The Quiet Girl

                                                                                  Andrea Davis on Pexels  I recently watched the movie Out Of Africa while on vacation. It is a good movie, although it is very long, almost 3 hours. (It also features the calm, lovely second movement of the Mozart Clarinet Concerto in its score). Towards the beginning of the movie, Karen, the main character, is sitting with friend Denys in front of a fireplace. For entertainment and fun, after finishing their regular everyday conversations, the fun activity of the night was to tell and make up a story! Karen and Denys went back and forth, each character adding more to the story. What a breath of fresh air! I enjoy writing on this blog, poetry, songwriting and music composition in its many forms, but ...

 First of all, I am the firstborn. Nothing can change that. I don't need "Big Brother" to watch me because I'm the big sister. I proudly did not have to experience that horrible event that was watching your older sibling get more privileges than you, because I was that sibling, thank you very much.  The type of "Big Brother" I am talking about here is in reference to 1984's "Big Brother Is Watching You." I heard through word of mouth about something in the news about grocery stores rolling out digital price tags with- get this - cameras for facial recognition , which is greatly disturbing. This aspect of AI is the most disturbing of all I have heard that AI can do. Thankfully my local grocery stores use paper price tags, which makes me feel better.   This is only something that has been talked about in the news. If it's only a rumor going around, I don't take it seriously until I know that it is the truth or it is not the truth. However...

 Facebook in the 2000s was fun. It was much better than the politics, serious-matter-laden social media platform of today. Back then, it was all about posting random things to make people laugh, listen to music, and play games. There was no pressure to post major accomplishments in your life to compare yourself to, just mindless entertainment. Here are a few of the things I remember seeing when I first got a Facebook in middle school:  Pieces of Flair-online "buttons" with pictures of your interests, such as cats, clarinets, or mountains, sometimes with funny sayings on them.  Classic Memes, Goth and Emo Memes. The pictures were not perfect. Once, a schoolmate posted a video of herself and a friend at home, in their pajamas, (with messy ponytails and no makeup ) making pancakes and tossing them across the kitchen from pan to plate. "The Ultimate Flapjack!" the girl said as she laughed.  Another friend in early high school (early 2010 by this point) posted pictures o...

                                            =   The image presented on social media is not reality. Furthermore, it is not a reliable source of information when seeking the truth or the news. Well, many news companies are biased and I have even heard of people publishing "fake news," but social media is the all-time worst when it comes to seeking information. It has increasingly gotten worse as time has passed, to the point of being fake-ly ridiculous. I posted a post on this blog several years ago about my deleting of Facebook in order to get away from someone toxic, but also because I was tired of seeing people only posting their best moments and nothing else, not even the everyday tasks of their lives such as cooking, cleaning, or working on the car. I got a Facebook again...

                                                                                                                Adonyi Gabor from Pexels  I'm going to be honest, reading is not my favorite. It has to be a topic that really grabs me for me to get into the book. But with the current times I stumbled upon a book that my sister had read as a kid and enjoyed, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. She loved that book so much, she even did a book re...

   I remember when YouTube was in its first few years. I was 9 when the first video, "Me At the Zoo", was uploaded. YouTube was much better before it was bought out by Google. It seemed to be run by independent artists, musicians, makeup artists and hairstylists alike who otherwise would not get their content seen or heard. The musicians never edited themselves in any way, it was just them being them, with a simple guitar and their voices, playing in their bedrooms and singing naturally, or playing the clarinet in church or in their living rooms. No fancy backdrops, no fixing their hair up, just real music. And everyday people were getting views. YouTube should have stayed this way.  Here are some of the videos I enjoyed watching in the 2000s:  Skillet- Yours to Hold (Cover by Lauren and Ashley) : two girls were on a dorm bed. One girl played     her Taylor guitar very well, and the other girl sang very nicely. Very well done. I cannot find it any...

   I previously talked about AI and how detrimental it already is and how detrimental it has the potential to be. Now I am going to talk about Google, which is a whole other subject.  Google used to be a source of fun. When I was a kid I researched different subjects for many school projects on Google. Mom would search "Free Coloring Pages" for myself and my sister, print them out, and watch us color away. And the computer never showed pop-up ads for free coloring pages when my mom checked her email or went to order something on eBay later in the day. Mom would just search, the computer would never know, and all was well.  When I was in eighth grade, my mother began to tell me that she does not like Google because they were beginning to track her information. I could not fully comprehend what that meant, similar to a teenager not being able to grasp paying necessary, adult bills. Now as a grown-up I understand what Google does, and I greatly do not appreciate it....

And now I will continue my case against Artificial Intelligence. But wait, There's More! And it will continue from where I left off from the last post I wrote about how computers decide whether a person's insurance continues, or whether a review is published, etc. So let's continue on..... To begin, I am the opposite of a Karen, and strive to have manners. (For those who are not familiar with that term, it is a term used to describe grown women who throw fits when they don't get their own way, and who are acting in every way like a spoiled, bratty child.) When my insurance was cancelled, even though my agent was fantastic, I decided to file a complaint about the company (not the agent) on a popular business review website. I don't throw out bad reviews just because a waitress was not precise with filling my drink up or because someone didn't greet me exactly when I enter a store.  Something legitimately bad, dangerous, or downright rude has to happen and be done...

                                                                 Photo Credit: Tara Winstead from Pexels  In the last post I discussed the number one reason why I think AI is detrimental to our world, and how I am afraid if people don't see what is going on that it will eventually push art and music, along with intelligent writing, into antiquity. Now I will discuss something else that bothers me about AI, and how people are in favor of it running the show in other ways.  I am tired of calling a company on the phone and getting a robot on the other end. It tries so desperately to sound like a person, but it fails miserably. It says things like, "I can help you with ____. Just speak to me like you...

 Our world has gotten more and more depersonalized by the minute. Adults throwing temper tantrums, not being able to log into a computer without it tracking your account to a certain device, and robots making decisions for us have become the norm. And this is the world that I graduated into to work in. Particularly in the last four years, I have seen people behave in ways that they should be ashamed of. I have seen six-year-olds behave much more maturely than many adults I have seen. I realize that I am only in the first few years of my working life, but not too long ago things were much better. The Internet, cell phones and email are all older than me, but I think we need much, much more moderation of what I grew up with that has now grown out of control. If things could go back to the way they were when I was a kid, and even as a young teenager, life would be so, so much better. I know I have said this before, we need to go back to the 2000s. I have shared on this blog the variou...

                                                                      cottonbro studio from Pexels  Artificial Intelligence is ruining what it means to be human. It is destroying the appreciation of the ability to create art from scratch, it is destroying what it means to work out problems by hand with another human being, and it is destroying our ability and appreciation of free thought. Further, it has made many people like that the computers are in charge of us rather than us being in charge of the computers.   I saw a nice cartoon once of someone that a person had made. I told them, "That looks great! What animation software did you use?" They then re...

 I wrote a post a few years ago about how much blue nail polish I own. Many of the bottles I owned then I used up a while ago. Sadly, I had a bottle my sister gave me, New York & Company's "Oceanic", that died recently because I used it all up. Last time I did my nails this color, which was last week, the polish didn't dry like it used to, and it was very thick and struggled to get off the brush. Sigh. This was one of my favorites. It was almost black, but blue like a deep night sky blue, and shimmery metallic.  My nail polish shelf. Notice how many bottles are blues. A dark teal mini OPI bottle which resides in my polish box with more polish and my nail tools, including a pair of blue glitter nail clippers. There are a few ideas I had for a replacement. I went to Sally's in between music students and found 2 different colors from O P I: "Yoga-ta Get This Blue" which is a dark blue slightly iridescent metallic color and I really liked, and "Chop...

 I recently placed a Chewy order for the first time. I ordered Shadowfax's food in bulk, and ordered $60 worth of cat food from Chewy and Walmart combined. I did this so as to avoid shipping costs, and to make sure Shadowfax always has something to eat.  The night I decided to do this, I had driven to the grocery store to see if there was any food for Shadowfax. Cat food, particularly Sheba, had become a rarity everywhere. There was nothing, I kid you not. Only 2 Fancy Feast cans were on the shelf! It was like finding a diamond when I was able to buy 1 month's worth of food for her after work once at a Walmart on the other side of town, in many flavors she liked. I usually buy her food by the month's supply. It was then that I made the choice to start buying her food in bulk, because I wasn't going to pay 99 cents for a Sheba when I could be paying 72 cents at Walmart or even 83 cents at Chewy, being guaranteed a box worth of food. This first time around I bought her 3 ...

 So, people, I tested positive. I felt some sinus pressure and congestion last week, and had a 99.1 temperature. So I tested, and I was negative. I got some rest. The fever didn't come back, so I thought I was fine. I took my Mucinex and Sudafed and returned to work the day after I tested negative. On Friday I tested again, and.....it was positive. It was positive even though the congestion was decreasing by the day and my temperature was normal. I even felt well enough to do 20 minutes on the stepper the day before. Today I have minimal congestion, and will probably clear up soon. I have been napping frequently and doing art and music, and drinking kombucha, apple cider vinegar, kefir, and green smoothies. I also have made vegetable soup with chicken and bone broth. I drank hot chocolate with 95% cocoa chocolate and cacao.  I just finished working on a snowglobe. I have worked on this project since before I got Covid, but I finished yesterday during quarantine. My boss gave m...