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Real life advice for real life

Michael 12 Comments

I would like to wish the fathers out there a belated Happy Father’s Day, those celebrating a Happy Juneteenth, and to everyone, the words of life advice from a father who has served many years of life.

I got this idea from last week’s post when I suggested one who serves food would be better received (and probably better tipped) if that one did not have a tattoo of a spider on the back of their hand. I realized then that I had a wealth of advice just waiting to spill forth from my brain and what better place for it to spill than on here? Just some morsels of common sense sprinkled over some of the nonsensical things I’ve lately noticed.

For example. If you own a bar, restaurant, bar and restaurant, diner, pizza parlor, sandwich shop, or similar, and you find yourself a little short staffed, don’t mount on the largest sign you can find “Servers, cooks, bartenders, dishwashers wanted” in the largest letters you can find and post said sign outside your main entrance door. You would be better served to post a sign that says “Please don’t come here to eat unless you enjoy waiting hours before being served.”

Likewise to the local auto repair shop owner with the sign “Mechanics needed” and is wondering why business has taken a sudden downturn.

I’m not sure anyone ever put “Spam Spreader” on their resume, but someone must write and distribute those aberrations to polite electronic mail correspondence. My advice to whomever it may be, don’t use flags, up arrow notations of urgency, or more than 4 emojis in the subject line. I can’t think of one legitimate email I’ve ever received that came with 🔈😮🔥🚨 as part of the subject that had me thinking “Oh my gosh, I better open this email before I do anything else or the world may end!”

While I’m thinking about resumes, if you should happen to think about applying for one of those open waitresses, cooks, or mechanics positions, leave “content creator” off yours. I’ve actually seen that on resumes and it didn’t impress me, and to honest, I’m usually quite impressionable.

Also apropos resumes, if you are employed as one who gets to send emails, text messages, or even real mail to potential job candidates and you start your spiel with “I found your resume on line and know you would be perfect for a position we are trying to fill,” please read the resume, or the next time someone wants to hire me as medical director at some hospital in a “world famous tourist location,” I may take you up on that, especially if you’re covering travel and expenses (including a plus one, naturally).

Finally, to those seeking a position in government like, I don’t know, maybe President, it’s in bad taste to put out TV, radio, internet, and mail ads suggesting your opponent is “dishonest” if you’ve just been found guilty of a few dozen felonies. Just my opinion.

Have a happy week everyone – and a happy federal holiday to those in states where it’s not illegal to celebrate it.

One way to survive in this crazy world is making the most of every hour. Not with a strict schedule and sticking to a to-do list. It’s implementing a to-don’t list. Yes, the secret to doing efficiently and effectively is knowing what not to do. We know  we said so in the latest Uplift!

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A rose by another name

Michael 8 Comments

Last week I poked fun at “man fashion.” It’s only fair the women now get their turn. Specifically, inked up women. Full disclosure, I am not a tattoo person. Quite like golf, I know I am a minor minority in that regard, but I just don’t get the point. Specifically in women. Especially beautiful, well put together women. Which is like 99.7% of them. All women are beautiful, except the tattooed ladies. So the percentage of beautiful, well put together women is dropping but that’s life.

Before I get into the meat and potatoes of this post, a work of advice to the tatted up broads, career advice. If you are in a field where you handle food or drugs, please don’t tattoo the back of your hand. In the last week I had a server set a plate in front of me with a hand on which she had a spider inked onto the back. And the cashier at the pharmacy handed me my prescription with her hand adorned with skull and crossbones. Can I just say, “Blech!”

Also in the last week I was at the service center customer waiting lounge at the car dealer. Yes, I was just there a few weeks ago.  Different car. I took a seat by the coffee pot because my knee was bothering me, and I didn’t want to walk very far several times an hour. A young lady walked up to the machine and admittedly, I stared. She was a very good-looking lady. Mind you, I have never been one of the crowd that says, ladies, if you don’t want to be looked at, don’t make yourself so look-able. But she was definitely look-able. And she sported ink.

So many people getting tattooed pick designs that mean something to them. Recently there had been a trend, especially among women, to cut through all the representation art and just put out there what they want to say with words, so now catchy phrases and famous quotes are appearing on human canvases. This lady at the coffee machine had taken that route and had words tattoos on the side of her foot, which was wearing a sandal, those exposing nearly all of the letters that made up all of the words. I had to stare so I could figure out what it said! She was not only look-able, she also had a sense of witty humor for on her foot she had emblazoned, “Put your best foot forward.” I kind of liked that. I wasn’t liking that she huffed and puffed at me about being some sort of foot pervert and to stop staring at her.

I remembered that advice later that same day when I was in the checkout line in the nearby Walmart, a place not known for instilling conservative dress and appearance in its customers. A lady in front of me was as look-able as the coffee machine lady, but for completely different reason. She also appeared well endowed with natural beauty, had well cared for hair and manicure. She seemed every bit a lady except that she was wearing basically swimwear and had a tattoo. Not a single phrase on the side of her foot, but a 2 or 3 inch wide thorny stem wrapping around her leg until it disappeared in her short, short bottoms and then reappeared wrapped around her exposed midriff and then ducking out of sight again under the bottom of her rather brief top. It did not continue up from the top of the top, but rather did a rose appear within her cleavage. Just a single rose although the corporeal vase easily could have held a dozen. Long stems and all.

But I didn’t stare. I’m not sure if I had if it would have bothered her much. I noticed she paid cash for the television and sound bar she was purchasing. I started staring as she carefully counted out her payment in one dollar bills.

Last week we celebrated “Start Over Day,” a day set aside to try again to master that which disappointed you the first time around. Learn from that disappointing experience and start over to make it better. We write how it can be the beginning of a new adventure in the most recent Uplift, Try, Try Again.

A hair-raising tale

Michael 7 Comments

I’m worried about humanity. Every day I see something more and more stupid than the day before. I don’t think we have a chance. You know what? I misspoke. Or mistyped. Not humanity. Humanity might be getting more stupid every day too, but I really mean men. If men had to promulgate the species by themselves, we’d still be in the Dark Ages. And probably in the dark as well. Especially if those men are, as almost all men will be sometime, starting to thin a little up at the hairline.

Oh my Heavens, you would think the world is coming to an end. As soon as it seems there is just a little creep backwards in the hairline, all aich, ee, double hockey sticks breaks out. “Frick! My hair is falling out! I’m not a man anymore!!” So genius that he is, he shaves his head. “Now it will look like a fashion statement, not that I’m bald.” Yeah, right.

But then, genius that he is, he knows how to use a computer and discovers testosterone is necessary for hair growth. Naturally he makes the connection, no hair means he has no testosterone. No testosterone means he only has his oversized red pick-up truck to prove he’s a man and he can’t take that to bed with him. What will he do?

Now this idiot remembers elementary school math and knows that 2 plus 2 equals something, so he adds them up and comes up with a solution. If he has to have hair to pick up women, then by gosh, he’ll grow some hair. But his head is off limits because he just spent a bazillion dollars on a fancy 17 head rotary razor designed especially for thinning and balding men to recapture their outer beauty by mowing away whatever hair might be left growing out of the top of his head. Next best thing to head hair? That’s right — facial hair! So he grows a beard. And not a sophisticated, well-groomed, trim offering like the debonair George Clooney. Oh no. He does the full on, don’t come near me with a pair of manicure scissors, scraggly, end of the world, manly man’s beard like ZZ and his friend, Top.  

Oddly, he still can’t pick up women, so since he is a genius, his first thought is that his truck isn’t big enough. A reasonable assumption. Everyone knows the larger the truck the more manly the man. Ask any used car dealer. So he goes all out, gets an even bigger, even redder, this time diesel pickup with bigger and shinier wheels and tires too. And takes the mufflers off to make certain his is noticed and not overlooked for some weeny in a Tesla. And he still goes home alone after spending all night at the bar. Now what’s the problem?

When he gets home he looks at himself in the mirror and decides he’d sleep with him if he had a chance. But even genius lunatic that he is, he sees something just doesn’t look right with a ZZ Top beard below a cue ball head. How can we fix that? Right! Get a hat! So the hext day he heads out to the fashion capital of the world, Walmart, and gets a hat. He’d like one with a pick-up on the front so he can double up on his manly man ride, but all he can find is one with a tractor on the front and a bull saying “Who farted?” and buys 3 of them so he’ll never run out. Remember, we are dealing with genius.

So now he has his manly man hat covering up his manly man bald shaved head above his manly man beard and he hops into his manly man truck and scoots on down to the local dive bar looking for a woman who can’t wait to be in the arms of a true manly manly man.

Just one problem. If he should find a female looney enough to match on him, he will have found her thus attired which means he can never ever never remove his hat except to shave his head, so he now goes through life with a hat on his head (a hat that says, “who farted?”) everywhere he goes, including out to fancy dinners, church and school functions, shopping, doctor appointments, job interviews, even when he goes to have his manly man truck cleaned up and made shinier where he can sit in the waiting room and share his manly man wisdom.

So if you ever run across a guy who looks like ZZ Top with a hat on climbing down out of big red manly man pickup truck, don’t try to pick him up. He’s taken. Mostly with himself.   

It makes sense that governments can’t take time to regulate everything in life, thus the unwritten law. But which is more powerful – the unwritten rule, or the desire to pursue life, full steam ahead?

The dedication of a lifetime

Michael 8 Comments

While you are taking time off today for Memorial Day in the US, try to remember why we remember.

I’ve written a few times of my disdain for spam, junk e-mail. There just seems something more intrusive, and more distasteful about it, than other kinds of unwanted solicitation. Recently, I started getting emails from something called “Patriotic Points.” It’s a poorly written, poorly disguised bit of campaign dreck spouting the lies we’ve all been on added with since November 2020. Normally I just click on the ”this is spam, keep it away from me” button and let the email client do its work, but this time I (foolishly) clicked “unsubscribe.” Within the week I was bombarded with a variety of ‘newsletters’ all with different names and subjects, but from the same email address each calling themselves American, Patriotic, Truth-seekers, but none of them living up to their self-acclaimed appellations.

I find something particularly sad about his year’s Memorial Day. So many people are calling themselves or others “patriots” who have never lived the word. It seems we’ve been too concerned Artificial Intelligence misleading us, we forget politicians invented the AI process. For 10 years I woke in a Memorial Day and dressed in uniform, not for a parade or a cemetery honor guard, but to report for duty. None of those years were spent in combat zones, but each day for all of them started not knowing that. Steadily, we performed our duties in training knowing that one day we could report for duty and be loaded into a transport plane for a point to be announced en route. We were not heroes, but we were and are patriots, as in the real definition of patriot.

So today when you see the parade pass by or see a flag wave, remember why we remember. “Patriotism is not short, frenzied outbursts of emotion, but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime.” (Adlai Stevenson)

Happy Memorial Day

As we move through life, our needs change and so do the energy and interest we pay to activities and events.  As one interest wanes, another rises to keep the mind and body moving at the same energy level. It all works out.

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Color my world

Michael 12 Comments

Because the dealership where I bought my car was dumb enough to give me state safety inspection and basic services free for life as long as I own the car, I visit them every 6 months for my oil change. Last week was one of those times. In fact, it was the 43rd time.

While I was waiting for someone to recycle my old oil I wandered about the showroom. It only took a few minutes to nickel something disturbing (to me). Between the showroom and the front line outside there was no color. All the cars were black, gray, silver, and white. In the second line there was one dark blue SUV.

I started paying attention at red lights, in parking lots, up and down the neighborhood streets. Cars have no color. It was not that long ago you could buy red, blue, and green in varieties of shades. Orange, purple, and chartreuse were almost common. It was longer ago but still in our lifetimes that two-toned, multicolored patterns decorated our motorized chariots.

I’m doing my part. I have a red car. It’s actually my third red car. I’ve also had blue, green, gold, tan, brown, and even black, white, and gray. And one the dealer called pewter. I called it another gray. I liked those cars. I can remember those cars because I can associate the color with a particular event or an era. If they had all been back, white, or gray, I’d likely not even remember them.

Car colors and the occasional chrome to excess identified our rides, were extensions of our personalities. They have been replaced by ever higher lift kits and exponentially increasing tire sizes. Oh, and tattoos. Can’t forget the tattoos. Where did we go wrong?

Adding a little adventurous audacity might be what your life needs to jumpstart your enthusiasm engine. What’s the worse that can happen? You’ll figure it out when you read the latest Uplift.

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Name it!

Michael 6 Comments

Name that…

Did you ever wonder where some products get their names? Other than it looks like one, why should a Brillo pad be called a Brillo pad.

I started thinking about these one day in the shower when I took a close look at the shampoo bottle, proudly proclaiming it is made of five vitamins and oils. Oh, so that’s why, I said to myself. And from there I was off and running.

I’m all knowing when it comes to pharmaceutical brands, they being such a big part of my livelihood. There are many stories of drugs being named after researchers’ wife’s and children. Sometimes a glimpse of what they do or don’t do is hidden in the name. The first commercially available benzodiazepine, chlordiazepoxide was noted to not cause a loss of equilibrium at sun-sedation doses and that led Roche to name its brand of the drug, Librium. When they made it more potent and released diazepoxide a few years later, they capitalized on brand recognition of the “ium” ending, and as a nod to its use as a sedative, started it off with the Latin for “good night” and named it Valium.

But what of the thousands of products out there that seem to be related. Are they? I there a connection between Kleenex, Spandex, Tilex, and Pyrex? No, nor among the other 600 trademarked products needing in EX. It just sounds good.

Indeed, the letter X in a brand name is much sought after, as is Y and Z.  Pfizer pharmaceuticals hit the letter trifecta with its brand of the antibiotic linezolid when they branded it Zyvox.

A popular brand name construct is combining letters with numbers, ala 7Up or in the company name 3M. Sometimes it’s just shorthand as with 3M which started as Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing. Sometimes it means something even if nobody knows what as with 7Up. (The most popular theory is that it is from its original 7 ingredients and the bubbles go up.) Sometimes the alphanumeric text means something and all the world (except me) knows it like that shampoo. Figure out what it is? Yep. Alberto VO5, named for the five vitamins and oils in the formula. Now I just have to figure out who the heck this Alberto guy is.

Happiness experts say there is joy in being content with ourselves and not missing out in what others are doing. We say joy is not being happy we are not missing out on some part of life. We are joyful because we are taking part in it! We talked about that in the most recent Uplift post, Fearlessly Joyful.

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Jelly Beans for Olives

Michael 12 Comments

For the last month in two, the weather here has been inconsistent, more warm and dry than cool and rainy (odd), but during that time, the weekends have been beautiful (very odd), except for this past weekend when being outdoors was a requirement of the day (par for the course).

Saturday, I had a meeting out of town, far out of town, requiring driving on interstate highways in the dark, in the rain. Highway drive is tolerable in the dark, tolerable in the rain, knuckle whitening scary in both. Sigh.

Sunday, the daughter and boyfriend ran the Pittsburgh Marathon (half marathon version) in morning rain and chill after weeks and weeks of training on dry pavement under sunny skies. Sigh

Something about this weekend reminded me of another spring weekend I wrote about. It took me a while to find it, but I did and I re-present it here from 7 years ago. If you read it then, humor me and give it another go.

From April 17, 2017, ‘Tis the Season, Spring Edition:

I’m pretty sure I should have been born the son of an Italian wine maker. Or perhaps an olive grower. I could see myself spending Sunday afternoons on a rough stone terrazza nibbling on marinated olives and peppers and artichoke hearts sipping a glass of wine, listening to Old World folk songs and letting the sun warm me where the wine doesn’t. Ahhhhhhhh.

Instead I have jelly beans and a leftover beer I found waaaaay back in the fridge, trying to find a spot somewhere on the 4×8 patio that is out of the wind driven rain storm, hoping the next lightning bolt stays waaaaay on the other side of that hill over there.

BOCThat’s all on me though. I couldn’t pick where I was born but I could have moved if I really wanted to. I chose to stay in the only city in America with less sunshine than Seattle. (That’s what I’ve been told. I didn’t believe it so I looked it up and they were WRONG! That particular proverbially always rain-logged Washington hamlet actually has less sun than my burgh but just barely, coming in at Number Nine of the Top Ten Cloudy Hit Parade with a 57% chance of clouds compared to our 56%. What is the number one least sunny city in the US? Juneau, Alaska. Sorry Land of the Midnight Sun dwellers. Apparently that’s not enough for the midday darkness the rest of the year.) Where was I? Oh, yeah. I stayed.

I chose to stay here where the chance of pressing my own olive oil is somewhere around the chance of me removing my own appendix. Wine making might have a little advantage, but still it’s not likely I’ll be trading in the Miata for an Alpha Romeo and riding it along a strada panoramica overlooking the Baia di Napoli. I’ll just have to keep an eye on the morning forecasts and pick those choice hours when the sun will come out and the top will go down and the drive will be just as scenic. Even if it is of the access road leading to the 27th worst commuter road in the country. And we do better than Seattle there, too. (They have the 8th worst commute. Sorry.

Thank God I don’t have to go to work in either city. More time for olives and wine. Or jelly beans and beer. Happy Spring!

There is always room on the calendar for special days. We found a few extra ways to celebrate everyone among the special days. Check them out on Uplift!

That special day

Michael 15 Comments

Happy birthday to me. Happy birthday to me. Wait. What? Birthday? Again. Already? Coulda sworn I just had one of them. Just had lots of them.

Some time between the last post and this one, I turned a year older. Seemingly overnight. That always struck me funny at work. Does not matter if your birthday is tomorrow, if you go to the doctor, hospital, or ER today, you’re however many years you last celebrated old.  There is no rounding up in medicine. From an old person’s point of view, that works out pretty well. I often forget how old I am, so not having to remember how old I’ll be, simplifies things.

I mention birthday because since my last birthday I’ve learned a new birthday routine I found pretty nifty. I had forgotten about it until my birthday. I’m wondering if I’m the only one who doesn’t know this.

First, I should mention, I’m not the biggest fan of birthdays. Of my birthdays that is. I love celebrating everyone else’s birthday but mine is not necessarily a date I’ve learned to look forward to. With only a couple exceptions, most of the bad or unpleasant things in my adult life happened on or within a week of my birthday.

Maybe that’s something leftover from a childhood during a time when you were king or queen (or whatever member of the royal court you preferred) of the world, or your world, on your birthday. You grow older and your world takes a backseat to the rest of the world and disappointment soon follows. Maybe because I heaped unrealistic expectations upon it. For whatever reasons, in terms of days to appreciate, even though I am one of the first to expound “every day is special,” my special day not only rarely is, often is anything but.

But, this new little routine could change that. I was talking with a friend and her watch alarm went off. It was an odd time, 11:18. She excused herself and was back in less than a minute ready to continue. “If there is something you need to deal with, I can wait or come back,” I offered.

“No,” she replied. “It’s just my birthday reminder.” I knew her birthday was months away, or months gone by, depending on whether you want to look ahead or look back, and my questioning look must have expressed that thought. She went on to explain.

Her birthday happens to be November 18, 11/18 in American abbreviation. Her watch is set to go off every day at 11:18, and when it does, she takes a minute to thank God for another day.

What a remarkable way to truly celebrate every day. There is something to be said for those who say every day is special and believe it. There is something stronger to be said for those who say every day is special and celebrate it. There is something unique to be said for one who can say everyday is special and then adds the bells and whistles to prove it! I say “the one” because so far, she is the only one I’ve discovered who goes to lengths to remind herself that each day is absolutely, amazingly, beautifully special.

Unless you know of someone who does something so remarkable and would like to remark on that, I think I’ve found the new queen of the world. And all it took was setting an alarm. And yes, I’ve already set mine!

We may not be destined for fame, but it does not mean with are not destined to do great things. We are everyday people doing extraordinary things every day. Our latest UpLift blog post talks about becoming those special everyday people. Please read along with us!

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Oh That Jack!

Michael 8 Comments

Not too long ago I was working on prompts for whatever I might want to prompt myself with and whenever I feel promptable. One of them is “Would I rather be a jack of all trades or a master of one.” My daughter say my list and said, “You know that’s not right.” I said, “Yes, but it’s closer that what most people think.”

You’ve probably said it or read it or heard it many times. “A jack of all trades, a master of none,” usually spoken derisively of someone more talented than the speaker. Obviously the speaker’s talents do not include reading. Buried between my prompt and the usual dismissal is the actual quote. Do you know what it is? I’ll let you think about that for a while and then we’ll come back to it.

That prompted us to think about sayings we get wrong, or those we pick or choose only a part of the actual quotation that is far more complex, but we stop short of the complete thought. For example, no, the customer is not always right. Harry Selfridge actually encouraged his employees to not question a customer’s taste, not the customer’s correctness with his whole message, “The customer is always right in the matters of taste.” An interesting side note to Mr. Selfridge. Many, many, many years before he founded the London-based retail empire that bears his name, he was born in Wisconsin and his first experience in selling was delivering newspapers after school (before he dropped out) in Jackson, Michigan. (And yes, I know somebody is going to say, no, that originated in France in the early 1900s about a restauranteur who said “no matter how ill-tempered is the diner, treat him with civility,” which is a completely different thought process.)

We all recognize that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Does heaven have a similar comparison? Why, yes, yes it does. When William Congreve wrote Act III of The Mourning Bride he wrote, “Heav’n has no Rage, like Love to Hatred turn’d, Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn’d.” Personally, I think love turning to hatred is more frightening than a ticked off lady. But then, I guess if she was really a lady, she’d not express her displeasure over much anyway.

One that doesn’t change the meaning at all is the complete quote that gave us ignorance is bliss, but it is so much more poetic. Hmm. Perhaps because it comes from a poem. Thomas Gray wrote in his Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College, “Since sorrow never comes too late ⁠and happiness too swiftly flies? Thought would destroy their Paradise. No more; —where ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be wise.”

Would you like me to make you an offer you can’t refuse. If you’re one of the billion or so people who claim to have been at the premiere of the Godfather, or one of the 400 who actually read the book, you would shake in your boots and beg for mercy thinking I intend to cause you bodily harm. It’s possible Mario Puzo remembered that line from the 1934 movie Burn ‘Em Up Barnes, about the owner of an apparently worthless piece of land. But rich oil speculators who know her land is worth more than a small fortune try to convince her to sell, sell, sell! John Drummond (played quite convincingly by Jason Robards’ father, Jason Robards (Sr.)) says, “I’ll make her an offer she can’t refuse,” literally meaning he would offer her so much she would be foolish not to sell the land to him. So you might want to check with whomever is making the offer if they are a vintage cinephile fan or a more modern movie goer.

A most familiar misquote, or incomplete quote, is one of many traced to the Bible. That is the one about money being the root of all evil. Although during the first century of the Common Era money was not as ubiquitous, or as necessary as today, it still was, if you’ll excuse the inherent redundancy, valuable, and used even by those mentioned in the Bible. The full verse in 1 Timothy (6:10) is, “For the love of money is the root of all of evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.” Not quite the same thing.

Speaking of not quite the same, let’s get back to jack, as in the jack of all trades. Do you know the full quote? Jack was given to us by the man who may be responsible for more common sayings than either Benjamin Franklin or the Bible. That would be William Shakespeare. Maybe. Some sources attribute it Shakespeare although not from any of his dramatic writings, but from his colloquial pieces. Others attribute it to fellow 16th Century author Robert Greene, speaking about Shakespeare. Still others have it going back to the ancient Greeks probably because you can make an argument that some ancient Greek said almost everything now noteworthy. Anyway, the full quote, which is not an insult is, “A jack of all trades is a master of none, but often times better than a master of one.”

Do you know of any others? Share them in the comments. Even if you aren’t sure of the origin or original meaning, we’ll get to the bottom of it.

Speaking of sayings, do you know the first instance of “Have a good day.” We do, and we even included it in the most recent Uplift, the one where we claim that telling someone to have a good day could be the smartest thing you do today. Have a good day!

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Artificially yours

Michael 9 Comments

I’m on notice. Me. Mr. Niceguy. The one who follows (almost) all the rules no matter how boring that makes me. Still, I’m the one in trouble.  But… I admit I did what I’ve been accused of. No “not guilty by reason of I said so” plea for me. No, I did it, I got caught, and I’ll tell you and whoever else wants to know, I’m going to do it again! I posted a manipulated picture. And the bad thing about that is, I didn’t say it wasn’t real. Here it is.

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Some of you might recognize this. It is the “cover art” that accompanied the ROAMcare blog post Spring Cleaning. I wanted a picture of a spray of daffodils and a red convertible. As luck would have it, I happened to have in my own photo library two very such pictures, and in years past, I would have spent hours cropping them, removing backgrounds, matching sizes, colors, brightness, and perspectives, then combining them and adding the resulting composite to the placeholder, overlay the text, and finally celebrate the job well done with a bowl of moose tracks ice cream. Instead, I took advantage of a tool at my disposal and told my handy dandy image generator (i.e. AI app), “show a spray of daffodils with a red convertible in the background,” and dished out the ice cream while it thought about this for a while. I knew it wouldn’t be exactly what I wanted but I made up for that with an extra scoop

Some time later, I added that image to our website, the email campaign, and the social media sites, Instagram, Threads, LinkedIn, Facebook, and the one that used to be known as Twitter. And there was the problem child. That last one. The one that doesn’t even have enough confidence in itself to give itself a name, just some generic letter used for centuries as the signature stand-in for the illiterati. It dared to lock the organization account until I could prove we are humans. Thus, I was forced to solve a series of computer-generated puzzles to prove I am myself not computer-generated.

I suppose I will now be counted among the many when the owner of said anonymous site defends his company from claims of spreading questionable if not outright false information by saying “Why in the last month alone we limited access and deterred the activities of 196 billion, and that’s so big it starts with a b billion, users caught red-handed posting AI manipulated photos. We the best there is at not spreading lies. And while we’re at it, the earth is flat and we know smart people who say so!”

And guess what? I did the same thing a week later when I posted a generated image of two geese sitting on eggs in a nest. What can I say. Lock me up!

Every life is a life worth living. Celebrate with us the memory of a man who kept so many very much alive in Staying Alive.