A MIND IS A TERRIBLE THING----

 

A MIND IS A TERRIBLE THING……

 

To waste…..

You might think that retirement is great and glorious but let me tell you that it has it’s pitfalls. For someone who has worked for over 68 years, it requires an adjustment. First off, I feel guilty laying in bed at 7am having my second cup of coffee. Secondly, the dog wants to know…’why are you still here?’. Thirdly, I have to make decisions on what to do each and every day. Going to the office was kind of like I imagine being in prison is like. All of your decisions are made for you and you just wash, rinse and repeat day after day.

But one aspect of living a quieter life without stress is that your sleep in so much more peaceful and your dreams are so much more intense. Which leads me to my next point. As you are getting older and living with less stress, does it make any sense to worry because you don’t have anything to worry about? This seems rather crazy to me. I find I keep testing my brain to check my memory to see if I have all my mental facilities. I need all I can get and don’t want to lose any.

So, the other night I was dreaming about country and western musicians. So, in my dream I can visualize this performer which we all know but can’t place his name. Same thing with the Rolling Stones. I can remember Keith Richards, Charlie Watts and Ron Wood but not the skinny lead singer. I know the country western singer sings “Blue eyes crying in the rain” and can see his face, but no recall of his name. I search (in my dream) Waylon Jennings, George Jones, Conway Twitty, Ferlin Husky and many more but no name for this red headed stranger comes to mind. I can see his guitar, but his name is a complete blank. This is not a dream; this is a nightmare. I think I am losing my mind. What is wrong here?

Do people who are losing their minds think they might be doing so?

Of course, I wake up and immediately think of Mick Jagger and Willy Nelson. So, the info was there, it was just suppressed by my sleeping?

My question is, do you think your memory bank is closed for certain things that are not accessible when you are asleep?

I know you can recall places and events that have occurred in your life in your dreams, but do you have the ability to mentally recall items that are not voluntarily offered to you as a part of the dream?

Who knows? Well at least I have given you something to think about or dream about for this week.

See you next week…Peary Perry

 

 

PHYSICIAN, HEAL THYSELF!!!!!

 

PHYSICIAN, HEAL THYSELF…..

I am so old; I remember when television commercials actually made sense and it was easy to tell exactly what they were selling. Today I have a difficult time trying to figure out what they want me to buy or what the product actually is.

Do you remember: “where’s the beef?’

Or “let’s let Mikey try it.”

When you saw a commercial for Chef Boyardee, there was never any idea in your mind as to what they were selling and what it was used for.

Same thing for The Jolly Green Giant and English peas. How confusing was that to understand?

When you saw a commercial for a toilet cleaner, you could not go away thinking…”what the heck was that used for?”. Toilet bowl cleaners are difficult to confuse with say a new cake mix.

Today, it’s not so easy. I thought when we went from an AM radio to an FM radio, we would get less commercials. I was wrong. I also thought the same thing would happen when we switched from cable tv to streaming services. They are just as bad, aren’t they?

Is it my imagination or all of the commercials we get here at our house are mainly about some new drug for one kind of illness or another? I mean, I know we’re old but do young people get swamped with medications that don’t cure anything, they just let you exist with it?

Heart, blood pressure, diabetes, skin problems, dry eyes, constipation, issues and the list goes on and on. These don’t actually fix the root cause of the problem, they just mask over it and let you keep on living. I guess if they fixed your illness, then they couldn’t sell you anything more, could they?

So, the commercials I see today are difficult to understand. First, I can’t pronounce their names and second, I can’t tell just exactly what they are used for. They use animated cartoons that have very little resemblance to a sick or ill person. Or all of the characters are skipping and dancing and have a gay old time of it, when they are in danger of dying from some horrible disease of some sort.

I cannot help but get a laugh out of the side effects that get displayed at the end of the commercial in very small, almost invisible print.

These include nausea, skin rash, headache, diarrhea, constipation, nerve damage, hair loss and or possible death. So, you are taking a medication for a skin rash because you got into some poison ivy in the garden and now can possibly lose all of your hair and have your butt fall off.

It would be funny if it weren’t so sad. Modern medicine at it’s very finest. Heaven help us all.

Sounds about right for our todays modern world.

See you next week….Peary

I AM A HUMAN !!!

 

I AM A HUMAN !!!!!

 

Not so many years ago, if you called someone on the telephone you could reasonably expect that the person answering on the other end was actually alive.

Today, not so much any longer.

The rise of automation and artificial intelligence has changed our lives in such a way that you never know who or what you are really talking to or connecting with.

The problem starts when you call a number, and their answering system starts out with the various departments in their organization. None of which can handle the type of concern you are calling about. Of course, it would be too simple to just say the operator can be accessed by pressing “O”. that would be too simple and inefficient. I really am in love with those calls which tell you that “faster service can be obtained by logging into their website”. No way, Jose is that going to happen. I have spent hours on websites clicking various buttons in the forlorn hopes of finding a real person who can answer my questions. Their chat lines tie you up for hours on end and we all love the notation that says… ‘We will be with you in a moment, you are caller number 47’.

Now, when you go to various websites for advice on some issue or another, you get their lovely ‘virtual’ assistant. Virtual means ‘not real’ as in it’s actually a made-up entity of some sort. So, you aren’t talking or trying to talk to a human but a machine of some kind. I usually lose my patience with these bots after the fourth or fifth question that is totally unrelated to my inquiry. I have found that by saying ‘enchilada’ over and over it will usually bring me to a real person. Of course, then you have to start asking your questions all over again.

Another annoying practice of today is the ‘verify that you are a human’ authorization section. We are not given the option of talking or conversing with a real, live oxygen breathing human being, but they want to verify that we are actually alive. Seems somewhat unfair to me.

I don’t know about you, but I feel like an idiot after I find out that I have been speaking or writing to some robot for the last ten minutes.

The future doesn’t look too bright in view of the expansion of artificial intelligence, does it? None of us know who we can trust. The news can be faked, photos can be faked, documents can certainly be faked. Research can be changed. I have heard that AI can even duplicate voices and make calls sounding like your spouse or children. Of course, you can use this to your advantage if one of your kids or friends calls up and asks for money. You don’t send any and when they ask why in a few days or so, you can just say I thought you had been hacked and the call was a fraud.

My advice? Trust no one or anything.

Except me, I am a human. You can trust me.

See you next week…Peary Perry