Home
75 Years Old
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: People
- Hits: 766
Most people I know, especially in the Kootenays, 75, it's middle aged. I think of my Father - older, sure, but not that old. Or Dagmar, 75 years old, bitching about not having sex for 18 years, her choice, she doesn't really like her partner, smoking a joint behind the restaurant, then tearing off to chain herself to a tree or protest something or another, 75 years young, you'd look at her and guess late 50's, tops, she's still a beauty, with more energy than most women half her age.
So it's a bit of a disappointment when I track down Batshit, 75 years as well, in his squalid apartment in Nelson. It's been a few months, good to see him, but not like this. His apartment filled with junk, boxes, he's sprawled on a tangle of sheets, chip wrappers, food tins, the place is a hole - he's hung a bed-sheet in front of the window, the entire winter he's not gone out, bathed, showered, filthy, unflushed shit in the toilet, watching old movies on the TV beside his bed...
I knew this move to Nelson was a bad idea. He's glad to see me, totters about getting dressed, the place stinks, there's no way to describe it, the mess, and his movements, slow, confused, complaining about every imaginary ache and pain, he's the worst picture of 75 years old you can imagine...
We go for coffee, catch up, he's got some scrolls for me. And he needs cigarettes, and a bag of stone ground coffee, and I order him a sandwich which he nibbles briefly on and then demands a take-out bag for, he'll eat it later, then he wants a bottle of liquor, and a toy in the antique shop window, and he wants some farm fresh eggs and thick sliced bacon and some canvas and it goes on and on and on and it's too much, I can't afford this shortest of visits, get him back to the car, he's complaining, tottering, doesn't want to walk up the hill, I'm pissed, he's become lazy, old, way before his years and I'm not playing this game, don't want to enable this charade of untimely old age...
...a lady watches me in horror as I drag him up the hill, swearing at him all the way - "Elder Abuse" I explain gently as I pass, he's got me annoyed, he's down a little self-pitying well, but I can tell he liked this little foray into downtown, me, not so much, I'll see him maybe again in the spring if he lives but it's become a duty, not a pleasure...
He's been adding the postcards I've been sending into his artwork...which is good...
Diamonds of YouTube
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 1296
13 degrees today, an amazing day, the season fast approaches and I'd better familiarize myself with my target.
Diamonds. Why not? Go big or go home.
I've looked at a million pictures of diamonds, rough and otherwise, and am starting to get a feel for the subject. And then I get onto the clickhole of youtube.
Rough diamonds, searching, searching, buggerdly fuck for information. Like, I'm not looking for a map, I have that, I just want some good images, but - like most of the internet it's largely bullshit.
Videos with poor images enlarged to 100 times their original size, computer generated voiceovers. Bad, bad, bad. Then there's the people trying to sell shit, parcels of rough diamonds, they're OK.
Then there's the "Independent Prospectors", fucking nut-jobs every one of 'em. I mean, hold a piece of quartz on a tray with a piece of silk. Hold it in your left hand. The silk lends value to the piece of quartz. With your right hand wave your phone around the quartz, don't let it focus, and talk about the diamond you found. Or just throw it on an old newspaper - nothing persuades me of success and quality like a Nigerian newspaper. Or a slideshow of rocks that - even to my limited knowledge - are clearly not rough diamonds. River cobbles, Calcite, Citrine, talk about that 2 kg (10,000 Carat) chunk of "diamond" you found and press the $10.00 diamond tester you bought off E-bay from China against it to "prove it's real" and then rail for a bit about how the jewelers don't know anything and they're inflating prices by not buying your piece of diamond at the more than reasonable price of $100.00 per Carat but if you, the educated you-tube viewer are interested please contact at...
You can't even parody this stuff, but I've got a lot of rocks to sell and so maybe I should start making a few videos of my own...
Wargames (1983)
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Film
- Hits: 744
One I missed in the theatres as a kid and so watched. With a spectacularly young Matthew Broderick, which is saying something, given we're about the same age...
There's the nostalgia for cars, computers, the optimism of the age - the foreshadowing of AI - deep learning programs like AlphaZero and Deepmind, and I knew kids in school that did this, hacked into airlines and printed tickets, enjoyed the general cheesiness and lack of gravity, but - in the end - very much of it's time, no Dr. Strangelove by a longshot. Maybe one to terrorize the kids with, but I doubt they'd forgive me...
This is not science
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Technology
- Hits: 1053
Looking at my Google News Feed - under science:
Lol. Sorry Google. That's not Science. Nor is it news.
Page 375 of 1021