Insanity Unhinged Edition
Unhinged. Completely off my rocker. Probably shouldn’t be allowed out in public, certainly not on my own. I’m out of sync with the universe and I’m feeling pressure to scream. I won’t scream because it would take the kids. The same children who were on their phones at five o’clock in the goddamn morning. Punishment? They have to live with me, isn’t that punishment enough? I’m being silly. Or am I? Frankie is certainly silly, sitting here with a stopped-up nose, trying to clean that one spot on his butt he can’t quite reach, knocking medicine bottles off the desk, sniffing at my coffee, and then making a face accusing me of being the crazy one.
You want to know what’s really crazy? A pickup truck driver ramming into a mall in Texas. Is it a trend or was he simply drunk? We’ll never know because the cops killed him before he had a chance to tell his story. His actions injured five, but killed no one, unlike the similar event in Germany. The German monster has been nuts for a while, was known by police, killed six, and wounded over 200, but he is still alive. US cops are quick to kill people here. They know nothing’s going to happen. Few cops are ever prosecuted for murder. We just assume they stopped something worse from happening. We’re gullible like that.
You know what else is crazy? AI may have claimed its first homicide. Suchir Balaji, the former OpenAI engineer to blew the whistle on possible copyright violations in ChatGPT, was found dead in his San Francisco apartment. He was 26. At the moment, the cops are leaning toward suicide. There’s no note, though. Friends and family say suicide is out of character. What did the AI do? Were there threats being made? Was he being harassed? Did he cross the wrong bot? There’s little question that the problems Balaji raised in October were creating a significant legal hurdle for OpenAI. Who was prompting whom? I don’t think this should be treated as run-of-the-mill suicide.
And then, there’s old-school lunacy, like when the president-elect, who has no real power before January 20, says he may demand that Panama turn over the canal to the US. Mind you, Panama is a sovereign nation. The canals have belonged to Panama since December 31, 1999 thanks to a treaty signed by then-President Jimmy Carter. The treaty allows the US to “protect the neutrality” of the canal, but keep its hands off operations. The incoming president has ZERO legal grounds and even thinking that he can tell Panama to do anything is the same kind of Imperialist thinking that doomed the British Empire, back when that was a thing. Maybe he’ll ask deClerk to bring Apartheid back to South Africa next. I’m sure that would make the Musk family happy. [Fortunately, deClerk is dead. I double-checked to make sure.]
Oh, but there’s so much more crazy to behold this holiday season. Have you heard of Christmas Adam? Yes, this is something invented by illiterate evangelicals because “Adam came before Eve.” I know it sounds like a bad joke, doesn’t it? But it’s a real thing. Apparently, Christmas Adam is celebrated on the 23rd, you know, before Christmas Eve. Yeah, everyone knows that ‘Eve’ is short for evening. They’re just rolling in the ignorance of it all. Some churches are even having special services. While some are saying it’s ‘just a joke,’ not everyone is laughing. There are a large number of people who take Festivus pretty seriously and that’s supposed to be on December 23. Perhaps Festivus celebrants can mention Christmas Adam in their airing of grievances.
Do you know what is making me crazy? Knowing that I might run out of pet food before any new money comes in. Knowing that I have absolutely nothing to give Kat or any of my adult children. Knowing that I’ll spend most of Christmas day (and all the days before and after) at home, alone, again, because of chemo. Not having any of the holiday candies or cookies that permeated my childhood. Listening to what sometimes sounds like voices in the heating vents (there are no voices in the heating vents). Going on week 8 or something of this stupid headache. Not understanding why six animals, including both dogs, are suddenly staring at my window. The lack of coffee on tap. Being hungry but too dizzy to risk cooking breakfast.
I think I’m going to embrace this insanity for a while. There’s no one here to stop me. I’m just here doing stupid shit.
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