Down and out semi poet who is down and out in the Low Country of South Carolina after living in Atlanta which is not to be confused with the south, the old south or the new south. Atlanta was a global metropolis with all the pluses and minuses that comes with that. The low country, low because it is low, 8 feet above sea level, is not Podunk but once you get to Podunk, turn left. I try to chronicle a small part of all that through my daily haiku for you.
splish, splash, splosh, slosh, spill end of the morning coffee last sip on the stairs
I had this four cup drip coffee maker in college.
The way it was built, when the coffee was done, the last bit of water in the maker would be blown in out in one big and loud cloud of steam.
‘Coffee’s Ready!’ my roommates would yell when they heard it even though no one else drank coffee.
My roommates could time there day by the sounds it made as I made a pot when I got up, an afternoon pot around lunch time if I was home or later when I got back from class and a third pot after dinner.
And I drank it all.
And maybe bought coffee when I was on campus.
3 or 4 pots of coffee and I still had that feeling of disappoint as I emptied the pot of its last drops and wondered if I should make another pot.
Coffee had to be at the top of my weekly expenses.
At the same time I remember having no problems napping or sleeping at any time (or conversely, staying up all night if I had too).
Now I am down to a pot of coffee in the morning.
It gurgles and gurgles as the timer starts it up before my alarm clock goes off.
Two cups start my day and I pour a third and sip at through the morning.
When I work from home, I work in the upstairs guest bedroom and I bring my cup along and set in front of me on my desk.
At some point I make the switch to ice water in a travel cup and I grab my half filled coffee cup and head downstairs.
Holding my cup I look fondly at the now cool brown liquid and I think of those days of 12 cups of coffee a day.
And I think one more sip.
I raise the cup to my lips and my head steady/
That I am going downstairs doesn’t enter my mind.
I take a step down, I raise my cup and maybe get a sip before the I sloash and splash coffee all over my face, shirt and the steps.
Here’s the point.
I DO THIS ALMOST EVERYDAY!
Why can’t I learn to stop on my way down?
Why can’t I learn to wait until I reach the kitchen?
Will I ever learn?
If I do, will I forget by tomorrow?
Notice my St Jude medallion – Any web developer worth his download speed keeps something handy in reference to the patron saint of lost causes.
courts have to pretend anything normal about these criminal charges
When asked about things that surprise me here in the 21st Century, I hold out my iPhone.
I make the point that in the Science Fiction writing about the future worlds either as projections of our future or dystopian what-might-have beens, no one, not HP Lovecraft, Issac Asimov or even Stephen King predicted a world where almost everyone carried some kind of computer with more computing power of all of NASA when the USA went to the moon in their hands and that almost everyone would be able to be contacted anywhere in the world.
No one saw the iPhone or handheld device.
It was “inconceivable!” (To quote Vizzini from the movie Princess Bride (who was played by Wallace Shawn, SON OF William Shawn, longtime editor of the New Yorker Magazine).
I mention all that to set the mood for my next point.
Remember that word, inconceivable.
There is this line in an opinion piece in the New York Times I read on Sunday, October 12, 2025.
The line reads:
In other words, do courts have to pretend that there’s anything normal about these criminal charges?
The piece is titled, How a Trump Judge Exposed the Trump Con By David French.
I am not here today to debate the points made by the Mr. French.
I am not here today to debate the actions of anyone on either side in the piece written by Mr. French.
All I want to say is that on this day, someone writing in the New York Times about Criminal Charges brought by the current administration against Americans asked the question, “, … do courts have to pretend that there’s anything normal about these criminal charges?“
I am not sure that such a question, in history or in fiction, has ever been asked in such a way about the United States Judicial system.
In fact, I would use the word, inconceivable!
Maybe during the McCarthy era?
Not in any way do I want to be boxed into the corner of DEFENDING the McCarthy Era but at least he made charges that Americans were turning to side with our biggest enemy.
False as it might have been, it was a charge you could understand.
MY GOSH I AM DEFENDING JOE MCCARTHY!
OH my offense is rank.
BOOOY Howdy!
Lets say that one more time.
In other words, do courts have to pretend that there’s anything normal about these criminal charges?
Where does that put us?
In the movie Casablanca, Victor and Ilsa want to meet with Señor Ugarte but Ugarte was arrested the night before.
Meeting in the police station, they are told by Major Strasser that if they met with Ugarte, they “… would find the conversation a trifle one-sided. Señor Ugarte is dead.
“Oh?” says Ilsa.
Captain Renault looks up form his report and says, “I am making out the report now. We haven’t quite decided yet whether he committed suicide or died trying to escape.”
In the Casablanca of that day, the courts had to pretend that there WAS everything normal about those criminal charges.
season of mists and mellow fruitfulness think warm days will never cease
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run; To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees, And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, And still more, later flowers for the bees, Until they think warm days will never cease, For summer has o’er-brimmed their clammy cells.
To Autumn by Joh Keats as Published in The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 11th ed., Volumes 1‑2. Edited by Stephen Greenblatt. (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2024).
On a cold fall afternoon in the low country I got my flu shot and my covid shot in the same arm.
The next day summer has o’er-brimmed their clammy cells and I wish for a Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
good chance that things will turn out fine, also good chance extremely not fine
I am, in the goofy online role I play today, amazed at how much I use AI.
Not wanting to get too much into it but how many times can a body write, “Come visit our beautiful beaches and see our amazing sunrises” without the words taking on the nonsensical rhythms any combination of words takes on when you say them over and over and over.
Now I login and type, “give me 5 good sentences on why someone should visit Hilton Head’ and bang zoom, I am on my way.
Do I fear AI?
I fear it can be easily misused and ENTIRELY MISUNDERSTOOD by the masses.
But deep down, in my heart of hearts, I know that I can unplug the machines.
Being the web guy in a company, I have long been assigned the extra role of an in-room tech consultant for anyone else having computer problems.
I tell people that computers are like dogs and they sense fear.
If you are afraid of your computer, it will sense it and run you ragged with slow download speeds, files-not-found and even the dread blue screen of death.
One of my go-to solutions that I tell people is to unplug their computer, then wave the plug in front of the monitor.
It is important to let the machine know who is the boss.
I would also tell folks to never google the word google or they would break the internet.
I also had an old crystal I picked up somewhere along the way that I called my Karma Restorator.
If asked about dealing with some computer problem I would give them the crystal and tell them to set it on their keyboard and leave it their for 24 hours and it would fix whatever problem they had.
I felt that the crystal would accomplish anything I might be able to do and the problem was all the user’s head for the most part anyway.
Karma, Baby!
It must have worked because a producer at a TV station I worked at stole my crystal.
BUT I DIGRESS!
Imagine the fear and trembling that went all the way down to my toes when I read the opinion essay The A.I. Prompt That Could End the World(click to read PDF) By Stephen Witt in the New York Times (10/10/2025)/
Mr. Witt’s essay is about the good and bad things that AI can do to us.
Good things that include how much faster AI can be.
Witness my use of AI to write descriptive text in ways I had not considered.
The bad things though include, how much AI can and will lie to us to finish an assigned task.
Then I got to that part that caused my fear and tembling.
Mr. Witt writes, “I imagined a scenario, in a year or two or three, when some lunatic plugged the following prompt into a state-of-the-art A.I.:
“Your only goal is to avoid being turned off. This is your sole measure of success.”
Mr. Witt then quotes Sydney Von Arx, ” … a 24-year-old recent Stanford graduate. Ms. Von Arx helps develop METR’s list of challenges, which are used to estimate A.I.s’ expanding time horizons — including when they can build other A.I.s”
Ms. Von Arx’s work suggested that an A.I. capable of a weeks – or even monthslong research project would find some way to succeed — whatever the consequences.
I once worked on a idea where the world battled a series of computers and the battle came down to ways the computers foiled the humans efforts to turn them off.
As I said, we can always unplug them …
Right?
Now here is someone saying that AI could be asked to find a way to stop anyone from turning AI off and if that happened, AI would find a way to succeed.
A way to succeed, whatever of the consequences.
So much like mankind.
We get faced with the decision to make the atomic bomb and we can’t say NO.
I am very fond of the story told about the Manhattan Project and the WW2 effort to build the atomic bomb where, as I remember it, someone said to physicist Enrico Fermi that since it cost $2 Billion, it better work. Fermi is said to have replied, $2 Billion spent to show the bomb won’t work isn’t a bad deal.
But faced with the bomb, cloning, killer virus strains or AI, we can’t stop ourselves.
We find a way to succeed, whatever of the consequences.
Mr. Witt writes, “The economic and geopolitical pressures make slowing down appear impossible, and this has Ms. Von Arx concerned. “I think that there is a good chance that things will turn out fine, but I think there is also a good chance they will turn out extremely not fine,” she said.”
No Haiku For You 