Non-fiction

Death to AI

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One thing that has worried me a lot is the emergence of artificial intelligence and how it has advanced technology. I use my Starbucks app to place a mobile order, and it suggests what I should eat with my hazelnut oatmilk espresso. Artificial intelligence also reminds me to order through Starbucks each morning on my phone. And that’s just the Starbucks app. What about everything else?

The most troublesome part of AI is how it’s taking over actual writing. There are people who let AI compose their books for them. I read somewhere that they have to admit that artificial intelligence has written the book, or else they could get in trouble, I think if they publish through Amazon, but I’m not sure. It would make total sense. Some people claim that they can tell between human and AI writing. I don’t think I’m that perceptive. AI doesn’t have a soul, and it shows, but I could still be fooled. I’m quite sure that AI doesn’t have a sense of humor, or if it does, it’s not good. I can’t imagine so because a good humorist is self-deprecating. How could AI be that way since it’s not human? I asked AI to be funny, and all it did was post a list of blogs with humor. It didn’t tell me any jokes, so there’s that element.

I don’t see the point in having artificial intelligence write books. Where’s the fulfillment for the writer? On the flipside, how can readers enjoy fiction written by AI? I’ll never understand.

I guess there are positive things, such as its efficiency in handling mundane tasks that humans would rather not spend their time doing, or the fact that AI doesn’t need to sleep so it can work around the clock, or it can diagnose diseases in their early stages. Don’t ask me how. It can also help the disabled through text-to-speech technology and translate different languages. I guess it can help out artists, but this is the area of which I’m not too sure. I mean, part of artistry is in our flaws. But I can understand how it could be of use in the fields of science. It can help me pick which restaurants to eat at and do research for a student. I can’t believe it can regulate energy and support wildlife, all the while also enhancing safety at home and at the workplace. It can also track and predict natural disasters, which I wasn’t aware of until I looked up the benefits. Of course AI helps businesses in finances and security. It has improved video games and come up with ideas for bloggers of all interests. But keep AI out of my fiction, where it doesn’t belong. This should all be human effort, as it has been for centuries until now.

Non-fiction

Living on Instinct

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I moved outside to a warmer table that wasn’t underneath an air conditioner. It was quiet out there on the patio. I left the table, came back, and saw that my backpack was gone. I thought it wouldn’t be so bad if it was stolen. It had valuable things, but nothing like my laptop. I could’ve lived with the loss. But when I came back and saw that it was gone, I panicked. I looked around. It couldn’t possibly have been stolen.

Then the barista came outdoors, holding my backpack and smiling. I was relieved. My first guess was that the barista had taken it to prevent it from being stolen. But a man came up to me with long black hair and a toothless smile and said, “You left your backpack outside, man.” So he’d taken it inside because he thought I’d lost it. What a Good Samaritan. But at the same time I should’ve yelled at him for touching my stuff when I’d left it there on purpose to mark my territory, to show everyone the table was mine. My heart stopped racing. I could relax, but not too much because the day would carry too much weight.

That was Friday. I got a haircut finally. A barber smiled at me and asked if I was a walk-in. I said yes. He told me to wait a second. There was a man before me sitting on the waiting couch. The barber called me first and skipped over the other man.

The other man said, “Oh, I thought you were calling me since I was here first.”

The barber told him he would have to wait. The man sat on the couch again and moped. Poor man. I should’ve given up my spot, but I didn’t.

My barber was very soft spoken, so soft spoken that I thought I was losing my hearing. I listen to a lot of loud music through my headphones, so I figured it could’ve been hearing loss. I’ve been dealing with a lot of ringing in my ears, but it could be all in my mind, or the man was too soft-spoken to be heard all the way. Everything around him was louder, so his voice was lost in a sea of noise. I kept having to ask, “What?” I was worried.

He asked what I wanted, and I told him the usual: three on the sides and back and a little off the top. He asked if I wanted a three on both sides. I thought he was insane. I told him no and repeated a three on both sides and a three on the back, a little off the top. So he started shaving my head with the three, all the while talking.

His first question was if I was gay or straight. I didn’t think that mattered, and I didn’t think the question was appropriate. But I’m a nice, open man, so I told him I was straight. He was gay. And I live in a predominantly gay community, which he’d said, and I told him I knew. Then he began to mention all the different places to eat and drink at in this town. I could barely hear what he said. He said he was from Seattle, was born and bred in Indiana, and had moved to Palm Springs. He said Seattle was beautiful this time of year: the right temperature and everything was in bloom. I still haven’t gone to Seattle but plan to go sometime, as I’ve heard so many wonderful things. But I don’t plan on traveling anytime soon.

He snipped the top with scissors after shaving the rest of my head. Then he rubbed warm shaving cream along the sides of my face and pulled out a razor, the kind that barbers use to shave men’s beards. It scared me because as he was shaving me, he kept talking about restaurants to eat at and Indiana. I thought he should’ve focused on shaving me instead of talking. Luckily I didn’t walk away with any cuts, but he was a professional. He should’ve known how to shave me and talk at the same time. I tipped him twelve dollars and went on my way back home on foot. I won’t get another haircut for about the next two months.

Non-fiction

Wow

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A man just walked by with the most offensive smell. It was like he stunk of bad breath. Bad breath covered his body and he released it like a skunk. The stench is still in here in this coffee shop, but he’s far gone. Wow. Should I move? The stench just hangs in the air like a cobweb. Except I can’t see it obviously. I wish there was a fan in here. He sits outside on the patio with a wheelbarrow that he brought. I watched him walk into the bathroom. He was in there for a considerable amount of time. I haven’t smelled something so bad in years, or else I would’ve remembered it and commented on it. I didn’t know a human could smell this bad. Someone just came over and hugged him. Am I the only one who could smell him? I can’t go near him or else I wouldn’t be able to breathe. Maybe it’s his clothes that reek and he’s just fine. I won’t be able to tell. Thank god the odor has been whisked away by the wind of the door opening and closing.

They’ve taken away the tables here and replaced them with a bench with five small tables, so now people who sit next to me are practically sitting on my lap. The man to my right might as well be looking at my screen. But let him look. What do I care?

It’s not even seven in the morning, and the coffee shop is full. What will it be like by eight when I’m still here? These people will be long gone. All I can do is hope. I’m not saying I want the whole place to myself, but this seating is ridiculous. I should move outside to the patio, but it’s offensively hot. I’m worried that my laptop will melt on the table. It happens when my phone is baking. It turns off and tells me to cool it down before it turns back on. What if that happens to my laptop?

Anyway, I need a haircut. Why are haircuts so inconvenient? I tend to postpone appointments until my hair becomes unmanageable. Then I finally break down and get one. I wish I could cut my own hair instead of paying fifty dollars for a simple job. I tell them the same thing every time I sit in that large chair where they can adjust the height: a three on the sides and back and a trim on top. Of course they never trim it. They always go too far on the top as if they need something to do while they’re cutting my hair, as if their job is incomplete. I walk home looking like a marine.

Well, I moved outside to the patio. I’d rather have my laptop fry than have someone sitting on my lap. There’s another coffee shop, but it’s a mile away. It takes twenty minutes to walk to, and it’s a challenging walk in the scorching heat. The sweat stings my eyes by the time I get there. And when I get back home, my clothes are soaked. I could drive there, but that would be lazy, or I could just stay home. Maybe I’ll start doing that.

The smelly man has left the patio, and his stench has gone with him. Now I smell nothing. I wish I could smell the trees and the flowers, but all is lost.

Non-fiction

What Hell is Like

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I’m not talking about the town in Michigan, although I’m sure it’s hell too. But people travel there where they collect souvenirs with the city’s name on it. And there are bars with the name as well.

I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about the actual hell, where wicked souls burn for eternity. That certainly sounds like hell to me. Just burning my finger on the stove is hell enough. I don’t need to feel it forever. Some people are living in hell already, and they’re not even dead. Maybe their jobs are hell, or their relationships are hell, or maybe living with themselves is hell. Whatever it is, they liken it to the actual physical place, which arguably exists.

Some don’t believe there is a hell, that it’s only a concept. And people assume hell is somewhere deep inside the earth. If you dig and keep digging, maybe you can reach there, but you would soon suffocate. And then where would you go? Maybe hell, depending on your soul. Then you won’t have to dig any longer.

No one has found heaven yet, and astronauts have explored many depths of space. Heaven must be hidden until death arrives. And then the person’s soul is lifted somewhere to the clouds, where God and the angels perch, and you live in eternal peace.

But back to hell… The devil sits on his throne, red all over, holding a pitchfork with a pair of horns on his head. He decides which pain you shall suffer forever. What other choice would your evil soul have except to burn for eternity? Or Dante was right with his rings of hell. There are levels depending on how evil you really are.

I read Dante’s Inferno when I was a high school senior. My English teacher made us read it for some reason. Then afterward she made us write a short story of our own infernos. I created one where the evil souls ride an elevator to their specific floors. I handed it in and waited for the grade. The English teacher hated me because she always thought I was making fun of her with my friend in the back row of the classroom, which wasn’t true. Hate is a strong word. How about dislike? She disliked me. And it hurt to have a teacher dislike me. But what choice did I have?

I remember a time when drama students entered our classroom and performed a teaser for their upcoming performance of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, which was coincidentally based on the story of Joseph in the Bible. She caught me laughing with my friend as the drama kids were signing in front of the class like total goofballs. How wasn’t I supposed to laugh? She scolded me for all the students to see after the drama kids left the classroom.

“How could you laugh at them after all the hard work they’ve done?”

I had to tell her, “Because they were dancing funny and making faces.”

It was an intense moment. I thought she was going to punish me but she never did. I never had to serve detention, which would’ve been embarrassing.

Anyway, she gave me an A for my short story about my own inferno, with a note that said it was imaginative. At least the teacher didn’t grade it with her feelings about me. But yeah, that was how my seventeen year old self viewed hell. Now I see it as any form of suffering that a human must endure.

Non-fiction

In Waves

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I showed up yesterday morning to the coffee shop before the sun rose and found that they’d taken away the tables to my surprise. They’d replaced them with a long bench and six small tables along the bench, chairs on the other side, and two large round tables with six chairs total. There was nowhere else to sit in there. They’d designed the shop to where my neighbors were practically sitting on my lap. I’ve lost my privacy in here.

It never fails that the older I get, the more is taken away from me. How much will I have in ten years? I imagine not much. I should be thankful for what I have right now. I used to write a list of gratitude. I’m grateful for this laptop, for this shirt, for these shorts, for my deck shoes, for my apartment… I’m thankful for everything I have because I don’t know what will be gone tomorrow, except my clothes of course. I know I’ll probably keep those. But as for everything else…

I’m also thankful for my hands. I can’t type without them. My left hand went numb yesterday. I was typing when I suddenly lost feeling. I panicked when I lifted my arm. My left hand bent and spasmed. I paced my apartment and wriggled my left arm, but all I felt were pins and needles. I thought about driving to emergency in the middle of my work shift, but I couldn’t drive there with one arm. I worried about a stroke or a heart attack. I heard that’s a symptom. The feeling gradually came back, but my left hand didn’t feel the same for the rest of the night.

Now I type with one hand that’s colder than the other. I also thought of carpal tunnel syndrome. One symptom is numbness and tingling. That which I’m experiencing. How scary, having no control. Is there a pill I can swallow for carpal tunnel? Who knows?

There’s also a mysterious rash on my left arm. I’ve been going through high stress, so I blame that. Otherwise, I’m clueless as to what’s happening.

Not to mention, my imagination has run away like a squirrel. I used to have one when I was younger, when there was less stress. But it’s an evasive animal. All I can hope for is a return like the sensation in my hand.

Non-fiction

Humpty Dumpty

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I’ve learned to criticize myself so easily. It has become second nature. I call myself an incompetent idiot for every mistake I’ve made, thinking somehow that will improve me when it won’t. I can’t think of a single time when being so hard on myself ever helped. Why criticize myself when other people can do it for me? Maybe that’s where those beliefs come from: from listening to other people and believing them when all I need to do is not believe them. What they’re saying is a fallacy.

To tell the truth, it has been a long time since someone has called me an idiot. In fact, I can’t remember, but it has been implied. Nevertheless, I still can’t picture who made me think they thought I was an idiot. I make a lot of mistakes at my job, and every time the voice in my head calls me stupid, I believe it, and I deserve to be punished for messing up. But I didn’t intend to make the mistake. It just happened. I’m at fault, but I also blame the company for not training me well enough.

I read through a worksheet last night when I couldn’t sleep about self-criticism versus self-compassion. I’m supposed to spend one day completely criticizing myself in the worst way and seeing if it helps, and spend the next day completely opposite and treating myself to self-compassion, which I don’t know how to do. What do I say to myself to have compassion? The worksheet asked me if I would talk to a friend or a child the way I talk to myself. The easy answer is no. I would never punish them the way I punish myself because I can be pretty brutal. I’m not my own friend. That’s apparent. So to have compassion for myself, I have to stay reminded that I would never talk the same way to someone else when they make a mistake. I would never call a child, a friend, or a relative an idiot. I’m practicing self-compassion right now, and I feel a little lighter. But self-compassion is delicate. It could break from the slightest pressure. Tomorrow I shall criticize myself to death to see how I feel. The worksheet said it could take a while before I notice any significant changes.

Non-fiction

Climbing Up a Broken Ladder

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I’ve been in this coffee shop since five a.m. The old man yawned behind me. People do that thing after they yawn, where they almost sing at the end. I never understood that. I’m not a loud yawner. I do it silently, trying not to bring attention to myself. In fact I try to hide my yawns, or else someone might say, “Am I keeping you up?” I hate it when they say that. Just let me yawn. I’m either tired or it’s a reflex when I’m wide awake. But I’m exhausted after waking up at two in the morning.

YouTube videos keep me company through insomnia. I’m addicted to one YouTuber who posts a video just about every single day, much like I blog every single day. He always produces content about music, and I love music, commercial music that is, or I used to. He has opinions on everything, some of which I don’t agree with. We have very different tastes in music.

He’s heavily into pop punk, which I think is awful. And he said Nelly is a good rapper. I’m not sure if he’s trolling me. He could be, but it’s hard to tell. I must accept that some people enjoy music that I think is garbage, and vice versa.

Nevertheless, his videos are still enjoyable. He likes to rank musicians on a tier. He said that Blink 182 is one of the best bands of all time, and I must strongly disagree. I mean are there people out there besides him who honestly think so? He also said that Metallica is okay, or in his words “mid”, a word I think the Gen-Z’ers like to use, meaning they’re in the middle. It doesn’t make sense because the YouTuber is a Gen-X’er like me. We should have a somewhat similar taste in music. But he said the best music came from the 2000s, which isn’t even close to true. Nineties music is far superior, and I’m supposed to believe so because of the generation I came from. Shouldn’t he agree?

Nothing against millennials, but their music doesn’t hold up against Gen-X music. Of course they would agree to disagree. They may believe what they will. And then the music from the 2010s was even worse. I won’t comment on today’s music. He was right when he said it’s not about how catchy the songs are now but rather what the mood is, like music you would play in the background while you’re doing homework, not exactly interactive. Today’s music listeners are fine with that. I don’t quite understand it. If you need background noise, just turn on the vacuum, not Spotify.

It’s all the same from what I’ve heard. I couldn’t tell you one Taylor Swift song. I know what she looks like, but that’s about it. He played a clip of a Swift video, so I have a general idea, and it wasn’t good or bad. If I were taking an Uber ride and was sitting in the backseat, and the driver was playing one of her songs, I wouldn’t be able to say, “Hey, that’s Taylor Swift.” It could be anyone with the way music is produced now. It’s overly produced if you ask me. There’s no dirt, all sparkle. Even metal music, with its loud riffs and punishing drums, glistens through the speakers. I don’t think I agree with that. There has to be some imperfection for me to want to give it a second listen.

Either way I’m addicted to that guy’s channel, and I’ll watch another video of his tonight. That’s my current viewing pleasure. I’m subscribed to YouTube TV, but I don’t watch anything except American football when it’s in season. Other than that, I don’t care about anything else. It’s not my intention. Nor do I subscribe to any streaming services. I can’t keep up at this point, having fallen too far behind. I used to subscribe to Netflix way back before all those shows populated, way back in the beginning when they would mail me DVDs. But I quit one year and never subscribed again. There’s just too much to follow. I miss the days when there were only a dozen shows. Now every network has a streaming service with original programming. It’s an overload. And I would watch the worst shows on TV, never the best ones, shows that never came close to an Emmy. I never said I had good taste.

Non-fiction

Approaching Gloom

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I stare at the white walls and think about the film The Seventh Seal by Ingmar Bergman.

You can’t live without a paintbrush.

All I do is walk around, falling deeper into shaving cream.

The milkshakes have all melted into Apple Jacks.

Life seems so incomplete.

I want to blow the candles off a birthday cake for no reason.

A couple climbs into a black SUV, wearing face masks in ninety-degree weather on a Sunday morning. Nobody says anything.

A kid walks in with a black t-shirt on and earbuds in his ears, and walks back outside just for the hell of it.

There’s a canker sore on my lip that I keep biting. It won’t go away.

I once saw a lady with pink hair and the eyes of a fish.

There’s no one to disagree with.

I’m sick and tired of seeing people waddle like Charlie Chaplin to a Target.

A security guard steps in with a green shirt.

Is it too hard to beg for an ice cream cone?

I can’t lift a finger these days. What does lifting a finger even mean?

We live in a world where chocolate-covered raisins are more popular than chocolate-covered peanuts.

She held the phone to her ear as she opened the door.

“Hey, man. Can you tell me what the time is in Zimbabwe?”

I parked my car here and left the car in drive.

The jeep rolls along with a dog poking its head out the back window.

I wish I had wings on my arms.

The STOP sign says hello, and I don’t say hello back.

The gray clouds greet the mountains, and all I can think about is Pizza Hut.

I’m all alone in here except for the staff, and they ignore me completely.

Yesterday I never had a bowel movement.

Chinese food makes me itch.

If a cow jumps over the moon, why can’t I write something as ridiculous as that?

I see a man wearing fluorescent green gloves just in case he has to walk at night.

I see people waiting for their emptiness before they leave.

There’s nothing left to do in this small town.

Tomorrow I’ll try to piggyback someone, but I don’t hope for much.

My car is parked in the shade.

I once wrestled someone and grabbed a beer with him afterward.

I haven’t got much time left.

My arms are cold; my legs are restless.

I miss the day when I dissected frogs–much simpler times.

My ego is held by drawstrings.

Who the hell drinks ginger ale?

It’s been a long time since a salesman has knocked on my door.

My next birthday present will be a chainsaw.

I eagerly anticipate a clown to trip on the sidewalk.

It isn’t quite yet time to panic.

I once asked a man for fifteen cents. He looked at me with contempt in his eyes before he walked away. He was a shutterbug.

Hospitals need dance music.

I’m seeing the ugliest green BMW I’ve ever witnessed in my life.

There’s an exit sign on both doors.

A friend of mine once told me she ate steak by the pool.

A man climbs out of a vehicle with his glasses in his teeth.

They don’t like being called redheads. That’s how it is these days.

I like to wake up in the morning with a hunger for bagels and lox.

Blame it on sweaty handshakes.

Non-fiction

Independence

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I’m struggling these days. It reminds me of the winter 2023, when I was getting ready to leave my apartment in Culver City. I was worried sick that I would be evicted from my apartment because of the mold in my bathroom that I never reported. So I would start future-tripping over the worst-case scenarios: I was going to be evicted, and the owner of the building would take me to court, and I would end up on the street, homeless, starve to death and die. These movies really play in my head. I’m not making this up. I told the manager about the mold, and he made me take pictures, and he said the maintenance man would come and take care of the problem. But he never did. It made me wonder. This was around the time when I hired Orkin to exterminate the bed bugs in my apartment.

It was a rough winter, and when the new year came along I carried the same anxiety as I do at the start of every year. What two disasters will strike? There are at least two, and they happen whenever before a dormancy period where I’m like a deer in the forest that hears a sound and gets alarmed even when there isn’t any danger. I’m hypervigilant, waiting for the next calamity because I go through them most weeks, like I can’t sit still and relax. I have to be on the lookout for any starving bears.

Well, I moved out of that Culver City apartment and never got evicted. The owner never took me to court either. I’d lived there for over three years and never got in trouble for anything.

Now life is better in Palm Springs, but my job has put me in severe anxiety. They keep inundating me with work and more work until I’m drowning and can’t breathe. They expect me to meet a quota which is too demanding and impossible to catch. I’m already way behind. I have to work cases and finish them within ninety-six hours, and I already have had cases open for over a week that I either can’t get to or can’t close because my clients keep having issues to solve, and so the cases remain open. That’s just one aspect of the job. Other duties include working from two spreadsheets with long lists of assignments that I can barely get to because I spend so many hours on the cases. And that doesn’t even count the emails I have to answer. These owners send them every day, and the emails keep growing and growing. It’s driving me insane. I need an assistant.

I went through full-blown panic on Tuseday because I believed I was dealing with a fraudster who’d stolen someone’s EIN for their business and changed the address. The person had fooled me into changing the corporate entity address that wasn’t on their SS4. I hated myself. I thought how stupid of me as I was taking a walk. I thought for sure I would get fired and get in legal trouble for being such a dumbass. I called the owner’s phone number on Wednesday, and it was the same shady person, although he didn’t sound as shady. But I still wonder if he’s a fraudster because he hasn’t signed the contract. The week only got more complicated from there.

Now I rest on Saturday, knowing what kind of maelstrom I’m gonna face on Monday: a long list of emails and cases I still haven’t solved, not to mention the spreadsheets. It’s all insanity, but I guess that’s what makes it a real job. It’s shitty, but I don’t know how shitty it can get. What if the next job is even worse than this? What if I actually have it good, but I can’t withstand the pressure as it is? I like my schedule and the company benefits. But at what price? How good are the perks when the job itself is making me want to quit? I go through bouts of a “fuck it, fire me” approach. That’s when I get fed up when I have to tackle five things at once without any skill in time management.

I watch videos where the guru says that multitasking is really bad. Tell that to the higher-ups who keep inundating me with work after work. For chrissakes, hire more people. I heard from a neighbor that that’s what companies are doing. They’re just overloading the employees they have with more work. I know I’m not alone, but I don’t want it period. I think about quitting and just roaming like a nomad living off the land, not having to work for anyone. But again, that’s me future-tripping. I know that’s not going to happen to me yet.

Non-fiction

The Beaten Path

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This woman bothers me in the coffee shop. An old man left the table in front of me, and the woman moved there with her purse and drink. But before she sat, she pulled out a wet rag and wiped the table and every chair. I don’t know why that happened to be annoying, but it was. She also brought her own metal spoon and was gonna eat an assorted snack of apple slices, cheese, and crackers.

The old lady with the corgi walked in, and the dog started howling like he always does. The lady who’d wiped down the table stood and watched the old lady sit at the next table. Somehow she had a problem with it. I don’t know what at all. Maybe she didn’t want a dog in the store? She went to a barista at the counter, and it seemed as if she was complaining by the look of the barista, but I couldn’t tell what she said because I was wearing headphones and couldn’t hear anything that was going on in here.

The coffee shop smells of nasty disinfectant. I usually don’t mind the scent, but I can’t even describe something so nauseating. The woman at the table ended up being so fed up that she grabbed her purse, coffee, and a metal spoon with her snack and sat at a table outside on the patio. Good. I didn’t want to see her anymore.

There’s no room left for odd people. I’m one of them. I have my quirks. Lately I’ve been done with this. As soon as I got here at half past five in the morning, they were already mopping the floor. One of the baristas was wiping the windows where I was going to sit, and I waited for her to finish. Now that she’s gone, I can sit here in peace, in a way, but it’s not calm altogether.

I don’t know what to write. It has been that way this whole week. I’m struggling. My head is too wrapped up in work. That’s bad. I wish I could control it, but my job has been so stressful that it has taken over my life to where it’s all I can think about. Man, it’s never been this severe, even on a Friday.

The fall is almost here. Just another month or so before it cools down, and I’ll get to walk outside without feeling like I’ll catch on fire. I’m slogging through everything. Even brushing my teeth feels like an uphill climb. I wish I could go back to an easier time.

Now the old men at a long table have taken over the store. They’ve stolen most of the chairs. One of the tables is missing all of them. What if someone wants to sit there? Oh well. The people in this store are getting on my nerves. Other than that it’s business as usual. I can’t focus on anything. Isn’t life stressful? Every little thing gets in my way.

The lady outside has left. Where would she go? Where does she live? I wonder about that.

Some other man took the other chair from my table. Now there’s nowhere for anyone else to sit. There’s a chair shortage in here. Each table has two chairs, and they’ve taken them all. I have a problem with people stealing chairs from my table. It gives me a chill for some reason. I can’t explain why.

I took a break and walked outside. The woman on the patio had moved to another table. She just sat there and stared off, like I did. She wears a white fedora and a black short-sleeved top, a yellow skirt, and black sandals. She looks like a Susan or a Martha.

I’m still wearing my headphones and listening to folk rap. Most people don’t know about it. It’s old music, which most people would think is crap, but that’s okay. I don’t like most pop music. This folk rap is like Tom Waits if he chose to write rap songs. The artist is from Nova Scotia. He calls himself Buck 65. I used to listen to him a lot when I was in my twenties. Now I have revisited his music, and it’s better than I thought. I didn’t think it would age well, but it sits quite comfortably. I remember how witty he was. My taste in music is so strange, but there’s nothing wrong with strange music. It’s better than the ordinary. Who wants to listen to ordinary music? That makes for ordinary people. And who wants that?