Tag: life

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Russell Brand recently copped to sleeping with a 16 year old when he was 30. WTF. Thank God he clears up the legality of it all by reminding us that the age of consent in the UK is 16. So, at least, as far as the law is concerned, he is in the clear. Whew. I was concerned.

I think if I was a man under investigation for rape, as Brand is, that I would be a bit more careful about sharing any information about my murky sexual past. That Brand willingly goes there is both surprising and telling.

In this modern Me Too environment, why would someone so stupidly admit to something that he knew would receive a hostile reception? Why would be bring up the age of consent otherwise? This gets him off the hook, sort of, for a morally dubious decision. Unfortunately for Brand, the facts remain the same, he was a 30 year old man and he knowingly took advantage of a 16 year old. The age of consent in the UK only matters to the police and the courts, the rest of us are free to judge him however we want to and, of course, have.

Tellingly, he thought he could explain it away without getting into any real trouble. Once people knew the age of consent, and that the 16 year old girl consented, and he now knows he was wrong to exploit her, he thought people would think what an evolved man Russell Brand is. Instead, people are coming to a different conclusion. Brand is a bit of an asshole and a not very bright asshole at that. How does he know the girl was 16? Did he check her passport details? A 15 year old can look a lot like a 16 year old and that would change his whole consent argument now wouldn’t it?

I’m not trying to encourage criminal activity but the one thing I do know is if you are under criminal investigation, you keep your trap shut and leads me to wonder if Brand had fallen completely under the spell of celebrity culture. He was a spent force in celebrity world and the only way for someone like Brand to grab headlines is to behave outrageously in order to regain that sad perceived glory.

Well, it worked if that was his goal, otherwise what a stupid asshole.

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I think if you want to get plastic surgery and it makes you happy, by all means, get it.

I won’t. Mostly because it won’t make me happy. I just don’t have the time or the energy or the money to keep working on my looks. It is, after a certain age, a losing battle.

No matter how much plastic surgery I get, I am still 68 years old. A 21 year old guy, even just a regular old 21 year old guy, not some super good looking movie star/model type of guy, walks into the room and then I walk into the room. The half way good looking 21 year old guy has me beat. By a mile. By 10 miles. By 100 miles. If I get talked about at all, which, let’s face it, is a very big if, it won’t be about my good looks but on how he has had work done.

Then there is the cost. People who I know investigated plastic surgery are talking thousands of dollars and, with my luck, it will turn out making me look worse. I know some people who have had excellent plastic surgery. I also know people who were disappointed with their surgery (see awful plastic surgery). It is a roll of the dice and if I am rolling the dice, I would much rather be rolling the dice in Las Vegas than rolling it on surgery.

Besides, I am that age where I need procedures and surgeries just to stay healthy. If I were to also get plastic surgery with the other surgeries I need, I might never leave the hospital. I just don’t want to take up residence in a hospital, at least not yet.

At this point in my life, I would rather fall back on my vast supply of charm and joie de vivre than attempt to alter my looks any further.

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As I get older, I am beginning to understand my peculiarities that stumped me before but are beginning to make sense now. I used to think I hated shopping. Any shopping. I did everything in my power to get in and then get out with whatever I thought I needed.

I thought, for the longest time, this hatred of shopping placed me on some superior moral ground. The capitalist overlords failed to entice me into a life of mindless consumerism. Something occurred to me as I was dodging super large shopping carts in Costco the other day. It isn’t so much that I hated shopping, it is more that shopping overwhelms me. I can feel my nerves begin to jangle every time I enter a store.

I can manage shopping if I have a list with specific items to be acquired by the time I return home. I find. I buy. I leave the store as quickly as possible. I rarely, if ever, will buy more than what is on the list. The list is sacrosanct.

On the other hand just lallygagging in a store to kill time almost always ends the same way — me fleeing after a few minutes without purchasing anything.

For example, I love to read so bookstores should be heaven for me. Not by a stretch. I want to purchase almost every book I pick up. Everything sounds like something I would like to buy, so much so that I reach fairly quickly a point of indecision. I can’t choose anything because I want everything which I know that I neither can afford nor will ever find the time to read them. So I punt and buy nothing.

Big ticket items provide a somewhat different problem for me. I don’t have a vision of what I want. If I am buy a car, all I want is something that moves me from place to place with a minimum of problems. A lot of friends I know walk into car lots with a strategy of getting specific things they want, and how to maneuver the salesman into giving them the deal they want. They know all the bells and whistles they want to purchase. All I want is a compact white Ford.

Worst of all, choice just baffles me. The more options I have the more stumped I become. Two or three choices I can manage. More than that I am wondering how I can get out of this showroom without looking like an asshole.

What I am saying is that shopping is overwhelming for me. I don’t so much hate it as all these products and choices leave my mind so overstimulated that I my mind is whirling with all the choices and I become exhausted and all I want to do is go home and take a long nap. This is why I hate shopping.

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I have to give it Donald Trump and his administration. They definitely know how to make a mountain out of mole hill and gain advantage from that little mole hill.

Demetre Daskalakis, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, resigned in a wave of resignations that struck the CDC last week. He also wrote a memo using the term “pregnant people” as opposed to the Trump preferred “pregnant women.” People and women are not the important words here, pregnant is. This is a message to advise someone who is pregnant about a health issue. It doesn’t really matter if you call them people or women.

But, of course, I am wrong. It matters greatly and people are hopping mad about it. One side believes pregnant people is more inclusive of trans people and the other side is claiming that only women can get pregnant and it’s ridiculous to use the more inclusive term.

Trans-obsessed lefties want everyone to use the more inclusive people and make no bones about telling people they should. This irritates trans-obsessed righties who think this is a biological question and that only women can get pregnant, so when talking about pregnant people, people should say pregnant women. This is so much cage rattling and of little significance to the majority of Americans.

First, the necessity to use pregnant people over pregnant woman is incredibly stupid. 99.99% of the people who are pregnant are women and like to be called women. Plus there is little chance that a pregnant trans man ( I am assuming about .01% of the population or less) would be confused by what the sentence means and how it might relate to him. But because somebody somewhere might be offended, people should be used instead of woman. This is the mountain they want to die on.

Language is social lubrication. It is there to make our lives easier. If you want me to use specific personal pronouns for you. I have no trouble using them. On the other hand, if I see a person with a beard, I am going to think this is a guy and I will trust my eyeballs and use male pronouns. 99% of the time I will be correct and offend nobody. This makes my life easier and less awkward because a lot more people would be either stumped by your personal pronoun question or unnecessarily angered by it. Why bother making trouble for yourself?

Which means I will continue to use visual cues, like a beard, to guess at someone’s gender identification until I start having trouble with people about it. Right now, I think I will die before having to ask someone their preferred pronouns.

What to do if people say “pregnant people.” I say deal with it. I admit it is a little clunky but perfectly understandable. Someone who says this is talking about pregnancy and want to be inclusive. Let them. Do what is comfortable for you. But no, “pregnant people” has become fighting words, so a fight must ensue.

The worst part is Trump has managed to turn the chaos at the CDC into a problem with politically correct bureaucrats. They have gone after Daskalaskis for being both gay and a satanist. So what should be about how to effectively get health information out to the public has become a witch hunt about being politically correct. And Trump has the advantage here.

I’m not sure this helps pregnant people or pregnant women but public health should be about using the right terms instead of delivering important information about people’s health.

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We bought a car a couple years back with an extended warranty which meant, or so we were told, that any problem with the car in the next 6 years, the dealership would handle free of charge. ANY problem. It was even called a Platinum Plan in order to let us know it was the best warranty possible. First, before I go too far, we love the car. It has treated us well and the free oil changes and tune up services we bought have been welcome.

But all good things must come to an end. Bob noted a problem with one of the door seals. It was a little tattered. I was taking the car in for an oil change so I made an appointment for a tune up and noted the problem with the door seals hoping that this can be dealt with at the same time.

We also kept getting a recall notice about a trailer hitch. We don’t have a trailer hitch but they had to do something or rather in order to actually confirm that we didn’t have a trailer hitch. Mind you this is the dealership where we bought the car and I would assume that they would have a record. They did not so they would have to check the trailer hitch in order for us to stop getting the recall notices. I decided to take care of this while I was there.

I arrived on time for my 11AM appointment to a 6 lines of cars with approximately 5 cars in each line. This looked ominous. I waited patiently in the car for Sam, my service counsellor, to consult with me. After a few minutes, he arrived. I explained why I was I was here and that I had an appointment to get his service. Things got hairy pretty fast. Sam explained that it would take at least two hours for the oil change, the door seals and the trailer hitch recall, it might take an additional couple of hours.

But I have an appointment. Sam informed me that this was only an appointment to talk with him and not when the car would actually be serviced. The woman who made the appointment never told this. Why would I think an appointment for a conversation about servicing my car instead of actually servicing the car. The whole reason for getting an appointment was for me to schedule my time and wait at the garage for the matter to be handled. Sam gave me the look of someone who has had to answer this same question a million times, a shoulder shrug, a pitiful look and then silence.

After a few seconds of awkward silence, Sam kindly offered to pay for Uber to take me home if I wanted to wait at home. I decided to take them up on this offer. The problem was I had to have Uber as an application and the dealership would give me a voucher as payment. I don’t use Uber because they treat their drivers horribly. I use Lyft who treat their drivers a little less horribly. In order to use the voucher, I had to put the Uber application on my phone.

So I began the arduous process of loading the Uber application, when Sam, as if this important piece information might have a bearing on my decision, informed me that he didn’t know if they had the door seals in stock or whether it was covered by the warranty.

I said of course it was covered by warranty. We bought the platinum warranty which was supposed to cover ANY repair for the next 5 years. Sam, again as polite and as beaten down person could be, explained that it would probably be covered but he would have to check with his boss.

I repeated the phrase Platinum Warranty as if this should ring a bell for him and make him understand the situation. It had absolutely no meaning for him whatsoever. Sam didn’t know what was covered on any warranty — be it Gold, Silver, Bronze or Platinum. It turned out I knew more about the Platinum Warranty than Sam. He still would have to ask his boss. He did say, as if to encourage me, that if I understood that they would repair anything that they would probably cover anything. I wasn’t encouraged.

After much pressing of keys and staring blankly at a computer screen, Sam determined that they did not have the door seals in stock and would have to special order them. Why did I drive all the way up here (OK it was all of 10 minutes but Sam didn’t know that) if the dealership didn’t have the part in the first place. More pitiful looks and shoulder shrugs. He didn’t make the rules. He didn’t understand the rules. He didn’t know anything about warranties. He was just here to see that my car was serviced and nothing else.

As I pondered my dilemma, Sam asked me if I still wanted to go ahead with the oil change. Of course, I don’t want to get the oil change if I have to wait here two to three hours and have to come back in a couple of days and wait another two to three hours to get door seal repair. Why would I want to waste two mornings getting my car serviced? Call me when the part is in and I will make a new appointment.

This is when Sam explained that I really didn’t need an appointment. I should just come first thing in the morning. The dealership takes everyone on a first come first serve basis. The earlier you got there, the faster you were served. Then why does the dealership advise making appointments? Sam had the pitiful looks and shoulder shrugs down.

Can I, at least, get the trailer hitch recall taken care of today? No I actually could not. But I don’t have a trailer hitch. Just put a little tick in the box saying the trailer hitch recall has been taken care. No, he couldn’t look at, he couldn’t take my word for it, the recall team would have to take a look at it and they would have to tick the box saying the trailer hitch recall was complete.

I drove home having failed to complete any of the tasks I set out to do and also none the wiser on what I should do next time. Why make an appointment if it has nothing to do with when I will get serviced? Why tell them what I need to do when they won’t have the part when I arrive for my appointment that I really don’t need in the first place? Will the trailer hitch recall team take a few seconds to see that I don’t need a trailer hitch repair because I don’t have a trailer hitch?

But, any way.

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One of the things I like about Slate, an on line magazine, is its advice columnists. They have a variety of subjects like finance, misbehaving children, people being assholes and sex questions. I enjoy reading and seeing whether I agree with columnist about the problem being discussed. Every so once in awhile there will be a non problem that I think why would anyone even bother writing about this extremely lame “problem.”

A reader addressed one of these non-problems to Slate’s sexual advice columnists recently and I have to admit being baffled by the reader’s concern and the columnist’s advice. The reader’s boyfriend, while asleep, vigorously touches his dick to the point of semi-erection. He never takes it to climax, he doesn’t make any demands on her, he remains asleep during the whole time and doesn’t seem to be negatively affected by the time he sleeps in this semi-aroused state. So what exactly is the problem here?

The woman is concerned that this might be a form of sexsomnia — a condition, I have to admit, I never even heard of until reading Slate’s sex column. For those of you, like me, who are new to sexsomnia, I have provided a link but I will try to summarize as best I can. A person with this condition acts out sexually during sleep – this could include attempting to have sex with a partner sharing the bed. The person who suffers from this condition is actually asleep and not faking it in order to get sex. They are genuinely asleep.

The advice columnist thought it could be a form of sexsomnia and suggested the woman have her boyfriend take a sleep study done to ascertain if this is indeed true. All I can say is WTF. Really. A sleep study to find out if he touches himself to semi-erection while sleeping? Why would anyone consent to a sleep study when he is bothering no one? The woman isn’t being harassed for sex and he isn’t complaining about the lack of sleep. How would anyone’s life benefit from a sleep study here? Yes you do have sexsomnia but it is so mild we don’t suggest you do anything about it? Or no, you don’t have sexsomnia, you dick is just getting hard because you touched it for a few seconds. It’s all perfectly normal so don’t worry about.

I would suggest the woman just go back to sleep when she finds her boyfriend in this state and to stop worrying about nothing.

On the other hand, it does keep my mind off of Donald Trump for a few minutes. So, there is that.

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One of the advantages of living in San Diego is that you hardly ever have to use air conditioning or the heater. This is pretty much the environment I have been living in for the past 30 years. I write this as a way of explaining why I had such trouble when my fire alarm went off in my new smart apartment. Bob was cooking and apparently a minuscule amount of smoke got into the fire alarm setting it off. I could neither see nor smell any smoke but who am I to argue with a screaming fire alarm.

Bob turned on the stove fans. Alarm continued to blare. I opened the patio doors. Alarm still continued to blare. Bob told me to turn on the fan in the apartment. This seemed like a simple task and I gladly expected the challenge. In the good old days, you would just move the dial to fan, the fan would go on and the smoke would disappear.

The smart thermostats, however, are different. There is no moveable switch that can turn the fan on. The smart thermostat is a touch screen with icons. None of the icons look remotely like a fan. So I did would anybody would do in this situation, I begin to randomly hit the icons in the hope that one of those icons controlled the fan. Mind you, the alarm is screaming in my smart apartment. Scaring me, Bob, the cats and all of neighbors on the third floor.

The icons do bring up menus. Unfortunately the menu items are crammed onto a screen about the size of a baseball. I am unable to read them with or without glasses. So I was back to the tried and true method of randomly picking menu items in the hopes one of them turns on the fan. Finally after a few minutes something occurs and the fan goes on and the indecipherable amount of smoke clears the room.

Greatly relieved but also a little concerned that I can’t easily turn on the fan which also leaves Bob worried about cooking again. If the alarm is going to go off every time the oven is turned on we needed to learn how it worked. It was time for me to learn more about the thermostat. I thought since the alarm had been silenced I could calmly look at the thermostat and figure it all out. Wrong. There was still the same unrecognizable icons, the same small print, and I again found myself randomly picking an icon in slim hopes that it will be the one to tell me how to turn off the fan.

Bob suggested finding a Youtube video explaining how to use this thermostat. This annoys me because instead of being easy to use, which is how the apartment bills it, I have to watch a video on how to use this most excellent tool. I fight the urge and continue to randomly pick icons. This has become slightly more important in that I have managed to turn on the fan but now I can’t turn off the fan. After going through numerous menus and not seeing, and I mean not seeing in every sense of the word, I surrender. I go to Youtube.

This is a revelation. I thought there would be one or two videos of how to use the system. But there were numerous 5 to 10 minute videos about a variety of topics — how to set a temperature range to automatically turn on the air conditioner, how to set a temperature range to turn on the heater, how to set the temperature range for mornings and evenings, and so on and so forth. None however specifically were for how to turn the fan on and off.

I did find one that had the word fan and managed to get enough information to turn off the fan. Success. We were on the road to fully use all the great tools our smart apartment had to offer.

The problem with my lesson is that by the next day when Bob asked me how to turn the fan on and off. I couldn’t explain how it was done because it required going to the right menu options and, for the life of me, I have no memory of how I did it. Indeed, I had to watch the Youtube video again to explain how I turned off the fan. The fan I had turned off just last night. That is how easy it is to use the smart thermostat.

I guess what I am saying is that the apartment might be smart but the users are definitely stuck in the remedial class on how to work it.

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For most of this summer, I struggled with a spider on our side porch. It all started one day when I noticed the string that turns on our porch light was out of reach for some reason. I pulled it down so I could reach it better. A few days later I noticed that it was again out of reach and I wondered what was happening to the string. This was when I noticed that the string had been incorporated into a spider’s web.

At first I thought I am not going to let some spider beat me. I pulled the string out of her web but the spider kept spinning the string back into web. Every morning I would take it down and the next morning the string would be back in a spider web. This went on for a week or so before I decided I would let the spider have her way. It was only a little stretch for me and I imagined it was a bit more work for her to spin her web and pull the string into it. I was being silly to fight with her about. So I surrendered.

Every so once in awhile I would need the porch light on so I would pull the string as gently as I could so I wouldn’t yank it out of the web. Occasionally, despite my best efforts to be gentle, I accidentally would pull the string out of the web. But the spider would repair it the next day and the string was where she wanted it.

Until the other day. The string dangled freely outside her web which was no longer translucent but grey and old. Day after day, I would check to see if she had reattached the string into her web and each day I was disappointed to see it hanging there.

She hadn’t returned to her web. I told myself stories. She didn’t need the string any longer or she moved to a new location but I knew she was probably dead. Spiders don’t live much longer than a year or so and it had been at least six months since I observed her work with the porch light string. She had probably come to the natural end of her life. It has bummed me out nonetheless.

I was of Katherine Mansfield short story “The Fly” where a man who lost his son in World War I struggles with a fly caught in his inkwell. Each time the fly gets out, the man puts more ink on it and roots for the fly to struggle free from his dilemma. He keeps doing it until the fly eventually surrenders to its fate and dies — upsetting the man.

I am at a certain age when people have begun to die around me at a frightening pace. Three people who I know in just six months. Others are getting sick and taking a long time to recover. Some, I surmise, just aren’t going to get better. Then there is the daily reminder of my own diminishing abilities — not hearing everything, pains in the knee, getting winded when climbing stairs, trouble seeing while driving at night and most of this is not going to get better. Only worse. Yet we, for the most part, carry on.

In the meantime I am waiting for my spider or one of her children to return.

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As I get older, I try to keep tabs on my mental state. So far, I think I am all right but every so once in awhile I think I might be a little crazy and I am just too crazy to realize it which leads me to present confession. I think my plants are watching me.

Now I rationally realize this is impossible but I still have this nagging feeling every time I give one plant water and not the others that I am pissing off the waterless plants. Watering the plants is not one of my normal chores. Bob does it. I water for ecological reasons or so I tell myself. If, while washing dishes, I notice water still in the glass, instead of tossing it in the sink, I give it to one of the house plants. There usually isn’t a lot of water. Just enough to give one of the guys a little dash.

Only one of the five plants is going to get water so I try to be fair. I put the plants in a rotation, so all is well as long as I remember my rotation. But I don’t. If we go out to eat several nights in a row, or I have too much to drink, or I just plain forget or some combination of the three, I worry that if I went out of rotation.

Now a normal person wouldn’t worry about this, right? But it really bothers me. I don’t want piss of the plants. It has gotten to the point that if I can’t remember the rotation that I give all of them a little water. The problem I have is that I am doing because the plants are behaving like assholes and not because I love them. It kind of pisses me off that I am letting a bunch of plants push me around.