Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
The usual places are empty
Our air is still
No soft noises are heard
None are there for a treat or a pill.
Toys are collected and put away
Wondering if they’ll be needed on another day.
Food bowls are cleaned, beds are washed,
Unopened food is given away,
The others are tossed.
Quiet shadows every motion and move
You think of memories
Which help and soothe.
But the faces remain, always there
In the empty space, an empty chair.
If my grip on reality is sure and we’re sharing the same reality, today is Satyrda, June 28, 2025. A strong sun lords over us with a hot hand. Mid 80s to upper 80s is the sun’s upper reach for us. Funny, but Mid 80s to upper 80s was what I remember as a new house price range in South Carolina in the early 80s when we lived there during a military assignment.
Upon scouring the news for lowlights yesterday and cringing through the Roberts Court rulings, The Neurons told me, “That’s it. We’re out of here.” To where, I asked the squirrelly gray beasts. “Kathmandu,” they replied. To reinforce their notion, they sprang the Bob Seger song on the morning mentl music stream. So here we go with the fifty year old song, “Katmandu”.
Seger related that the song was born out of frustration and exasperation, so it’s wholly fitting for this era for many of us. At least, in theory. The Neurons were speaking out of my disappointment with my country, the United States. I love it and don’t plan to move away, but the current political atmo leaves me panting for some friggin’ other place, at least until TACO madness has subsided and we get back to being a democratic republic.
Time to rock and roll another summer day in the U.S.A. Hope you’re dealing, wherever we’re you’re at. Cheers
TL/DR: AI is fucking up. And that’s fucking us up.
One of my childhood passions were cars. From that grew an intense interest in auto racing. It wasn’t something that I shed as an adult. Passions aren’t easily surrendered. Yeah, as an adult, auto racing, with its environmental impacts, ridiculously increasing costs, and inherent dangers, lacked substantial commonalities with the human condition and the challenges Earth and humanity face. I excused myself for decades with the subterfuge that we don’t want a vanilla existence. Year after year I followed sports car and Formula 1 racing. For a while, I also hunted NASCAR, IMSA, and IndyCar news. But sports car and Formula 1 was it for me. As I aged, the passion became muted and dulled. Part of that was that the sport just wasn’t as competitive. Aspects of its relevance to real existence also troubled me, though, and that grew.
One of the Internet’s commercial strengths is that it notices what you look at, and then baits you with more of the same. The net noticed I checked out LeMans this year. It came up with reminders about Ford’s victories at LeMans in the 1960s via the Ford GT. That effort was highlighted not long ago in a movie called Ford v Ferrari.
A story about Ford’s 1967 LeMans victory grabbed my eye. Driving a red Ford GT Mark IV, American drivers Dan Gurney and A.J. Foyt took LeMans in record form. I built a model of the car within a year. It sat on my dresser among my other models until I moved out of Mom’s house four years later. Eagerly, I read the story. Then I wondered: how many drivers have won both the 24 Hours of LeMans and the Indy 500?
I put it to AI; how many drivers have won both the 24 Hours of LeMans and the Indy 500?
AI responded, slightly paraphrasing, Lewis Hamilton won it in 2011 and Max Verstappen has won it four times recently.
WTF?
I know that Lewis Hamilton has never raced at Indy or LeMans. Nor has Max V. Both are Formula 1 champions.
The entire AI answer was fantastically fucking wrong. Now, if I didn’t know the sport, I may have been fooled by the answer. Which pushes the wonderment in me, how many people consult the Internet for truthful and factual information and are being fed wrong answers? How many lack the resources or awareness to challenge the veracity of what they’re being fed?
For shits and grins, I asked AI again. This time, one source said, “…while only Foyt has won both the 24 Hours of Le Mans and the Indianapolis 500.” Another told me, “Only one driver has won both the Indianapolis 500 and the 24 Hours of Le Mans: Graham Hill.”
So, both answers are wrong, because I knew before asking that Foyt and Hill were the only drivers who accomplished this.
Wrong info on the net is not new. We’ve joked for years, “It was on the Internet so it must be true, ha, ha.”
But the shit is getting deep. The way that wrong information is advancing and spreading with AI’s gentle assistance, the joke is now on us.
Two nights past, I dreamed I was being snatched. I was arriving at work each time, which amounted to showing up at a desk where a computer was set up. Others were there — all men, most in suits and ties — setting up their own computers or opening briefcases, talking on phones, or grabbing one another for a quick consult. No one noticed me. I was fine with that.
In the first snatch, a white, muscular man with short hair, wearing a sky-blue shirt, came up and grabbed me. As I struggled against him, demanding who he was, he carried me away. That’s essentially what happened with each snatching, and I think I was snatched a dozen times. A different man grabbed me every time but they were always white, with short hair (usually brown or blonde), wore a sky blue shirt, and had red arm tattooes.
But my reactions grew different, and I grew aware of the impending snatch attack, so the circumstances varied in degrees. During that first one, I was completely surprised. The second one, I was briefly startled but had time to worry about my wife, who was working at another space some distance away. The third time found me exasperated that it was happning again, and had me telling others to inform my wife what happened. The fourth instance, I was more resigned but appealed to the men around me to help me stop what was going on. That happened several more times. Each time I was taken, I was irritated that nobody paid attention, but that’s essentially where it ended; then I would arrive at work and get taken again. By the ninth time, I was expecting it and trying to figure out what to do to stop them. By the twelth, I tried immediately running away when I arrived. My captor expected that and I was easily taken.
Thinking about the dream the following morning, I thought it represented frustrations. At home, executing my budgeteer persona, I fix things and more things break. Likewise, I go to the doctor for one issue, get it resolved, and another arises. I feel like I’m on a bad news conveyor belt. My wife’s health is declining. Mom and Dad are both in spirals of decreasing health and increasing concern and have been for half a decade plus. Personally, I feel frustrated and thwarted by my fiction writing efforts. Politically and economically, I see my nation and the greater world becoming mired in increasing chaos of growing intensity. Personal rights and responsibility seem to be shrinking. I don’t feel like I can do much about any of them. This, frankly, pisseds me off.
So, last night, I dreamed I was tearing things down and rebuilding them. This was being done via huge slabs. I don’t know the slabs’ materials, but they were sized like large pizza boxes. Extremely hard and heavy, they were in shades of gray or black. Light didn’t reflect off them. Each was marked in large bas relief with ‘2804’. I’m clueless about what 2804 means.
At first, I was simply moving them. One at a time, I’d picked one up and relocate it to a new position. As I was doing this, I began pausing to consider my actions and be more selective about what slab I picked up and where I put it. I also started re-arranging some slabs that I previously moved. After some period of doing this, I wondered, what am I doing? I heard a voice respond, “You’re rebuilding.”
I reacted, “Oh, okay, cool. That’s good.” Finishing, “I need to rebuild,” I resumed lifting and moving the blocks with new energy.
Dream end.
Some days, shit is happening, and all you can do is pretend to pursue the normal aspects of being. For one, war is hettin’ up in the Middle East or whatever you want to call it. It’s been a war zone for years. It’s usually a matter of who is going to strike back, how, and when. There will be violence, death, and destruction. The Middle East quagmire of religions, history, and tribes and factions are overstocked with tendencies to war.
Personally, dispiriting matters keep piling up in my world. I don’t write about all of them. Not going to start now. My basic bottom line which I return to again and again, is, this is life. Many of us — hell, I’ll go out on a limb and declare that most of us — go through this shit. I can only imagine how worse the shit is magnified if you’re suffering from serious diseases, homelessness, racism and other prejudice, discrimination, or hate. On paper, I have it pretty good but life is lived on a spectrum. We slide up and down it. I’m on the down side today.
We watched again a Neflix series on the gut and the biome’s influence on our brains and pains.* As part of this show, they talked about fecal transplants. Transplants were done by people who had problems and were seeking solutions. One woman used her boyfriend’s fecal material as her transplant source. She noted that he has ‘mental issues’ but didn’t specify more. Or maybe I spaced on it. I did catch her say that she began acting and feeling like him, emotionally unstable, anxious, and depressed. She quit using his shit and used her brother’s shit. After a week, she felt much better.
I imagine a future of routine fecal transplants. A partner on the computer says, “I’m ordering some groceries and things. Is there anything you need?”
“Yes, get me some new shit. I’m almost out of shit and I’m feeling it.”
“What shit do you want?”
“Same shit as last time. It should be in your order history.”
“Is it the Tom Cruise brand Improved Shit?”
“Yes, that’s the shit, but get a big jar. I’m really feeling it.”
“You got it.”
I think about whose shit I might order. Maybe Taylor Swift, Tom Brady, or Patrick Mahomes. I pity the fool who tries mine. But then again, I know people with some shit that’s a lot worse.
*The Neflix series is You Are What You Eat: A Twin Experiment
It’s an oddity. Today, the coffee shop is filled with men.
Three regulars are among the dozen men. We regulars do our regular things with computers, eyes intense and intent on screens, fingers doing a keyboard dance, sometimes shifting a mouse tango.
The rest are pairs of men. Male couples. They’re all in deep and low-key conversations. Youngest looking are some twenty somethings. Most have ages hovering in the upper thirties to low sixties. I’m too far from any to overhear conversations. There’s little laughter among them. These are serious topics at hand.
Two by two, the meetings are wrapped up. The participants depart. Soon, it’s just me and one other regular, busy with our computers. A small break ensues. Quiets drapes the business. New people arrive. New orders are given. It’s a mix of males and females.
Coffee shop life resumes its normal posturing.
This dream had quite a jumbled collection.
It starts with me returning. I was off to the military; now I was back. People had been staying in my place while I was away, but that was done with my permission. Things were a little out of hand because they’d treated it like a party crib. I had a stern conversation with them; yes, they were welcome to stay there. Sure, it was okay to have people over, but they’d start trashing things, and that wasn’t appreciated. They were very understanding in return.
Then I was tidying. I had shelves of old electronics, mostly stereos, cassette and 8-track tape players, CD players, and VHS players. The dust on some were thick. As I resettled back into life, I exclaimed to myself, “Man, I have a lot of gear here. How the hell did I get it all?”
A young boy came up. He didn’t pay any attention to me. He seemed to be looking for something so I asked, “What’s up?”
The boy answered, “I’m looking for a music player for my friend. He wants one for his bicycle.”
I said, “I think I can help him.” I pulled out a small black box and dusted it off. “This has a radio and tape player. It’s small and he can mount it on his handlebars.” I looked more closely at the black box. “It also has record player on it so I don’t know if he would want it.”
“That’s okay,” the boy said. Taking it, he went away.
In a weird dream shift, my place was both outside and inside. I worried about my cats. I had two, and they were a plush gray with golden eyes. Both were young. I looked around for them. They were busy investigating things just outside and playing. When I called their names, they hastened to me, which mitigated my worries.
Then, I worried about my schedule. I needed to call and find out where and when I needed to be for work. Going through my cluttered place, I picked up the phone and dialed 633 while going to my desk to find what the final four numbers were. A woman answered the phone, “Operator intersect.”
I laughed. “Sorry, I didn’t expect that,” I said. “What’s an operator intersect?”
The operator explained, “The call is diverted to the operator whenever the call is not completed but the line is open in case someone has an emergency but can’t finish dialing.”
I answered, “Sorry, I just don’t know where I’m calling. My bad.”
Next, I thought, oh, I should call Mom. So I did. Answering before a ring finished, she said, “About time.” No hello or anything else.
Irritation jumped through me. “Wait, are you pissed because I didn’t immediately call you when I got home? Is that what’s going on here?” She did not answer. I said, “You’re being childish. I’m going to count down from five. If you don’t start talking before I’m done with the countdown, I’m hanging up. Understand?”
No answer.
I began the countdown. When I said, “Three,” I went on, “Oh, forget this. This is stupid. You’re an adult, Mom, and you’re behaving like a child.”
Then I hung up on my mother.
Dream end.
Michael Seidel, writer 