Bad Ads

 We online shopping users need to have a word with our ad makers. The best ones, show you what you want and in addition offer in the fine print, measurements and reviews.The worst ones, to put it simply, lie. Their ads like one I saw today that advertised cars for sale with pictures of tiny electric cars, when you clicked on it wanting to see more of these tiny one-passenger cars, got a big car dealership and there were no tiny cars to view. Sure, they were electric but not the ones in the ad. One of the sites wouldn't let me see their cars at all without "signing in". Realtors do this nonsense also. As an online shopper, I am not interesting in talking to an agent. I have eyes and can see and read about the product for myself. Don't insult me. If I want an agent, I'll ask for one. When a company shows "you need to register" you're not going to see me again. I  make it a point to find sellers who allow me the dignity of browsing in private. Just as I would in a ground store outlet. I do not favour someone following me about yapping this and that or even greeting me at the door. I want to shop my way, thank you. Used to be in  large department stores now struggling financially, that you could find no one to assist. You searched up and down aisles thinking you might be the last person on earth. Not now. Now on line, a name and face pop up in the corner of your screen. Warning. They are usually bots and their language is restricted only to what is put into their cyber brains. If you don't pick from their list of questions, you are out of luck. You are told to check your spelling and words. Huh? Click off that site. Another company I used to deal with shows wonderful ads and when you click on the one that advertises exactly what you are looking for, you get good old Dan in the corner. Once I actually did call Dan and he turned out to be Jose in another state and Jose didn't know anything about the item, but turned me over to Celia. Celia referred me back to the site and the merry go round went on. Ordering from other countries is a shot in the dark. I ordered a lovely white trench coat that I could find nowhere in my country. It came and was beige. The ad said white, the invoice said white.  Another experience also of  a foreign country, advertised jewelry in 18 karat white gold with real sapphires. Looked wonderful. Got it. What came was glass and cheap white metal. No recourse. One learns who to trust, therefore, advertisers need to get up to speed on getting it right. Buying locally doesn't always work either. Supply is what you see. Prices are become exorbitant. Just got word my phone bill is going up by two dollars a month and that a tiny tin of tuna now costs seven dollars. Beef? You might as well go out at twenty to thirty dollars. At least you get sour cream and shallots on your potato. And you don't have to scrape the barbecue. 

Grocery Boy Grown

 My mother always had her groceries delivered. She did go to the store to chose the items and then had the groceries delivered later. The delivery chap was always a young boy or youth who came into one's house and put them on the kitchen table. In those days, the "island" was a table called a work table because that's usually where the food prep took place. Sometimes, as in our house, it was a kind of wooden butcher block effort with drawers under the top, for cutlery and large knives. When one of Mom's friends one  came over to visit during the day, they perched on the one  kitchen stool, a plain worn wooden thing and sipped coffee made on the stove top, not in a cute machine with little pods. The visitors chatted with Mom and she prepared dishes or stirred up the baking. The coffee pot sat on the stove all day after perking but the coffee was the strongest and  best in the world. So was the conversation. It was without cell phone interruption. But that was then, and this is now. Today my groceries came delivered by a man whose job it is to spend the day trucking groceries to online shoppers. I love that service. Unlike some of my pals, I don't need to go to the supermarket to squeeze the tomatoes or socialize over the yams. My shoppers do a great job because they know quality when they see it - they should, they live a good part of their lives in the store that is my online market. What surprised me enormously, is that my store is now bagless. It seems a very responsible matter to go bagless, but I have to admit, I miss both the paper and the plastic bags. I always recycled them to put my garbage in whether plastic or paper. But that's the way the world is and it must know better than I do. It's far older than I am. I go out as seldom as I can manage. I love the natural world, not cement, tar and dodging people and bikes. The grocery chap came to my door with his bins of tins and boxes and packages, and lo and behold, they looked exactly like you see on the store shelves. The tuna tin was just that. The frozen packages dripped water drops onto my hallway bench and floor. The cold items were also dripping. The raw chicken nakedness was behind one layer of plastic, the cracker boxes were a bit wet from the condensation. Ah, how the world has changed but having groceries delivered hadn't changed all that much other than the age of the chap who brings them. He doesn't have time to visit but he is friendly and knows my name. It's a pleasant rarity to have someone call out your name when you are "served". There are times when I get the fish eye from some compatriots, having my groceries delivered. But hey, I say, if I catch the look, you take you car out using gas and wear and tear. You have to find the right parking spot which can be stressful. Then, you go find a big heavy basket and push it through aisles dodging other carts, to pick up mostly the same old things you do every single time. Next, wait in line or at the computer to check out. Lug it all to your car and put it in the trunk, go home, take it out and lug it to your house and put it on your shelves. That's a lot of effort. Oh, you like the social aspects? What would those be? Well, Fish Eye, I order my groceries at my computer with a cup of coffee in hand. They come on the day and time I request. It costs me less than five dollars for Tony to bring them out of his truck, and arrive at my door. I put the groceries away. Done. Want to give me the fish eye again? It might seem merely an "old lady" thing to do in your book, but hey, when you work it all out, seems to me pretty up-to-date. Old isn't helpless, it's learning how to make life better. And Tony, my grocery delivery man is part of "better". 

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AI - Nothin' New

 AI is the byword today and some are thinking that it is  miraculous, a tech genius way smarter than any human being. Fact One, it still isn't as smart as the human brain. Fact Two, it certainly does have a much better memory better than any human can manage. Way better. But, they are not the same thing. AI is simply a fantastic machine, a computer that can be fed all kinds of facts with a nice feature that allows it to mix them all and come up with something new that some misdirected folks think is original thought. It could be a stove that has a shower in it for tired cooks. Voila.  It's like making cookies and dumping into the batter a lot of interesting ingredients.  A new flavour is made, but it's still a cookie.  Likely more organized than a hoard of monkeys at a keyboard doing Shakespeare's works, it's still, not completely able to own the human matter of emotion, intuition and organized sensible original thought. What's really handy about AI is that while we may have all the sensitivity of our human nature, it doesn't. In some ways that can be useful. It doesn't tire, it doesn't need coffee breaks, it doesn't sleep, it won't need sick leave or weekly salaries, it doesn't fall in love and have babies and can't join a union. Then again, how would you like to have it in your staff room when you're making fun of the boss or gossiping or complaining or venting your private life? You wouldn't do that, because your work AI may be programmed to remind you that what you are doing doesn't fit the rules of the place and you can't plead, "well, I'm only human". It won't get that. It's not human. Then again, why is it in the staff room in the first place? It doesn't drink coffee or sip tea. Or need a coffee break. What could be good about having one of these machines in your work place, is that you can pick its "brain". It doesn't have one, but it has a lot more stored in its memory bank, than you can remember. Every little detail is in there. If  you want to know a few facts about what really is "going on"at work, it will spill the beans or rather, the bytes,  and reveal all. Unless, of course, it has been programmed not to. If you don't mind working with someone who doesn't chat with you from time to time, because it's against the rules, you'll feel like you're sitting beside a cold, mute nerd. The AI will likely say kind things in That Voice that they all have, but it has no empathy even though it speaks the right the words there are no real feelings. Remember,  The Voice that is devoid of vocal chords used a recorded version that sounds lovely but feels nothing.  The good part is that it won't 'nap your stapler or snitch your yogurt from the staff fridge or give you a ride home or divulge romantic secrets. It is a machine, and while you are told it is intelligent, nope, it isn't intelligent. It has a super memory and can only stir up what facts someone fed it. Don't ask it how to deal with a mother-in-law from you-know-where, or what to do when  your teenager tells fibs or when your spouse drives you up the wall. The day , however, that AI contains a beating heart, a strong liver, a great brain, the sense of touch, has a driver's license, never gets a cold and can pay its mortgage, stand back. 

House Husband

 Occasionally, as most writers do, I launch into fiction and today is one of those days. I write about Jenna's House Husband. Jenny, an octogenarian lady and widow of some years, lay in her bed one morning and thought about her ideal once husband. Their life was charmed. When they were launching their careers each, having been fairly well educated at colleges and universities, they fell into their jobs easily and furthermore, they liked them. They met, courted, became engaged without any actual sex act and then married with their kin as witnesses, consummated and worked a few years before having a family. They built a house, had their one child and life went on. Their own adult child married before a divorce some almost two decades later, but in the meantime bore a couple of healthy, happy children before divorcing amicably ( as was said). Both Jenna's husband and son were now dead and Jenny was alone. All alone, but with two ideal career-involved grandchildren. Some would say, it was the ideal life, an ideal marriage, comfortable with pensions, benefits and savings. They retired and travelled the world.  It was, in  fact, more than ideal. As Jenny lay, single, in her big queen sized bed pondering how much time she had left in life because she was a healthy, happy, not-too-bad looking widow living in her owned condo with some very nice friends around her and a unit full of rather lovely things. But was it all? Was it everything? This life that appeared to go on and on? Sure, she had the usual, as most women did, when their husbands died, an exciting love affair after, that taught her, love doesn't happen just once even though the first one is the best and never forgotten and is forged as "the love of your life". Along the widowhood way, she learned to beware of men whom she never quite "got" as she described it. They were strange creatures with very different sorts of aims. But thinking about her first and only marriage, she began to doubt. At the time, with the busyness of it all, it had been impossible to analyse exactly, on a scale of one to ten, how good the marriage was. It seemed to be ideal. It would have been irrational and nasty to dissect what was all rosy and perfect. Her husband was especially perfect. Or was he? In Jenny's day, home life was divided into neat male and female roles, and happily so. The world was in its place and even though there were small wars on the globe, filled with mostly men who both hated and loved the military.  Her life had begun when the Second War in the World started, and it would likely end perhaps, right before the Third and final one. Way things were going. But what about the husband she once adored mutually? Yes, him. She knew friends who talked about something called a soulmate. Remembering this term, she recalled, she and husband never did sit together to discuss their relationship. Why would they? He managed all the finances even though she earned well at her profession. He was attractive, faithful to the marriage, hard working and handy around the house. He was in fact, just that. A house. He was, like a house, big and reliable and safe. He surrounded their little family with dignity, respect, honour and diligence. Were they, a couple, warm and cozy and deeply into one another? No. Life ticked along as though he were actually the house inside which they lived and all went well and beautifully the whole marriage. He was just a house husband. A house, the house. 

A Tut-Tut World

 We have a tut-tut world. My gramma used to say tut-tut-tut in the day, when she saw something she disapproved of. There was no ranting and railing in her day. A mere tiny critique such as tut-tut would do. These days the tut-tuts are word endings with "tion" slamming on meanings according the lastest media rant. Recently, when I happened to disagree with someone on a popular topic that had nothing to do with race or religion or any other freedom we now enjoy, but a rather minor situation, I was charged with "prejudice". Of course, one's opinion is their "prejudice". Check the dictionary. Just as the word "discriminating" is not necessarily the same as "discrimination". If you have a brain, you are discriminating and you might even discriminate but not in a bad way. The word alone is not evil without more specific reference.  I thought that in our enlightened society, we continued to enjoy the freedom of opinion as long as it did not offend anyone else. Now that's a tall order because "offending" someone else, can be a very minor matter. It can be, that I either do or do not eat meat for example. Where I live, an individual who is a vegetarian or vegan, has threatened to move out of the building if he smells any cooking "flesh", as he calls it, on a barbecue. That is a threat to be examined carefully because it could offend someone who might call it discrimination. Discrimination against meat eaters, in this case. The man can be discriminating which is fine. The response to the charge by meat eaters, might be that the vegan person is prejudiced.  Get my point? Private opinion and often is  discriminating, but not discrimination. It's easy to charge someone with a "tion". We are "tion"ing into loss of personal choice and opinion these days as the world wants us all in one smooth bundle while daily separating us with up close examination of everything we do and say that makes us different. We must no longer look at someone and their heritage and certainly not dare to ask about it, because that is considered some kind of "tion". Whether this is a good thing or a bad one, remains to be seen when the dust settles, and we all as one human group, get back to living and being natural once again. Where I want to work and live and recreate and with whom, is my business. Or was.  At present there are hoards of people examining everything that is reported, printed, photographed and said, for the slightest reason to charge  a "tion". Sometimes those of us who are of a past generation, have come from words once thought innocent and are, but are currently said to be wrong. I don't mean the really bad ones, I mean the ones that were commonly and correctly used in their day, but that are now not to be used. Sometimes we elders slip and the word or words, pop out. We hear about it and listen to a "tion".  Before I enter a chat with someone, I have to sanitize my vocabulary so that I don't blurt out the wrong word that could offend some thing or body or place.  In order to keep the peace, it's better to stare at a little screen on a phone or some other piece of plastic junk and text. There are no "tion"s  in texting. Tut-tut Gramma. She had words that would send her to jail now or be sued for millions. 

When's Enough?

 One of the driving forces in human nature is to improve. It's good and bad at the same time. It's what man has achieved and while there are those who want to tear it all down again to make it "right", and that's okay, because it's what Man does. Some voice, "it's never enough", and these days, it appears to be true in many ways. Seems there is never enough peace or money or fun or whatever else "turns your crank". If  you don't know that term, a "crank" was the way some of the first cars were started. No turning little keys or punching buttons to get it going, in those days. And I do remember my dad cranking our old Ford. The air was sometimes blue when this was happening. Back on topic: I know too many people who have what I call "everything", but are still craving to make it more. They won't stop wanting to make more money or cook the best food or rear the most brilliant kids or live in the biggest house or drive the greatest car. Goes on and on. When do they have time to sit and let the trees look at them, as someone said on the radio this morning. I'm not a mystic who knows much about The Third Eye, but I think we do have a kind of "third eye" in all of us. It's the one that dares to look inside at who we are. We all have a third eye, but we seldom take the time to use it. What do we truly want? What is enough? If we have enough, which is something different for every person, why can't we sit back and use that third eye to find out what makes us happy? Are we too busy "improving" to simply look around us and go perhaps outside to just sit  or walk and look. To do nothing. Try it. I dare you. Turn off and leave, at home, the electronic junk and take a chance to do this. Don't plug a gizmo into your ear to drown out what's there or check your pulse as you pound along some path in your Lulu Lemons. Just stop, and sit and look and do absolutely nothing for a few hours. Find, without distraction, the real you, not the one you think you are going to improve on for "success". Success is a myth.  Remember, that "you" person? The beauty, and it is true beauty, of old age is giving up all the stupid things we thought we needed and had to have and finally found we could be content with. It's what we do have. Sometimes it is one room in a "home", a place where all worries are over and you can enjoy your memories without interruption except for the routines to be endured. Sometimes, it's being on your home sun deck or yard and watching the clouds drifting by or the rain drops coming down or the snow flying or a bird singing somewhere or a gull riding high in the wind. It's not something poetic, it's life, the real one, not the one on a screen or in music  or somebody you have to impress. It's where you are, the space in the air you are filling, your breathing. It's your body that is you alone. Your body is really all you own in this life. Don't be embarrassed to understand that your body is all important because you are "here" just as you are, and what you have, is you. And that's enough.  

Ignore Don't Roar

 Demonstrations are not invitations to war. They are made up of people who express, along with others of the same vein, their beliefs. When they are officially granted permission to do so, those with opposite opinions who appear to come and "roar" at those who have opposing views to their own are offensive. And it can turn into violence when tempers between people who feel offended by the demonstration act out. Instead of parlay, they strike out. It can turn into dangerous confrontations and police must try to restore order. The police don't take sides. They do their jobs, very difficult ones, to separate those engaged in acts of violence. They are trained to do this difficult job in dealing with persons who take their opinions beyond reason and right. We all have personal opinions, some very strong, but most of us, while maintaining the right to our individual ideas,  know,  that in this country, we respect, or should, those opinions of others. Why do some citizens appear and cause trouble by disrespecting the rights of citizens? If they have legal permission to organize and demonstrate within rightful boundaries, what harm can it do? Physically attacking demonstrators, does not change anything, certainly not anyone's mind,  and while it feeds the media that it loves this kind of show, it does nothing to change the opinions of opposing believers. Just as we do with children who are having temper tantrums, why not  simply ignore what we don't believe ?Why not stay away and ignore?  Your presence could be affirmation to those whose ideas are not yours. It seems there is confusion in the minds of factions that organize against those who legally demonstrate. They are not on the side of democracy. They want only their own opinions forced.   There are some human beings who enjoy forcing their opinions on others. It's party time for them. In this country, that's not done. We have many freedoms to savor. We need to allow others, their rights.  In a democratic realm, there is a place for all within what our law makers deem to be the norm. A norm doesn't mean "normal" because that's judgemental. The "norm" is what the polled average person adheres to,  and it is simply a kind of ruler of the times, with numbers ranging on it. That's all. The norm can change, but it can't be forced. It is an societal observation, not a law. In places in the world where the  government is not democratic, the norm is forced, so that it will become a norm. When this happens, there is strong opposition. The norm then, goes berserk and is unreliable. Violence can occur.  Here, we are fortunate. We elect our government. If we disagree, we may demonstrate within legal bounds. One of the benefits of a democratic environment, is that peace can be maintained by allowing those at either ends of the political spectrum to express their opinions in the form of demonstrations. They are meant to be peaceful means of showing others why and what some feel about their conditions. That is the right in democracies. To invade with force and violence, anger and chaos, those  who are merely presenting their ideas, is not responsible in our democracy. If one doesn't agree, one should focus on its own beliefs, allowing others, even in opposition, to have their say. Appearing and  physically out-shouting, shoving and striking at those who have the legal right to be there, is just plain irresponsible and disrespectful of other citizens. And certainly is undemocratic. Allow democracy. Stay away; ignore; don't roar.