"Rumble"

I just spent the morning creating a formal portrait of J.D. and Usha Vance in A.I.  Had to try over and over as it couldn't quite get his face right.  When I had something I could use, I posted it and spent part of the morning writing a piece about her pregnancy.  It got to be too. . . much. . . so I deleted it.  

Prudence is the better part of valor today, I think.  My mind is a waste disposal system lately.  

And so. . . I'll stick with the shot of a woman eating meat on a stick.  Nice. 

Still. . . .

What do I have to report?  I think the painters are doing a great job on my house.  I can see why no one painter wanted to take it on.  If I had done it myself. . . well. . . it wouldn't be right.  There has been a crew working on my house for days, caulking, sanding, repairing, priming.  Five women are doing the detail work.  They are all over, way up on ladders, standing on one roof to reach the higher parts of the house.  The crew is all Mexican, and they are lovely.  Now all the windows are covered in plastic.  My walls are mostly windows.  Yesterday while I was there, I opened the shutters and the light that filtered through the plastic was diffused, soft, and lovely.  Hmm.  

Today they begin painting the house color, I think.  This is the men's work I take it.  There were two guys doing some of the small spraying jobs yesterday.  Maybe seven people working in all for five days.  Yea. . . I can see why no painter wanted to take this on.  I'm super happy I didn't try to do it myself.  

I was there when the house cleaners came.  The jefe said they could just skip cleaning this week, so I gave her fifty dollars to go to lunch.  She has only been taking 2/3ds of the money each week since I haven't bee living there, and when she was gone, I thought, "Man oh man alive. . . I should have given her a hundred."  It has been eating at me since.  

Every day now, I see article after article about how to exercise to stay young and live forever.  There is dietary advice, too.  And now, supplements.  Not just vitamins and minerals and plant extracts.  Nope.  Even at the Club Y where plastic surgeries abound, people are turning to peptide chains.  Hardly any real research on this stuff, but anecdotal evidence shows immediate gains in muscularity and big reductions in fat.  All the boys are already doing testosterone replacement therapies, and the women those combined estrogen/progesterone/ testosterone bundles.  

The thing is, once you are on, you can't get off without resuming your lesser self.  And eventually, when problems begin to arise, and they will. . . . 

There is no staying young forever.  Ask any old person other than those freaks selling product.  I'm allowing my body to run on estrogen the way god intended.  

The other trend is more viscous.  Everybody is learning to fight.  There are fighting gyms everywhere and parents are putting their kids into classes.  I'm sure most kids could kill me now.  My fighter buddy sends me videos all the time.  Cool.  But I think once you get hit upside the head with an iron pipe, all that shit goes out the window.  I don't think most criminals are going to say, "Come on, buddy. . . put up your dukes."  

"Ju-jitsu is good for your brain," one video opined.  I said I would be willing to play brain bowl against him.  

It's a dangerous world, my friends.  I just live in it.  Kind of.  

If you like the weather, vote Republican.  

I'm just saying.  

And so. . . I wonder if the Vance's fourth child will look anything like J.D.  None of the others do.  

That's it.  I'm done.  I'll leave you with a little ditty that I think I can get A.I. to make better.  The world just keeps getting cooler.