Everything’s Computer!

In the future, everything's Computer! Even kitchen and breakfast.

“Everything’s Computer!”, so said the mad king sitting in a plastic chariot.
Microwave ovens? Computer!
Broadcast television? Computer!
Electric cars? Computer!
Social media? Computer!!
The Internet? That’s Computerrr!!
AI? You better believe that’s nuthin’ but Compooter!!
Everything’s Computer!

Remember when we thought putting Computer in everything would make everything work better all the time? Remember when we thought connecting everything Computer (which at this point might as well be everything) to the Internet (which is computer!) and it would make our fridges smart enough to help us drink fresher milk? Now we’re going to put AI inside Computer which is inside everything and is connected to everything else and it won’t cause any harm at all.

Like it wouldn’t suddenly take over the power grid and turn off all the traffic lights at night to save money. It wouldn’t raise the temperature in refrigerators to spoil all our food to raise food sellers’ profits. It wouldn’t call you randomly and ask for $10,000 in bail money for the release of your nephew in the voice of your nephew. It wouldn’t scam your grandmother. It wouldn’t funnel money from the treasury and invest in bitcoin to fund a series of coups in the Balkan states. I’m absolutely sure it wouldn’t transpose the names of Estonia and Lithuania on every published map as an unsanctioned improvised defense strategy. It wouldn’t rename The Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America then to Big Gulf of Water brought to you by Taco Bell, then rename it The Pepsi Halftime Gulf Brought to you in partnership with Verizon. It wouldn’t invent a new kind of porn that blends seafood with anime and broadcast it to screens, large and small, across the planet (OK, I’ve just been told it’s already done that). It wouldn’t spread disinformation to destabilize economies. It certainly wouldn’t take your job by making you redundant.

Well, it might do that.
Actually, there’s a good chance it will.
In fact, there is a 97.9% chance it has already happened.

Seen in March

A short list of a long look. Sasquatch Sunset was one of the highlights.

This is a short list. Why? It's short because we're in the midst of watching series that continue. It's a drip of entertainment instead of a flood. But it's a good drip, not a dark site water torture drip.

It's all over now, baby blue.

A Complete Unknown
Fascinating look at the explosive first few years when Bob Dylan (née Robert Zimmerman) fell first into the burgeoning folk scene before later becoming rock and roll royalty.

"It's all over now, baby blue" also applies.

Sasquatch Sunset
Kanopy
Like a funny version of Quest for Fire. We follow a group of Sasquatch as they make their way through the forest finding more and more human curiosities along their route. There's a reason it's Sasquatch Sunset and not Sasquatch Sunrise.

The magic of the show Hilda.

Hilda S03
Netflix
Still a wonderful comfort to me, this animated show about a young girl growing up in slightly Scandinavian place where magic, trolls, elves and witches are part of the natural world she and her friends love to explore. Based on a comic book by a British artist, voiced by British talent like Bella Ramsey yet animated by a small Ottawa studio, this show is beautifully designed and well written.

I am Not a Robot
YouTube - New Yorker Channel
Oscar winning short narrative film in which a woman makes a startling discovery in the most benign way.

Rosencrantz and Guilderstern, or is it Guilderstern and Rosencrantz?

Rosencrantz & Guilderstern are Dead
Hoopla
Secondary characters and childhood friends of Hamlet find themselves stuck, existentially speaking, in Tom Stoppard's film adaptation of his own play. There's a lot to be said of this oddity of a story that is described as "absurdist", and is both a challenge and a comedy, mostly due to the performances of Gary Oldman and Tim Roth (or is it Roth and Goldman?).

All the Weirdness in the World

Bob Dylan, Newport Folk Festival, 1965.

Watching the Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown it was striking to see not simply the florid period of Dylan’s output but how it was a part of the unfolding events shaking the world. At the heart of it was the postwar power and cold war shadow that was the USA. Sound familiar? Fear of nuclear armageddon, political upheaval, unwanted war, the environment, and fights for freedom and equality were the fabric of the quilt that was tearing at the seams of 1960s America.

I didn't appreciate the music of the 60s as I do now. Films like The Big Chill were a show of strength of the Boomer generation and when they were running things, all pop culture and music would directly refer to the time of their youth. We were constantly told by aging journalists, DJs, and music directors that Dylan was a mysterious deity, a genius, and oft suggested he might not be mortal. That was the bee in my bonnet and that bonnet was my cross to bear. As a Gen Xer, I recognize that the music of my youth is now popular and much revisited in many Marvel films and film franchises that returned from the dead for no particular reason (Top Gun, Beetlejuice, Ghost Busters etc.). Don't worry. This is just a brief blip as we Gen Xers are not a big bunch and we're getting older and would like to retire before the Earth is entirely engulfed in flames.

They say "Victors write history", but they forget to mention that the generation that comes after the victors get to rewrite history. I have reached the age when history starts repeating itself and it is very ugly. Let's go back some 40 years ago. Oh, I was a bright-faced boy who could not keep up with being cool, so I didn't bother. I couldn't afford it (the looks, the music, the whatever). I discovered my musical tastes later than a lot of people. In fact, I think I discovered that any of my tastes (music, film, art, books) would never be fully "discovered" but would be a continuous thing I am always chasing, finding, understanding or being wrong about. It's often said that the tastes, likes, and dislikes that you form as a teen are the ones that influence and inform your choices for the rest of your life. I can't really argue against that though I'm sure many would. One thing I think The Olds get wrong about teenagers in general, is that they don't know and understand the flotsam and jetsam of the world. Of course, teens don't have the weight of bills, work, and taxes on them, but they can have a keen eye for simplifying big issues into black and white. The moral greyness of adulthood hasn't clouded their eyes with corneas of experience.

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The New Egg

Leave your morals at home.

There’s been a lot of talk about a scientific paper from Italy purporting to make the perfect boiled egg using the periodic method. The methodology described uses two pots and takes 32 minutes to complete. The reason for such complications are because the white of the egg cooks at around 85°C, while the yolk cooks at around 65°C. It's this difference that generally has flummoxed many a home cook. Over a decade ago the sous vide technique lead to the 50-minute egg and became the new standard of eggy perfection. Neither of these methods compare with my Sunday ritual that requires four pots set at three different temperatures and takes six to eight hours, depending on your elevation above or below sea level.

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You are here (but don’t want to be).

This is where you don't want to be.

As more people are being asked to return to offices it’s as though we have to remind people that working from an office was something we all did, all the time. We did it so much that we forgot that it wasn’t normal to be sitting at a desk all day. How the pendulum has swung. Nowadays if people are asked to go to the office, you can measure the collective groan from space. The collective sigh would affect the weather. I get it. I’m one of the moaners and my sighs are heavy, accompanied by eye rolls of disbelief.

How did it get this way? For years I worked in an office because well, that’s where the work was. Even when I was designing signage for trails and spent days on my bike to better understand the landscape (or just scoff off while riding trails in Gatineau Park) I still returned to the office to mark where I’d been and what I’d seen. When I started working freelance from home, I found myself going cabin crazy and would routinely run around the house meowing at the top of my lungs while jumping off the walls. Though that may have been the cat? The sentiment was the same. We were cell mates in a prison of our own making.

When I did start working for someone else again, I enjoyed the office and the camaraderie. We had just moved to Toronto and I didn’t know many people so it gave me a world of meeting people of my ilk. At some point though, doing digital work, it became possible to do it in the office or at home as long as you had a good internet connection and a desk you were fine. Yet that more often than not led to bringing work home when you really shouldn’t. The seeping of work into home life had begun.

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Word Play

I think this is how movie ideas are generated now.

Epic Penile Picnic Panic
There’s a hot dog joke in there somewhere.

Each morning I do a series of New York Times puzzles including Wordle, the Mini crossword, Connections, and Strands but I start with the Spelling Bee. That's how this gem of a sequence of words appeared as I puzzled away on the possible anagrams (where you try to create as many words as possible with the seven assigned letters).

It even included the word “Alien”. I only wished I hadn’t thought of it out of sequence. Can you imagine being confronted with “Epic Alien Penile Picnic Panic” first thing in the morning? Even separately there's fun to be had: "Epic Penile-anything" could be fun or terrifying. Who hasn't had a "Picnic Panic"? Or, if I may say so, who amongst us hasn't suffered a "Penile Panic"? The less said of "Penile Picnic" the better.

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