Closing credits
What happened in 2023? It’s a blur. I get through a day at a time. I barely look ahead or behind.
Mostly, I chase after children who live only in the moment. They are rather wicked. (As I compose this, one of them is removing his diaper and peeing on the floor.) My wife kindly looks after them a few hours every third evening so I can record my thoughts on this blog; a week later, I’ll’ve forgotten what I’ve written.
I steal moments to do a little reading. A book or two later, I’ll’ve forgotten what I’ve read.
Someone at a party asked which books I liked best this year. I said Shakespeare, Harry Potter, and Narnia; I had trouble remembering anything not in a series. I had to check my list of “completed” books after I got home.
My life is turning into a series of disconnected events. I’m becoming the hero of Borges’s “Funes, the Memorious,” only without the memories.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Before I forget, I wish to complain that the previously serviceable app Grammarly has quietly gotten much too big for its britches. Yesterday, I was typing in a document, and Grammarly sneakily auto-corrected “resistible” to “irresistible,” which is THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT I MEANT. This illustrates a larger point, that 2023 was the year when a lot of ordinary people started noticing (or reading online) that AI had “jumped the shark.”
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
“You need to go to therapy, Sweetie,” says Karin. “This is the bleakest entry ever. ‘I remember nothing, and the robots are coming.’”
She is too young to understand.
Now that I think about it, it would be amusing to pay a stranger to listen to me read my blog entries out loud.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Allegedly I groan a lot, even when I’m sitting still.
Do I groan, or purr? Jasper snuggles next to me as I type this, and our noises sound alike.
Jasper is middle-aged now; Ziva is almost middle-aged. They’ve both mellowed out. They hardly fight each other anymore.
I look forward to my sons’ attainment of this happiness.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Every year, I read the book of Zechariah; and afterward, I am sorry to say, I forget about it until the next year.
It ends like this.
Mostly, I chase after children who live only in the moment. They are rather wicked. (As I compose this, one of them is removing his diaper and peeing on the floor.) My wife kindly looks after them a few hours every third evening so I can record my thoughts on this blog; a week later, I’ll’ve forgotten what I’ve written.
I steal moments to do a little reading. A book or two later, I’ll’ve forgotten what I’ve read.
Someone at a party asked which books I liked best this year. I said Shakespeare, Harry Potter, and Narnia; I had trouble remembering anything not in a series. I had to check my list of “completed” books after I got home.
My life is turning into a series of disconnected events. I’m becoming the hero of Borges’s “Funes, the Memorious,” only without the memories.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Before I forget, I wish to complain that the previously serviceable app Grammarly has quietly gotten much too big for its britches. Yesterday, I was typing in a document, and Grammarly sneakily auto-corrected “resistible” to “irresistible,” which is THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT I MEANT. This illustrates a larger point, that 2023 was the year when a lot of ordinary people started noticing (or reading online) that AI had “jumped the shark.”
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
“You need to go to therapy, Sweetie,” says Karin. “This is the bleakest entry ever. ‘I remember nothing, and the robots are coming.’”
She is too young to understand.
Now that I think about it, it would be amusing to pay a stranger to listen to me read my blog entries out loud.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Allegedly I groan a lot, even when I’m sitting still.
Do I groan, or purr? Jasper snuggles next to me as I type this, and our noises sound alike.
I look forward to my sons’ attainment of this happiness.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Every year, I read the book of Zechariah; and afterward, I am sorry to say, I forget about it until the next year.
It ends like this.
[14:16 ff. (NIV):] Then the survivors from all the nations that have attacked Jerusalem will go up year after year to worship the King, the LORD Almighty, and to celebrate the Festival of Tabernacles. If any of the peoples of the earth do not go up to Jerusalem to worship the King, the LORD Almighty, they will have no rain. If the Egyptian people do not go up and take part, they will have no rain. The LORD will bring on them the plague he inflicts on the nations that do not go up to celebrate the Festival of Tabernacles. This will be the punishment of Egypt and the punishment of all the nations that do not go up to celebrate the Festival of Tabernacles.So when you worry about war in Israel, or anywhere, think about that.
On that day HOLY TO THE LORD will be inscribed on the bells of the horses, and the cooking pots in the LORD’s house will be like the sacred bowls in front of the altar. Every pot in Jerusalem and Judah will be holy to the LORD Almighty, and all who come to sacrifice will take some of the pots and cook in them. And on that day there will no longer be a Canaanite in the house of the LORD Almighty.