Tag Archives: general crankiness

The Rise of the Asterisk

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It’s well-known (by people who know me) that I love punctuation. I read books about punctuation. I have two punctuation tattoos. My favorite mark of punctuation is the semicolon (which is one of the tattoos I have). But lately, when it comes to punctuation, the asterisk is in the ascendancy. And that’s because an increasing number of books have swear words in their titles. Punctuation is how we address the problem delicately.

The first example of the trend and at the time most shocking was Go the F**k to Sleep, a book that purported to be a read-to-kids goodnight book, but was really an expression of parental frustration. It caused quite a buzz.

After that came The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck (and the more daintily titled The Subtle Art of Not Caring About People’s Opinion), I Used to Be a Miserable F*ck, Unfu*k Yourself, The French Art of Not Giving a Sh*t, and F*ck Feelings. For those who prefer hashtags, there’s Unf#ck Your Brain. The winner for the longest title is The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F*ck: How to Stop Spending Time You Don’t Have with People You Don’t Like Doing Things You Don’t Want to Do (A No F*cks Given Guide). And Everything is #@%!ed! uses a whole string of punctuation. Fucking This shit Show: A Gratitude Journal for Tired Women dispenses with the veil of punctuation altogether. (I can’t help that inconsistent capitalization. That’s the way it’s written. Maybe shit is supposed to look less threatening in lowercase? But I digress.)

(When marks of punctuation are used as stand-ins for letters or words, they’re called “grawlix,” an almost completely useless word, but one I’m quite fond of. Most people have seen grawlix only in comic books when Popeye, for example, wants to cuss. But I continue digressing.)

What’s the reason for all the daintily disguised sweary titles? It’s not like we don’t know what the asterisks stand for. It’s not fooling anyone. Go the F**k to Sleep was obviously meant to be shocking, though it also expressed humor and frustration. After that, it looks like a bandwagon was jumped on. The book even jumped on its own bandwagon. Now it’s a trilogy, including You Have to F**king Eat and F**k, Now There Are Two of You.

(I note that most of the sweary titles go with self-help books. Does this indicate a certain irreverence regarding the concept of self-help? Frustration with the concepts in the books? I know I’ve wanted to swear at self-help books during various periods of my life. Now I write them, though (so far) none have titles that require grawlix. But I digress some more.)

Personally, I have no objection to swearing. For a long time, I couldn’t do it, but after working as a waitress, I made up for lost time. Now I swear like a sailor, though with better enunciation. Sometimes, a curse word is just the right one. And of course, when I use a swear word in writing, I punctuate it properly. No grawlix here.

My favorite unexpected use of punctuation, however, comes in this brief verse:

Mary’s little lamb / Upon the grass did frisk. / But Mary was afraid / Her little * .

Now that’s creative punctuation!

What We Deserve

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I saw a mattress commercial once that said something like, “You’ll get the good night’s sleep you deserve.” Or maybe it was good dreams. I was taken aback. Do we really deserve a good night’s sleep? The ad appears to not have taken into account new babies and new puppies, known destroyers of a good night’s sleep and neither one a problem solvable with a new mattress. If you’ve recently acquired either a baby or a puppy, a good night’s sleep is not so much something you deserve as something that you desire.

Especially in commercials, there seem to be many things that folks apparently deserve. The most recent one I’ve heard is toilet paper that tears off neatly in pretty scalloped lines. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never desired—or deserved—ass-wipe that made pretty patterns on the roll. I’m satisfied if there is a roll and not just a brown paper tube on the holder. After being stranded once or twice, I won’t even insist on it facing the right way (over the front) as long as it’s there when I need it.

When it comes to what we deserve, I generally think of the very basics. We all deserve to have shelter and food and physical safety. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs has these physiological needs as the foundation of its levels of development. Maslow’s theory is that we can’t move on to higher levels of the pyramid until we have completed the ones below. So, until we have our basic needs met, we can’t move on to higher needs like love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualization.

But apart from our basic needs, what do we deserve? Singer-songwriter Mary Chapin Carpenter has some thoughts (or rather Lucinda Williams, who wrote the lyrics). In her song “Passionate Kisses,” she lists “a comfortable bed that won’t hurt my back”—so maybe that mattress is something we deserve after all. Other needs she wants fulfilled are “pens that won’t run out of ink and cool quiet and time to think.” And of course, those passionate kisses. “Shouldn’t I have all of this?” she asks. Yes. Yes, you should, I find myself thinking. Especially the pens. (Those don’t appear on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and neither do passionate kisses, except as a part of the love and belonging tier. But I digress.)

Williams was really onto something. While the comfortable bed and the pens cost money, the cool quiet and the time to think don’t, and neither do the passionate kisses.

I can think of a few other things we deserve as well. Healthcare that won’t bankrupt us. Enough food to stave off hunger, especially for children. Low-cost housing that the working poor can afford. Just to name a few. You know, stuff on the lowest level of Maslow’s Hierarchy.

Unfortunately, those do cost money, which really needs to be provided by social programs that require government funding, either national or local. Charitable organizations can help too, but they can’t shoulder the entire burden. And in the current political climate, funding for social programs is increasingly on the chopping block.

(And no, I’m not suggesting that there should be social programs that would offer funding for pens that don’t run out of ink or passionate kisses. That would be crazy. Maybe there should be a research effort to work on the pen thing, though. But I digress some more.)

For me personally, I think I deserve a mouse and keyboard that won’t run out of juice, a refrigerator that won’t run out of juice, and passionate kisses that won’t run out of juice. My old mattress works just fine.

What I Love About Election Season

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I’m tempted to say “Nothing,” but that would be too obvious.

I’m tempted to say “Watching the debates,” but that would be a lie. (I do enjoy the Bad Lip Reading versions, which are truly hysterical. But I digress.)

I’m not tempted to say “The engaging political discourse and the spirited exchange of ideas,” because that would be a big, fat lie.

However, if there’s a woman candidate, I do like to watch and see how many times the media comments on her fashion sense and grooming and calls her voice shrill and her personality unlikeable. I can keep score and see which outlets do the best and worst jobs. But that seems somewhat unlikely this year, though there may, of course, be female VP nominees—most likely will be unless Joe decides to ditch Kamala, which he shows no sign of doing.

No, what I love about the election season is the opportunity to view rhetorical fallacies in the wild. Slippery slope? Got it. Moving the goalposts? You bet. False equivalence? You know it. Appeal to the common man? All over the place. The places to see them are the debates and the TV commercials. Again, it’s fun to keep score. Keep a checklist handy. It’ll keep you distracted from your outrage.

(One year during election season I was teaching freshman English at a university, and I had a grand time introducing rhetorical fallacies through the above-mentioned method. It wasn’t around at that time, but now there’s a card game called Fallacy, which would have been a dandy teaching aid. But I digress again.)

Of course, there are classic political ads. (Some would say notorious.) The king of them all was Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America” ad. It starts with a daisy and ends with a mushroom cloud. It was a classic slippery slope fallacy (also called the camel’s nose). The subtext was “Give the Soviets an inch and they’ll scorch the earth.” (This was back when Russia was our enemy.) It was also a notable campaign because it introduced the phrase, “Let’s Make America Great Again,” though no one wore hats that said that. And for a little more nostalgia, let’s remember that Reagan was 69 when he was elected. Back then, we thought that was old. (An underground slogan was “Reagan in ’80. Bush in ’81.” But I digress some more.)

Speaking of Bush (H.W., in this case), he took a vivid and vicious swipe at Michael Dukakis with his “revolving door prison” ad. This was the heyday of attack ads, which I think we’ll see a resurgence of this year. It could be both entertaining and appalling, as well as full of rhetorical flaws. (Also, Dukakis didn’t help himself with a commercial showing him driving a tank, which was supposed to be patriotic, but just looked silly. It was described as “The Photo Op That Tanked,” which I have to admit was a clever headline, unlike so many others that try to be witty. But I digress even more.)

I also love seeing how many times the candidates use the words “patriotic” and “freedom” without ever defining them and whether they refrain from talking about re-education camps or death panels. What I really love about election season, though, is one when there’s no violence. May it be so.

Fighting Spam and Scams

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It’s tempting, but I don’t actually use an air horn to discourage spam callers. And I don’t want to buy a program that claims to help. My phone recognizes what it calls “Potential Spam,” which leaves me with a dilemma. The phone doesn’t officially declare it to identified spam, so I always fear missing a call I want to answer because my phone is mistaken. But I do know a couple of ways to thwart the spammers and scammers.

One not-so-secret I’m willing to share is that saying, “Hello” when you answer the phone is a bad idea. If it is a call from a spam boiler room, this triggers their system to route the call to one of their agents. I have sympathy for people who are forced to make a living this way, but not enough to listen to them begin their spiel.

Instead of “Hello,” I identify myself (“This is Janet”). It’s a polite enough greeting just in case it’s someone I might actually want or need to talk to. My second response is similar—”What is this in regard to?” It’s a good question even if someone does start talking after “This is Janet.” If there’s still no one on the line, I say, “Is anyone there?” After that, I simply say, “Goodbye.”

This system works well for me. It takes only a couple of seconds. And it avoids the “Hello” trap.

Another thing I know about spam calls is never to say “yes” to any question. Unscrupulous callers can record this answer and use it to “prove” that you agreed to make a purchase. One of the most common questions designed to evoke a “yes” is “Can you hear me?” For that, I reply, “I can hear you.” Sometimes, they ask twice, hoping that the next time I’ll say, “Yes, I can hear you.” You have to be alert to make this work. Spam callers can ask a lot of yes/no questions, hoping that you’ll slip up.

Other spam calls, the more dangerous kind, are ones that are designed to get you to whip out your credit card and give them money. They usually try to make their call sound frightening. For example, they say, “This is the IRS.” That’s enough to alarm nearly anyone. However, the IRS never phones. They send threatening letters, sometimes the kind that you have to sign for.

Another scammer scheme is to claim that they are from IBM (or Microsoft or whatever) and claim that you have malware on your computer. They then say that they can take care of the problem and ask for your credit card. Or they say they’ll give you instructions that will let them take control of your computer to remove the malware—an even worse idea. At least one guy I know was suckered into doing it. I also know a 96-year-old woman who didn’t fall for it, bawled them out and threatened to call the cops on them.

Speaking of computers, scammers also try to catch you via email. Once I received a communication that said that I was being charged several hundred dollars and, if I hadn’t actually bought anything, I should get in touch. Alarmed, I did. But then they went too far. They said that to solve the problem, I would need to download a software program. Well, I wasn’t born yesterday. I knew that was a bad idea and declined to do it. Then I reported them to the computer crime and fraud hotline. When I got another communication of the same type, I simply ignored it.

Another email scam is to contact you and say that a friend or relative is in trouble somehow and needs money right away to solve the problem. I got one of these claiming that someone I knew was stranded in Germany and needed help. It was remotely possible, as he had a daughter studying in Germany. But before I did anything else, I called his wife. She said that he was indeed out of town, but visiting family in Michigan.

Once I actually was in the position of being in a foreign country and needing funds. When I contacted a friend, though, I provided an obscure piece of information that only a close friend would know. That’s another good strategy. “If you’re really Roger, tell me what was on the corner when you lived near me.” If he doesn’t say “a vet,” he’s probably a Nigerian prince.

There’s Prayer in Schools

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Despite what you may have heard, there is prayer in public schools. It’s totally legal.

You don’t think so? The government forbids it?

Not true! Students and even teachers pray in school every day. They always have and they always will. Pray all you want.

A student can pray before a test or just because. Groups that meet for that purpose can pray—during a free period, for example. (There was a group in my high school that did this. I attended a few times but left when they started planning a book burning.) There’s absolutely nothing stopping you from praying like this.

The only thing that’s not permitted in schools is requiring anyone else to pray with you or telling them how they have to pray. A principal or teacher can’t start class with a prayer. You can’t insist that students pray over lunch. You can’t base grades on whether or not a student prays. If a student chooses to pray, you can’t tell them which prayer to use. All those things fly in the face of the Establishment Clause of Freedom of Religion in the First Amendment to the US Constitution.

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” is what it actually says. That means that there can’t be a law that makes one religion the official religion of the US. And it means that, if you do have a preferred religion, the government can’t prevent you from practicing it. It’s left up to the individual what religion—if any—they practice.

The problem comes when we’re discussing public institutions, which include public schools. (Obviously, students in religious schools can pray whatever the school says to.) The first part of the clause says that the public institution can’t declare an official religion. That’s why there’s no compulsory prayer in schools. The second part, “prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” says that everyone is free to worship in their own way. That’s why students are able to pray in schools during their free time, by choice, without an official such as a teacher or the principal leading it. The government can’t forbid it.

If prayer were to be required in schools, there would be any number of cans of worms opened. Let’s take a basic Christian prayer—The Lord’s Prayer.

Which version of the prayer would everyone be required to say? There’s a difference between the Catholic version and the Protestant version. But the wording also differs among the Protestant denominations and individual congregations. Debts and debtors? Trespasses? Sins? Many churches specify in the church bulletin which wording to use so that they can pray in unison.

Another can of worms is that not all Americans are Christians. Increasingly, children from other faiths are entering the public schools. Why should they be required to pray a Christian prayer? But what’s the alternative? Couldn’t they just sit quietly while everyone else prays or pray their own prayer silently to themselves? No. That establishes the prayer of one religion as the official classroom prayer to the exclusion of the others. Anyone who doesn’t share that religion gets treated differently. Their prayer is not the one being said for everyone. That’s the establishment clause again.

Then, think about what it would be like if Christians weren’t in the majority in a school. (For the moment, let’s suppose that the majority rules, which is many people’s assumption.)

But Christians aren’t always in the majority in a public school. I always think of the example of the followers of the Bhagwan Rashneesh. A religious community in Oregon, they incorporated as a city, Rajneeshpuram, which had around 7,000 people. Nearby Antelope, Oregon, had a population of about 60.

The State School Superintendent visited the district’s high school and found that it was “permeated with religious symbolism” and “did not look, sound, or feel like a public school.” The religious symbolism was Rajneeshee, of course.

Now imagine those people from nearby Antelope. If their kids had to attend the Rajneeshpuram school, which was officially a public school, how would their parents have liked it if the students were required to say the Rajneeshee prayers? Not so fond of required prayer in public schools now? Ready to take the Rajneeshees to court to prevent their prayers as unconstitutional? That would be my guess.

In other words, be careful what you pray for.

Me and the PoemBot

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The other day I started fooling around with ChatGPT, the AI program that people are using to write things for them. As a writer myself, I wondered if I would be out of a job any time soon. Realistically, I know I won’t, since the ghostwriting firm I write for does not allow us to use AI-created content.

Still, I was curious about what ChatGPT could do with various writing tasks, so I dove in. Here’s what I found.

The program did well on factual queries (Write a paragraph on bipolar disorder) and even had an answer for a philosophical query (What is the meaning of life?). The more criteria I gave it, the worse it did. (Write a practical but amusing paragraph about bipolar disorder.) It showed a definite tendency to throw in every simile and metaphor it could, which definitely ended up mixed.

For blog posts with not-too-specific topics, it did better. I asked it to write a paragraph for a blog post on a self-help topic, and it almost instantly came up with one about positive affirmations. Asked to write a blog-post paragraph on toxic positivity, it did quite a competent job.

But I really wanted to test its talent when it came to poetry, a much more difficult skill. I stuck mostly to sonnets and haikus (I did have it write one villanelle) on assorted topics. All the sonnets it produced were Shakespearean unless I specified a Petrarchan, Miltonic, or Spenserian one. The sonnets were awfully self-reverential. No matter the topic, they tended to include the words sonnet, stanza, or verse. Here’s a sonnet it wrote on the subject of writing, which I suppose gave it an excuse to refer to sonnets within it. But it also referred to a dance, a symphony, brushstrokes, a tapestry, melodies and song, a journey, and dreams.

Now, I haven’t done Lit Crit in many a year, but the result seemed muddled and mediocre to me.

Upon the page, my quill begins its dance/ In ink, the thoughts from depths of mind take flight./A symphony of words, a sweet romance/Each line a brushstroke in the poet’s light.

In solitude, I craft a world unseen/With verses woven like a tapestry./The writer’s heart, an open book, pristine/Unraveling tales of eternity.

Oh, how the words, like melodies, entwine/In stanzas, whispers of a silent song./The poet’s soul, an endless, vast design,/In every verse, a journey to prolong.

Through pen and paper, dreams find their release/In every sonnet, life finds sweet peace.

Then, I tried it on a different topic—sex. I was curious to see how it addressed this most human of activities. Here’s what it wrote:

In whispered shadows where desire’s flame,/Ignites the senses in a sacred dance./Two souls entwined, no need for words to claim,/The poetry of passion’s sweet romance.

Bodies as verses, intimate and bare,/In tangled sheets, a sonnet takes its form./Each touch and kiss, a stanza to declare,/A love that weaves through passion’s vibrant storm.

Ephemeral, the moments that we share,/As pleasure paints the canvas of the night./In silent echoes, echoes of a dare,/Two hearts entangled in this sweet delight.

Oh, sonnet of the flesh, in whispers spun,/In ecstasy, a tale of love is done.

Again with the references to sonnets, dance, poetry, verses, stanzas, and painting a canvas.

The chatbot, in my opinion, did better with haiku. Here’s a haiku on the subject of haiku:

Three lines, concise art,

nature’s essence captured close,

haiku whispers truth.

Here’s what it did with a haiku on bipolar disorder:

Storm in a fragile mind,

sunshine and shadows collide,

bipolar tides shift.

And on the subject of writing in general:

Ink-stained whispers flow,

Words on paper, tales unfold,

Silent stories grow.

But when it came to sex, the haiku was again (in my opinion, needlessly) self-referential:

Whispers in moonlight,

Bodies weave an intimate

Haiku of passion.

So, what did I learn from my experiments? ChatGPT does a decent job with factual topics, though it has a tendency to rely rather heavily on figures of speech. Here’s a paragraph it wrote when I gave it the subject of bipolar disorder in the style of my other blog, Bipolar Me. It wrote a (flattering) description of the blog instead.

Navigating the rollercoaster of emotions that is bipolar disorder is a journey unique to each individual, a theme explored with raw honesty on the pages of the Bipolar Me blog. In the midst of the highs, where creativity flows like a torrential river, and the lows, where the world appears desaturated and heavy, the author skillfully captures the kaleidoscope of emotions that define life with bipolar disorder. With a poignant blend of vulnerability and resilience, the blog illuminates the challenges faced by those grappling with the disorder, dispelling myths and stigma along the way. Through personal narratives and reflections, the Bipolar Me blog serves as a beacon of understanding and connection, reminding its readers that they are not alone in their journey through the intricate landscapes of mood swings and self-discovery.

And here’s what it said about this very blog:

The “But I Digress” blog, much like a meandering conversation with a wise and witty friend, invites readers into a realm where thoughts flow freely, detouring into unexpected intellectual landscapes. With each post, the blog embarks on a delightful exploration of diverse topics, from profound philosophical musings to lighthearted anecdotes, weaving a narrative that reflects the author’s curious mind. It’s a virtual salon where ideas intermingle, and the unexpected tangents become the heart of the discourse. Whether dissecting the nuances of contemporary culture, diving into the intricacies of literature, or reflecting on the quirks of everyday life, “But I Digress” captivates its audience with a blend of insightful commentary, humor, and a touch of intellectual whimsy, creating a space where readers can both ponder the profound and enjoy the pleasures of intellectual meandering.

I’ll take it. Thanks, ChatGPT.

When You Have the Flu: Some Unsolicited Advice

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I keep revisiting this post — this time because I just tested positive for COVID, which is, after all, uber-flu. Anyway, I feel too crappy to write something new.

Say you’ve got a touch of the flu. Keep far away from me – you feel awful and I don’t want to feel awful too. I know you don’t want visitors, but here I am, and at least I’ve brought a gift: a few suggestions for entertaining things you can do while you suffer in peace and quiet, except for, you know, the coughing and sneezing and assorted other noises you’re making. Relative peace and quiet, if you know what I mean.

Drink tea. It really doesn’t matter what kind, since you can’t smell it anyway. Earl Grey will smell just like jasmine. Peppermint and English Breakfast, the same. And if you want to, you can use any variety as the base for my father’s restorative tonic, which consists of tea, bourbon, and horehound candy (tea optional), or boring old lemon and honey, if you insist, though my father would not approve.

Cuddle large, fuzzy cats. Do this even if you’re allergic to them. You’re already sneezing as much as humanly possible, so you have nothing to fear from dander. Bonus: A large, fluffy cat makes an excellent substitute for a heating pad or hot water bottle.

Read. Or pretend to. Actual reading may distract you from how miserable you are (unless you’re reading Les Miserables). Pretend-reading will encourage people to keep their voices low, plus it doesn’t matter if you fall asleep with the book elegantly displayed on your chest. (Make sure it has a classy dustjacket, even if the book inside is Fifty Shades of Gray, which I don’t recommend, unless it’s for pretend-reading. It can lead to barfing, which may be in your future anyway.)

Eat chicken soup. Tell everyone that you need it for the fluids and the electrolytes, which is true. Egg drop soup is an especially good variety – if you can’t convince someone in your household to make it and bring it to you, you can always convince the Chinese take-out down the street to do it. Nibble saltines daintily, or the little fried things that look like Chinese tortilla strips.

Hit the Nyquil. I don’t mean the non-drowsy kind – sleep through as much of the illness as possible. Warning: Do not mix Nyquil with Southern Comfort or the bourbon-horehound mixture (see above). You’ll barf and you may be doing that already. Also, don’t mix Nyquil with cough syrup, which can cause unintended psychedelic effects and more barfing.

Squash tissues. Let them blossom all around you in a protective ring that no one will want to cross. If you try the tissues with built-in lotion, don’t use them to wipe your glasses before trying to read (see above).

Call the doctor. Don’t go see the doctor. You’ve got a virus and there’s nothing she can give you for it. Just ask how long it is until you can get an appointment and rest assured that your ailment will be over before then. You may want to actually go if you start making a sucky (in both senses), moist kind of wheezing sound when you breathe. The advantage is it will keep people even farther away from you, but the downside is that you may have pneumonia, which is even less fun than flu.

Use Vick’s Vapo-Rub. You won’t be able to detect the scent because your nose is busy with something else (snot), but other people sure will, encouraging them to keep a respectful distance. If you don’t have Vapo-Rub, try Ben-Gay. Bonus: nice warm feeling on your chest. Note: If you use either Vapo-Rub or Ben-Gay, do not cuddle the large, fuzzy cats (see above), unless you want to look like Bigfoot. Just sing “Soft Kitty” instead, or insist that someone else sing it to you.

Whine. Punctuate with coughs and sneezes. Again, the goal is to get people to leave you alone. If this tactic isn’t working, move on to even more disgusting symptoms. Keep a bucket by your bed, just so people get the idea that you could use it at any moment.

P.S. I’ll give you one guess why I wrote this. If you don’t get the answer right, I’ll start whining. And coughing. And sneezing. And barfing. Just bring me some egg drop soup and leave quietly.

You wouldn’t want to catch what I’ve got.

Keep me in Nyquil!

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Science Madness

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The problem these days is not so much “mad scientists” as people who are mad at science.

Where did the Mad Scientist trope come from anyway? Arguably it was Mary Shelley’s horror novel Frankenstein, published in 1818. Science fiction classics like Jules Verne’s The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896) kept up the theme and the “Golden Age” of science fiction provided many more examples.

In these novels, scientists either tampered with things better left alone or succumbed to a lust for power. Death rays and the precursors of gene splicing abounded. The outcome was mostly dreadful, except for those few gallant hero scientists who managed to save Earth from a deadly plague/alien/monster/giant something.

While the ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s were the heyday of mad scientists in fiction, those years also constituted a time when real scientists were heroes. The atomic bomb ended WWII in the Pacific. Polio was conquered. The “Space Race” that led to many scientific breakthroughs began, thanks to the Soviets and their Sputnik (1957).

Back then, scientists were revered.

Later on, not so much.

The conflict between science and religion heated up. Of course, there was conflict going way back – before Mary Shelley warned us about “playing God.” Galileo and Kepler removed us from our “God-given place” in the center of the universe, and Darwin implied that we were just another animal. The Earth suddenly became billions of years old,  circling a mediocre star.

Then there was fallout, both literal and figurative, from the atomic bomb. Medical science gave us thalidomide. NASA used up billions of dollars, with no obvious monetary payoff down the line, and some people decried the space program for spending money that could be used for problems on Earth.

And all that led to changes in the general public’s attitude toward science.

By the ’60s. medicine was under fire from those who found Eastern philosophy and natural healing just as good or better. Physicists were condemned for the same atomic bomb for which they had been lauded. Science didn’t seem like such a good deal after all.

And there’s some truth to the complaints. Many scientists believed that math, physics, and chemistry were all. If it didn’t have numbers attached to it, forget it. Psychology, sociology, anthropology, and most other -ologies were “soft sciences,” barely sciences at all. Hard sciences ruled.

Slowly, the ground under science shifted. Now science has become to many people the enemy, the domain of elitists and narcissists and people who feel they are entitled by their intellect to run the world.

Of course, the stereotypes from early science fiction had something to do with that.

But the Average Man (and Woman) had a bone, or at least a fossil, to pick with science and scientists. Again, science was denying what the general public believed.

Increasingly, people believed in the efficacy of non-Western medicine, or at least the non-efficacy of Western medicine. Science believed in genetics and stem cells and cloning.

People believed in the spiritual realm. Scientists believed in the measurable.

People believed in religion. Science believed in science.

You can see where this is heading – right back to the days when people thought science meant the reanimation of corpses, invasions of bug-eyed monsters, and the creation of death rays. Because what, after all, is the distance between growing human organs and creating Frankenstein, between cloning a sheep and making a half-man-half-fly, between a laser-guided missile and a death ray?

And many scientists are arrogant, dismissive of popular opinion, and unwilling to engage in dialogue with opposing viewpoints. “Because I said so,” seems to be enough for them. “Real” scientists look down their noses at “popularizers” who look to educate the public about science.

Unfortunately, everyone is shouting and no one is listening.

Personally, I am a sometimes science geek as well as a word nerd, thanks to high school chemistry and physics, college astronomy, and lots of nonfiction reading. I don’t think science knows it all, and it’s a long way from figuring it all out. I also think that psychology and spirituality and art have a lot to teach us about the human condition and our place in the universe, STEM classes and careers notwithstanding.

But the pushback against science scares me. NASA is wasting its time chasing UFOs. Streaming channels that used to be devoted to science now feature ghost chasers and treasure hunters. I’m not saying that science never stumbles, but it provides the best answers we have to some of the problems that plague us, including plagues.

I don’t advocate returning to a time when science was the be-all and end-all of thought and education, or to the time when fictional science made scientists suspect. I just think science deserves more respect than it’s getting now.

Seven Reasons I Hate The Bloggess

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jennymeFirst, let me say that I read The Bloggess’s (Jenny Lawson’s) blog all the time. I have her books and I read them all the time too. But secretly I hate her, and here’s why.

1. She had a weirder childhood than I did. She lived in a small Texas town full of farm critters and wild animals, and weird characters, including her father the taxidermist, and has interesting poverty stories, like the one about the bread-sack shoes. I lived in a nondescript middle-class suburb with a stay-at-home mom and a dad that went to work every day smelling of Vitalis and Aqua Velva, rather than deer blood.

(This was also the problem I had trying to write country songs. You can’t get very far with “I was born an industrial engineering technician’s daughter/in the Central Baptist Hospital of Lexington, KY.” But I digress.)

2. She had more interesting pets, with more interesting names than I did. She had a raccoon named Rambo that wore Jams and a delinquent turkey named Jenkins. Later she had a dog named Barnaby Jones Pickles and now has one named Dorothy Barker. Her cats are named Ferris Mewler and Hunter S. Thomcat. We had dogs named Blackie and Bootsie and rabbits named Christina and Mittens. Our recent dogs have been Karma and Bridget, and the only eccentric cat names we’ve bestowed have been Django and Dushenka.

(Ordinarily, I don’t like cat names like Baryshnikat and F. Cat Fitzgerald. I think cat names should be something you wouldn’t be embarrassed to yell out the door if one of them wanders off, like Louise or Garcia. I suppose the Bloggess’s neighbors are by now used to anything. But I digress again.)

3. She has more interesting disorders than I do. I have bad knees and bipolar disorder type 2 (and a blog about it, www.bipolarme.blog). The Bloggess has generalized anxiety disorder, anti-phospholipid syndrome, rheumatoid arthritis, depression, and, apparently, an obsession with chupacabras and vaginas. This gives her much more to write about. Although I do have two blogs. Two! In your face, Bloggess!

4. She’s less inhibited than I am. The Bloggess would have ended that last paragraph, “In your face, motherfucker!” I didn’t learn to cuss till I was in my 20s and no one I meet ever believes I swear until I do. Then they’re shocked. Also, I swear all the time, except in my blogs, where I’m afraid I’ll offend readers, all of whom I assume have tender sensibilities. The Bloggess knows her readers better than that.

5. She has way more readers than I do. And she’s published books and has another coming out. I have some followers, but I think most of them want to sell me books on how to publicize my blog. I should probably study a book like that, but I’d rather read ones about emerging viruses, cloud cities on Venus, and mostly true memoirs. On the other hand, I have the distinction of being the only writer ever to have articles in both Catechist and Black Belt magazines. So take that, moth . . . Bloggess!

6. She and her husband have more interesting arguments than my husband and I do. We never even talk quietly about whether Jesus was a zombie.

7. She has a stronger voice than I do. I mean her writing voice. I had no idea what her speaking voice was like until I saw a video clip of her on the web, talking about vaginas. But when I’m going to write in my blogs, I have to lay off reading her for a day or two, because her voice takes over my weak, tiny mind and it wants to sound like her. I wish I could write like that. Or at least as well as that.

But, like the Bloggess, I am a strangeling. And that’s a start.

The Future of Sex and Cleaning

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Forget about all the robot assembly and manufacturing machines that are out to steal our jobs. As far as I can see, the only occupations  chores activities that are likely to be overrun by robotic thieves are sex and cleaning.

Let’s start with everyone’s favorite – cleaning. (I mean favorite in terms of one thing we’d like to have taken off our to-do lists  hands plates – including cleaning the plates.)

Of course everyone knows by now about the Roomba and its cousins, those vacuuming wizards and automatic cat transports. And although they’re not the Jetsons’ Rosie the Robot Maid, they’re fine. As far as they go. Which supposedly is around corners and table legs, over shag carpets and pet stains, and through any detritus (other than Legos, which have overcome every attempt to remove them from floors so that they don’t attack unwary feet. But I digress.).

But do you have any idea what other household chores have been usurped by mechanical minions?

A quick tour around the Internet reveals the possibilities. As of this writing, there are, in addition to mechanized, self-propelled vacuums, robotic:

window-washers

barbecue grill-cleaners

gutter-cleaners

pool-cleaners

dustpans (I can’t make this stuff up)

baby-rockers

plant- and lawn-waterers

and lawnmowers. (At $2100 per, a bit pricey compared to the kid down the street or your own reluctant teenagers. But I digress again.)

It would be nice if there were one robot that would satisfy all our needs  do all that, but unfortunately, every chore needs its own robot. So we humans still have to multitask, even though our machines don’t.

But, speaking of multi-tasking, there is the RealDoll (Abyss Creations), apparently the be-all and end-all  epitome (for now) of sex dolls. They’re easy, but  not cheap. And they’re marketed to men. (Do I need to say that? The sexbots-for-women industry is tiny  minuscule  nearly invisible  not yet growing  unimpressive.) Starting at about what you’d pay for a robotic lawnmower, but rising rapidly  at increasing price points or more, you can have a “plastic pal who’s fun to be with.” (Apologies to Douglas Adams. Couldn’t resist.)

Make no mistake, for that price you’re getting more than your standard blow-up doll. Or blow-up sheep (which I’ve actually seen). More than “just silicone orifices,” according to one writer, the sexbots are jointed, with synthetic skin, and customizations tailored to the customer’s preferences  desires specifications as far as hair color, skin tone, eyes, clothing, booty jiggliness, and genitalia go.

(That customizable genitalia feature has me perplexed. According to the specs, that can mean “removable, exchangeable, flaccid, or hard.” I don’t quite get why someone would want a sexbot with flaccid genitalia. And if you know, don’t tell me. Removable kind of gives me the creeps too. But I digress yet again.)

For those of you not in touch with  an aficionado of  deeply into conversant with the world of artificial intelligence, any number of quandaries are brought into being by the creation of sexbots. You (well, not you) pay for them, so are they prostitutes? What happens when a company decides to make a robo-sex-sheep (and you know they will)? Will a sexbot that can fulfill antisocial desires make it more or less likely that users will act out criminal lusts IRL (as the saying goes)?

Sexbot visionaries have lots of plans for the future: camera eyes for facial recognition, multiple downloadable personalities, etc. The goal is to have either a sexbot that can pass the Turing Test (being indistinguishable from a human being in conversation, the gold standard of AI) or one that you can fall in love with.

Long before then, however, we’re going to need a sexbot-cleaning cleaning robot. ‘Cause otherwise, ew.