I Thought Of This All By Myself

 I am old enough to remember that little paperclip that used to show up in the corner of a new document who offered "helpful" suggestions like "It looks like you're writing a ransom note. Would you like some help?" This none-too-clever anthromorphic paper fastener was called "Clippy," and after a ten year run of "helping" users of Microsoft Office, he was sent to the bottom of the drawer where all paper clips go to die. 

Did you like having Clippy around for those moments of hesitation? Do you wish you could still have his obsequious presence in your life? Welcome to the age of Artificial Intelligence. Looking for something on Al Gore's Internet? Google will be happy to distill any potential learning that could take place by distilling your search into pre-chewed nuggets of fact-pablum that can be easily digested. 

Have you ever wondered what you and your loved ones might look like if they were in a film by Nick Park. 

What's that? You say you don't know who Nick Park is? You might know him as the creator of Wallace and Gromit. Or maybe you'd like to sidestep that whole painstaking world of creating films by animating clay figures one frame at a time and use a filter to see what you would look like as one of those clay figures. 

For free.

Or maybe you're a fan of the work of Hayao Miyazaki and you'd like to have your next selfie look like something that came from one of his films. ChatGPT can do that for you.

For Free. 

Intellectual property? Don't worry your funny-looking head about it. It's all a part of the brave new world of machines doing the work for us. 

Somebody else's work. 

I know the difference between "homage" and "rip-off." If I used these "free" machine assistants I might pose that question to one of them. 

But that would be surrender, wouldn't it?

When I run out of words, I'll stop writing. 

So Much

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens

This was the poem that played over and over again in my mind as my wife struggled to move a dozen railroad ties from our front yard where they had been so unceremoniously delivered to the back yard where they were going to be employed in the seemingly straightforward task of replacing the terracing. There was a time when the thought of moving a ton of lumber around would have been an amusing way to spend a weekend. Those days are gone. 

But that didn't keep my wife and I from making the grand gesture of Do It Yourself as my Spring Vacation was just beginning. There would be time for relaxing and recreation after the work was done. The work was negotiating all that wood into a configuration both useful and pleasant to look at. The first step in this endeavor was the most daunting. As I have mentioned far too often in this space, I am not the hale and hearty thirty year old who needs a challenge. There was a time when this would have been a great opportunity to maximize my dad and husband points by accomplishing something superhuman. 

Instead, I saw the opportunity to use my age and wisdom by finding a simple machine that would help us in our time of need. There was a moment when I truly believed that our garden wheelbarrow might just do the trick. Alas, it was strong on appearance, but short on balance. Instead, I opted for what amounts to the red wheelbarrow at our house: The Radio Flyer wagon that provided hours of amusement for my son when he was still captivated by wheeled contraptions without motors. Then over time, it became a utility vehicle for moving this and that here and there. 

And it continues, with a few rusty spots, to be red. 

The transport of railroad ties was accomplished without injury and not just a bit of pride. It occurred to both my wife and I that the next part of the job might best be taken on by elves if we simply left all the pieces strewn about the yard, but we knew that we were most likely in for the long haul after the long haul. Retaining walls don't just spring up out of the ground like you'd like them to. 

But that red wagon. 

So much depends on it. 

Bravo, and thank you William Carlos Williams. 

   

I Don't Get It

 I have a history of making some pretty solid April Fools jokes. The "secret" was based on having some minor toehold in truth. "It's funny because it's true," is an expression that gets a lot of play in the comedy business. The punch line comes at the moment when the level of abstraction where you have been operating switches suddenly and it creates a momentary confusion in the audience. Of course, if you shift too abruptly or not enough, the response will almost invariably be, "I don't get it." 

Which pretty much sums up my feelings about the Second Trumpreich. I know what a gift comedians felt that those first four years would be for comedy. You see, there's the regular way to do things, and then there's the absolutely worse way to do them. This where the humor that can be mined from Goofus And Gallant. This suggests that there is a Gallant to go along with the Goofus. 

Not so in the current regime. 

If there is a wrong or difficult way to do something, the MAGAts will find it. There is no comfort here. There is no landing place. Just a series of straight lines. 

Like, "Hey, you know what would be cool? If we invaded Greenland."

Or how about, "You know who really needs to date? Lauren Boebert and Kid Rock." 

Are these setups or punchlines? "Let's include a journalist on our secret war thread."

The folks at Saturday Night Live have to be pretty fed up with these clowns doing their job for them. 

Because it's not funny anymore. 

It's tedious. It's depressing. It's painful. 

It's currently scheduled to go on for four years. 

Get it? 

The Mouth Than Roared

 I suppose the lesson I take away from all this is: Never send a sycophant to do a sociopath's work. 

Julius Domingo Vance was in Greenland a few days back, nominally to visit the United States airbase we have up there, but also to chastise the folks who live there as well as spew disdain for their nominal leadership back in Denmark. "Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland. You have underinvested in the people of Greenland, and you have underinvested in the security architecture of this incredible, beautiful landmass filled with incredible people. That has to change, and because it hasn't changed, this is why President Trump's policy in Greenland is what it is."

Perhaps you weren't aware of the massive unrest in that arctic nation. Perhaps because there wasn't any massive unrest. 

Except for that created by the guy who was replaced by Elongated Mush. 

Which brings a couple of movie references to mind. This is my blog, so of course you would expect a couple movie references. The first one being the closing minutes of Stripes, in which the fates of the main characters are played out in magazine covers. Except for their former commanding officer, played by John Larroquette. He gets a tiny article buried inside the Nome News announcing his arrival in the Arctic wastes amid a record cold spell. 

There was a media event scheduled for Jimmy Duggan Vance to meet and greet Greenalnders. They could not find anyone in Greenland to accept that invitation. 

The second movie reference would be that of The Mouse That Roared, a little Peter Sellers comedy about how the Duchy of Grand Fenwick once attempted to take over the United States in hopes that their soldiers would be quickly vanquished and then US aid would come flooding back into their country. Except it didn't work out that way. 

Watch the movie. 

Don't watch the continued shenanigans of Joaquin Dizzy Vance as he continues to get things backward, threatening a sovereign nation that is busy going about their peaceful existence. The "mouse" in this equation wants nothing to do with the nation of roaring MAGAts. They would much rather get back to the concerns of trawling for halibut. 

And living their lives without the sound and fury coming from America, which signifies nothing.   

Garden Genome

 My wife and I were, I suppose, fortunate for each of us to have a sibling who was willing to donate a swab of spit to the genetic research the roots of our combined family tree. There were no surprises. If anything there was a calming affirmation of just how direct a line our ancestors had followed compared to the legends that had been shared over the years about our respective clans. 

My younger brother's trip into the mists of time revealed not a panoply of influences from across the globe, but a large red dot that was centered on one particular neighborhood in London. Compared to his wife that looked like a globe that had been infected with measles, tiny dots scattered across continents and time, his was pretty solidly a one note affair. 

My wife's mother has spent decades researching her family's trek from Germany to the mean streets of Detroit, something that a test tube of DNA only confirmed when my brother-in-law sealed his up and sent it away for observation. No side trips to points previously unknown or hidden relatives waiting to be revealed. His report was a somewhat less colorful version of the stories he had been told all his life. 

There were no missing inheritances or outstanding debts to be cleared, financially or emotionally. 23andMe failed to open any mystery doors. Which is why I find myself currently wondering with some relief what brought me several months ago to the edge of redundancy by ordering a kit for my wife's sixtieth birthday.

What was I thinking? Maybe there was some hidden piece of straggling genetic code that was missing from the year that separated her birth from that of her older brother. Maybe I was hoping to give her the experience of exploring her lineage within the extraordinarily safe limits of a test that had already been taken. 

Or maybe I could fess up to the truth: Amazon had a PrimeDay sale of 23andMe and it seemed like too good a deal to pass up. 

So I didn't. 

And that sealed package has floated from our coffee table to her desk to the window seat next to our bed in the intervening months, waiting for some reason to roll those loaded dice. 

Now 23andMe is filing for bankruptcy, and as part of the fire sale they are conducting, everyone's genetic code is up for grabs to the highest bidder. It's on sale for a limited time, not unlike PrimeDay, but only if you are silly enough to leave it sitting there on their website. If you don't delete your data, the 23andMe folks insist that you will be providing an enormous service: tracking down killers who escaped justice and providing a possible cure for the common cold. 

But I suppose it would be nice if that information had been given willingly, and not part of a legal settlement. 

Me? I'm willing to send a vial of my spit to Tesla. In case they need it. 

Cruelty Free

 It will be good to take a break. 

It's Spring, after all. 

Whoever said "March is the cruelest month," was probably an elementary school teacher. T.S. Eliot may have been on a different calendar, but it has been a month and a half since we have experienced anything like a standing eight count here in the trenches, and we are ready. 

More than ready.

I have written here before about the mild shame I sometimes feel when I remember previous jobs, like when I worked at a book warehouse where the only days we got off were those taken by UPS. Those were ten hour days, and plenty of times when we had to work a little longer just to be sure that we got the orders out the door. 

Now I live in a world with an "academic calendar," which includes the last Friday of March "in lieu of Cesar Chavez Day." I'll be taking that, thank you very much. I will happily avoid my school site for the week following, with the added incentive of having just forty school days left once we return.

I am not certain at all whether I have always felt this level of exhaustion creeping into Spring Break. I know that the days leading up to Winter Break were tenuous, but the idea of being wrung out and spent like I am currently suggests that it is a cumulative effect. The number of Springs that have been broken over the course of my teaching career is beginning to limit my capacity to rebound. The phrase, "I could really use a vacation," comes far more easily to mind than it used to. 

Then again, a fourth grade girl, one possessed with a rather large personality, showed up just after lunch this past Tuesday. When our principal asked where she had been, expecting a doctor or dentist appointment as the excuse, this personality-laden fourth grader replied lazily, "I was sleeping." I've done a few tours of Fourth Grade. I get it. 

We could all use a break.  

Thread

 PH: My dudes! What's shakin' for this weekend?

MW: Lookin' forward to getting my March Madness on. 

JDV: Maybe chug some nachos?

MR: How 'bout some wangs?

PH: Love me some wangs!

TG: You boys have your fun. I'm catching up on some work.

MW: Work?

PH: Yeah, what's that?

SM: Right. Some of us have to work this weekend.

PH: Oh, I can fix that.

TG: Whaddya mean?

MR: He means he can just send a msg to a base in the Middle East and poof.

TG: Which base?

PH: Don't you worry your pretty little had about that. 

JDV: Yeah. You should be checking up on that bracket of yours.

MW: Anyone else got Gonzaga?

JG: I do.

SM: Goldberg? Who let him on this thread?

JG: Your pal Pete. 

MR: No way. 

JG: Way. 

PH: Hey Jeff, you're not going to tell anybody about this, right?

JDV: Yeah. Who would believe you?

JDV: Right. Who would believe you?

TG: I'm out, boys. You explain this to the boss. 

MR: Not me. If anybody asks, I was out mowing the lawn.

MW: You guys still talking about the air strike on the Houthis?

TG: Mike - ixnay on the outhishay. 

MW: What?

JDV: How 'bout that Gonzaga?

JG: You're right. Who would believe that senior administration officials would be planning an military strike on an unencrypted text thread?

PH: Right. 

SM: Right. Now can we get back to deciding who to send anyone with the last name Cortez to Guantanamo Bay?