My God, it’s full of stars!

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Artimis Stage Separation

Yesterday, after months of delay Artemis II finally launched to the moon. It will not land on but circle the moon, much like Apollo 8 did almost sixty years ago. This back to the future (or is it the past?) flight occurs against a backdrop of our latest so-called Mission Accomplished war against Iran and closer to home, there are the problems with Anne’s iPhone.

She has been complaining for days about problems with her phone. I have offered to help but have been rebuffed. Lately, though they seem to have multiplied. New problems include Google not being able to access the microphone and the calendar app not being able to add new events. When she tries, she gets an error message saying, “Calendar does not have permission to access your calendar.” I googled these errors and found online solutions.

Equipped with this advice I was able to convince Anne to allow me to assist her. Unfortunately, none of the menu trees called out by Google’s AI matched what was available on the phone. With mounting frustration, I tried calling the Apple Genius Bar to make an appointment. All I got was a lot of run around, but eventually in lieu of an appointment, their AI suggested that we reboot the phone. We did this and voilà! Like magic everything was working again.

I guess it was my bedside manner or lack thereof, but Anne was not happy with me. Words were had and at that point I wisely baled. Returning later, ruffled feathers were smoothed and peace reined over the land. Well, at least here.

Fool’s Day

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The Bridge, Edwin Austin Abbey, 1898

Besotted with tales of medieval knights and ladies, Edwin Austin Abbey collected fabrics, read histories, and studied original artifacts to ensure the authenticity of his work. He described this troubadour as a “Gringoirish¹ Barnaby Rudge² kind of Blondel-like³ person,” naming two medieval minstrels and the character of a fool from Barnaby Rudge, by Charles Dickens.

I love using footnotes in my blog posts. I feel (probably wrongly) more sophisticated by using them. Being an engineering student in college, I never had much call while writing Fortran for using footnotes in school.

On every April 1st I operate with “shields up”. Yesterday, Anne was fooled by a joke that claimed that an executive order had just been issued to chop down all of the cherry trees in Washington. With this administration it is easy to believe such outlandish stories. With them it is hard to know whether they are being serious or not. I guess when ICE beats down your door, then you’ll know.

I am especially wary of NPR today. They frequently have a prank news article. Something that they inherited from the BBC, who famously broadcasted an article in 1957 about Swiss spaghetti harvesting. A practice that friends and us once recreated. This was in the era of homemade pasta machine. Anne was coaxed into dressing up as a rural peasant, and we photographed her picking limp pasta noodles off a “spaghetti tree”. I wonder if Bob still has those pics?

The BBC reported, “Spaghetti cultivation here in Switzerland is not of course carried out on anything like the tremendous scale of the Italian industry. Many of you, I’m sure will have seen pictures of the vast spaghetti plantations.” They eventually had issue a retraction, because they were being inundated with requests for where one could get a spaghetti tree.

These days with politics being what they are and with AI looming overall, it is harder to find humor in such foolery. Another example of why we cannot have nice things anymore. But maybe if I use my noodle, I can come up with one.

  1. Gringoirish (Pierre Gringoire): Refers to the 15th-century French poet and playwright, often depicted as a starving, eccentric, or idealistic traveler, famously featured in Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre-Dame.
  2. Barnaby Rudge: The title character of Charles Dickens’ novel, known as an “intellectually handicapped man-boy” who is simple-minded, innocent, and often wandering with a pet raven.
  3. Blondel-like: Refers to Blondel de Nesle, the 12th-century French troubadour who is legendary for traveling to find his imprisoned king, Richard the Lionheart, symbolizing loyal, romantic artistic devotion.

Floss Nazis

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“Is it safe?”, is the most memorable fragment of dialog from the 1976 suspense thriller Marathon Man. Based on the book by William Goldman, the movie stars Dustin Hoffman. In this story of diamonds stolen by Nazi doctor Christian Szell (Laurence Olivier) who is torturing Babe (Hoffman) by drilling his teeth while he is bound in a dentist’s chair and repeatedly asks him, “Is it safe?”. Fifty years have passed and I am still terrified of this scene. Other people have similar fears of sharks and the waters that they inhabit, but not me. For me it is all about the floss nazis. Today we paid a visit to the dentist, for a cleaning.

I dread these appointments. In anticipation of today’s, I had bad dreams last night. They (the appointments, not the dreams) always feature sincere young women, who have trained hard to do their work. Question: Where do old hygienists go to die? I have never met one over thirty and I cannot believe that it is such a lucrative profession that one can retire so early. What happens to them?

Anyway, back to today’s torture session. First, out come the instruments, scalers, curettes and probes and the like. Once one’s mouth is filled with these sharp and pointy things, then begins the interrogation. Is it safe? No, they never ask that. That would be too obvious, too much on point. It is always like, “How often do you floss?” Never would be the correct answer, instead I lie. I mean if after starring into hundreds of mouths, day-after-day, they should know without asking. They ask not so much to gain knowledge (which they already know), but as an intro to begin their propaganda. They love to sermonize. As if their proselytizing will convert me now, after 70+ years of living in the wilderness. The fact that I have an almost perfect set of teeth must only infuriate them more.

Eventually, I submit, if only to get them to shut up. Even though it is only a faux conversion, I still feel used, cheapened and abused. It is these feelings, not the pain or the blood that I dread the most. To counteract my apathy, they have taken to scheduling my next appointment sooner and sooner. I blow those off. Why? Because they are Nazis. I hate Nazis.