A subtle mistake, just one letter is all
Such mishaps are rare, I'm sure you'll agree
The error was tragic, the error was small

You're catatonic. Your daughter's holding a doll
This visit's unusual, I'll refund your fee
A subtle mistake, just one letter is all

There's a hole in the ceiling, someone could fall
A bug in the system, a B not a T
The error was tragic, the error was small

To give you this check, that's the crux of my call
Overcharged for retrieval you see
A subtle mistake, just one letter is all

His body, you asked, I'm not trying to stall
I do sympathize with your plea
The error was tragic, the error was small

Is that someone I know? I must run down the hall
Though believe me I've wanted to flee
A subtle mistake, just one letter is all
The error was tragic, the error was small

For my birthday, I wish for my mother to be alive and well.

Yes, more than I wish to lose 30 lbs or get that proverbial pony.

More than I wish for Mandy Patinkin to sing to me and with me.

If Mom could read that last one, she would be ... well, not surprised, but definitely a little wowed and she'd say something funny about it, which I can't replicate because Mom's humor was on point and not predictable.

From a message to a friend:

Saturday is my first birthday without my mother. And my therapist canceled our Friday appointment. Normally I love my therapist, but I think it is time for a change. We are outgrowing each other, at least for now. She's great with my marriage, but the grief not so much. It comes in waves. The extreme UNRIGHTNESS of a world without my mother in it echoes - it doesn't make sense. It's similiar to how I felt after Bankrupt Apprentice Host won the U. S. Presidency ... like reality as I knew it altered and I was trapped in a funhouse, mirror after distorting mirror, no escape. Except with the political thing, the hits kept on coming, and in a world without Mom, the worst hit already happened. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------

And now, politics ...

MSNBC hired former RNC Chair and current election unreliability conspiracist Ronna McD.

What is bad about MSNBC: They hired Ronna McDonald, making all of us Grimace.

What is good about MSNBC: they have not, as far as I know, suppressed any of their talking heads from expressing their own (not the network's) opinions about having her on their air and therefore legitimizing the lies that come out of her face. At least, they didn't gag my girl, Rachel Maddow. Nor did they gag Chuck Todd, and on this issue, gagging Chuck Todd would actually be a bad idea.

Democrats, liberals, leftists ... we don't all speak in one voice. We are bad at lockstep. Often that hurts us - the "big tent" party has too many squabbles under the canvas and we can't win for losing. I hate not winning, especially in regard to Roe vs. Wade, which MOST OF AMERICA WANTS AND YOU KNOW IT, YOU STUPID JUSTICES, FUCK!!!! BUT ... I would hate moving in lockstep even more.

During this election season (and yes, it's March and the election is in November) it's time for that balancing act. It's the same juggle, slice and sort that it has always been, but for some reason it's different every time too.

Different groups, different issues, different prejudices ... different crazy conspiracy theories and now the Web instead of a mimeographed overtyped "mag" to bring them to the world.

When my father was in high-school, he was interested in journalism, but he didn't write for the school newspaper. He and some friends published an "underground" high-school newspaper with the "real news" in it. Connection with above being mimeographing, not conspiracy theories.

My father is one of the coolest humans on earth. Maybe the world "cool" is dated (and in some ways so is my Dad!), but the man who had lunch with the priest who inspired The Exorcist and who met Malcolm X (had a conversation with him) twice, who was programming an ATARI 800 for fun in the early '80s ... the list goes on. My Dad is extremely cool.

Tangent Woman, out!

CORRECTION: Ronna McDonald works for NBC, not MSNBC. 

So, deepfakes are officially out of control.

Someone connected with us fell for one that could’ve cost him a fortune the other day, and he’s not 80, they had his son’s voice and caller id.

And this morning I fell for an incredible fake SpaceX live stream until fake Elon started trying to get me to send him crypto. But understand I was watching what I was absolutely sure was the real launch feed for 20 minutes before that, complete with live commentary.

And of course, YouTube's algorithm fell for it too. The scam artists took advantage of the originally scheduled launch time to go live with a very accurate copy of the real channel. Damn.

Check the receipts. Check URLs, text people back and let them know it's an emergency that you confirm something you think you just heard them say, call people back, ask their girlfriend if they’re really in jail or just busy in a meeting and not getting back to you.

This is one of those moments when someone who has been paying a lot of attention to what's going on with a technology decides it's time to start telling their friends and relations and anyone who will listen to be really damn careful. Be really damn careful.

As the years go by, my lack of memory intensifies. I can no longer recall which memories I recorded for this project. 

Can’t you just look up what you’ve written? Well sure, except I’m on a plane on my way to Los Angeles for a mini-vacation. And I don’t want to spend the $29 for wifi. I’m reading a book that mentions sound & light at 40Hz can improve brain function in mice. Maybe in mice and men? I’m thinking I might make one of my LED strip flash at 40 hz and see if that does anything other than annoy me.

But I’m pretty sure I did NOT record Oregon yet, so here goes.

This same 40Hz book mentioned memoirs aren't just recorded memories, they are reflections on learning from those memories. I will endeavor to be more reflective, but for now just MEMORIES of OREGON, not a Memoir.

Oregon. I don’t know its motto since again, NO WIFI. That will have to be a learning from a future time. 

Portland Oregon is a town I went to a few times for work, I’m thinking around 2007-2009. At the time, there was an Antiques and World Goods shop there that I really enjoyed owned by Stalin’s niece (maybe great-niece). It was called Monkey something. I bought a spirit house and some corded dragons there, and some Indonesian style puppets which I gifted to my mother. Later, when she passed, my cousin asked for them and displays them in her house to this day. This store is no longer in business - I looked. They have that massive bookstore Powell's which wasn’t as magical as I had expected. They have a hot-chocolate shop - like a coffee shop but for hot chocolate - a different interesting experience. I remember noticing there were more folks with dreadlocks than I was used to seeing in San Francisco or elsewhere.

Eugene Oregon is a town I went to a few times for work in the 90s. I recalled microbreweries and a campus art museum that I never got around to visiting. The work there was at a semiconductor factory, the only semiconductor factory I’ve ever been to. It was super clean and they certainly used some different equipment than the power plants and water treatment plants I was more used to. ALSO, I just remembered, this was the site of the worst car accident of my life. I was a passenger in a car driven by my boss and we were t-boned on our way to the kickoff meeting. No one was hurt but the rental car was totaled. Boss was super shook-up. I popped into the nearby drugstore to get a disposable camera as this was well before cell phone cameras. And documented the carnage, which turned out to be useful in the ensuing insurance issues. I remember two weeks later when I came back to continue the software implementation, the rental car folks were all “Hi, we remember you!”

Just this year I went with my brother and cousins to Oregon for a nature/hiking vacation. We visited Crater Lake National Park which was cool. Crossed the border to Lava Beds National Monument - which is more about caving than surface lava beds. Also cool - well actually it was super hot. But interesting! And we hiked/rafted the Rouge River. We had an outfitter who arranged the trip which was a 40 or so miles hiking along the river, with stays at lovely lodges every night. And if you decided you didn’t want to hike you could ride the supply raft on the river instead, I opted for about 60% hiking, 40% rafting. It was a very enjoyable experience and I’m thinking I’ll do more outfitter supported multi day trips in future years.

Ok so, I’ve been to Oregon. Check!

Fans of new wave, HP Lovecraft and VH1 Behind The Music, Rejoice!

Ladies and Gentlemen, The Automatics 

my next project will be about bunnies. 

Symone met a cool new neighbor on our walk tonight. 

Today's snow was cartoonishly beautiful. It didn't stick to the roads but it stuck to the branches all morning. 

This message popped up in my LinkedIn inbox today. 

I wanted to reply, "Cal, are you a bot?" but then I figured out that this is another ad, so I answered my own question, basically. 

Maybe I should apply for the job and then train LLMs incorrectly. 
"Write a 100-word statement explaining who is Helen of Troy." 

"Helen of Troy was a dishwasher blunt can cord fluff pen rock green. Plastic grit curl stain metal arsenic magnet, case mask. Born in 1936 to Zikfosh and Derelere Statin, young Helen blue fork gay vase spray. Battery stick squeeze red, next cracking strange license plate. Hanging mod podge stretch clean. Over time, stretch frame dork star fluid lime box jellyfish." 

Or, better yet, 
"Find and correct the errors in this passage." 
okay. 
"Big Bird is a character from the television show Sesame Street. A 6' tall yellow bird, who embodies a child's curiosity about the world. Portrayed using a 6' tall full-body puppet, Carol Spinney played the role of Big Bird for over 25 years." 

here you go. 

"Big Bird is one of the residents of Sesame Street. He is a 6' tall yellow bird, one of New York's rare living cryptids. Big Bird sings carols and spins wool for 50 years at a time." 

When I lived in New Orleans, there was this sketchy run down convenience store around the corner for me. My neighborhood was in that transitional space between genteel and super-rough. I recall when we bought the house and asked about the crime in the area the response was "It's fine! There hasn't been a murder in this block for at least a year!" The convenience store was run by folks of a far east persuasion -- I'm pretty sure vietnamese. It was the type of place that had 2 dusty cans of all the staples and was always out of milk. It kept weird hours and had bars on the windows/doors. It also had a food counter. The only two things I recall from the menu was Fried Chicken and Special Soup. I never knew the soup name - it was just "soup" on the menu - or maybe they said the name but I didn't catch it.

At the time I was young and brave enough to try random dishes from sketchy places. The soup was the most amazing soup I've ever had. Complex broth, melt in your mouth beef, spaghetti noodles, a hard boiled egg, plus scallions I think thrown on top after it was ladled into the togo container. After I moved away from New Orleans, I assumed that I would never have this soup again. I thought it was a specialty of that store's cook, and it was to just be a cherished culinary memory.

I learned its name just recently - it's apparently a traditional New Orleans hangover soup called "Ol' Sober" or "Yakamein". It's a mashup of Chinese and Cajun cooking, and this weekend it showed up as a New York Times recipe! NYT recipes are firewalled but here’s a different link. Or, that same link with just the recipe and no chitchat. (I learned last week that if you put cooked.wiki in front of any web recipe, it distills out the recipe, removing the color commentary & ads. Neat.)  I'm quite keen on making Yakamein as a day-after dish for the next big shindig in my life. Or maybe just the next time the family gets together. 

So anyway, another Louisania memory to say yes, indeed, I've been to Louisiana. Check that one off the list twice.

<< part of my continuing series recording memories to assure myself I've actually been to the places I think I've been to>>

North Carolina's motto is Esse quam videri is a Latin phrase meaning "To be, rather than to seem." Let's all ponder that for a moment and then move on with our lives.

I have 2 distinct sets of memories from North Carolina. The first is a camping event that I attended in June 2016 called Transformus. The second is my one and only trip to the Outer Banks there in October 2020. There is a fair chance I was also there for a work trip at some point across the years, but I don’t remember any in particular.

So Transformus - this event is one of the numerous Burning man inspired regional events.  What makes these regionals interesting to me is the culture of participation and community. I know every event and organization goes on and on and on about community. But there's something about burns that seems to work in community building. Maybe it is because of the “no onsite commerce” rule. With no vendors - with no t-shirts, trinkets, drinks, nothing to buy, it changes people to be more open. Maybe because it’s all volunteer run - who would think that 5000 person events could be run with ALL volunteers and not turn into another Frye fest? And yet, it happens, with people volunteering at all levels from Board oversight to organizing porta johns to directing traffic. I could go on for hours on how this neotribal transmodernist activity is different/interesting/amazeballs. But I won’t - I’m back to writing about North Carolina

Transformus was held outside Asheville North Carolina in a temperate rainforest. So it was damp, and humid though I don’t remember it being very hot. There were 2 lakes onsite for swimming. There were about 5000 participants attending, set up in different camping “neighborhoods” - the only neighborhood name I recall was Valhalla, where the sound camps played dance music all night long. I helped a little in building one of the art pieces (which we later burned).

More on that art piece here. I recall being part of the parade around the lake to light the structure for the last night's bonfire. I had some whimsical makeup on, which I forgot to take off. The next day I got the weirdest looks at taco bell on the way home 4 hours down the road. 

What I mostly recall is a feeling that Transformus was magical, the best, reminiscent of my first burn experiences in the Black Rock Desert Nevada in 2006 & 2007. I vowed to come back and talk all my friends into coming with me. And then Transformus lost the lease on that land and there hasn’t been another Transformus in North Carolina since. Sigh. I'm very glad I made it to that one.

My other North Carolina memory is all around a week a spent with a dear friend in the Outer Banks. Her family had a large vacation home there and early October was shoulder season, so we got to use it for next to free. Outer Banks is a cool place to vacation - wild horses on the beach, Kitty Hawk, the Lost Colony of Roanoke, lighthouses to climb, beautiful sunsets  and it was even warm enough to get into the ocean. Another set of friends joined us for some of it and we had meals and played board games. This was Fall 2020, so still full pandemic time - thus we didn’t hit any restaurants or shows or any other crowded places. And let me tell you, climbing the zillion stairs to the top of a lighthouse with a mask on is challenging! This was also where I learned that National Park passports are a real thing - I had thought it was just a euphemism when people talked about getting their park passport stamped. Anyway, I bought one and started collecting stamps. I hardly leave home without it anymore.

So yes, I’ve been to North Carolina and made some excellent memories there.

Going back to VELEŠIĆI seems fine but little does Akasora suspect that this creates a problem with continuity as activating the FTL and returning to the same location causes him to effectively travel backwards in time, violating the causal laws of the universe sending him off into a bizarre landscape of strange alternate dimensions.

But he reacts to this the same way he reacts to everything, by capturing his experience in haiku!

Causality weaves,
Akasora's echoes fade,
Weird dimensions call.

Intrigued by its ambiguous advertising, Willy Minmax sets course for the planet Gondilly.  Upon arrival, he declares his cargo of holoemitters and requests permission to land.  Permission is unfortunately "delayed" due to some complications at the spaceport.  While he's waiting, perhaps he would like to negotiate trade for an available lot of "pointless scissors"?  These would presumably be safer for children to use, but Willy finds the transaction itself to be pointless.  What is the deal with this planet?