Mysterious Creature of WWW

During the last week my computer has been altered internally, and not by me. My entire file system has been lost. My picture files have disappeared. Everything, even the lower tool bar is not working properly. What, who, why?

It is my habit to organize photos by subject in order that I can find pictures quickly. Apple seems to think differently. Every time an update is downloaded the computer is different, and not always for the better. All my pictures are still in the drives, but I can’t access them because my file system is lost. Searching the internet supports the fact that this is not just my problem, therefore, I blame it on Apple. They employ thousands of people who are under the gun to make the computers better, but in their wisdom they screw things up. Guys like me were brought up on logic and order, and so have the Apple guys, but the difference is that their logic is not mine, and their idea of order is from another planet, or at least a few generations away from mine.

Like Microsoft, Apple income depends on getting people to buy their software. When they can’t sell me a new computer they revise the existing software and call it an upgrade. Millions of us take the bait, and the result is mayhem. I predict it will take the rest of my remaining life to get my files straightened out to a point where I will be able to understand how to use this damned stupid machine.

Thank you Apple. GRRRRRR.

I Can’t Believe

When it comes to kids wanting to change their gender while still in grammar school, I cannot, nor will I, ever believe it is possible. It’s been a long time since I was that young, but it never occurred to me that I might want to be a girl. The subject never came up in our house. My brother is a boy, I am a boy, and my sister is a girl. We were satisfied with life as it happened. What I could believe is that kids who want to change their gender at age five or six have been brainwashed. Perhaps by parents who wanted a girl instead of a boy or vice versa. Kids just don’t think that way. They are too young to really understand the difference. Another thing I don’t understand nor believe is the medical industry that is growing up around gender change. There must be a lot of sick doctors who believe they can become famousl by supporting the physical surgery they implement to change a boy into a girl.

There has to be something in the food or water these people drink to make them believe in what they do. There is no other explanation. What is scarier to me are the laws that politicians are implementing to allow six year olds to undergo major body transformations without parental approval. Instead of giving parents the responsibility they have for bringing up their progeny the law pushes the right on to elementary school teachers. That is totally insane. In fact nothing about gender change is sane.

One of my theories is that the brains of these children have been infiltrated with garbled messages and the young brain just soaks it all in, and messes up the intricate linkages between mind and body. One way that occurs is by the constant repetition of thought processes that may occur during electronic games. All kids love playing computer games and parents use the games as a way to keep their child occupied and out of their hair. The games allow characters to morph from one person to another, they can change personalities with button pushes in instants. I know from my own addictions to electronic games that the desire to win and play is strong. One game I play is two deck solitaire. The stats kept by my computer show my win rate to be 16.2%. That is a losing statistic, but the desire to beat this game of chance continues. The same meter tells me that I have spent a total of 122 days, 23 hrs, and 25 minutes playing a game that I cannot beat. Yet, whenever I get near my laptop, I play another round. If that isn’t conditioning I don’t know what is. It is hard for me to realize that I have spent four months of my life playing solitaire, but it is a fact.

Statistics of populations world wide show that the number of people who are transgender varies between 1-5 percent. My math calculates that to be as many as 80 million people who have been born with their wires crossed. Is it our responsibility to convert these souls into their proper gender? I say no. We are still far away from having the smarts and the techniques required to make gender reassignment safely feasible. At this point we are merely performing experiments on kids to uncross their wiring. That puts us in the NAZI class of experimenting on humans because it is fun to do.

One day, soon I hope, these people who believe they can alter nature and revise gender will wake up and reverse the process. By that time we will be flooded with generations of kids who have been bodily re designed to think they are something other than what they are. The problem is they will have no way to reset to what is normal.

Time Flies

It seems like just yesterday when I began the blogging adventure, but WordPress just sent me notice that it has been 15 years. Happy anniversary to GrumpsJoesPlace! Actually, I began blogging before that and I was struggling with my own website, Mortyangel.com. Modifying a website to include content frequently was not the platform I needed, I just didn’t realize it. At the time I pursued my goal to write stories for kids. I wrote them, and illustrated them with cartoons, and printed them in a book format. Each kid got a copy of the story. The unique aspect was that I made each book personal to the child with his name as a character in the story. I thought it was a cool idea, but never realized how much work it would become to automate each story with different names, and pronouns depending on the gender. I learned a lot about the limitations of Microsoft Word, Word, and Apple Pages I tried asking for help from friends, but they never used the word processor’s for my type of work. I also learned how to print a book, and to bind it with a hard cover.

A young man at work, (I was still occasionally accepting money for my advice from my previous full time employer), told me I should look at WordPress. Thank you Christopher. I followed his advice and fell in love with the ability to write freely everyday if I so chose to do. From the beginning I had no intention to use this venue as a profit making venture. I now know that was a huge mistake. At the time, making money didn’t interest me, writing did. Today, as my nest egg begins to dwindle, I am just a tad bit sorry that I did’t pursue earning extra money by writing.

My wife Barbara, my one true love, encouraged me to open up and let my thoughts run wild. I adopted the idea and the noms de plume of Grumpa Joe, and taught the kids to call me by that name. Barb is the one who told me that my grandkids, who were all little at the time, would continue to call me Grumpa. To me it was a joke intended to convey the idea that I am a grumpy old man even though I am the exact opposite. Barb was right. My oldest grandchild is now twenty-seven and she still calls me Grumpa.

Barb celebrates her twentieth anniversary in heaven this year, and I am still in love with her. Even though I have married twice since then when I speak to old friends about my wife it is always about Barbara.

I got the idea to write about myself from a story I heard on National Public Radio. A young man was explaining how he got content for a book he wrote about his grandfather’s stories. In his case he spent a lot of time with his grandfather and the old man told him stories about his life. The kid honored him by writing a book about this relationship. I thought I would do the same thing by writing vignettes about growing up in the Burnside neighborhood of Chicago. I titled the book “Jun-e-or”, and published three volumes on Kindle. I think they are still available there today. Of course no one has ever heard of the book because I never told anyone about it until this very day. I learned from that experience that publishing a book is 99% selling and 1% writing. I also re-established the fact that I am not a salesman.

In the meantime, I am happy publishing and posting articles on WordPress on GrumpaJoesPlace. It is fulfilling the self actualization part of my life’s pyramid. My readership is dwindling lately because I am posting less content. I am also not ranting as much as I did in previous years. My largest following was during the Obama presidency when I did political cartoons to include with the rant about his stupid attempts to socialize America. Today, I leave President Biden alone only because he is an old guy like me. Just to be clear I think Biden is Obama on steroids and also much more stupid. I’ll stop with that.

Any attempt by me to try to convince people to like Donald Trump is futile, and therefore, I don’t even try. It is hard for me to understand why the world hates him so much. Then I begin to think about all of his policies that attempted to kill the bureaucracies which are loaded with creatures who rely upon the swamp to feed their families. I remember a time when people who couldn’t do anything practical got jobs with the government and received far lower pay than the rest of us. Today, the tides have turned and non-government jobs pay far better than real jobs that require people to: 1. know stuff, 2. show up, and 3. produce actual useful content.

If my luck holds out I’ll continue to blog for as many years as the Lord allows me to. In the meantime, thank you for reading my stuff, your comments keep me happy and interested in writing.

Good Old Boys

Yesterday I go the surprise of my life as I opened the door to Ryan’s Pub. It was Friday, and during lent I abstain from eating meat. Lovely had just returned from a doctor’s appointment where he performed a biopsy. She was not a happy camper. Our plan was to go to Ryan’s for a fish dinner, but that fell apart when I had to go alone.

Just inside the door of Ryan’s is a section of bar, and sitting there were four of my very best friends. They were just as surprised as I was and greeted me with open arms. Naturally, I had to have an adult pop while I waited for my fish order to go. I felt like a teen ager gabbing away with my buds. The biggest difference was the topic of conversation. As teen agers we would have discussed the girls and their mammary protrusions, but as octogenarians we discussed aches and pains.

My new intarsia project is taking shape, I promised myself to have it finished by May. I have completed the cutting and moved on to fitting. With over a hundred pieces there is a whole lot of fitting going on. At this point the picture is not very pretty, there are too many wide spaces between parts and it isn”t a picture yet. I feel good about the wood colors I selected this time the object should look pretty natural.

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PSA-230323-What Some People are Famous for Saying

“To get back to my youth I would do anything in the world, except exercise, get up early, or be respectable.”

Oscar Wilde

“The older we get, the fewer things seem worth waiting in line for.”

 Will Rogers

“We must recognize that, as we grow older, we become like old cars –more and more repairs and replacements are necessary.”

 C.S. Lewis

“Old age is like a plane flying through a storm. Once you are aboard there is nothing you can do about it.”

Golda Meir

“I’m so old that my blood type is discontinued.” 

Bill Dane

“The older I get, the more clearly I remember things that never happened.

Mark Twain or Joe Biden

“Wisdom doesn’t necessarily come with age. Sometimes, age just shows up all by itself.”

Tom Wilson

 “Always be nice to your children because they are the ones who will choose your retirement home.”

Phyllis Diller

“I don’t plan to grow old gracefully. I plan to have face-lifts until my ears meet.”

Rita Rudner

“I’m at that age where my back goes out more than I do.”

 Phyllis Diller

 “Nice to be here? At my age, it’s nice to be anywhere.” 

 George Burns

“Don’t let aging get you down. It’s too hard to get backup” 

John Wagner

“First you forget names, then you forget faces, then you forget to pull your zipper up, then you forget to pull your zipper down.”

 Leo Rosenberg

“Aging seems to be the only available way to live a long life.” 

 Kitty O’Neill Collins

“Old people shouldn’t eat health foods. They need all the preservatives they can get.” 

 Robert Orben

“It’s important to have a twinkle in your wrinkle.” 

Unknown

“At my age, flowers scare me.” 

George Burns

“I have successfully completed the thirty-year transition from wanting to stay up late to just wanting to go to bed.”

 Unknown

“At age 20, we worry about what others think of us… at age 40, we don’t care what they think of us… at age 60, we discover they haven’t been thinking of us at all.”

Ann Landers

“When I was young, I was called a rugged individualist. 

When I was in my fifties, I was considered eccentric. 

Here I am doing and saying the same things I did then, and I’m labeled senile.”

George Burns

“I complain that the years fly past, but then I look in a mirror and see that very few of them actually got past.”

 Robert Brault

“The important thing to remember is that I’m probably going to forget.”

 Unknown

“As you get older three things happen. The first is your memory goes, and I can’t remember the other two.”

Sir Norman Wisdom

“It’s paradoxical that the idea of living a long life appeals to everyone, but the idea of getting old doesn’t appeal to anyone.”

Andy Rooney

“Birthdays are good for you. Statistics show that the people who have the most live the longest.”

 Larry Lorenzon

“The older I get, the better I used to be.” 

Lee Trevino

“You know you’re getting old when you can pinch an inch on your forehead.”

John Mendoza

“I was thinking about how people seem to read the bible a lot more as they get older, and then it dawned on me—they’re cramming for their final exam.”

 George Carlin

“I don’t feel old. I don’t feel anything until noon. Then it’s time for my nap.”

Bob Hope

“I’m 59 and people call me middle-aged. How many 118-year-old men do you know?”

Barry Cryer

“I don’t do alcohol anymore—I get the same effect just standing up fast.”

 Anonymous

“By the time you’re 80 years old you’ve learned everything.  Then, you only have to remember it.”

George Burns

“Old age isn’t so bad when you consider the alternative.” 

 Maurice Chevalier

“Getting older. I used to be able to run a 4-minute mile, bench press 380pounds, and tell the truth.”

Conan O’Brien

“I have reached an age when, if someone tells me to wear socks, I don’t have to.”

 Albert Einstein

“Grand children don’t make a man feel old, it’s the knowledge that he’s married to a grandmother that does.”

J. Norman Collie

“You know you are getting old when everything hurts, and what doesn’t hurt doesn’t work.”

 Hy Gardner

“When your friends begin to flatter you on how young you look, it’s a sure sign you’re getting old.”

 Mark Twain

“You know you are getting old when everything either dries up or leaks.”

Joel Plaskett

“There’s one advantage to being 102, there’s no peer pressure.”

Dennis Wolfberg

“I’ve never known a person who lives to be 110 who is remarkable for anything else.”

Josh Billings

“At my age ‘getting lucky’ means walking into a room and remembering what I came in for.”

Unknown

“Old age is when you resent the swimsuit issue of Sports Illustrated because there are fewer articles to read.”

 George Burns

“The idea is to die young as late as possible.” 

 Ashley Montagu

“You know you’re getting old when you stoop to tie your shoelaces and wonder what else you could do while you’re down there.”

George Burns

“People ask me what I’d most appreciate getting for my eighty-seventh birthday. I tell them, a paternity suit.”

George Burns  

“Time may be a great healer, but it’s a lousy beautician.” 

Anonymous