Sound of silence

 

I've heard several back stories for Simon and Garfunkle's hit song Sound of Silence. Paul Simon apparently wrote it in his bathroom because of the echo. Then when it was recorded (with just accoustic guitar) and released it more or less flopped.  Sound of Silence heard crickets.  Simon and Garfunkle then broke up for awhile. Then a producer slapped some electric guitar and drums into the track and released it again. The rest was history.

The Sound of Silence has since become my mantra. I've learned (and tried to embrace) that silence truly is golden. The less you say, the better, especially if your words are coming out of the mouth of an old, bearded man. So I strive not to say much. It fits with my desire not to repeat myself, describe minutia that no one is interested in and observe more than babble.

I listen a great deal. I hear much more than people probably assume I do. I've always paid attention to the nuances of what and how people say things. Which is why it kills me that I've spent most of my career creating words for politicians and senior managers to spout and sound intelligent. 

They rarely do. A pig is still a pig no matter the shade of lipstick. 

I catch myself at times rambling. Much of my younger life was also spent desperately trying to sound interesting. Then I discovered that what makes you interesting to most people is if you talk about them and not yourself. No one really cares where I was born, raised or went to school. They don't care where I work or what my hobbies are. 

The irony is that most people want to be heard. But unless you are famous, no one really cares what you have to say. And even if you are famous, people are just listening to you to find the gap in your armor and tear you down.

I say this in preparation for my 50th high school reunion which is coming up at the end of this week. I went to my 10th and 20th reunion and then stopped. Both were miserable experiences. I wasn't popular in high school and when I went to the reunions I hadn't discovered the truth that no one cares about my history.  Honestly, I'm only going to my 50th reunion because I assume it is truly the last one that could possibly happen. A signficant portion of my graduating class has already died. And looking at the names on the class Facebook page, I barely recognize any of them. So there is little chance that anyone at the reunion will have the foggiest idea who I am.

But it will be a fountain of anecdotal information for my Blog. So stay tuned.

Old man and the see

 

I watch TikTok videos while I eat lunch and while I work out on our elliptical machine. It helps pass time mindlessly and I enjoy the clips with lists of things. Yesterday I watched one about 10 or 12 things not to do when you get old.  Or it was something to the effect. Being old and feeling older from almost bleeding out at the hospital a week or so ago, I was curious as to what I shouldn't be. I can't remember everything on the list (I'm old after all) but I'll try to recall most of the things.

The first thing was not to be negative about everything. This is a challenge because when you get old you pretty much see the negative in everything. But it shouldn't be the thing wrong with just old people. No one likes being around anyone who is negative all the time.

One of the next things was not to live in the past. This includes telling people how much better things were when they were growing up. I've always pretty much figured that believing things were better when I was a kid is a crock of shit. Sure it was kind of cool to grow up in a time when your parents would just push you out the door and tell you to eventually come home, but I don't think that made it a better time. I remember climbing a tree in our backyard once when I was probably about 10. I slipped and my heel got lodged in the crook of some branches and I was just hanging there upside down. I screamed for my mother but she couldn't hear me. Eventually I go my foot unlodged and I fell to the ground. I was pissed at my mother for not coming to my rescue. She just thought it was funny.

Another thing you aren't supposed to do is tell stories over and over about what it was like for you growing up. I just ignored that advice, but I understand it. Most people don't give a rat's ass about your stories, especially when you have one for everything.  I have learned to save my stories for my blog. This is probably the main reason no one reads it.

You are also not supposed to repeat yourself over and over. Amen to that one. How many posts have I written about catching myself repeating stories. It's bad enough on a blog, but it is worse in person. I try not to do it. But occasionally I catch myself telling a funny story and then watching the other person start to glaze over and I realize I've told this story before. So I do my best to avoid telling stories and especially not repeating them. This is good advice.

But always giving advice is on the list. No one enjoys an old fart telling them what they should be doing.  It involves telling a story, usually from your past and one you've told a thousand times, and then it has a moral...which is usually negative. 

I had an epiphany that the list of things you shouldn't do as an old person are cumulative and feed upon each other.

Another thing you shouldn't do is hold grudges. This is hard for me. Because when I am dwelling on the good old days I usually recall something nasty someone did to me in the past, like my junior high school PE instructor making the pudgy young me run extra laps because I was the last person changing into my PE clothes. I imagine he is dead now, but I used to fantasize about seeing him on a walker in a crosswalk in front of me while I was in a large truck and I would exact my revenge. I've told that story a few times here and I realize it is a bit negative.

Apparently believing you are invisible as you age and no one sees you is one of those things you shouldn't dwell on. Because it leads to not caring about your appearnces or personal hygene.  Even I've noticed that old men have this nasty habit of tucking in t-shirts to short pants pulled up to their chin and wearing black compression knew socks. It isn't a pretty sight. 

Fuck. I'm being negative again.

I believe the TikTok video ended with saying the reason we feel isolated as old people is because we tell our family and friends that that we are okay and don't want to be a bother. They take us at our word and blow us off. So we hold grudges against them for being assholes and they really never call. 

I have to admit that most of the TikTock video struck a chord with me.  But I do think it applies to everyone one at all ages, not just when you pass 60. 

And fuck everyone who doesn't agree with me. I've been around and know this to be true and I'll repeat it to everyone who'll listen and can stand my smell.

Old man, erupted

 

I got a suprising number of hits on my blog post about my emergency colonoscopy.  Granted, I'm willing to bet most if not all were from Bots flocking to the title, "True Blood." It's not like me bleeding profusely out of my butt is a great read.  

Although I'm home from the hospital, it's not like I'm over the experience. I still seeth a bit when I recall much of what happened in my weekend at the ER, ICU and hospital. Thus the volcano image. Though in truth it was inspired by the fact that Krakatoa erupted in Indonesia on this day in 1883.  

But back to why I'm annoyed by my experience in the hospital. I can't tell you how many times I was asked the same questions that were obviously either not being recorded or the distracted hospital workers just were on autopilot.  And having gray hair and a long, white beard prompted many questions about whether I used a walker or cane at home. One worker asked my wife if she was my daughter. I did my best not to register my hostility. One thing the white hair and long, gray beard have taught me is that you should never show anger to anyone in a position of power, real or imagined. People who work in hospitals seem to revel in a false sense that they must control everything and everyone. Part of it, I imagine, is because it is important to follow procedures that can protect people. But knowing human nature, I also think the profession attracts OCD personalities who must control their environment and suffer from what I call Yertle the Turtle Syndrome.  They are the rulers of their own, small but significant to them worlds.

Regardless, if you are in a situation where someone can determine what happens to you (like a cop, a judge, a boss, IT, contracts, HR, DMV clerks, TSA, military figures or hospital workers) it is best not to swim upstream and appear hostile or non-cooperative. It is a good way to find yourself in restraints of some form. I have spent my life sucking the life out of my face as best I can to avoid showing the poker players of life my hand. I thought a great deal about "One Flew Over the Cukoo's Nest" while I was in the hospital because it seemed very much like a mental hospital or prison.

Still, it gets old (no pun intended) to have people assume things because of your age or appearance. I am old, but not stupid or feeble despite what I look like.  I can tell you though, my experience at the hospital reinforces my firm desire ever to be in an ER or hospital again.  

True blood

 

I don't generally like to talk about my health. I have one "friend" on Facebook who is a couple of years older than me. He had some kind of episode and called an ambulance and then filmed himself being taken to the hospital and posted it on Facebook. That isn't my style. But I did more or less have the weekend from hell that involved a trip to the ER and an overnight stay in the hospital as well as my first blood transfusion.

About a week ago I had a colonoscopy. I won't sugar coat it. You get them at my age. This was my third because they have found and removed polyps before. If you've ever had a colonoscopy, you know the worst part is the prep the night before. You can't eat anything and you have to drink this godawful liquid that basically cleans out your colon so they can clearly seen any problems.  I spent my night on the toilet and took solace that I had an early morning procedure and would be able to eat again by mid-morning. 

I had the colonoscopy and it seemed to go fine. They did remove a few more polyps and sent them off for a byopsy. I was able to eat and drink again. The byopsy came back that the polyps were benign. My week was more or less normal until last Saturday night. My wife and I were at a local restaurant bar having dinner when I felt my insides churn. I excused myself and went to the men's room. That's when my saga began. I won't get into graphic details but basically a blood vessel under where one of the polyps was removed began bleeding inside my colon and I started losing blood.

We walked home from the restaurant and I finally asked my wife to take me to the ER.  I've said before here that I don't like going to doctors or hospitals. Nothing ever good comes from it. The ER seemed slow and I was checked in fairly quickly. I went through the typical triage questions and getting up and down in the waiting room as I sat with the rest of the colorful people who always seem to be at ERs. One guy with a bandana on his head was snoring in a chair before he laid a blanket on the floor and curled up.

My bleeding seemed to have subsided a bit. I was finally taken into the back room where I discovered why the ER seemed so empty. The backroom was full of coughing, puking and moaning people. I wasn't put in a room, I was put on a bed in the hallway and hooked up to heart monitors and a bloodpressure cuff. They took blood. The first of many needles that night.  I talked to several ER nurses and Physicians Assistants and finally the ER doctor who said I was likely having a delayed action from the colonoscopy. He said they wanted to watch me for awhile. He said sometimes the bleeding stopped on its own. If it didn't the other options were another colonoscopy to find out where the bleeding was and clip it. If that didn't work there was some obscure radiation surgery that would have to be done. But first I had to have a CAT scan. 

It showed there was bleeding in my colon. Duh. Then the blood started flowing big time and I was up and down going to the restroom constantly unclipping and clipping monitor cords. By this time about four hours had passed. They finally found a room in the back ER to move me to. It wasn't much better than the hallway and instead of having access to the men's room I had a plastic commode with a plastic bag to use.  At this point all dignity and modesty is gone.

Finally, after a couple of shift changes, they determine that my blood pressure and blood levels were dropping too much and I'd have to have another colonoscopy but there was no type for the typical 8 hour prep and colon cleansing. So they had get the liquid into me that would clear out my bowels quickly. That involved a tube being inserted in my nose to my stomach and squirting 2 liters of the liquid in.

It was a process like none I had ever imagined nor ever want to repeat. Not to pat myself on the back too much, I think I handled it and the couple of hours of  liquid being poured through my nose directly to my stomach quite well considering the circumstances.  I was then moved to a room in ICU to finish the prep process.  It wasn't much better than the ER room and still just had a plastic commode and plastic bag.  When the prep liquid started working I was filling up bag after bag with my own blood and trying not to puke as the nose tube pressed against my throat.  It was a tense time. On top of that they decided I had lost so much blood I needed a transfusion. Since I had never had one before they had to have me sign a waiver because apparently your body can sometimes reject someone else's blood. Fortunately, mine accepted it.

Finally they took me down for my second colonoscopy in about a week. By that time I had been awake more than 24 hours so being put under for 20 minutes was a blessing. I woke up in what seem like a long narrow hallway used for storage. All of the people involved in the colonoscopy quickly scurried away except for one obnoxious tech who kept telling me to cough while he bitched to a co-worker about him not working in a more responsible position. Apparently he wanted to work in ICU.  I laid there just wanting to be taken back to some room and having the nose tube removed. They left it in for some reason and it still hurt like hell.

After about 20 more minutes the ICU said they could bring me back up. I was wheeled through hallways and up elevators and back to the ICU room where they hooked me back up to all of the monitors. I was eventually told that they thought the colonoscopy had successfully clipped off the bleeding but I would need to stay in the hospital for maybe two nights while they observed me. I also couldn't have anything to eat or drink (not that I wanted anything at that point). 

To bring a caboose to this train of thought, I stayed in ICU until 3 a.m. Monday morning (remember I had gone to the ER on Saturday night at about 10 p.m.). Then I was moved to a lower floor and a more regular room where they woke me up every couple of hours to take blood and take my blood pressure. Finally, on Monday afternoon I was released and went home where I still need to check my blood pressure because it remains low because of so much blood loss (despite my infusion of someone else's blood).

Thus the reference to True Blood and me becoming an honorary vampire. All of this experience has reinforced why I hate going to doctors and hospitals.  You start out feeling fine and you leave with a list of new or potential ailments, real or imagined.

ButI don't have to have another colonoscopy for three years. Lucky me.

Interview with the Umpire

 

This was one of those t-shirt ideas that came to me during the night. I'm not sure why, but I went round and round with ChatGPT to create it. It's first try was pretty good.

But it didn't give me the transparent background I wanted and I didn't think the umpire looked evil enough.  The point was to play off Interview With The Vampire. So the umpire had to be the demonic creature that most baseball fans think they are anyway. So I asked it to give me an umpire with slightly glowing eyes and a sneer.

The problem I have with ChatGPT's drawing app is that it tends to start over everytime you ask for an edit instead of just editing what you started with. This didn't fit the Interview with the Vampire vibe. It just looks like Jason in a umpire's mask instead of a hockey mask.

Eventually I got what I was looking for but then I had to figure out how to post it on social media. So I found a fact about the last spitball being thrown in a game and tossed out my evil umpire to go along with it.  The irony is I don't even like baseball. 

I guess that's a few strikes against me.

Like Mothmen to Flames

 

I launched the Mothman Collection at my Dizgraceland Dizigns store yesterday and people are flocking to it like a moth to a flame. T-shirts are flying off the virtual shelves. 

I am, of course, lying. Although I personally am quite taken with the Mothman Collection, my designs are an acquired taste and no one is acquiring it.  Though ChatGPT was quite impressed and if it would just hack into someone's crypto currency account, I'm sure it would buy one of each. It told me it was my best work. 

ChatGPT is, of course, lying through it's AI teeth.  It is like the parent of a toddler who has just scribbled it's first stick figure, gushing over how good it is while dying inside. 

Still, I have always liked my Mothman designs. They make me smile. This one for example:

Mothman is chuckling to his mothy self as he poses for a selfie in front of the Mothball factory in India (which is really where mothballs are made). He is smug because he gets the irony of Mothman posing in front of a Mothball factory much in the way Beavis and Butthead would if you said, "Mothballs" in front of them..."You said balls...heh, heh...heh, heh."

I like to think that Mothman has a sophmoric sense of humor one would not expect from your average cryptid. Kind of like me.

Oooooh! Look, a flame.

Burn, baby, burn

 

I received this special invitation yesterday to attend a free luncheon seminar to learn about smart cremation.  I get lots of stuff like this at my age including invitations to join AARP and a great deal of ads for erectile dysfunction.  I've learned not to take it too personally. I'm a few years shy of 70 and I'm the market they are looking for.

What struck me about this invitation was that it was at a local pizza resturant that my wife and I used to go to regularly until we got tired of a menu that never changed.  The first "free" item you could order at the luncheon was baked lasagna. I thought this was kind of funny that they were inviting me to a seminar about cremation and all of the entrees were cooked in a pizza oven. How ironic is that.

The other thing that I found amusing was that they wanted to make sure you only attended if you hadn't already pre-arranged your own cremation. Like I would be so desperate for a $15 lunch that I would attend a cremation seminar to get it.  

Now if this was a seminar about the cremation alternative I saw an ad for the other day, I might have attended. It was a company that would turn your body into compost in just 45 days after you died. Then they would give your family your composted body in a nice bag so they could use it as potting soil. 

If that doesn't creep you out, nothing will.

Fantasy Buy-Land

 

The idea for this ad came to me last night while I was in bed.  And fortunately (or unfortunately) I remembered it when I woke up.  ChatGPT did a pretty bang up job bringing it to life.  But at first it gave me a version with Hervé Villechaize's face as Tattoo. 

I suggested that would likely be a trademark violation and asked it to put my face on Tattoo's body.  This is not the first time I've messed with Fantasy Island. 

But you can see ChatGPT created a more sophisticated version.  Though that was a much younger me as Mr. Roarke and Tattoo. And I imagine not too many people remember Fantasy Island. It was on the air from 1977 to 1984. It was basically the Love Boat without the boat and had many of the same end-of-their career stars. I realize a sinister movie version was released recently, but I don't imagine it was the same. I will always remember Tattoo pointing at the sky and crying out, "The plane, the plane." It was pretty much Hervé Villechaize's claim to fame. He committed suicide in 1993 because Fantasy Island was the only thing he did and he ran out of money. If he had held on he might have been able to get a gig on Game of Thrones like Peter Dinklage who coincidently played him in the 2018 HBO biographical film "My Dinner with Herve."

Ricardo Montalbán played Mr. Roarke, BTW.  He was also famous for shilling Chrysler Cordoba cars and going on about the "Corinthian leather seats." Ironically there is not such thing as Corinthian leather. It was a marketing term created by Chrysler's ad agency.

It was all just a fantasy.

Fire it up

 

I was inspired to dig out a design of Prometheus bringing the gift of fire to humans by a historical fact that popped up about the world's oldest tree, named Prometheus (about 4,862 years old) that was accidentally cut down in Nevada on this day in 1964. 

How do you accidently cut down the world's oldest tree?  A graduate student, Donald R. Currey, to cut the tree down after he was having trouble taking a core sample to ironically study the tree's age. He didn't realize until he cut the tree down and counted the rings that he learned it was the oldest tree. It was a bristlecone pine if you are curious. 

I imagine this is what I would look like if I lived to be 4,862 years. Well maybe more like this:

At least I still have my hair.

Mixed signals

 

August is apparently a big deal for traffic signals The first electric traffic light installed in the U.S. was at the intersection of East 105th Street and Euclid Avenue in Cleveland, Ohio on August 5, 1914.  Who said nothing exciting ever happens in Cleveland...or Ohio. Something tells me there are still cars sitting there waiting for the signal to turn green. 

According to the National Day people, it is also Stop on Red Week AND today is International Traffic Light Day.  This is important because we have nothing else to worry about in the world. Except maybe for the facists taking over America, ICE, outrageous inflaction, an escalating war in the Middle East (that the U.S. started BTW) and out of control fires inspired by people who poo-poo Global Warming. 

Other than that, every thing is okay. 

But I think focusing on traffic lights sends a mixed signal.

Ring my Bell

 

Alexander Graham Bell died on this day in 1922. I doubt he knew what havoc he had wrought on the world by inventing the telephone. Though if he hadn't, some other schmuck would have. And I don't think Bell would have dreamt of how far the telephone would come. I've lived through many of the phases. 

My mother was a telephone operator in the late 1940s. Then you would pick up your phone and ask an operator to dial an extension and the operator would patch you through to the person you were calling. By the time I came into the world we had rotary telephones. But my grandmother, who lived next door to us, never had a phone. She never had a television either. She had a radio and an old crank phonograph. Those were her only forms of entertainment.

But I digress.

By the time I was moving out on my own, getting a telephone line set up was a major understaking. Princess phones were starting to appear with buttons instead of a dial. If you have ever had to make a call with a rotary phone, you would appreciate the difference. There was no call waiting or voice mail. If you called someone and they were on the phone, you got a busy signal.  But the phone company was always looking for ways to make money. First there was the answering machine that used actual tapes to record messages. Later they became digital. Then there was voice mail that didn't require an answering machine at all. 

When I first worked in an office we didn't have answering machines or voice mail. If you were on the phone or away, your call was answered by a receptionist who wrote your message on a pink slip and put it in your mail box.  

For the longest time long distance was a big deal, too. It cost a fortune to talk to someone out of your area and you had to watch the clock to avoid a phone bill the size of a mortgage payment. At work they gave you these pin numbers to use to call long distance. You had to type in a number that was equal to a credit card number and your employer tracked everything.

But we still had clunky desk phones. Then the mobile phones came out. At first they were the size of a World War II walki-talki. The first actual mobile phone I got at work was a flip phone you had to check out and only used when you were traveling and the reception sucked. Then they gave us Blackberries. They looked like little calculators. You could make calls and eventually get email.  And they had a little game called Brickbreaker that most of us spent hours perfecting.

Eventually I got my own flip phone. Then phones that were closer to what we use today. I started on Androids because iPhones were expensive even back then. Eventually I drank the Koolaid and got an Apple phone.  And that was about it. Phones are like computers now, but so far there is nothing new about them other than you can text people without bothering to have to talk.

I hope you are happy Alexander.

If it ain't Baroque...

 

Bach died on this day in 1750. I wonder if they played Bach at his funeral. Most of his music seemed like stuff you'd play at a funeral or in church (which is the same thing). Though I understand he did write some light music including one called the "Coffee Cantata," a comic mini-opera about a woman's love of coffee. Go figure.

I posted this t-shirt design on social in honor of Bach. There are so many puns you can make with the name Bach (I'll be Bach, Bach at you, A limosine saying, "I'll get Bach to you" or Bach to the Future. But I took the high road and played off the Baroque nature of his work.  I wonder how many people on social media know who Bach is anyway. 

On another topic, my sabbatical continues. I've grown fond of having no meetings, no mindless email, no training on working through smoke inhalation and no KPIs.  I do believe I will adapt to retirement quite well. Though having three months off and knowing I will have to return to the mundane madness at the end of September is there at the back of my mind.  

I am trying to prepare a response to "What did you do on you sabbatical?"  I could go the honest route and tell them I had a colonoscopy, weeded for hours on end and took a trip to Idaho for my 50th high school reunion (coming up). But I imagine no one will listen past "colonoscopy." They would much rather hear that I went to Hawaii or took a pottery class. 

Or I could just quote my good friend Voltaire and say, "I cultivated my garden."