Monday was the start of meteorological summer, if you care. And if you care, what is wrong with you? Even meteorologists don't care anymore.

Sobering thought.

We are more than halfway to the next 'midcentury modern' mania, in which designers create uncomfortable furniture and surround it with no color or deep depressing tones. Then, 75 years later it will be revived to the delight of some but the disgust of most.

Run fast, break things.

We like to think that we, our culture and even our generation, discover or create something. Teenagers, for example, think that they are the first people ever to discover sex. (all predecessors existed because of immaculate conception or spontaneous generation.)

So it is with technological advancements. We like to think that we (the computer generation) kind of invented large advances in technology all at once, and this rate of rapid advancement often required rapid shifts away from existing ways of doing things and ignoring existing guardrails.

One of the things that often is required to change is art and other creatives forms of expression. We often don't draw a line between technological changes and movements in art. Photography, for example, was going to be the death of painting. Instead, photography lessened the need for painting to be representational.

In spite of the fears of Hollywood types that AS will destroy everything, I can see a future where AS will do the heavy lifting on 'B' movies and trash TV—rom-coms with stiff dialogue, wooden dialogue, no com and one of three plots; reality television; and professional cornhole and pickleball leagues. They're broadcasting cannon fodder. AS could be used for spin-offs, or any sequels where the title has a number in it, like Hot Tub Time Machine 2. Remember those real-life people who confused the lives of the soap-opera actors with the characters they played and would chastize them in the streets for being mean?? AS would be perfect for creating these shows and populating them with AI people. Writers, directors and actors would be free to pursue more meaningful, creative passion projects.

Really, now, how much hurt could AS put on Three's Company?

Reality comes calling.

Remember how over the past year or two we were treated to the boasts of the Artificial Stupidity bros saying how AI was the future, that it would take all our jobs, and do everything for us except maybe make coffee, and it would all happen by 2030? Buoyed by this self-hype,...

Well, not so fast. Turns out that the ASBros were tuning up their comedy acts, as they've had to back away from their suicide-suggesting bots, AS help that recommends travel to non-existent places, dangerous ingredients in recipes, and can't even do basic math. They're getting pushback on power usage, building data farms, and other activities like being used in movies. The future is interesting, to be sure, but painful while we get there.

Picture in the attic.

I never read The Picture of Dorian Gray. No particular reason. I like Wilde, and know the story (picture in the attic and all that). But a while back, I bumped into a reference that made me want to read it.

So I started, and ran across this statement by Dorian: How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrid, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be older than this particular day of June. . . .

Of course, this moment represents the thickening of the complication, gets the game afoot, to use two unrecognized literary terms.

Spoiler alert: very soon after this, Wilde flips the plot on its head and has Dorian stay young and the picture grow old.

But I stopped here not because of other pressing duties, or ennui (it's Wilde, after all, and mere boredom just won't do), but because I immediately jumped to something else I read that made a similar claim about relationships that have ended, that the image of the person in your head is frozen, trapped between the first spark and the parting. No matter how much you grow and change, and the other person grows and changes, your memory is confined to the time if your time together.

You know me so well, Costco!

or, on the use of irony and/or sarcasm.

A recent email from Costco had the teaser subject line, See what just arrived for you.

Well, at least it wasn't 'just for you.' I bet other people got that exact email. Even so, Costco has a pretty sorry idea of what I like and use. Their list of offerings includes a paddleball set; a dome tent; an electric bicycle; a playhouse; a dinosaur cave adventure; and a Disney Adult Varsity jacket.

Alas, my soul wearied, and I was forced to forswear continued perusal of the proffered items. Wearied, I say, wearied. I grow languid and faint. Or faint and languid, I don't know which. I swoon. Farewell.

'Tag' reading and thinking.

If tapping certain bookmarks in my browser wore out the icons, I would have a couple of blank spaces where certain favorite writers' icons would be.

While I find information/inspiration from the regulars (inforsplation? No, that won't work), every now and again one of them will point me at another thinker-writer-inspiration-friend for me to connect with.

Such is the case with Neil Postman, who was 'tapped' by Jeff Goins.

Postman himself makes a lot of connections and references, to Marshall McLuhan, providing an explanation of how we are shaped by what and how we consume, and the 'stickiness' of the information we gather. He also does a nice comparison of the apocalyptic, competing visions of George Orwell (1984) and Aldous Huxley (Brave New World). Ultimately, he says we have more to fear from Huxley's vision, that we get inundated in oceans of entertainment and miss the truth and other important stuff.

It's too bad that Postman died before Nate Silver published The Signal and the Noise.. It provides valuable additions to the whole discussion.

But in the meanwhile, you've been tagged. Enjoy!

R.I.P. OK Boomer!

Maybe some sort of switch was thrown, or I missed a memo, but it appears that picking on Gen-Xers for being old, conducting fuzzy thinking exercises and committing fashion-faux pas has replaced picking on we baby boomers as the sport of choice for young 'uns.

Or maybe we're all dead, or declared irrelevant and no longer worthy of mockery. Must have missed another memo.

Or most sad to contemplate, we 'OK folk' are no longer fun to mock. That would be sad–I've still got a lot of zingers beyond 'and you durn kids stay off my lawn!' that I haven't used yet.

Because I haven't in a long time.

Bar jokes are usually among the most reliable. Here's a new one on me.

A priest and a rabbi walk into a bar. After sitting down, ordering, and scoping the place out, the priest says 'Have you noticed there are no women in here? I think it might be a gay bar.'

A man approaches and starts to hit on the priest. The priest is shocked, and doesn't know what to do.

The rabbi leans over and whispers something in the man's ear, at which the man walks off.

'Thanks,' the priest says, 'but what did you tell him?'

The rabbi grins and says 'I told him we're on our honeymoon.'