Not to sound like a Luddite, but these AI data centers have gotten out of control. I live in Coweta County, Georgia. I've lived here for decades. In all that time, we've had zero data centers. At the current moment, there are plans to build five. I'm no statistics major, but that seems like a big increase.

The locals are not particularly happy about this sudden spurt of this particular kind of development. To be honest, the locals are rarely happy about any development that doesn't bring them a new restaurant, but they are very not particularly happy about this. Last weekend, people stood in line for hours at the park up the street from my house (on Jefferson Davis Parkway, if that gives you any idea of my county's usual politics) to sign a petition they hope will force their suddenly development-friendly elected officials to quit ignoring our torches and pitchforks and finally have a public referendum on the matter.

It's noteworthy that most of the land those data centers want was until recently zoned "Rural Conservation." For refence, the Coweta County Georgia Code of Ordinances Appendix A Article 7 defines a "rural conservation district" as... oh, hell, just read it:

The rural conservation district is intended to provide for agricultural land use, and low density single-family residential land use in an area of Coweta County shown on the future development map as the rural conservation area. Agricultural land uses include farming, forestry, horticulture, wholesale plant propagation, dairying, ranching, and equestrian activities. Rural residential land uses include rural homestead lots, and low density rural residential developments designed to preserve woodland and open land along Coweta's roadways, to preserve primary conservation land: river or stream corridor, areas of vulnerable groundwater recharge, floodplain, steep slopes, habitat of endangered species, archeological sites, cemeteries, and burial grounds, and to provide neighborhoods with their own private, yet common, recreation areas.

Does any of that sound like the place anyone was ever planning to put a resource-intensive information warehouse? But who doesn't want a shiny new water-guzzling, 800-acre data center next door to their low density single-family residence? And as for preserving river or stream corridors and areas of vulnerable groundwater, the developers themselves have asked for 1,010,000 gallons of water per day. If that sounds like a lot, that's because it is. It's 13% of the Coweta County Water & Sewerage Authority's current production ability for only five new businesses, which is the equivalent of all the existing CCWSA customers donating 33 of our gallons of water per day to our thirsty new AI overlords.

In defense of the Board of Commissioners, the data centers are promising that once they are up to speed, they'll pay an astonishing $176 million in property taxes. Considering that the county took in less than $76 million in property taxes in 2024, that also seems like a pretty big increase. Assuming the data centers are telling the truth — AI would never lie to us — that's a lot of money to turn down. Who needs equestrian activities when you can ask a computer to turn you into a cartoon character for a social media post? With all that money, at the very least the county will be able to afford to pay the CCWSA to find us some extra water somewhere. I hear the arctic is melting.*

*Superman Month Sidebar: Speaking of "our national water crisis," Eric Brockovich (heard of her?) has lately been crusading against data centers like these in large part because of their "substantial" water usage. Her 2020 book on the subject of is titled Superman's Not Coming, which is both disheartening and, I hate to say it, accurate.

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The human brain is a strange thing. I was trying to take a shower, but I couldn't stop thinking about the handful of people in my life I know I treated very badly, by which I mean specifically the people I treated badly who didn't deserve it.

I know I'm a selfish asshole, always have been, and, frankly, I'm generally okay with that. Other people, even people I know quite well, often make me uncomfortable, and I self-defensively want to keep them at arms length. As any good dog will tell you, the best way to do that is to growl and bark at anyone on the other side of the fence. But in the past half century, there have been a few people, about five I can name easily, who did not earn the behavior I showed them.

I'm bothered by the lingering concern that that my actions likely caused them discomfort and lasting emotional damage. That sounds narcissistic, doesn't it? That I could have the power to so strongly influence their lives for the worse? I hope not. Obviously they should never have given me such power, but more importantly, if they did, I shouldn't have taken advantage of it. Shame on me. I wish I had the skill and emotional stability to have communicated better.

In the movie Billy Madison, an older, wiser Billy (played by Adam Sandler) calls his former bullying victim (played by Steve Buscemi) and apologizes for past actions. I'm not going to do that. While I regret my past behavior and those I have wronged probably deserve an apology, I don't think any good can come from my investigating old wounds. I'm not in any twelve-step program. (I know how those apologies typically go.) And, more importantly, I still don't have the skill and emotional stability to communicate better. If Steve Buscemi is going to shoot anyone, it might as well be me.

There. I feel better for having typed that. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a shower to finish.

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"Since October, 100 emergency calls have come in, Conroy said, with 81 of those involving vehicles crashing into an animal or a dead deer in the roadway. There were seven incidents of deer caught on a fence, eight responses to calls on injured deer and one incident of two deer fighting, the chief said."

Obviously, that begs the question: who, exactly, were those two deer fighting?

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So I've been telling this little story about this bull out in the field with six cows and three of them are pregnant. So you know he's got something going on. But all he cared about is kept his nose against the fence looking at three other cows that didn't belong to him. Now all he had to do is eat grass. But no, no, no, he thought something was better somewhere else. So he decided "I want to get over there." So one day he measured that fence up, and he say "I think I can jump this." So that day came where he got back, and he got back, and as he took off running, he dove over that fence and his belly got cut up under the bottom. But as he made it over to the other side, he shook it off and got so excited about it. And he ran to the top of that hill. But when he got up there, he realized they were bulls too. So what I'm telling you, don't think something is better somewhere else.

Opponents of Walker, a longtime resident of Texas and father of several bastard children, will read that and scream "hypocrite!" His supporters will read it and say "A wise man speaks from experience!" Aesop probably should have written a parable about that.

And, in fact, he did.¹

There was once a house that was overrun with mice. A cat heard of this, and said to herself, "That's the place for me," and off she went and took up her quarters in the house, and caught the mice one by one and ate them. At last the mice could stand it no longer, and they determined to take to their holes and stay there. "That's awkward," said the cat to herself. "The only thing to do is to coax them out by a trick." So she considered a while, and then climbed up the wall and let herself hang down by her hind legs from a peg, and pretended to be dead. By and by a mouse peeped out and saw the cat hanging there. "Aha!" it cried. "You're very clever, madam, no doubt; but you may turn yourself into a bag of meal hanging there, if you like, yet you won't catch us coming anywhere near you."

If you are wise you won't be deceived by the innocent airs of those whom you have once found to be dangerous.

¹Yes, yes. I know it's really "The Man and the Lion." Don't try to "The Fox and the Leopard" me!

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Today we put down my father's 7-year-old poodle Scarlett because we discovered that cancer had eaten her liver. She'd been lethargic for the past week, had stopped eating, and at the last, her skin and eyes turned yellow. But she didn't complain. She wasn't that kind of dog.

Scarlett's last haircut, Oct 5, 2021

Scarlett loved chasing squirrels, walkies (especially when she was stalking a squirrel), belly rubs, and escaping through open gates to chase the squirrels who wouldn't stay inside her fence, probably in that order.

Scarlett wasn't my dog, but she kind of was. And I miss her. Even the trouble.

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I had to change the latch to our picket fence gate because Scarlett learned that she could put one paw on the handle and push to let herself out of the yard.

My irritation at having to track down a muddy escaped poodle was tempered by my appreciation that she learned how to escape just from watching us come and go.

Never underestimate a determined poodle.

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Sunday was just winding down when I got a call at 7:10 PM from the Newnan Police Department. Someone, it seems, had driven into the front of the commercial building my family owns downtown.

The building sits facing a traffic light (at a t-junction), and someone ran straight through the light into the steps. The officer tells me that the driver was unharmed. I'm really only surprised that in the roughly 3/4-century that the building has been there, this hasn't happened before.

It's been a rough 2021 for the building. A tree that was knocked down in a recent storm last month. (It actually was toppled in a windstorm the week *after* the tornado.) The tree fell away from the building, but its roots tore up the asphalt and tore up the fence and the neighbor's awning. For the record, no one was harmed in that accident, either.

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I could bloviate some pomposity punctuated with a picture of a sunset...

Or I could just post a picture of a sunset.

You're welcome?

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December is over, so it's past time I started wrapping up movies watched in the last month of 2019. Here's the first batch.

204. (1643.) They Call Me Mister Tibbs! (1970)
The sequel to In the Heat of the Night feels like it takes place in a different universe. That's not to say that this detective story (about finding the real killer of a dead call girl) is bad, exactly, just that it would probably work better if this wasn't supposed to be the same character.

Not a lot to choose from in that soda pop machine, guys.

205. (1644.) The Three Musketeers (1948)
This was the Gene Kelly version, and it may be my least favorite of all I've seen (which is, let's see, this, plus the 1921, 1973, 1993, and 2011 versions). Kelly seems too... *gay* for the role of D'Artagnan, and I mean that in the traditional 1940s MGM musical sense of the word. Watch him dance-fence, and you'll see what I mean.

206. (1645.) Tapeheads (1988)
The spiritual predecessor of Will Ferrell movies. I'd've loved this in high school. (Note: Tim Robins played the art nerd here the same year he was a hotshot pitcher in Bull Durham. Boy had range!)

207. (1646.) Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974)
A small-time crook gets mixed up in a meandering, hapless bounty hunt for a man who is already dead. It doesn't end well for anyone involved, including the dead man and especially the viewer. Obviously, I'm not a fan.

Also bring me a Coke!

208. (1647.) Phase IV (1974)
Science fiction fable about how humanity's hubris results in its death at the hands of super-smart ants. I mean, considering how many ants I've killed in my backyard, I guess we all have it coming.

Obviously you can't make a movie about an army of ants without a sugary beverage.

More to come.

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I see deer everywhere these days. Literally every day. Deer here, deer there, deer everywhere. That's not paranoia talking, either. I have pictures!

Ok. That's not a great picture. But that really is a deer, and it was only the first of four I saw last night!

Even if you go to bed at sundown, you probably know that after dark suburban neighborhoods are teaming with raccoons, possums, and armadillos roaming between the religiously maintained lawns and hedges. Owls can be heard marking their treetop territory, and it's not summer without bats overhead hunting gnats and mosquitoes. Those critters are everywhere, but they're small. Deer are big, larger than dogs. You think you'd notice if they were around. Don't be fooled.

I've been letting Dad's dogs out at about 2AM for the past two months. Almost every night, I see deer. This week alone, on Sunday, I spotted a pair of does napped by a fence. On Monday a family of four walked calmly across the road in front of my car. On Tuesday another grazed at the end of the driveway without regard for my presence. The dogs chased it away briefly; then it came back and finished its meal. That was a determined, hungry deer.

Where do these deer go every day? Do they have a lair? Do they retreat to their secret underground deer cave? Do they squat in abandoned crack houses? (Dad watches a lot of Ancient Aliens on History Channel. He'd probably insist they go back to their spaceships.)

I'm not trying to be an alarmist about this. It's too late to build a wall. Deer. Are. Everywhere. It's time to stop fighting them and learn to live in harmony. And build bigger gardens: deer eat a lot of greens.

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