Guardrails

Recognize the picture?  You might.  The photograph has been here before.  It is difficult to keep the facial features when ChatGPT makes an image, though.  They don't want users making fake pictures of people that might be offended.  

I guess.  

Chat and I may be breaking up.  The rules, or as it refers to them "guardrails," keep shifting.  What you can make one day, you can't make the next.  Right now, it isn't letting me make much.  And yet, it can still be useful. 

I'm getting back in the groove of living my life in four hours a day.  Everything must be done in that window.  The rest of the time, I am at my mother's house.  

Selavy.  

It is autumn.  Often, at least in memory, the first day of autumn here is a surprise.  You get up to a cool, crisp day.  It happens.  But not today.  It's not horrible, but it isn't crisp.  We won't see that until after Halloween if history is any guide.  

But history is changing.  

Even a dumb sock puppet shouldn't be murdered.  But the farce is when a dumb sock puppet gets to be called a martyr.  Here's how Trump justified it:

Mr. Trump said that Mr. Kirk had valued debate and “did not hate his opponents.” And that, Mr. Trump said, is where he and Mr. Kirk differed.

“I hate my opponent,” Mr. Trump said, standing behind protective glass on the stage. “And I don’t want the best for them!"

There you go!  And the millions weeped.  

There is nothing to be done about it.  It is genetic.  That gang is hardwired that way.  You won't argue them out of it.  You might as well be screaming at a wall to change its color.  If you and all your friends think otherwise. . . .

In my own home state, one of the best liberal colleges in the country was taken over by the governor who put his conservative Christian buddy in charge.  They have determined they will erect a statue to the slain martyr on the college campus.  

See?  I told you Chat could still be useful.  And I also told you that it would change the face so that. . . well, in this case it isn't William Shatner, is it?  

"Tomfoolery," you have the right to claim.  Maybe you're right.  But as I've said, since coming to my mother's, I haven't much else to do other than cook and clean and run errands.  Today we have an appointment with the hearing aid tech to see how mom is doing with her nearly $4,000 hearing aids.  What can we tell her?  

"She doesn't really wear them.  She likes to make people yell."  

It seems as if there was more to tell this morning, but I can't remember what.  My life is mostly on hold right now.  I have to figure out my mother's car and house insurance today.  Now, if you knew me, you'd know I'm not really the man for the job, at least I never have been.  I am not a good businessman or accountant.  About as far as I can go is, "Do I have enough money to buy this?"  That is why my financial friends consult with me.  They say I'm an "indicator."  I have bee attracted to other people like myself in this fashion.  They are some of the most celebratory and adventurous friends I have.  I have friends of the other sort as well, but they are not the ones I count on for adventure.  Expensive meals and drinks, sure, but not the kind of stuff you get outside a theme park.  

Oh. . . I remember now.  I'll end with this brief anecdote.  I had to go to the grocery store to get "fixin's" for dinner.  Just that--pork loin, asparagus, and potatoes.  The store was full of "normal" looking people.  What I mean this time is that they did not look like the people who spend their days in the gym which is what one usually sees around here now--fitness people.  No, these people were "normal."  They weren't overweight but they weren't muscular.  It looked like they had been shipped in from the 1960s.  Men and women without obvious muscle, smaller people, meeker, perhaps.  I don't know.  It was noticeable is all I'm saying.  Maybe the rest had gone to watch the Charlie Kirk Funeral Show.  

But that isn't the point of my story at all.  I shouldn't even say it, but the women were pretty in their non-athleticism.  Maybe both genders.  What I felt was that I was in a less hostile, nicer crowd.  Gentler.  Yes that was it.  They seemed gentler.  

Anyway, as my mother likes to say, when I checked out, I was watching at the prices being rung up on the screen, and I must have appeared accusatory, for the elderly cashier looked at me concerned.  I just shook my head.  

"Everything is getting more expensive," she said.  

"I can't believe it.  Three small red potatoes cost three dollars.  A dollar a potato." 

"Wait until you buy apples," she said.  

I didn't go into the politics of it with her.  We were on the same side.  It was a gentler store that afternoon.  But I don't know how we are all going to make it.