Entry 792: Chaos

The chaos was threefold this week: in the world, the country, and on the homefront. In the latter it was not even on the same scale as the other two, in terms of importance, but it was especially relevant to me because it was mine, and I'm heavily biased toward things that affect me. I'm (not at all) weird that way.

S went away for work -- just a mini-trip, a few days -- but it happens to be on a weekend in which a bunch of things are coming together at once. It also doesn't help that work is quite busy right now. I've been putting in long hours since I got back from vacation. Today, the moment I woke up, at 7:09, I started doing shit -- getting the kids ready and off to school as work items piled up. By 11:00 I was sufficiently agitated, so I stopped, closed my computer,* threw on some workout clothes, and hit the exercise bike for an hour. It was a great stress relief. What I really wanted to do was run on the treadmill. I started doing that again, once in while, and I love it. I go for an hour and crank out six miles -- not a super fast pace, but running for an hour is still running for an hour. It's the best cardio workout around, as far as I'm concerned. But, alas, the only treadmill available to me is in my sister-in-law's apartment building, and although, it's only about a mile away, I didn't have time to go there (or anywhere), so the basement stationary bike it was.

*Actually, I opened a blank PowerPoint presentation and put it into full-screen mode. If I close my computer, or it goes into sleep mode, it disconnects me from the VPN, which can be bad, depending on what I'm doing. So, I've gotten in the habit of not letting it go into sleep mode, which it will do automatically after 15 minutes of inactivity, and I can't change it, because I don't have administrative permissions for the privacy/security settings. I used to to jiggle the mouse every 14 minutes and 55 seconds, like a chump, and then one of my colleagues told me that if you're in a full-screen PowerPoint presentation, your machine will never go to sleep. Totally changed my work life.

After that, I was able to refocus and get a bunch of work done before I had to pick up Lil' S1 from swim practice on the other side of the city. That actually went okay, but I was annoyed because he usually doesn't have practice on Friday, and then last night I got an email saying that he did have it for some reason. So, I had to get him, and I got some pizzas for dinner also, which you think would be easy, but getting takeout is an ordeal with my kids. They never want the same thing -- Lil' S1 wants Chipotle, Lil' S2 wants Chick-fil-A; Lil' S1 doesn't want Domino's, Lil' S2 only wants Domino's; Lil' S1 doesn't like Thai food, Lil' S2 loves Thai food -- and it drives me crazy. I'm like you're getting takeout! Stop complaining! Then they get mad at me because I won't order from two different places. That's totally on S. She'll get them each their own thing, and now they have this bratty sense of entitlement because of it.

Oh, and after I picked up Lil' S1, I had to take him to the comic book store (in rush-hour traffic) to buy a gift for his friend's birthday party tomorrow. To be fair, he did offer to take the Metro home from swim practice and walk to the comic book store and then walk home, but it would've been a 45-minute train ride, and then over a mile walk in the rain, in the dark, with all his school stuff and swim gear and whatever he bought for his friend, at 6:30 at night. I wasn't going to do that to him or to me -- I would be feeling guilty and worrying the entire time.

Anyway... I'm home and chilling now, decompressing, watching a terrible football game (Indiana absolutely running roughshod over Oregon). This is when I wished I drank. I mean, I do drink but only socially, not by myself. We have plenty of alcohol in the house, but I know that if I actually had a drink, I would be regretting it later. I mean, I just ingested about 25 ounces of pizza. I'm probably already pounding the Pepto tonight, anyway. I'll just crack open a seltzer and pretend it's a beer. That's actually more effective than you might think. Just the ritual of opening a can of something and taking swigs off of it can be very relaxing.

In other news, S and I finished Stranger Things, and I absolutely loved the last few episodes. I stand by everything I said in my previous entry. The show's flaws are myriad, and if anything, it got worse toward the end of the season. Instead of everything everybody says being complicated plot explanations or mediocre one-liners, they introduced a new type of trite dialog: The lengthy, cloying relationship-defining talk or heartfelt soliloquy, always delivered in the most dire of circumstances, when there is not time to spare, except for the perfectly timed five-minute lull in the action.

But I'll be damned if it didn't all come together in the end. The story mostly made sense, and was pretty clever, provided you ignore some pretty major plot holes (spoiler alert*). Those kids in Hawkins pulled it off. They saved the world and it was a joy to watch.

*At the end, right before the upside down gets destroyed or collapses or what have you, when all our heroes are in custody of the military, what happened to them after that? How did they get free? Did Dr. Kay and her vengeful minions just let them go after all they did? I mean, Hopper killed, what, 50 soldiers by himself. Once Eleven was out of the picture, the military was like So, you destroyed a bunch of our equipment, stole our vehicles, and annihilated dozens of our colleagues, but, hey, no harm, no foul?  

Alright, that's all for now. Until next time... 

Entry 791: Xmas 2025

We got back last night from a week-long sojourn to Florida to visit the in-laws. It was a nice trip, but a week is about our limit there as a family. I love the warm weather and laid-back atmosphere -- it's a bit disturbing how amenable I am to the lifestyle of an 80-year-old retiree -- but my digestive tract can't take much more than a week. I treat my time down there as something of a culinary rumspringa. I gorge myself on my mother-in-law's delicious Indian food and almost constantly partake in the many snacks on-hand -- crackers, cookies, chocolates, ice cream, mixed nuts, etc. I also drink about a pot of coffee and eat at least three bowls of Honey Bunches of Oats each day. Cereal is one of those things I love, but cut out of my regular diet almost completely, so when I allow myself to eat it, I go way overboard. But there are no free lunches in nature (nor any other mealtime), especially not in middle age, so I pay for my gluttony in the form of a perpetually churning stomach.

The only saving grace is that I also work out a lot during these visits. There's a lot of downtime, and the in-laws have a nice gym in their community center. I hit it up every day we were there this trip, except for one, and on that day I walked nearly 20,000 steps (many while pushing a wheelchair), because we went to Universal Studios. It was a lot of walking, but also a lot of fun. Of the three Orlando theme parks I've been to -- Hollywood Studios and Magic Kingdom being the others -- it's my favorite. It was also, by a huge margin, the most expensive. We decided to shell out and buy the fast passes, which allowed us to use the short lines, and it was totally worth it. We did eight things that required waiting in lines:* the Harry Potter ride, two Simpsons rides, the Mummy ride, the Bourne stunt show, the Minions ride, the ET ride, and the Transformers ride. Without the fast passes, the total wait time at these attractions would have been over eight hours, which is longer than we spent at the park. We maybe could have done half of them, but we would have been fighting and miserable the entire time. The Harry Potter ride alone had a posted wait time of 110 minutes. For us, it was about 15 minutes -- like I said, totally worth it, even if I am embarrassed to say how much four fast passes cost.

*Not including lunch, which was our longest wait time. The kids wanted Luigi's pizza in Simpsons Land, and I told them we should go somewhere else or come back at a different time, because the line was outrageous, but they insisted, so I decided to use it as a teaching moment. I said, "Okay, fine, we'll wait, then." About halfway into it, they were complaining about how long it was taking, and I was like, "See! Told you so! You guys made your bed, now you have to lie in it." The problem, of course, is that I also had to lie in it, because I was still the adult responsible for two hangry kids. We finally got our pizza, which was subpar, and we also got a massive Lard Lad doughnut, which made the experience somewhat tolerable.

The thing about theme parks is that I can take them or leave them. S's mom came with us, and she just sat* and waited for us while we went on the rides. I totally could have done that and been perfectly content (and saved ourselves the money for my fast pass). In fact, I would have done that, but for the fact that I wanted us to have a family experience together, and I'm 25% of the family, more if we go by total mass. And the experience was great, that all worked out, but the rides themselves... I'm just not that into them. I like the roller coasters the best, and I don't even really like roller coasters that much. At least they don't give me a headache, though, and the nausea is temporary. The fake roller coaster ones, where you get in a box and the box shakes as you watch a VR screen spit images at you at a million miles-per-hour, make me so sick the entire time I'm in them. Thankfully, there were only a few of those (The Simpsons and Transformers). The rest were thankfully not extremely headache-inducing, and the Harry Potter ride and the Mummy ride were legit fun. The Bourne Stuntacular was pretty cool too, but even it had an element of "shaky box" to it, as it was a mix between live performance and VR screen.

*Even though she can walk fine, we got her a wheelchair, so that she could sit whenever she got tired and still keep up with us. 

Actually, the thing I liked the best was probably this mini Macy's parade thing they did in the evening right before we left. Just S's mom and I watched it, as S took the kids to the Minions ride (I figured we had already hit our quota for family experiences), and it was cool to see the choreography and stilt-walking. Also, it was festive and sentimental, which I'm becoming more and more of a sucker for the older I get. Although, it's kinda weird because it was all Christmas-themed, but it was two days after Christmas. I guess you get a Christmas grace period until the New Year, but it doesn't quite feel right to me. We need more generic holiday music and paraphernalia for that interim period between Christmas Day and New Year's Day. The party is usually still going, but it feels fake to still be listening to "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" everywhere you go.

Alright, a few pics, and then I'm calling it a post. Until next time... 

[View from a lanai near the in-laws'] 

[A festive house near the in-laws']

 

[Stilt walkers at the parade at Universal Studios; I think they're supposed to be snowflakes]

Entry 790: Sun-Baked Christmases

I was thinking about it, and I think over the last 15 years, since S and I got married, we've experienced more warm Christmases than we have cold Christmases. In 2010, we were in Sydney, Australia, in the heat of summer. In 2023, we were in Mysore, India where it was quite warm, and I have to imagine that of the remaining 13 Christmases most of them were spent in the southern part of US were the temperature was somewhere between "might want to put on a light jacket" and "thank goodness we have AC". Last year, we were in Tampa at the in-laws, and I can remember a Christmas in each of Columbia (SC), Hilton Head, Fort Lauderdale, and Atlanta. On the other hand, I can only remember two Christmases in cold climes -- one at my parents' house in Washington state (where we got a literal white Christmas) and one at home in Washington DC. That leaves four or five unaccounted for Christmases. I'm sure I could figure out where we were in those years by searching this blog, but I don't feel like doing that. My (not super interesting) point is just that sun-baked Christmases are becoming the norm for us.

And so it goes again this year, as we fly out tomorrow for another holiday week in Florida. I like going down there because it's an easy(ish) flight, it's nice to see S's parents, and it's relaxing. It does get a bit boring, but the older I get the higher tolerance I have for that slow-paced lifestyle (and, honestly, I've always had some old-soul in me, in that regard; I've never minded doing nothing too much). The hardest part is that it gets boring for the kids, which means that it's a lot of screen time, or it's a lot of annoying us. But even that gets a little bit better with each trip we take, as they get older and more independent.

Speaking of this trip, I have a lot to do today before we leave. I still need to finish the laundry, pack, clean out the fridge (once we came home to rancid eggplant, and it made the entire kitchen smell for a week, and I vowed to never let that happen again), and take out the trash. I also need to hit the exercise bike -- while watching football, of course. I took a little bit of my year-end bonus and purchased NFL Red Zone for the next few weeks. My Christmas gift to myself, and Lil' S2, I guess, since he will surely enjoy it as well. 

 So, I'm going to get to it all. 

Until next time... 

Entry 789: TV Takes 2025

Last week it was music; this week it is TV. Here is a list, in no particular order, of five TV shows I watched in 2025 with a brief (except for the first one) take on them. I'll do my best not to include any major spoilers.

Stranger Things

When Ted Lasso ran its final episode a few years ago, I wrote a post detailing why and to what extent I disliked the last season. My mom read it, and then she said to me, "I agree with everything you said, but I still liked watching the show." This is where I find myself with Stranger Things after consuming the first half of the final season. I don't think the show is very good anymore, and yet I can't wait for the next batch of episodes to drop. I've coined the acronym ABE (Always Bail Early) for TV watching once a shows starts to go downhill, but I think I have to amend that to U BE (Usually Bail Early), because there are a few programs that I want to stick out until the end, even as they founder to the finish line.

Why do I think Stranger Things is bad now? Many reasons, but first and foremost is that there has been a lot of Eleven on the show this season, and she is simply not a good character anymore. She hasn't been for a while. One of my hot takes is that the series would be better if they martyred her off a long time ago. Her story lines when she's not actively fighting evil are incredibly dull, and her powers often serve as a contrived narrative crutch. Throughout the series she's vacillated between normal girl with no supernatural abilities and all-knowing, all-powerful being. Where precisely she is on that spectrum depends almost exclusively on what's needed to advance the plot at that moment. It doesn't help that she's currently spending all her time with Hopper, who has somehow transformed himself from a real person -- a flawed, troubled recluse -- into an indestructible action-hero. He's now a mix between Arnold Schwarzenegger in Commando and Predator, taking out paramilitary warriors with one hand and inhuman monsters with the other.

Hopper's arc is emblematic of another big problem with the show: The plot armor of all the main characters. The only people who die are random townspeople/military personale and newly introduced sacrificial lambs -- Bob, Billy, Eddie, etc.* This has two knock-on effects that make the show less intriguing than it could be: 1) The many battles between our heroes and Vecna's minions feel super low-stakes and not very interesting; 2) the cast gets bloated to the point that characters have to be hidden away (sometimes literally) for large swaths of the season to make the scripts manageable. At this point, the show runners are pot committed to El -- they missed their opportunity to write her off -- but there are definitely some characters we (or at least I) could do without: Jonathan (really? the love triangle with Steve and Nancy, again?), Murray (completely superfluous), and Max (good character, but they clearly didn't know what to do with her this season), to name a few.

*And Barb. Remember poor awkward Barb? 

The sheer size of the cast means screen time is at a premium, and the writers seem to have dealt with this by having almost all the dialog on the show be comprised of characters taking turns explain convoluted plot points to each other (and thus the audience). First, Will is up to tell us all about how being possessed by Vecna is currently affecting him. Then, Mike will expound upon what it all means. Next, Henderson will lay out why that's a problem they have to solve. Then, Nancy will formulate a plan, and so on and so forth. It's not so much dialog, as it is serial explanatory monologues. Well, it's that and Easter egg reference to things from the '80s (which admittedly I'm a sucker for). There is very little actual character development, and what there is often feels forced and pandering. Also, the plans they make are unrealistically complex to the nth degree. They would be logistically impossible to pull off in one reality, let alone multiple realities. They are also often ethically dubious, to say the least. If your best idea involves drugging, kidnapping, and detaining an innocent family, you might want to go back to the drawing board (this goes for both the characters and the writers).

With all that said, I still want to watch. I still want to spend time with Steve and Robin and Joyce. I want to watch evil Linda Hamilton get her comeuppance and eviller Henry be vanquished once and for all. I'm still intrigued. I'm barely in, but I am, in fact, still in.

Pluribus

I don't know if this show is the masterpiece some say it is, but I do like it quite a bit so far. There are a lot of ethical/philosophical questions that its premise brings to the surface, and I've heard these explored on various podcasts. But something I was thinking about that I haven't heard anybody else dissect is that this show is an excellent critique of modern liberalism. The protagonist is mostly correct -- she has a strong moral position -- but she's so unappealing in how she expresses her views that she can't bring the people whose help she needs over to her side. She's self-righteous and condescending and hypocritical and unwilling to meet people where they are at. Instead of trying to win people over by listening to what they want and finding common ground, she presents her position as if it's gospel, and then acts as if everybody else is morally degenerate when they aren't completely on board with her. I don't think Vince Gilligan consciously wrote Carol Sturka to embody the flaws of liberalism today, but he knocked it out of the park if he did.

The Middle

My family growing up wasn't in disarray to the same degree as the Hecks, but a lot on the show definitely rings true -- the messy house, the overgrown yard, the beater car. We watched this one as a family, and we all really enjoyed it. It goes on a bit too long (nine seasons), but it never really jumps the shark. It's solidly good-not-great pretty much from start to finish. I didn't love Sue's arc, however. She went from being my favorite character in the early seasons to my least favorite in the middle (as it were). They just made her too much of a cringey loser in high school. In college she got better, and we got more Brad, who surpassed her as my favorite character. Actually, now that I think about it, Frankie was my favorite character all along.

White Lotus

The worst of the three seasons, in my opinion, by a large margin. One and two are basically tied (I give a slight nod to two), and then three is way below them. I still liked it, and I'm still in on the series and eagerly awaiting Season 4 (en France), but I can't deny that Season 3 had some major flaws and was far below the high bar Mike White set for himself. I could easily write another 10,000 words on what exactly I didn't like about Season 3, but I don't have time for that right now, and you probably don't either. So, let's move on.

The Chair Company

Weird and hilarious, but I didn't like ending. It was too abrupt. I don't think Tim Robinson knows how to end things. This is something I've noticed in his skits on I Think You Should Leave. I will be watching a sketch by myself, literally laughing out loud, wondering where it's is going next, and then it just ends.

Until next time... 

Entry 788: That's A Wrapped 2025

It's cold here today, so cold it snowed a bit this morning, so cold I "invented" pajamas. Do you ever do that: Come up with an idea you think is really smart, and maybe it is, but then you research it or think it through a little bit more, and you realize that many other people have already thought about it, many other times, and it's already a well-established thing? I did an extreme version of this the other night. I was getting into bed, and our room runs a little colder than the rest of the house, and S wasn't there to act as my human heater, so I was a bit chilly, so I put on a long-sleeve shirt and sweats to sleep in. It was fine, but my outfit wasn't made specifically for slumber, so it doesn't quite fit as snugly as sleepwear should fit. That set off a light bulb in my head: They should make super comfortable, warm clothes just for sleeping! Genius idea DG, genius idea. Very original.

In other news, Spotify's end-of-the-year "Wrapped" reports came out a few days ago. It's always interesting (to me and perhaps only me) to see what I listened to over the course of the year. Here are my top songs. It's a weird list, but it makes sense, at least the first three slots. It would have taken me over 100 guesses, literally, to come up with songs 4 and 5.

1. A Rihanna song is number one because I listen to her a lot with S. S has worse different musical tastes than me, and so when we listen to music together it's usually one of the pop divas, a lot of Rihanna, a lot of Dua Lipa. It's not my absolute favorite type of music, but I do enjoy it, and I've found myself adding more and more of it to my playlists as I get older. (This Dua Lipa song in particular is a straight bop.) 

2. I love Fleetwood Mac now. I'm pretty late to the game, they've been a band for, like, 50 years, and I only started listening to them relatively recently, but as a middle-aged white guy, I think I'm right where I need to be now. "Dreams" reemerged in the zeitgeist in a major way five years ago with the video of that skateboarding guy drinking juice, but I didn't really start listen to it, or any Fleetwood Mac, until Christine McVie died in 2022. For some reason that prompted a deep-dive on them, and now I celebrate their entire catalog. I do think "Dreams" is their best song, however. It's basically a perfect composition of perfect individual parts. Like, it's amazing to listen to as a whole song, but if instead you just focus on a single part -- Stevie Nicks' vocals, Linsdey Buckingham's guitar, etc. -- you think to yourself There's no way anybody could do this any better.

3. Ugh... It should be "This Song Drives Me Crazy," amirite? It's catchy and nostalgic, so I put it on a playlist, and now I'm regretting it. There are a few songs that come up way more than they should, and this one is the chief offender. It's like, I got 227 songs on my list. How is this one coming up again? I'm making a mental note to delete it next time it comes up. People say-ay I'm obsessed...

4. I have no idea how this one got on the list. It's an okay song, but I don't even ever remember listening to it. I probably wouldn't list this among my top 1,000 favorite songs. I never put the earbuds in and think to myself, You know what I'm in the mood for? "Have Love Will Travel" by The Sonics!

5. Another random one, although one that I do enjoy quite a bit. (What's the Story?) Morning Glory still holds up today. I mentioned in a previous post that I recently read Mark Lanegan's memoir Sing Backwards and Weep, and here's what he says about Liam Gallagher.

Liam Gallagher was an obvious poser, a would-be playground bully. Like all bullies, he was also a total pussy. Always with the big fucking mouth as long as he was safely wrapped in the wet-nurse security blanket of the company of two tall, rotund dudes paid to protect and, I assumed, suffer his endless stream of bullshit.

Perhaps, but I'll be damned if he can't sign the heck out of a pop song. But I quite fancy her mother, and I think that she likes me... 

Alright, I gotta watch the next episode of Pluribus. I have heard it's a banger.

Until next time... 

Entry 787: Thanksgiving Audible

S is out of the country for work again, so I'm on my own with the kids for the week. It's fine, but it's hard to keep their screen time down to a reasonable level. They both have access to so many devices, and I can't be on them constantly about it. Well, I can, but it would be a constant fight, and I wouldn't get anything done I need or want to get done. We all know a big appeal of screen time is that it's easier on the parents. Also, the weather has been terrible, even considering it's the end of November -- some combination of cold, blustery, and rainy -- so I can't send Lil' S2 outside, which is one of my go to moves. That's never worked for Lil' S1, however, as like he told me the other day when I suggested he bundle up and go for a walk, "I've never really liked going outside." Too true, too true.

I am a bit worried about his lifestyle, to be honest, as all he seems to want to do is be on his screens -- play video games on one device while watching other people play video games on another device -- and eat junk food. He'll do other things when we make him. He does his homework somewhat willingly (and gets decent grades), and he does swim team, but left to his own devices, it's just that... devices. He doesn't even seem to want to hang out with his friends that much. He's not proactive with them at all, and a lot of his social engagements are still engineered by S, mom-to-mom arrangements, and he's about to age out of that phase of life completely, if he hasn't already.

There is a lot of chatter these days about how our devices are allowing us, encouraging us even, to essentially opt out of society, which is making us lonely and miserable, and it's only going to get worse as AI gets better and more intrusive. We know the secret to life. It's not actually a secret. We know what makes us happy and satisfied: close meaningful relationships with other people. And yet all of the profit motives in technology right now are aligned to do the exact opposite. A lot of people are getting rich by keeping us isolated in their fake worlds. It's a battle to do see who can pull us in and keep us there the best. It's hard for me to fight, and I'm a middle-age man with an already fully formed brain, who grew up at a time when being bored was still a thing and running around the neighborhood with whatever other kids you could find was how you passed the time.* What do you do if you're an impressionable teenager who's never known any other upbringing, and who is already conditioned to be stimulated by technology every waking moment of the day?

*Thankfully, this is largely how Lil' S2 passes the time as well. We're fortunate in that there are three or four kids on our block who are close to his age. But more so it's a personality thing. Unlike his brother, Lil' S2 likes running around and shooting hoops and riding bikes and throwing a ball. Different kids; different interests; different problems. Lucky S and me, we get the gamut of child difficulties. Although, we don't have a girl, so maybe I shouldn't be too sarcastic. I've heard they're a whole different ball of struggles.  

I don't mean that rhetorically. I mean it literally: What do you do? And what should we do as parents? When S gets back we will have to develop some sort of system to keep things in check. It might be no devices on school days or more requisite activities. I'm not exactly sure yet, but we gotta do something before these bad habits become even more entrenched. Parenting is weird thing. You want to cherish every moment you get with your children because you know how ephemeral it is, and yet you simultaneously cannot wait to come out the other end, when they are fully functional adults, and laugh at the things you used to worry about.

Anyway... as often happens, I set out to write about one thing and ended writing about something entirely different. I was going to write about Thanksgiving, but I'm almost out of time, so I'll just give you the abridged version. My sister came to town with her husband and two boys (20 and 17). My brother-in-law's parents live in Montgomery County, Maryland, so we were going to go to their house for Thanksgiving, but his mom came down with the flu earlier this week and had to cancel. Instead, we went to my brother-in-law's brother's house in Loudoun County, Virginia (a name that unfortunately makes me think of the 2021 Virginia gubernatorial race every time I hear it). It was a good time -- laid back, fun, filling. It was nice to my sister and her family, even if only super briefly. I wish she would have stayed longer, but their whole trip kinda got messed up.

The food was provided by Wegman's, and it wasn't bad, probably just as good as your typical homemade Thanksgiving dinner. I successfully avoided overeating and still ended up with an nontrivial case of indigestion. The problem is that Lil' S1 made a cherry pie, but he made it with maraschino cherries, which are already sugar-soaked, so it was cloying sweet, but for some reason I ate an entire piece anyway. I tasted maraschino creeping up my esophagus for the rest of the night, no matter how many Tums I consumed. Even just thinking about it now makes me wince a little bit. Next time it's a slice of pumpkin pie and maybe,  maybe, a scoop of ice cream.

Alright, that's all for now. Until next time...  

 

Entry 786: Pocket Advocate

I have an idea for a product. It's a million-dollar idea if it's doable, but I don't know if it's doable. It certainly won't be done by me, because I'm not entrepreneurial -- few things sound worse to me than spending my waking hours trying to convince people to give me money -- but for somebody who actually has the business chops to do it, it could be a serious money maker. It's an AI app, and the working name is Pocket Advocate. Although, I also kinda like AIdvocate. I just worry people wouldn't know whether to pronounce it "A-I-vocate" or "aid-vocate." Anyway, here's my Shark Tank pitch...

What's the worse part of society right now? If you asked people to give their top ten answers to this question, I bet going to the doctor would be high on a lot of lists. Going to the doctor is terrible, and one big reason why it's terrible is because it's expensive, and it's confusingly expensive. You never know how much things are going to cost until you get the final bill. Even if you know your insurance plan inside and out (which most people don't), there are always little (and not so little) fees that get tacked on, and every medical clinic has their own policies and services that aren't explicitly spelled out anywhere. They just show up on your bill seemingly out of nowhere.

As an example, I got the bill for my doctor's appointment from a few weeks ago, and there was a charge for "Weekend/After 5:00 pm Service." I made the appointment online and nothing alerted me to this extra fee when I booked it. It wasn't that big, but it's still annoying. And I have a much more expensive example. When I got physical therapy done on my broken finger earlier this year, I was told there was a $10 copay due at each visit. Being that last time I got PT it was $70 a session out-of-pocket, this seemed too good to be true to me. Indeed it was, as after I "graduated" from my therapy, I got a bill for hundreds of dollars with an itemized listing of a bunch of treatments I got while I was there -- things like "hot paraffin wax" and "electrical stimulation." Apparently, it was a $10 copay plus a bunch of other costs I would find out about later.

The thing is, I wasn't even really mad about it because I'm so used to paying for medical expenses this way. I go online and find a doctor in my network, go see them, do what they say, get the bill a few weeks later, and hope I have enough money in my HSA to pay for it. I think a lot of people do things similarly. And that's where Pocket Advocate comes into play. It's an app you run on your phone whenever you go to the doctor, and it listens to everything everybody says and tells you how much your out-of-pocket bill is going to be as you go. When you first install it, you input your insurance information into it, and then when you make an appointment with the doctor, it reads all their documentation (either it grabs it off the web automatically, or you take a picture of it and it reads it that way), so it knows everything. Then it calculates all your costs in real time.

Think about how great this product would be. Not only would there be no surprises, but it could save you a lot of money, because it would allow you to better advocate for yourself (hence the name). For example, suppose the doctor says, "This mole looks benign, but we could get it biopsied just in case." *Ping* A notification from Pocket Advocate: A biopsy will add $250 to your bill. Now maybe you don't want it. Or when a doctor hands you a splint and says you should use it for a broken finger. *Ping* A splint will add $100 to your bill. Or *Ping* Ask how much this will cost. This same implement is available on Amazon for $35. Who wouldn't want this product? Just charge a few bucks to initiate a session plus a few cents per minute of use, and then that's you rolling in the dough. It's brilliant.

Now, there is a big question of whether or not this product is even possible. To that I say, if AI can take over the world, like has been speculated, then it can figure out how to calculate a medical bill in real time. And this would be an actual good use of AI -- a product that helps people by doing something no human could practically do. That's what AI should be used for, in my opinion. We don't need it to feed us heaping servings of internet slop -- which is largely what it does right now -- as we are already quite good at doing that ourselves.

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In other news, I'm currently watching two shows -- Pluribus and The Chair Company. I'm about halfway through each of them and think they are both excellent, for very different reasons. Pluribus has got that brilliant Vince Gilligan storytelling, and Rhea Seehorn is so good in everything. At first I was worried it was another zombie dystopia show -- I got serious The Last of Us vibes from the first half of the first episode -- but it's not that. If anything, it's a zombie utopia show. And it raises some interesting questions about humanity. I don't want to spoil anything, so I'll just say that I'm not sure I would choose the path the protagonist is going down. I'm not that defiantly individualistic.

As for The Chair Company, it's just funny. Tim Robinson isn't everybody's cup of tea -- S, for example, couldn't make it through the first episode of this show -- but he certainly is mine. The Chair Company makes me literally (and I mean that literally) laugh out loud a few times an episode. Tim Robinson is the master of coming up with things so completely weird and random that you can somehow still recognize as a joke. Most of the time when I hear people say How did they even come up with that?! in relation to comedy, it's about something that a lot of funny people could have come up with. Most funny people, even super funny people, sound a lot like other funny people. But with Tim Robinson, I'm legit How did he even come up with that? It's just so bizarre and hysterical.

Alright, I'm out of time. Until next time...