Category → Fruit of Contemplation
Musical “1776” Two Thumbs Up
Please do not tell anyone, but I saw a musical play the other day, and I liked it. Humiliating to admit, yes, but our three readers come here for honesty, if nothing else. Today you get five doses of honesty: The musical “1776” was excellent, timely, accurate, entertaining, and all the other positive stuff that my movie and theater critic mentors Siskel & Ebert would say about it.
We saw it at the historic Walnut Street Theater in Philadelphia, America’s oldest longest-continuously running theater. Because the venue has a sane policy on weapons (have your carry permit available if anyone asks to see it), I was strapped. I was strapped because it is downtown Philly, where the Wild West can descend upon one in the blink of an eye.
The docents, volunteers, and paid staff were all nice and helpful. Before the show started, we could have raised Lazarus more readily than actually reaching a human being during operating hours. Weak spot, but probably a weak spot in all theaters. No one there answers the phones or the emails until after you have come and gone.
Look here, theater is not for me. Watching adults play dress-up and make-believe is usually overwhelmingly annoying for me. These are not mature people, and many of them have gratingly annoying personalities. It is impossible to take actors seriously, on stage or off. Now that TDS is ravaging Hollywood, I am reminded daily about how much I dislike actors. It seems that the kind of people drawn to acting all fall into the “Big Jerk” category of life.
One exception in my world exists for those live stage performances that are about meaningful, inspirational, true stories. Biblical stuff ranks “acceptable.” Political theater is almost always heavily slopped to the falling overboard-left, preachy, inaccurate, dumb, communist, and, thus, annoying. Best bets are on movies, where the nonsense and forgotten lines moments have been left on the editing room floor.
“1776” is about the writing of the Declaration of Independence over a one month period, however, and is, therefore, a ten out of ten in my book, any day. It involves the story of the delegates from 13 colonies, debating the break-up with Britain, in Independence Hall, in Philadelphia, in June and early July, 1776. The widely documented personal performances of Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and our own (local to PA) John Dickinson are performed admirably by the capable actors. Thank you!
Real focus is put onto the debate about slavery, which did occur in the actual Continental Congress, and how that hot issue was taken out of Jefferson’s first version of the Declaration of Independence. Depicting this on stage is especially important these days, as it is bizarrely considered “cool” by some to incorrectly badmouth America about slavery.
Fact: In 1794 America just about had a civil war over slavery. We also almost had a full civil war over whisky and taxes, then, too. But abolishing slavery was an early goal in our nation’s founding, and white people were ready to fight and die to end it, even as slavery was a full blown enterprise in the rest of the world. Eventually American whites got around to that fighting and dying thing, in 1861, when the insurrectionist Democrat Party declared separation from the rest of America, over keeping their slaves.
By 1865, the Republicans took away the Democrats’ slaves, and as we see even today, the Democrats never forgave them for it.
I digress.
That this was a musical without much singing was God’s way of showing me that beauty can occasionally exist in the darnedest places, including on a stage full of … feh… actors. That most of the singing that did occur was bawdy or silly really took the sting out of the musical part.
The actors said their lines well, performed very well, and entertained us audience people well, about an important subject. The Walnut Street Theater was clean, had no stray odors, and was a pleasure to visit. All the audience members upon whom I threw myself were friendly and gracious.
In another couple of months America, us, our nation, will celebrate its 250th anniversary since our founding. It is a really big deal. This play was timed to synch with our national celebration, and it fits well. If you find yourself going anywhere near Philly in the coming weeks or months, go see “1776.”
And go strapped, because the venue has a Constitutionally-minded policy on 2A concealed carry. God bless ’em. That was the only reason I set foot inside the theater…they actually believe in FREEDOM.
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Lab grown vs Beautiful Naturals
Quite a debate has been raging for some years, decades really, about the impact of lab grown gems on the natural gem market. This debate is at peak right now, and appears to be headed in a surprising direction.
We are talking here primarily about colored gemstones, not diamonds. Lab grown diamonds for wearing as gems completely defeat the entire purpose of having a diamond in the first place. Gem-grade diamond grown by Mother Nature is quite rare, and therefore quite valuable. Lab grown diamonds are not rare, but are rather just cheap knock-offs of the real deal. What is the point of wearing a fake that looks just like the real? Are you trying to mislead people? That says a lot about you!
Forget those lab grown diamonds.
What started in the 1950s with junky, soft, easily identified, easily fractured high impact glass morphed into better quality lab-grown cubic zirconiums. Those “CZs” ruled the roost of cheap gem knock-offs for decades, both colored and clear, and were easily detectable by the eye and with simple two-prong “diamond testers” of many makes. Either a stone was diamond, or it wasn’t, and if it was not a diamond, it was most likely CZ.
The colored versions of CZ were almost ridiculous looking. They lacked the soft, deep, subtle nuance of the colored stones they were supposed to emulate, primarily red ruby and blue sapphire, and were often blindingly garish. Easy to spot these as fakes from a mile away, only the most unabashed or cheap wore them as deliberate gem representations.
Early attempts at lab growing blue sapphire corundum (and ruby, which is just the red version of corundum) gem-grade crystals bore rudimentary fruit, with clear growth rings that separated lab Frankenstein creations from Mother Nature’s real, beautiful, naturals. Same for lab emeralds, most of which still today have an unnatural nuclear-green Kryptonite color that is 99.999999% impossible to create naturally.
GIA really exploded in importance in this time period, because lots of decent lab-made fakes were being offered as natural colored stones, and GIA labs could analyze stones and certify them as natural, or not.
However, starting in the 1980s, the age of President Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars” anti-Soviet space lasers and incredibly accurate laser sighting systems for terrestrial military tank cannons, and then for laser cameras on military satellites that can count the hairs on a fly’s ass from 100 miles up in space, etc, American and Russian laboratories began to grow various crystals from corundum and other chemical concoctions (like YAG) to suit the military’s optical needs, which also happened to result in true gem-quality product. Clear, clean, visually appealing, natural looking, hard.
In all of this re-purposing of mostly sapphire/ corundum and garnet crystals for high tech optical uses, a broader public niche slowly opened up: Gem-grade lab grown…gems. These lab-created crystals-cum-gems are mostly actual ruby and actual sapphire that look in all ways like something created over hundreds of millions of years in the Earth’s crust…. or, in the alternative, these gems are something else entirely, with non-garish, unnatural, but nonetheless truly beautiful gem properties, like the various colors of YAG.
Lab-grown Alexandrite is one of the cooler gems, because it occurs naturally (in extremely limited quantities, mainly in the Ural Mountains) and yet the lab creation looks exactly like the beautiful natural material. Making it in the lab is not that easy, so it is not ridiculously cheap.
Now, we are seeing people experiment with custom-grown lab crystals made to specific color (using various rare earth metals), refractive, and chatoyant characteristics, with hardnesses of 8-9 Mohs, which make them eminently wearable as personal gems. These purpose-crafted lab creations are not garish, but rather are beautiful gems to look at, and easy to appreciate. When encased in gold or platinum, they look every bit as beautiful as a genuine natural pigeon blood ruby or Ceylon cornflower sapphire, or more beautiful.
The advantages of these lab gems is that they cost far, far less than the naturals, and can be made to look as good as, or better, than the naturals. How is that for a ROI? Pretty damned good!
Why do humans wear gems and jewelry in the first place? First and foremost to make ourselves more attractive. Other reasons include showing off wealth, hoarding wealth, making wealth highly portable in times of war or dislocation. Royalty the world over wear crowns made of precious metals and absolutely loaded down with precious rare gems. These crowns are a form of banking, concentrating wealth – and thus power – in one very small place.
What the lab created colored gem stones have done is democratize beauty, making gems and personal beauty more affordable and thus more widely available. They have also grown appreciation for just how rare are the actual natural stones in those royal crowns and sceptres and sold by Harry Winston. By making beautiful gemstones both believable and also widely available, lab gems are here to stay. People can pick and choose personally tailored gems that work best for their own unique skin tones and eye colors.
And of course, there are already fakes of lab created gem stones, made of glass, so already the lab stones must have some greater value than just glass.
To put this crassly, everyone loves a beautiful natural, but boy, those lab enhanced “fakes” sure look good, don’t they? And the fact that they function just as well as the naturals, or even better, means they are here to stay.
If your emerald looks impossibly green, it is fake.
Memes for your enjoyment
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Advice for young men
Following a lot of recent discussions about the generally sorry state of America’s young people, it is necessary for this elder to chime in. Go ahead and say it: “OK Boomer,” it just proves the point here.
Because I am a man, and grew up in a time when Americans knew who they were and what a woman was, and what a man was not, this advice is aimed at America’s young men. If you think you are young, then this is for you. And if you are starting over a little later in your life, then these thoughts might also be for you.
First, be a gentleman in all ways, and dress like one, if you can. Be articulate, thoughtful, reflective, a listener, and respectful, even of people or opinions you do not yet understand or with which you disagree. This will set you up for receiving the same, which we all enjoy. Dressing nicely will really make you stand out, and be received well.
Second, be chivalrous at every opportunity. Men my age were taught to open doors for women, which made women feel special and made men feel better than average. Today I open doors for women, and men, every opportunity possible. Sadly, many older women evince surprise at this kind act, and I always say “If I did not hold this door open for you, my mother will jump out from behind that bush over there and she will kick my ass.”
The older women know exactly what I am talking about, and smile, or laugh, because they remember. They enjoy being treated nicely and because discipline was once an important part of child rearing and creating a healthy, well adjusted, functioning adult. Some women will even laugh or confirm my fear that Mom is indeed right over there, just waiting for me to screw up. Fear of Mom is not always a bad thing. It built functioning human civilizations for thousands of years until recently, when moms decided they had to be their children’s best friends, or worse, their enablers.
Third, learn how to fight. Fist fighting was a way of life when and where I grew up, and almost all of the boys I had fist fights with ended up becoming close friends. We ended up hunting, fishing, camping out together, riding dirt bikes, etc. Some of us are still in touch. It shaped us, it did not ruin us, though some kids liked fighing too much, and they ended up being the older guy you know who goes to jail.
A lot of those youthful fights were more a test of a guy’s measure than an act of hostility. Guys sizing each other up. Today, hostility is in the air, and danger lurks around every suburban street corner, because crime goes unpunished and the wheels of our society are falling off. A man worth being called an American should know how to at least defend himself, if not make an attacker regret his choice.
Recently at a wedding, I encountered a young man whose last appearance in my life was as a scrawny, nerdy, bookish, bespectacled, sweet natured teenager. Today, he is a fine, confident, and muscular specimen of a young American man, complete with a concealed carry pistol and weekly boxing lessons. No designated victim he, unlike so many American men.
You do not need to be a black belt in anything, some of which are actually a liability and not an asset (overconfidence kills the cat); you just need to know when to run away, which is almost always, and lacking the possibility of retreat, how to make a good showing for yourself and your future health. Boxing and various other forms of fighting can be learned almost everywhere across America.
Simple lessons teach the basics of stance, timing, blocking, parrying, and striking. Eons ago, I tried a few styles of Karate, and settled on the old version of Tang Soo Do, Korean street fighting. That was replete with throat rips, eye gouges, and finger breaking. Today, such training is considered a legal liability, and Tang Soo Do is no different than the version of the point system Thai Quan Do taught in most dojos.
Whatever fighting style or practice you learn is good. Again, learning to defend one’s self is not about becoming the bully of your block or being a nationally recognized expert in arm locks and spinning back kicks, or ripping your shirt off at parties and demonstrating your moves. You are not taking classes in self defense so you can do somersaults that end in hand choppng pine boards. Rather, every American man should have enough confidence and will power to stand toe to toe with an assailant, if the need arises. This is the American spirit.
A man’s spirit.
TBC
Spoiled brat Republican kids, wth
Next installment of cane-shaking at spoiled American kids, this time directly at the so-called conservatives and Republican young people.
Why are you young people, with so much promise, so much potential, so much energy, so many options, also so negative and living the flip-side of the grievance culture that the Left has used to nearly destroy America?
You will say that America is ganging up on us, which is true, and that much of the ground rules, that your parents made you live by while you were growing up, are not being followed by anyone else, which is also true.
True, all of it, but irrelevant. Let me ask you a question:
When our forefathers founded America, what kind of conditions did they face? Not very good, right? Bad, right? Overwhelming odds, right?
Were the British fighting fair, while trying to stop the young republic from gaining independence and succeeding as a new nation run by its people, instead of its nobility and aristocracy? No, the British did not fight fair. In fact, they very often took no prisoners on the battlefield, and “dispatched” with bloody bayonet anyone who was wounded, and then executed by firing squad anyone left standing.
And yet, General George Washington and his brave troops fought, and fought, and fought. They were undeterred. They bled and fought, day after day. Yes, it was tough, but what option did they have? To lose was to lose everything, and become slaves.
You young conservative Americans are not weak, and you are not pathetic, and you are not sad losers, so STOP ACTING LIKE THAT.
My advice, or rather my request, is that you look within yourself/ yourselves and find and use that same strength and ingenuity that our Founding Fathers had to draw upon to survive and create the great country we live in. It is in you.
And yes, America is in survival mode right now, no arguing about that. Our beloved America is in terrible shape because of anti-Western ideology on the Left and complacent cowardice on the Right. The Democrat Party is crazy and the Republican Party is lazy, and the crazies are winning.
So do not mimic the Left and begin whining and bitching about how unfair things are. Do not do that. Rather, band together and pursue positive goals. Like: Recruit American Blacks, Hispanics, and Asian Indians into the Republican Party, and make the Republican Party a truly conservative institution that promotes the basic principles of America’s founding, like meritocracy and equal opportunity for everyone.
And like: Create your own institutions, if the current ones are corrupted.
Years ago, my son was one year away from being an Eagle Scout, and he dropped out of Boy Scouts because of the massive assault on the institution. The demand to include girls in his troop was one problem, because he could no longer hang out with just boys and talk about Boy things in a safe environment. And then came the gay thing, where everyone had to talk about being gay, and acting gay, with older gay men hanging around, in what had been a non-sexual environment where talking about sex anything was generally frowned upon. It was this new form of sexual harassment that drove my son out of the Boy Scouts, and broke his will as a Boy.
Hugely sad for our family, who had all cheered on our son in his many years as a Boy Scout.
And I experienced something similar while in graduate school, back in 1990, when I was matter-of-factly told that White men had a bleak future in academia. My dream of being a college professor was blown up, because I had the wrong skin color. I felt sold out, and betrayed by the institutions I wanted to be a part of.
And in fact, when I went to work in the Federal government in Washington DC, instead of finishing my Phd and becoming a college professor, I discovered that the federal workforce was only a few years behind the racial and anti-man gender assault well under way in academia. My career turned into a white guy running like hell, trying to stay out ahead of the pack of dogs chasing us down (how ironic that the people running those packs of hunting dogs were and still are all White Liberals, who long ago destroyed the American Black family).
So I know of what I speak, and of what you feel. Your groups, organizations, institutions have almost all been corrupted, and you find yourself overwhelmed and surrounded by attackers. All of this is factually true, it is not just a feeling. But do not live by your feelings, live by your intelligent brains.
Be like George Washington when he fought the British, and retreat and re-form and re-organize in safety, again and again as much as you must, in order to fight effectively another day.
But fight you must, as men, as American men, as George Washington men, because if you little bastards sit around sucking your thumbs and bitching about how unfair life is, you will indeed lose this fight and lose America and all of its beautiful promise, and your adult lives will be a horrendous leftwing Marxist hellscape of slavery and oppression. And tough guys like me will either be dead or too old to fight for you.
So fight, dammit, fight smart and out-flank the enemy. Out-organize it, and defeat it. And once you have your enemy defeated on the battlefield…do not leave it alive to come back and attack you again later on. Make Marxism and treason absolutely illegal in America… by making it terribly punishable.
So Job #1: Form a stronger, better, harder, more popular, leaner, less elitist Republican Party, and go out and win elections with a majority of the country supporting you. You can do it, if you but will it.
Passover + Easter = Peaceful freedom
Tonight is the beginning of the week of Passover, the ancient Biblical holiday marking the end of Jewish slavery in Egypt and the beginning of their 40-year trek to Israel, their Biblical homeland.
Passover is the major worldwide holiday dedicated to human freedom. From Passover comes inspirational phrases in American founding documents and coinage, and the Last Supper in the Gospel. This Sunday is Easter, the worldwide holiday about spiritual renewal and peace.
Tonight, while Jews and Christians are at their Seder tables, President Trump will announce the beginning of the end of the war to end Iran’s apocalyptic nuclear holocaust ambition. This Easter Sunday will mark the beginning implementation of that winding down. The symbolism of this timing of events is powerful.
In just one month, President Trump has done what naysayers and spineless apologists had said could never be done – the destruction of a genocidal Islamic tyranny determined to hijack our entire planet. Iran as we knew it a month ago is no more, its 47 years of nonstop militarism now in rubble, its threats to humanity vastly diminished.
Imagine if world leaders had had Trump’s level of foresight and bravery in 1938; if they had had his strength of conviction to confront Adolf Hitler before he gained momentum; there would likely have been no World War II, no mass destruction of Europe by the genocidal German Nazis. President Trump’s principled, decisive nature this past month has saved what is left of Western Civilization, giving it time to save itself in the long run, before it is subsumed under a wave of foreign ground invasion and Iranian nuclear missiles.
Tonight, the world knows peace for the first time in a very long time. If you don’t know this, you should, and if you don’t appreciate this fact, you need to contemplate on it. No more TDS, no more JDS, just give thanks that the America you so easily take for granted has a lot more breathing room. Much thanks to be said this Passover and this Easter for President Trump’s gift of peace and freedom.
And we all hope the Iranian People will take this same opportunity for themselves.
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Carpe diem, carpe lifeum, carpe friendum
Carpe diem – Latin for seize the day – was popularized in America by now deceased actor Robin Williams in a wonderful (if moronically anti gun) movie called The Dead Poets Society.
In his characteristic full-throttle mode, hard to tell if he was acting or just being him-so-interesting-self, Robin Williams playing the school teacher, beautifully exhorted his high school students to carpe diem, seize the day, to gather ye rose buds which ye may, to live life fully moment by moment and day by day, to miss nothing, let no opportunity slip by, to live and be their best.
This is an ages-old challenge for all of us, especially Americans, whose lives today are filled with so much clutter and nonsense, especially online (except for this blog, of course), so much material chasing, and ego driving, and so little opportunity for reflective contemplation.
Well have I been reminded of carpe diem in just the past couple days. Another friend gone, before their time, before the years said they should be gone and leave us. A wonderful and interesting person, full of life and cantankerous fist-waving at President Trump and Republicans, who was a pretty conservative rural white Southerner, nonetheless, whose personal views on borders and illegal immigration and public welfare for new immigrants fell deeply into Republican policy territory. Whether this contrary policy place was cognitive dissonance or confusion or misplaced brand loyalty to a political party that had long ago left this person behind, I do not know, nor do I care.
I never cared. It just made them an interesting person, whose chemistry somehow strangely matched with my own.
This old friend was important to me, as are so many old friends from, let’s say, the past fifty years of my ever-shortening life. And yet, not important enough to see in person for many years, despite mutual declarations of intentions and desires to do so. So much to catch up on, the kids, the grandkids, career, friends, family.
Now, this person like a puff of smoke in a gentle breeze – poof – is gone from my life, and from the life of their own children and family, who loved them very much.
As I age, I am seeing more and more friends literally drop dead or get sick and die. People I care about very much, and maybe to whom I have not expressed my appreciation in a long time. Or my apologies for stupid behavior in our youth. Or to share some knee-slapping hilarity over ridiculous and probably dangerous adventures we did together, long ago, when rural American youth did such things with impunity, and without fear of being branded a terrorist.
Yes, I have regrets, now that my friend is dead, before I had a chance to sit down with them one more time. And in this moment of regret, or recurring moments as I move through my day from one errand and activity to another, I am reminded to carpe diem.
And… Carpe Lifeum, Carpe Friendum.
To miss no opportunity to breathe in the richest of life that I can muster, at every moment. Enjoy my friends, my life. Before I, too, suddenly and unexpectedly breathe my last breath on this earth.
Not to sound morbid, but my friend did just unexpectedly die, literally dropped dead, and so let us both turn this sad black rose into a red rose bud that we gather together, and treasure together, while we yet may.
Goodbye, old friend, and Hello, living friends. We need to have a coffee or a beer together, don’t we…
Bomb shelter inequity and other Monty Python skits
Today, while texting with someone I love and do not really know, despite our many years of acquaintence, this odd exchange occurred:
Me: “Here is someone in a bomb shelter, in his work clothes on a sunny afternoon, watching the rockets fly overhead.”
Alice in Wonderland: “Those who haven’t a bomb shelter would happily trade places. ;-)”
Turns out, Monty Python has bomb shelter envy because of his bomb shelter inequity. Monty Python picked a fight by dropping bombs on his neighbor, got bombed back, and then cried foul because he lacks a bomb shelter in which to hide from the bombs he invited in response to his own bombs.
Picking fights with the neighboring country, bombing its citizens day after day after day, immediately turns to victimhood the moment that the neighboring country fights back.
You following the illogic here?
The perpetrators are actually the victims, and the true victims are actually entitled richy-rich fancy-pants because they have bomb shelters in which to take cover from their neighbors’ bombs. There is a bomb shelter inequity here, because having a bomb shelter is a privilege, and it is really so damned sad and unfair. There should be proportional bomb shelters, apparently, in addition to proportional bombs. Can’t respond with too many bombs, because that is also inequitable.
How about this for an inequity: There are 2.5 billion Monty Pythons bombing about ten million officially designated victims. This wildly disproportionate attacker-to-victim ratio is so wildly out of kilter, so blatantly unfair; and yet, to some very strange twist of logic and inversion of values, we have ended up with bomb shelter inequity and privilege.
Why, the brazen survivial of those officially designated victims! How dare you!
Monty Python could make one hell of a loony tunes skit about this bomb shelter inequity situation, except that the real Monty Python guys also went down this same rabbit hole. Nothing funny remains, just crazy people with too many bombs and a handful of survivors running for their lives in ever shrinking amounts of real estate.
Only the sadists rejoice.
Go ahead and laugh, sadists of the world, because Alice and Monty Python are coming for you, next. Grinning clowns with butcher knives. It is hysterically funny.
Where is the Manual Override lever?
A friend of mine has a beautiful home filled up with high technology gadgets. Everything in the house is automated, including opening and closing toilet seats, lights, music, the kitchen wine rack, you name it; if it can be programmed to happen or turn on or off when a person enters or exits the room or uses the potty, he has it set.
First time I encountered this was at a party. It was funny and entertaining. I would experience something newfangled and robotic, comment on it, compliment my friend for his ingenuity, and then retreat to the pool deck or his living room to talk with a human being.
Then a year later he generously hosted me as a guest for a weekend as I ran for state senate, while he and his family were away. Every time I stepped into the kitchen, lights would turn on, the fridge would light up, or automatically open if I approached it, same with the coffee maker, etc. When the shower was turned on, music started.
No matter what I wanted to do, or needed to do, or possibly indicated a desire to do, the automated electronics tried to anticipate me and do it for me. Even the toilet paper dispenser was set to go, maybe not enough, but it tried to provide. Everything but the final act was done by the toilet paper dispenser, but then the guest room toilet also had a bidet feature, which if you are into that, can work wonders if set on “fire hose high.”
After that weekend, I swore I would try to avoid automation as much as possible the rest of my life. It unnerved me, because almost as frequently as the robotics were correct, they were then incorrect, and then annoying. Put another way, the first hour of that is Golly! amusing. The second hour is provocative, as the human mind tries to find ways to work around the now-annoying robots. After that, one becomes tired of the novelty, and a bit alarmed by all of the automated activity that occurs no matter which room one enters into, and what one really wants.
And there is no manual override.
Several years ago I made the mistake of buying a newfangled clothes washing machine. Our old one died, and I had run out of fixes for it. I could not find its two-way electric motor, used, even on eBay, and so it went out into the world of recycling.
Looking for that old machine’s fierce old-fashioned tear-your-arm-off churn of the washing machines we all grew up with, I accepted the salesman’s representation that this new machine could do that, if I programmed it to do it. And Lordy but does it have buttons for programming! It even can link up with your smart phone and be run from that, if you download that manufacturer’s spyware app.
I figured that with all of these sophisticated buttons and options, the machine could probably be programmed to write Shakespeare sonnets, much less really, really clean our family’s clothing.
Nope.
Turns out that the machine has programming for a high efficiency absence of cleaning water set at cold, and shame-on-you low efficiency absence of cleaning water, set at tepid, with the same weak, flaccid, slow, low-energy half-turn of the cleaning rotor as happens with the high-efficiency choice. And the churny-rotor thingy is a superior action to the lift-and-flop motion the machine is set to do from the factory.
Any mistake in trying to run a wash and then stopping it requires the machine to drain out all of the wash water and then start all over again. Which is a waste of water, and whatever electricity it used, and is usually an unnecessary step.
With this new, expensive, high tech clothes washing machine, you are stuck with a set of poor or poorer choices in how to maybe clean your clothes. The machine was designed and programmed by people who care more about energy and water efficiency than actually cleaning clothes.
Note to clothes washer manufacturers: We consumers buy clothes washers because we want our clothes to get clean, however that is done, whatever it takes, at whatever amounts and temperatures of water are needed, and with whatever rotor churn power is needed to knock the caked dirt off of my work clothes. We don’t want high efficiency water and electrictity use for anything other than thoroughly cleaning our clothes. And if the high efficiency settings don’t clean clothes, as they usually do not, then we want a choice in setting the machine to really kick ass and do what clothes washers are supposed to do: Clean. Really, really, super clean. At whatever cost in water and electricity.
And no, there is no manual override for this fancy washing machine. You the consumer are given an incomplete set of choices, and by golly, that is what you will learn to like, whether it is likable or not.
Last but not least among the examples of modern thingies needing a manual override, we have the new car belonging to the Princess of Patience. It is a 2026 Toyota Rav4 hybrid, being number four in a progression of RAV4s the Princess of Patience has owned and relied upon, with great enjoyment.
Heh, well, this latest and greatest iteration of the tried and true and much favored RAV4 inspires our gentle, soft spoken, always well considered Princess of Patience to say things like “I hate this %*$#@! thing. I want to set it on fire and leave it on the side of the road!”
Now, what could inspire such a harsh reaction to something so wonderfully modern and reliable as her new car? In a word: Technological automation.
This damned RAV4 has more technology than a fighter jet, and more automation than the Toyota car factory that built it. The technology is overwhelming, unnecessary, superfluous, and impossible to control, unless one has a degree in computer programming. The little turny knobs we used for the past seventy years for selecting radio stations and interior temperatures worked, ya know. Simple solution, hard to break, easy to tune. Not the new car technology! It is all touch screen, which is hard to see, inelegant, and clumsy.
This RAV4 tries to grab and pull into its computer motherboard every electronic gadget and phone that passes within fifty feet of it, then downloading and storing everything digital on said gadget and phone (to then download to Toyota so the car company can then sell and monetize our most personal information). This car also has every kind of Nanny pseudo-safety feature automatically built in that a weenie sheltered mama’s boy could ever dream up.
The car beeps and chimes and dings if you swerve one inch into the road dividing line. It will also automatically swerve away from any car or dividing line it believes you have mistakenly turned towards, even if you are swerving to avoid a deer standing in the middle of the road, but end up hitting the deer instead, because of the car’s automated correction system.
Ditto for coming anywhere near another vehicle while driving or parking. Last week my left wrist was nearly broken because of the force it hit the steering wheel with, as the car automatically and harshly jammed on the brakes to “save” us from hitting the rear end of a car that was turning into an alley in a congested urban area. We were plenty far enough away from the other car’s bumper, but to the RAV4, we nearly died, and it saved us.
Whoever programmed this car’s automated sensors and driving instructions obviously never drove in Brooklyn, New York, where urban combat driving is the norm and clearances between moving and parked vehicles and with buildings and humans are all measured in tenths of inches. To everyone’s satisfaction. But not to this car!
If I were to try to drive this 2026 RAV4 in a place like Brooklyn, I would leave a trail of destruction and mayhem behind me, on account of the automated driving and “safe reaction” nanny settings programmed into the car. The car would swerve to avoid one perceived obstacle, and then take out two grandmas, a stroller, and a partridge in a pear tree in one full swoop, just to stop me from maybe hitting something. All while the damned thing scans my eyeballs and my brain for what music I might possibly want to listen to at that second.
Folks, there is just too damned much technology and automation and useless gee-whiz gizmos in everything we use. It is all working against us, against our interests, our choices, against our humanity. It is a reflection not of us and our choices, but of the weak and highly risk-averse fairies who program these things before we start using them. And there is no manual override for any of it.
Not everything analog is bad, and hardly everything digital is good. The deeper we go into digital everything, the more we want some of that old analog world back. It was easier, more user friendly, did more with less, easier to maintain, lasted longer and broke a lot lot less than the digital crap.
You want a tamper resistant and theft-proof vehicle, that does what you tell it to do, when you want it? Get a manual stick shift. That is what I want in my next pickup truck, if only to be able to regularly give Third Gear to The Man.