Thanks to the growing prevalence of artificial "intelligence," malicious impersonations are becoming commonplace. We all need to be prepared for unexpectedly dubious interactions with people we have previously trusted.

For future reference, I cannot roll my tongue, which geneticists who study such things insist more people can do than cannot. So if you are approached by someone who claims to be me, demand that they roll their tongue. If that Walter can do it, run away.

However, just because that Walter claims he can't doesn't mean he's telling the truth. There's only one Walter but plenty of liars, so if you're playing the odds, you should probably run away anyway. That's really the only way you can be sure he's not trying to take advantage of you.

Only a trustworthy guy such as myself would suggest such a course of action as would result in ensuring I don't get whatever it is I might have wanted, so you can be sure my advice is good. Unless I'm really an impersonator trying to make you think it's a good guy, in which case you would be best advised to ignore this message.

To be perfectly safe, I encourage you to avoid all Walters altogether. It's what the AI would do.

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I had though I found a "news" item that fit perfectly within the Venn Diagram of several topics I like to blog about (video games, comic books, sex), but on further research, I decided that I didn't fully trust the sources and have chosen to refrain. I'm sure that in years prior — and past posts on this blog will bear this out — I would have posted it anyway, facts be damned. But I find I'm getting a little squeamish about engaging in such behavior as I grow smarter and wiser.

I'd like to drop the "-er"s and say that I'm growing smart [full stop] and wise [full stop], but, like perfection, I suspect that both of those absolute conditions are probably beyond my grasp. I strongly believe that one can never be smart or wise enough (especially as regards one's ass), and even though I like to think of myself as smarter than the average bear, I'm still plenty stupid in many respects. For example, after accidentally slicing open the tip of my ring finger on Independence Day (you celebrate your way, I'll celebrate mine) while replacing an air filter in the HVAC (I have a terrible track record with sheet metal), I put a Band-Aid® over it mostly to remind me to be careful with that finger as it heals. But today I hid that reminder inside a work glove while recycling aluminum cans (which are just sheet metal rolled into tubes for your mouth). Out of sight, out of mind. The uncomfortable sensation I felt as I used the finger to push a heavy bin into a dumpster painfully reminded me that I am definitely not as smart as I like to think I am.

Although, I suppose if I want to be pedantic, I should accuse myself not of being stupid but being unwise. Smart is a synonym for acquired knowledge or the ability to recall and process information quickly. Wise, on the other hand, is the practical understanding of how and when to apply that knowledge/processing. Knowing I should protect my finger is smart; failing to do so is not wise.

Or, in another example from earlier today, being smart is knowing that in case I die suddenly, I should leave nothing in my possessions that would embarrass me if my mother found it. Being wise would have been not to mention that to my mother. She responded with a giggle and the unembarrassed confession that one day I'm going to find a bunch of old vibrators in her room.

I'm smarter after that conversation. Wiser, too.

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I was just looking back at old blog posts to see if I had a "garage door" category. I don't. But what I noticed while looking was that many of my posts referencing the garage also reference Star Wars. I knew I referenced Star Wars frequently, but I hadn't consciously connected Star Wars with garages. Funny the things you notice when you actually go looking.

The motivation for this latest round of navel gazing was that I spent too many hours on Friday replacing the other automatic door opener in the garage. I replaced the north bay opener ten years ago — I checked receipts — but the south opener survived until this week. Technically, it still worked, but its speed had become increasingly variable; sometimes it took a half minute to open. Mom had had enough and finally gave orders that it should be replaced.

Of course, Genie no longer makes the exact model I installed in 2016, so I had to get a newer model (with accompanying cost increase), but it was pretty much the same thing. I read the instructions. Twice. They made it sound like a job so easy, any idiot could have done it. Unfortunately, the idiot was me.

Despite the pictures, I still screwed up assembling the track. The new drive head was narrower than the previous, so I had to make an additional trip to Home Depot for extra hanging hardware. Then I dropped the spool of wire off the top of the ladder and had to spend the next forty-five minutes untangling. And just when I thought I had it all working, I found that the signal from the new safety sensors conflicted with the sensors on the other door and had to be rewired. So easy.

It probably wouldn't have been so bad if the heat index wasn't in the mid-nineties. I also need to learn to give myself more room to work. The place is so full of tools, recyclables, and painted cutouts, it's amazing we can still get any cars in there. Between the heat and the clutter, the place is starting to remind me of a Jawa sandcrawler. Utinni!

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Last night I was lying in bed reading The Tick Omnibus comic book. Not to brag, but it's the 1990 limited edition first printing, numbered 1446 of 3000, hand signed by Tick creator Ben Edlund, art director/letterer Robert Polio, and editor George Suarez. You know the one. Anyway, the point is that I was reading Tick comics in bed, and what should start crawling up my leg?

It could have been worse. I could have been reading issues of Poison Ivy. Or Hellboy.

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The hiccup in today's voting was that I had to do it twice. The first time I went all the way through the very long ballot for 31 local and state positions and studiously reviewed my choices only to have the system tell me it could not print my ballot, that I should remove my card and speak to an election officer. I did as instructed. The officer consulted another officer and together they decided I should just try again from the beginning. I cannot tell a lie: I selected a lot fewer boxes the second time through. Sorry, nonpartisan candidates for Judge - Superior Court Coweta Judicial Circuit (To Succeed C. Jephson Bendinger).

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Watery, itchy eyes; sinus drainage; sneezing/coughing. I either have the worst allergies of my life, or I have a cold. If I'm having bad allergies, how did they get this bad? Is it time for me to consider moving to the desert? If I have a cold, "Friend" Ken gave it to me. I told him two weeks ago when he was coughing in my car that if he got me sick I was going to be very angry at him, and I am a man of my word. Better hope it's allergies, Ken.

UPDATE: Good news! Ken has kindly apologized for any role he may have played in my illness. Better news! After adding parosmia to my list of symptoms, I gave myself an OTC COVID test, and it came out negative. So probably just run-of-the-mill sinusitis, then. Great. I feel better already.

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As a child of the 70s, I have long considered myself a Star Wars fan, which is why I impulsively decided to follow the link to "The Best Star Wars Trivia Quiz Questions to See How Much You Really Know" at Mental Floss dot com. The quiz has 100 questions, only the first 19 of which are in the category "Classic Trilogy (Episodes IV–VI)." But that's about where my fandom ends, so I figured I'd do pretty well. And I'm happy to report that I did know the name of Han Solo's ship and Luke Skywalker's trainer on Dagobah. But then I got to question 15.

15. What is the Emperor called in The Emperor Strikes Back?

I know I'm getting old, but I don't recall a movie named The Emperor Strikes Back in the "classic trilogy." And I certainly didn't know the answer.

Darth Sidious

Again, I'm old now, but I do remember a Darth Sidious who was the Sith Lord master of Darth Maul and later (after Maul gets cut in half) Darth Tyrannus and later (after Tyrannus gets decapitated) Darth Vader. (As Luke's trainer says of the Sith, "Always two there are. No more, no less." By which he clearly means a top half and a bottom half.) Darth Sidious was the evil alter ego of Sheev Palpatine, the representative of the planet Naboo in the Galactic Senate who manipulated events to rise to Supreme Chancellor before disbanding the Senate and ruling the galaxy as Emperor. So, yeah, Darth Sidious and the Emperor are the same person, but technically speaking, since Sidious wasn't introduced as a character until the fourth Star Wars movie, The Phantom Menace, no one called the Emperor that in any of the "classic trilogy" films, especially one that doesn't exist. (Point of fact: the prequels played so coy about Palpatine/Sidious's future as "The Emperor" that I have often wondered if Lucas expected contemporary audiences to be unaware they were all the same person.)

So I call bullshit. But what else should I expect from a piece of Internet clickbait in the post-truth culture in which we now live, where every major technology and media company has turned their content engines over to poorly curated supervised LLMs that "hallucinate" up to half their facts? The fault is clearly mine for expecting reality to live up to my fantasies of living in a more civilized age.

Happy May 4th to those who celebrate.

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Adventures in Yard Maintenance, Part One: Last year the yard spigot I had installed a decade ago on the back of the house started leaking at the handle. Today, I finally got our regular plumber to come fix it. (Last year, he said he would get around to it. Last week, he said Monday. Monday, he said Tuesday. Yesterday I said now or never, and he showed up.) I could have tried to replace it myself, but I knew the connector was rusting and the copper pipe was crimped, meaning that I was just as likely to break it. Given how much work the professional had to put into it, I definitely made the right call.

Adventures in Yard Maintenance, Part Two: After hearing horror stories about the size of armadillo dens, Mom decided to run off an armadillo who had recently taken up residence under our front porch. Since she knew armadillos are un-poisonable, she had me throw some mothballs under the stairs in the hopes of killing off their food supply. What I didn't think about at the time was that I also live under our front porch. Paradichlorobenzene vapor is heavier than air, so it gradually settled down into the armadillo den... and then came through the concrete block walls into my bedroom. After three days I had stood all I could stand and had to crawl under the stairs and dig out the mothballs. I don't know if the armadillo learned anything, but I sure did.

Adventures in Yard Maintenance, Part Three: Still covered in dirt from the porch, I decided I would use some of the Ortho Poison Ivy poison that my aunt had brought over and left on my patio because she was tired of it being on her patio for a year. What I did not know was that the reason the poison had been sitting on her patio for a year was because one of her handymen had broken the sprayer. When I went to use it, I spilled poison all over my hand, and got none on the ivy that needed the poison. So poison ivy wins yet another round in our decades long war.

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Why is my Google News feed full of stores about how rampant commercialism and inept governments are leading to the impending collapse of Earth's ability to sustain life? Is this inspired by the current moon mission? Earth Day? AI data centers? War in the Middle East? Or just my particular doom scrolling preferences?

I'm a downer. I get it. But how about a nice link to dogs eating ice cream? Or Kpop Demon Hunter memes? Or news about cabinet members being fired for being terrible at their jobs? You know, the sorts of things that give hope that the universe isn't bent towards the worst possible outcomes.

Maybe if I just keep scrolling, I'll get to the good stuff....

Aw, geez. Now it's "I'd like to buy only America a Coke"? Fine, you win, universe.

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Today, while paying a visit to an ailing friend, I crossed paths with former bar trivia teammate Rachel, who I have known casually for many years, and Rachel said, "Whenever I see you, you don't look like you've aged. You look like you have been 35 for 15 years."

Which, I mean, she was lying. I'm bald. creaky, and look like an overfilled water balloon. Rachel was just saying something obsequiously flattering to fill the silence during an otherwise awkward social moment. Hollow and meaningless, it was manners as defense mechanism.

But now I'll take a bullet for that delightful woman.

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