenes.

Less robot than robot

In a new study researchers claim AI generated social media text appears more human than actual human text. Participants in the study were tasked with looking at tweets and identifying whether the tweet was composed by a human or AI. The study found subjects were more likely to ascribe human origins to AI tweets than those written by actual humans.

“The most surprising discovery was that participants often perceived information produced by AI as more likely to come from a human, more often than information produced by an actual person. This suggests that AI can convince you of being a real person more than a real person can convince you of being a real person, which is a fascinating side finding of our study,” said Federico Germani of the University of Zurich, one of the authors of the study.

Considering that Twitter has long been associated with humanity at its finest and most authentic, the study’s findings are startling. Nowhere does every facet of human potential and excellence shine more brightly than on Twitter with users pouring every available shred of their being and complexity into the 280 characters that form a single tweet. Indeed, it would seem that on a digital platform it is possible for AI models like ChatGPT to appear more human than humans.

However, while Federico Germani is stroking himself over his team’s finding that “AI can convince you of being a real person more than a real person can convince you of being a real person,” perhaps they are misinterpreting the results of their little experiment. Maybe it’s the case that humans don’t operate all that well in a digital space. Maybe it’s the digital realm itself that limits and compromises the human capacity to fully realize and reveal itself, enabling robots to plausibly mimic humans. Maybe it’s just the case that humans suck at being robots.

The internet in general and social media in particular funnel users into producing a low resolution representation of themselves. In many respects these platforms constrain human potential, dumbing down and fitting it into a neat little avatar, which is easy for AI to mimic and even manipulate. Of course the tech gods, governments and corporate controllers would like us to migrate our lives as much as possible onto these platforms. There in the digital realm humans are more or less just a shadow of the self that exists in the material realm, a shadow that can be more easily controlled by artificial intelligence, less robot than robot.

The Onion editor calls J. K. Rowling “a billionaire with a penchant for spreading misery”

The irony runs deep and voluminous when The Onion senior managing editor Jordan LaFlure sits down for a chat with Buzzfeed. In the interview, LaFlure describes widely beloved and massively successful author J.K. Rowling as “a billionaire with a penchant for spreading misery.” It is quick-witted comments like these that cause Onion readers to nearly fall out of their chairs laughing. Having sold more than 600 million books worldwide, the sheer scale of misery J.K. Rowling has inflicted on the planet boggles the mind, and is worthy of a hearty chortle. LMFAO at the notion of all the suffering souls plunking down $7.7 billion at the box office to enthusiastically endure the senseless agony of sitting through Harry Potter on the big screen. Oh, all the humanity! Why just last year, Harry Potter books had sales of 123 million British pounds in the first six months alone. I don’t know how much misery that equates to in American dollars, but it sounds like an awful lot. By the way, that’s 22 percent more misery than the previous year.

The Onion is seeking to mine comedy gold by portraying J.K. Rowling as a transphobe. LaFlure is onto something there as the possibilities for irony seem nearly limitless. Portraying J.K. Rowling as a transphobe would be like depicting Mr. Rogers as a neonazi. A recent example of this new approach features a mock interview between The Onion editors and Rowling. Because Rowling has never made an anti-trans comment in her life, The Onion satirically depicts her saying of trans-folk, “I was advocating for their total annihilation.” Boundless hilarity erupts on the pages of The Onion as it attempts to portray a woman who escaped an abusive marriage and went on to become one of the most successful authors in history, a woman who has donated hundreds of millions of dollars to charity and earned the adoration of a billion fans as a merchant of misery.

Indeed, LaFlure and his colleagues at The Onion appear to be ushering in a new knee-slapping, golden age of comedy satire. Attacking a much beloved children’s author with egregious and untrue accusations shielded in satire is just the sort of side-splitting comedy relief the world has been clamoring for.

Meanwhile in the analog zone

Driving around after work last Friday, jamming to Nebula on my factory installed Camry car stereo, I experienced a momentary time slip back to the analog era that existed before we gave ourselves over entirely to the digital dystopia we currently inhabit. With Nebula’s nineties-flavored hard-rock psychedelia filling the cabin of my Camry, the world outside took on the chill analog aspect of days gone by. Some reading this might deduce, “this guy’s grooving on stoner rock and flashing back to the nineties, he’s probably puffing on some powerful mary-jane.” Negative, amigo, this was a totally sober analog flashback.

As I cruise through dense Friday afternoon traffic, a dude up ahead tries to navigate his way across a busy six-lane on his bicycle. He’s playing a dangerous game of Frogger as he swerves unsteadily between passing vehicles. Nearby, a girl walks along the sidewalk still dressed in her KFC uniform. Looking a little dazed and weary from her fast food shift, she carries with her a bag of chicken and fixins, and, presumably, the closely guarded secret of Colonel Sanders 11 herbs and spices.

The package store parking lot buzzes with blue-collar dudes clutching frosty cold cases of beer. In a bygone era, their mulleted manes would have blown majestically in the spring breeze. Today, it’s their prodigious beards flapping furiously in their faces. A girl perched in a colossal hemi-powered pickup truck rumbles passed in the lane next to me. The extended cab, dually monstrosity is made all the more massive-looking contrasted with her petite appearance inside the cab.

I’m stopped for a red light at a busy intersection. I resist the temptation to roll down my window and flood the street with the sonic ferocity of Transmission From Mothership Earth. This is one of those intersections where the signal only allows one action at a time. Northbound can make a left, then southbound can go left, northbound can go straight, then southbound can go straight, eastbound left turn lane go fuck yourself, westbound go straight, etc.

The time finally arrives for the cross traffic to go left. However, a young couple’s motorcycle does not appear to be cooperating. The young gentleman furiously tries to start the stalled machine while his girlfriend holds on tight. Sensing he’s about to run out of left turn signal, the young man makes a ballsy move. The motorcycle is small enough that his feet easily rest on the ground on both sides. With just seconds of left turn arrow remaining, the young man starts pumping his legs and runs the motorcycle through the massive intersection a la Fred Flintstone. The girl is hanging on tight and they’re both laughing hysterically at the absurdity of the scene. Horns honk and drivers cheer as the young gentlemen, his girl and the bike clear the intersection just before the light changes.

Streaming for your approval in the analog zone, one of those mundane everyday moments that overwhelms you because its flooded with meaning. You have the quick-thinking, heroic actions of stalled motorcycle guy as he whisks his girl away from danger. There is the spectre of life’s struggles popping up at the most inopportune time, and the indominitable will and determination to overcome said struggle. There is optimism and joy that laughs in the face of said struggle and young love that remains hopeful throughout. All the while, onlookers root for a triumphal outcome.

Of course, it’s entirely possible I read too much into the scene. Maybe the pair later cursed their misfortune, got into a big row and she dumped him over some perceived public embarrassment and shame to which he subjected her. But I’d like to think not. I’d like to think that years from now, when the couple have kids who are old enough to appreciate a good story, the pair will regale them with this analog tale and they will all have a good laugh.

Strange scenes in the alley 2

A couple of nights ago, there was a car parked in front of my garage containing a young couple engaged in amorous relations. My garage doors open almost directly into the alley, leaving not so much a driveway, but a small, car-width sliver of space between the garage and the alley. Of all the thousands of discreet places in the city, it was in this space that the pair of youngsters, overcome by passion and desire, decided to dock their mid-size sedan to permit the male occupant the opportunity to dock something else.

Inside the house, I was totally oblivious to the strange vehicle and the illicit love making going on outside. That is until my wife came home and asked who was parked back by the garage. Needing to take out the trash anyway, I decided to walk back there and investigate. As I drew closer to the garage, I could tell that the car was running. Although it was dark, I figured the driver would see me approaching and tear off into the night. I rattled the trash cans a bit, hoping to get the driver’s attention, but still there was no discernible activity coming from the car. In retrospect, if the car had been rockin, I might not have bothered knockin. But I couldn’t see anyone sitting in the front seat, so I moved in closer to take a look. It was dark, but I could just make out a figure laying down in the backseat. I wondered if perhaps this was some homeless person who had pulled into this spot to take a nap. Almost every conceivable explanation flashed through my brain as I knocked on the window. But it never occurred to me that the car’s occupants were making the beast with two backs until two figures popped up, startled at my tap, tap, tapping on their Chevy Malibu door. The young man hurriedly hopped out the door on the opposite side of the car, struggling to pull up his pants.

For my part, I was a little shocked at the scene I had stumbled upon and immediately began to flip out. “What the fuck are you doing!? This is private fucking parking! You can’t do that shit here! We run a clean damn family neighborhood around here!” My wife later told me that from inside the house she could hear every word I shouted, which means my daughter and most of the neighbors could probably hear me as well. Listening to myself cursing at this young man, I paused, collected my thoughts and began to calm down. “Listen, son,” I said. “We’ve all been in your situation before, but parking in someone’s drive is a real amateur move. Any homeowner that sees a strange vehicle parked on their property is going to investigate. You’re lucky it’s me and that I’m cool. My wife wanted to call the cops. Just go find a deserted parking lot, or park behind one of the bars downtown. Nobody down there will give a second glance to a couple of lovebirds copulating in the backseat of a car. Probably happens every night. Now scram, you horny devil.”

As I stood there, proud of myself for reining in my irritation and using the situation as a teachable moment to impart some of my accumulated wisdom on the younger generation, the impassioned couple tore off down the alley and into the night, flipping me the bird and yelling “Fuck you old man” as their taillights disappeared into the darkness. I just shook my head and smiled. They may not realize it yet, but one day when they’re coupling in solitude, they’ll appreciate the wise advice that grouchy old man gave them.