Tech Reflection - Two Sides of AI

“This Halloween, I’m dressing up as generative AI. I’m going to show up to the party without a costume and just start stealing pieces of other people’s outfits.”
— An X dispatch my niece screenshotted for me

Introduction

Is AI the amazing new technology that’s changing the world, or a petty thief that just steals people’s ideas and passes them off as its own? Does it actually carry out anything approaching thought, or is it just a zombie, stalking humans’ digital relics and muttering “brains … brains … brains” as it angles to get a piece of us?

In this post, I examine the two most fundamental functions AI chatbots can carry out, and draw a distinction between the two. I believe this can give us useful guidance in deciding how we ought to use this game-changing technology.

Ecclesiastes vs. Barthelme

AI is evolving fast, perhaps faster than our ability to understand it. I’m having to adapt; for example, I’ve stopped spelling it “A.I.” because leading media outfits like The New Yorker and The New York Times have now eschewed the periods. So if you’re reading this on your phone in a sans serif font you may have initially thought I was writing about there being two sides of Albert or Alfred. I asked ChatGPT what to do about this ambiguity between a capital “i” and a lowercase “L,” and it suggested I could “kern or tweak the glyphs.” I’m not exactly an expert at kerning glyphs, so I asked the chatbot how. It gave me all kinds of strategies, the best one for my blog format (HTML) being this:

AI <!-- default -->

A<span style="letter-spacing:0.05em;">I</span> <!-- slightly looser -->

So you can see, GPT is right there with an answer when queried about a technical operation that has been done before. But what about doing something creative and original? This is a fundamental distinction and I am going to propose we look at AI from two largely separate perspectives, for which I’ve invented labels:

• Operational mode – I thought about calling this Ecclesiastes mode, for “no new thing under the sun.” This mode is about helping with a nuts-and-bolts operation (e.g., HTML scripting, DNS routing) that somebody else, probably many people in fact, already figured out and documented out there on the Internet for AI to gobble up, distill, pretty up, and present. Here, AI is basically a really good large language model that excels at combing through gobs of chaff to find answers, and organizes and summarizes information very clearly. I wouldn’t say it’s as parasitic as what’s suggested by the X epigram above, because lots of people freely post technical stuff to the Internet just to be helpful, without thinking of it as sacrosanct intellectual property.
• Creation mode – I think of this as Barthelme mode, named for the writer Donald Barthelme, because I think he’s the epitome of totally original, wacky, one-of-a-kind creative types with an absolutely distinctive voice. In other words, this is the intelligence that I am quite convinced AI could never approach. By creation I mean using the full capability of your own mind to advance ideas that are new, and yours.

The trouble is, many people don’t make any distinction between these two general areas of AI, so on the basis of its prowess as a natural language search engine, they are be led to believe it can do a perfectly good job at creation mode. And since most people aren’t English majors, and in fact don’t respect English majors, AI platforms get to roll out some pretty inferior writing and everybody thinks it’s genius. (This widespread lack of sophistication is also why McDonald’s makes so much money.)

So what?

For many years, as I’ve lamented at length in these pages, kids have been told all the jobs are in tech, and they need to study STEM. And now, many of the kids who dutifully followed these marching orders are graduating from college with Computer Science degrees and not getting jobs, and tech is laying off gobs of people. Next time I meet a STEM major I’m gonna ask him, “Computer Science? What are you gonna do with that?”

So how did STEM go from meal ticket to a food stamp? Well, I think it’s largely because AI is actually getting pretty good at the operational mode. It writes software so well, all industry needs is a seasoned coder to check it. Will we still have seasoned coders in 20 or 30 years, when all the current ones have retired and nobody has come through the ranks to replace them? Probably not, but that’s a whole other blog post somebody has surely already written. (I did blog about ChatGPT’s prowess with operational mode earlier this year, here.)

So as we look at AI, and particularly its role in our personal and professional lives, I think we need to ask ourselves what we have to offer that is rare and valuable, and how AI can help. Specifically, I believe we should be asking the question: how do we use operational AI to handle rote stuff, so we have more time to develop our unique, original ideas—so as to bring out our inner Barthelme?

What to use AI for

I have to confess, I love AI for light research when I’m blogging. The kernel of my posts always comes from my own brain, usually from pondering all kinds of things while I’m out on a solo bike ride. But ChatGPT is a great way to chase down and pinpoint something I had vaguely committed to memory. For example, when working on a recent post I asked it, “Can you track down the Lore Segal quote from ‘Her First American’ about ‘protocol is the art of not doing what comes naturally’?” I probably could have found this with Google, but the AI helped (and might have been indispensable here had I not remembered the name of the novel). ChatGPT was also super helpful when I was writing my post on induction ranges, in researching certain facts (e.g., energy efficiency info and whether government rebates are available).

AI is also pretty helpful at work, where I use a “walled garden” version my employer provides. (It doesn’t use any of my chats as training data for the AI’s ongoing education.) In fact, my employer exhorts all us employees to use AI every day. It’s like with any great tool: we’re expected to work more efficiently because we have it, so we’d better use it well. Recently, I took several product specification documents for different Internet hardware devices, fed them into an AI utility, and asked it to read them all, highlight the differences among the different makes and models, and tell me which one I want for xyz purpose. This was much faster than poring through everything myself, which is a decidedly operational task. The report it generated was clear and reasonably concise, and probably won’t be read very carefully anyway. In fact, someone will probably upload it to a chatbot and have it summarized. All this is fine with me.

One other great use for AI chatbots is to ask them for instructions for quotidian technical matters in your personal life, like disabling the child lock on your new microwave oven, charging your new bike’s electronic shifting, or restoring your playlist after updating your smartphone’s MP3 app. Sure, these are things you could look up on YouTube, but often that search can be tricky, and the videos can be agonizingly slow. The following video tutorial, which is crisp and concise and beautifully shot, is perhaps the exception that proves the rule:

I guess one benefit with YouTube is it’s less likely to hallucinate. I asked ChatGPT if my bike’s brake/shift levers have button cell batteries, and it explained in great detail how there are actually wires running from the battery pack to each lever, so they get recharged along with the derailleurs. The chatbot even drew me a nice diagram to illustrate this. Alas, it was hallucinating: the levers totally do have button cell batteries that need to be periodically replaced.  But all this being said, it’s easy enough to sanity check this kind of output, and I usually get a good answer from AI when I can’t locate a product owner’s manual or don’t feel like leafing through the 50-page one that I have, trying to get past the 14 foreign language versions.

What NOT to do with AI

I think where people get into trouble with AI is when they try to get it to do their work for them, particularly writing documents or correspondence that they then pass off as their own. In some cases this is an ethical or even legal matter; as I described here, the New York Times is suing OpenAI for copyright violation, and I have firsthand evidence of ChatGPT essentially plagiarizing this blog. But I doubt you overmuch care about that. There are two bigger issues, I think:

• What this “creation mode” usage does to the quality of “your” writing
• What it does to the quality of your thinking

There’s this notion that you can ask a chatbot to write something for you, anything from an email to an invitation to a work report, and then you can just polish it up a bit, and you’re done. No more writer’s block! No more outlines, or worrying how to organize your thoughts! That might be okay for a very basic report, like what I described comparing features of tech hardware. But when you start from scratch with your own document, you’re not just leveraging AI’s impersonal, sprawling training data; you’re using your own—everything you’ve experienced, heard, read, and dreamt of. It’s your own personal muse, not the generic Internet one.

Honestly, for anything loftier than a rote technical document—that is to say, anything designed to edify, persuade, or entertain—haven’t you seen for yourself how AI can fail? Like, you’ll get this chipper invitation to a family reunion and it’s using corny phrases like “drum roll please” and joking about your family’s dance moves, and it just seems generic and clichéd? That’s all AI can do. It doesn’t know you or your family or friends well enough to say anything truly clever, and all the polish you want to give its rough draft won’t help. Your invitation will never have real style, along the lines of, “L— gets dibs on the guest room (which she may still anachronistically refer to as “her” “bedroom”) and its magnificent new king-sized guest bed. If you’re nice she might invite you to a slumber party there. Other guests can fight over the legendary Futon of Sand down in the home office. Beyond that, we have two large sofas for those interested in the college-esque party-‘til-dawn experience. We would not be offended if one or more parties were to seek a motel/hotel/AirBNB/VRBO, especially given the relatively small number of bathrooms here (i.e., one). Regarding rumors that the men are encouraged to pee in the backyard, this is true, but please stick to the planting beds and the fountain.” See how much better that is?

Now, you might be thinking, “Wait, I’m not a blogger and I wasn’t an English major. Cranking out an email or an essay may be easy enough for Dana, but I just want to get this task done and checked off.” But stop and think for a moment: what would you like to be good at, in life? Please tell me the answer isn’t just “typing good prompts into AI.” Wouldn’t you like to be articulate, interesting, and capable of thinking on your feet? Because what are you going to do at a cocktail party, or a job interview, or a non-virtual work meeting, when you don’t have a chatbot to help you, and that’s the habit you’ve let yourself fall into? The reality is, we get good at thinking by struggling to do it, for ourselves, the old fashioned way.

So let’s not undervalue written communication by outsourcing it to AI. The best case scenario is that it’ll do an inferior job, replacing what could have been original thought with a pile of trusty clichés and/or stealthily plagiarized, slyly anonymized content. The worst case scenario is that it’ll actually get good enough that you never have to write for yourself again, and your brain can atrophy to the point that you’re not even a thinker anymore … just a chatbot operator.

Because you don’t care

Gosh, I guess I drifted into high-and-mighty, pompous, full-on pontification there, and I feel pretty sheepish about it! Fortunately, I’m realistic enough to sense you snickering, and I know you’re going to turn right around and keep on using AI for whatever you can possibly think of. That being the case, check back next week because I’m going to catch you up on the latest AI technologies and how much they’ve improved since my last check-in. Whether your chatbot of choice is ChatGPT, Gemini, or Copilot, I’ll have you covered. Until then, I’ll be getting back to what I really enjoy in life: kerning glyphs.

Other albertnet posts on A.I.

• I, Chatbot
• Almost Intelligent – Part I
• Almost Intelligent – Part II
• Smartphones & Artificial Stupidity
• A.I. Smackdown – Moto vs. Cortana vs. Siri
• Could Artificial Intelligence Replace Writers? – Part 1
• Could Artificial Intelligence Replace Writers? – Part 2
• Could Artificial Intelligence Replace Writers? – Part 3
• A.I. Smackdown – English Major vs. ChatGPT – Part 1
• A.I. Smackdown – English Major vs. ChatGPT – Part 2
• Schooling ChatGPT
• Will A.I. Steal Our Jobs?
• Tech Check-In - How Good is the Latest A.I.? - Part I
• Tech Check-In - How Good is the Latest A.I.? - Part II
• What is ChatGPT Great At (and Not)?
• AI Smackdown – ChatGPT vs. Copilot vs. Gemini
• More AI Smackdown - ChatGPT, Copilot, & Gemini Write Poetry

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Email me here. For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

Because It Amuses Me: the albertnet Subhead

Introduction

My wife is starting a business, and recently read up on how to build a good website. This has given her some ideas for albertnet, one of which is to have some kind of subheading, beneath the masthead, that conveys the nature of this blog. I guess the subhead is meant to be kind of a slogan, or a mini-mission-statement. It should ideally answer the question of why the business exists: i.e., what is the point?

Having been thus encouraged to apply this idea to my blog, I’ve had to do some head-scratching. One result of this is the subhead you see above. At least, you should see it above, if I updated the template properly. In any case, you can see it below:

My thought process, including further examination of the question “why albertnet,” follows below. If you’ve ever wondered what the hell this blog is even about, this is your chance to (maybe kind of) find out.

Not a business

First and foremost, albertnet is not a business. Since I pay for web server storage and for my domain names, but receive zero revenue because I refuse to turn on AdSense advertising, this blog is actually a cost center for me. This means the answer to “why?” can’t simply be “because money.” Meanwhile, I can’t call this is a non-profit, pro bono type of business, because I have no way to tell if it’s actually benefitting anybody. To date, this blog has had about 890,000 page views, which pales in comparison to a great many blogs (though in absolute terms it strikes me as a somewhat large number). I’ve posted over 700 times over a period of about 14½ years, so 890,000 views is not a lot of bang for the buck. I also don’t know whether a page view represents somebody reading an entire post or just glancing at it and deciding it’s not the Google result he was looking for, and closing the page. So to assume I’m serving some market and satisfying readers would be pure guesswork.

Does that mean I shouldn’t bother trying to promote my blog? Not necessarily; after all, what writer doesn’t want to attract an audience? But that doesn’t mean I have the time or patience to work much at it. After all, technical tricks like search engine optimization and content marketing are not nearly as interesting to me as, say, writing. So what if I double my page views? From the financial perspective, two times zero is still zero. From the “actual reader” perspective, leading people here does not make them read.

What do readers want?

For a blogger—that is, the kind of writer who can’t simply look at book sales to see if he or she is successful—page view counts might seem very valuable. Data mining is certainly a popular practice in corporate America; I recall a big boss once advising me, “Metrics are important in this space.” (Man, I think I actually bruised my eye sockets at that moment, so forcefully did my eyes roll.) Another time my director was counseling my boss and me on a tough decision we had to make: “Go with your gut,” he said, and then—seeming to suddenly remember the business zeitgeist of the time— he quickly added, “but make sure it’s data-driven.” Um … okay.

Okay, fine, I’m poking fun at puffed-up pronouncements here, not the data behind them; what does page view data actually have to say? Could I use blog post popularity data like a mini-focus-group? Well, consider that my most popular post of all time, as of today, is “Spelling Focus: Is It ‘Kindergartner’ or ‘Kindergartener’?” which has racked up over 11,000 views. Should I conclude that this the kind of post albertnet readers love, and do more posts like it?

Well, not so fast. I think when companies make data-driven determinations like this, they’re using the feedback to try to react quickly to the market. But if this “Kindegart(e)ner” post were a TV show, it’d have been canceled immediately, because it was initially stillborn and generated practically zero page views for the first two years it was up:

This isn’t an isolated phenomenon: my most popular post of the past month (though it’s only so far climbed to fifteenth overall), “Selecting Bicycle Wheels – Part I,” was largely dormant for over nine years before suddenly gaining traction about six months ago. It’s been going strong ever since, getting almost 1,700 page views (about 60% of its total over time) in the last three months alone:

I see this again and again with albertnet posts: “Everest Challenge ‘Pep Talk’” took six and a half years to go anywhere and is now my tenth most popular ever; “The Problem With Soccer,” my eighth most popular, malingered for almost a decade before building any momentum. So why should I put any stock in page view stats, knowing that any of my 700+ posts could, theoretically, suddenly tip? All I can really glean from the data is that albertnet posts are not timely. But then, I knew that.

Now, it’s tempting to think I could set the numbers and timelines aside for a moment and simply look at the topics of my most popular posts and try to figure out what they have in common. Here are my top five of all time (as of today):

Hmmm. No single theme is jumping out at me. The top post is about spelling. Second most popular is a news story about a cyclist setting a world record. In third place is an essay about whether highbrow entertainment is actually superior to lowbrow. Fourth goes to a harrowing personal history about having my balls shaved and my vas deferens snipped. And the fifth most popular is a poem about bicycle gearing. In terms of topic, these posts almost couldn’t be more different.

Could it be some other characteristic they share, that makes them popular? Well, I guess they’re all arguably funny—but then, I try to find humor in everything I write about, and these posts aren’t necessarily standouts in that regard. The one about the cycling world record, for example, has a few decent gags but isn’t nearly as funny as, say, “From Farting Liberally to Liberal Arts: the Flatulence Files,” which has performed dismally, with under 600 posts total over nine years.

Should I care what readers want?

When I look over those top five albertnet posts, I can remember how each of them came about—and in every case, worrying about whether the topic would attract readers never crossed my mind:

• The corn cob post was a result of a cycling teammate of mine ribbing me about the randomness of my blog topics. As I wrote in the post’s introduction, he said, “You could write an essay about each cog, or better yet, you could write a sonnet, an ode to the corn cob!”
• The vasectomy post was simply a great yarn that demanded to be told; from the shaving of my scrotum, to the mysterious ConMed Hyfrecator machine, to the mid-procedure power outage, to the doctor declaring ominously, “I’ve got your vas,” the confluence of events was practically literary entrapment
• The “Highbrow vs. Lowbrow” post came about because I’d wasted a bunch of money at a museum and wanted something to show for it, if only an essay
• The cycling world record post almost didn’t happen … it seemed like an interesting opportunity to actually report on some breaking news, but I was feeling lazy, and prevaricated before finally deciding, what the hell, I’d go ride South Park Drive a bunch of times with a wannabe world record holder
• The “Kindergart(e)ner”post was simply to help out a curious friend, who puzzled over the spelling but wasn’t as keen as I to dive down rabbit holes after arcane knowledge

The common thread you can discern about those posts is that the likelihood of an enthusiastic audience wasn’t the point. And why should it be? Writing for me is simply a hobby, and how many hobbies are measured by some worldly notion of success? Does the fly fisherman care how many fish he catches (particularly if he always releases them, as many do)? Does the bird watcher mainly do it for the bragging rights? Does the Netflix binger hope his encyclopedic knowledge of “The Crown” will bring him glory at the office water cooler? No … we do these activities simply because we enjoy them.

The joy of not caring

At the end of the day, many if not most bloggers are amateurs. Many of us have probably considered writing for a living, but that means pleasing our publisher and editor and getting worked up about what critics have to say, and how well we’re selling. That sure seems like it could take the fun out of the activity. If I always write with some potential readership in mind, then I’m really doing this for them. But since this is my hobby, why shouldn’t it be about me? And if others happen to find my stuff useful, funny, or insightful, why not just consider that a bonus?

So if you’ve ever come to the end of an albertnet post—perhaps this very one!—and thought, “Man, that really didn’t do it for me,” don’t be disappointed. This blog was never about you. It’s about me, and more specifically, whatever I think it’d be fun to write about. And thus the answer to “why albertnet?” is a simple one: “because it amuses me.” (I hope it happens to amuse you, too.)

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Email me here. For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

More Q&A With a Grammar Lover

Dear Grammar Lover,

A friend put it to me that “fuck” is the most elastic word in the English language, since it can be a noun, adjective, verb, etc. I’m guessing it’s not truly unique in this, but I can’t really prove it. What’s your take?

Tom G, Brooklyn, NY

Dear Tom:

By my count, of the eight parts of speech, “fuck” can be used as five:

• Noun: I don’t give a fuck
• Verb: He really fucked it up
• Interjection: Fuck!
• Adjective: He doesn’t have a fucking clue
• Adverb: Are you fucking shitting me?

These last two are of course gerunds, which to me isn’t as wholly satisfying as if “fuck” itself could be used as an adjective or adverb. Thus, I’m tempted to say “well” is more elastic, because (as detailed here), it can also be used as five parts of speech … and it doesn’t need an –ing suffix. However, as one commenter pointed out, “well” isn’t actually one word. It’s a pair of homonyms. “Well” as in “good or satisfactory” is an entirely different word, with a different etymology, from “well” as in “shaft sunk into the ground.” So to my mind, “fuck” wins, at least between these two.

One more thing: bonus points go to “fuck” for being useful not just as an interjection, but as the most powerful interjection of all time.

Dear Grammar Lover,

In a previous column you asserted that it’s not always appropriate to correct somebody’s grammar. What’s the most tasteless, tactless context for a grammar correction you’ve ever encountered?

Wanda L, Las Cruces, NM

Dear Wanda,

When my father was dying of cancer, I suggested he write up his own obituary, just so I wouldn’t miss a life detail he felt was important. He inadvertently wrote his draft from the perspective of someone who was still alive, which is understandable … he may not have fully accepted yet that he would actually die. Accordingly, among my revisions were a number of necessary verb tense changes. I also included an email address so people could send tidings without wasting paper on cards (feeling that this was what my dad would have wanted). One of his friends sent a very terse email pointing out that I’d made a verb tense error in the obituary. The obituary had noted, “He has also done work for NBS/NIST on computer peripherals, power supplies, and the atomic clock” which, as this guy pointed out, should have read “He also did work for NBS/NIST….” The guy was right, of course; my sentence did not properly convey that my father was dead, dead, dead and would never do any more work for NBS/NIST, or anyone else, ever again. (The email itself didn’t say “dead, dead, dead,” but it might as well have.)

Since the email didn’t say anything else beyond pointing out the error, my (admittedly ungrammatical) response was quite brief: “Asperger’s much?” (Just kidding. I did not respond.)

Dear Grammar Lover,

In a previous column you said the silliest example of bad grammar you have come across in music is “exactly whom I’m supposed to be” in the song “Should I Stay or Should I Go” by the Clash. How is this any worse than Eminem repeatedly using the non-word “insaneness” in the song “Brainless”?

Sean C, Boston, MA

Dear Sean,

For one thing, using a non-word isn’t the same class of error as using “whom” incorrectly; “insaneness” is more like a playful stylistic stretch in the Ogden Nash vein. And this non-word opened the door for Eminem to rhyme with “brainless” and “pain in the anus,” whereas the Clash’s goof didn’t accomplish anything. Besides, Eminem freely acknowledges the poetic liberty; in a muted aside at the end of the song, some nameless adversary says, “‘Insaneness’ ain’t even a word you stupid fuck,” to which the singer replies, “Neither is ‘ain’t.’” Meanwhile, at least two dictionaries (such as this one, for example) do include “insaneness” as a legit word. And above all, the whole point of the song is that the singer is brainless, so why wouldn’t he use a non-word?

Dear Grammar Lover,

What do you make of “their” as a singular possessive pronoun? I know this has long been used when the speaker doesn’t wish to specify one sex or another, but it’s technically wrong and can cause confusion, such as with singular vs. plural. Doesn’t clarity trump convenience here? Can’t we all agree that “their” as a singular pronoun is just plain wrong?

John S, San Leandro, CA

Dear John,

I try to avoid using “their” to refer to an unnamed or hypothetical person, preferring “his or her” or some other way around the construction. But I haven’t traditionally worried too much about other people doing this, as it doesn’t tend to cause that much confusion, really. For example, “Everyone must bring their workbook” could imply that a bunch of students share a single workbook … but common sense should easily put that vagueness to rest.

Things get a bit more complicated around the more recent trend of using a plural pronoun for an individual who doesn’t wish to identify as one sex or another. For example, a non-binary person may request that people use “they” or “their” to refer to “them.” This plural pronoun begets a plural verb, to achieve subject-verb agreement, which can also add confusion.

I will cautiously assert that spoken grammar evolves more quickly than formal, written grammar, so if we’re looking for what’s officially “correct,” it’s useful to take after the dictionary publishers and see what’s in print in a mainstream magazine written for an educated audience. (I wouldn’t look to “Us” magazine, which is all about celebrities, because they don’t even get their own name right; the magazine should be called “Them.”) So, as I’d done when trying to determine the definitive spelling of “kindergartner,” I looked for non-gendered pronouns in “The New Yorker.” Consider this passage from a recent article:

    Caro Murphy … said that a Disney rep had told them not to talk about their work at the park, so we spoke about LARPs in general terms. “There is this tension between the commercial part of LARP and the community part,” they said.

The word “them” confused me a bit initially because I thought perhaps it referred to Murphy plus one or more colleagues previously mentioned or implied. But the confusion was dispelled when the quote was followed by “they said.” Obviously this was not two or more persons speaking in unison.

Still, this new usage can get a bit confusing when obvious clues like that quotation aren’t provided. This was the case in the previous paragraph of the same article, which coincidentally involved another non-binary interviewee. And more confusion arose later, with Kes, a LARPer whom the writer and her colleague Tim met onboard a Disney theme park spaceship:

     [Tim] told me he thought that Kes might be a cast member. He’d seen her being chummy with Croy in the engineering room.

     I [Googled] the name of the LARPer Disney had just hired. I edged around the crowd. “Caro?” I whispered to Kes.

     “Yes!” Murphy said, grinning.

Some of the confusion here comes from a single person being referred to by three different names in the span of seven words, which has nothing to do with pronouns. But the earlier bit about “her being chummy with Croy” did complicate things. Kes, when in character, may have identified as female, unless the writer just made an assumption. But when out of character, Murphy prefers they/them. The writer, when composing the article, knew that Kes was Murphy and thus could have said “them” instead of “her,” but this would have spoiled the surprise of the secret identity.

I got some good advice once in a writing class, which is that a writer should never make the reader do extra work unless there’s a good reason. So is honoring the preference of a source a good reason? Of course! Interviewees are at the crux of journalism (and in this case in particular, Murphy was taking some risk, having been told by Disney not to talk about their work). Meanwhile, professional courtesy aside, I think acknowledgement of any human’s self-identity is more important than ease of reading comprehension. Yes, this can mean extra work for the reader, especially for those of us with a lifelong habit of thinking about gender as a very cut-and-dried, binary matter, but isn’t this kind of work good for us, as we grapple with the more complicated reality?

Dear Grammar Lover,

How good are the grammar checkers in Microsoft Word and Google Docs?

Linda S, Broomfield, CO

Dear Linda,

Artificial Intelligence is really bad at grammar. If you asked A.I. to diagram a sentence it simply couldn’t. It is powerless to understand context, so its suggestions can seem practically random. Thus, software grammar checkers are pretty much worthless.

To validate this assertion, I ran a Microsoft Word grammar check against a recent blog post, and then ran the same post through the grammar checker in Google Docs. In theory, both programs should flag the same “errors,” right? After all, if you handed an essay to two different human newspaper or magazine editors, the feedback on grammar and spelling would be similar, one to the next. What I found with the software was that a) there was zero overlap in feedback between the two grammar checkers, and b) most of their suggestions were flat-out wrong.

Here are some of the “errors” flagged by Word (click to enlarge):

As you can see, Word was wrong in every single case. I sincerely hope nobody is trying to learn grammar by reviewing this software’s suggestions and rationale.

Google did a bit better, finding one bona fide error (I had “other the internal” instead of “other internal”), and only making four incorrect suggestions. One suggestion was particularly inane: in the sentence “I considered his feat from the perspective of coach,” Google suggested I change “feat” to “feet.” Why does this software think I’d be looking at a rider’s feet? Does it assume coaches, and/or writers, are likely to have a foot fetish? The less facetious question is this: as an educated human, why would I ever outsource my editing to software that makes so many mistakes?

Dear Grammar Lover,

In a previous column you said the silliest instance of bad grammar you’ve found in rock music is “exactly whom I’m supposed to be” in the song “Should I Stay or Should I Go” by the Clash. How is this any worse than “If looks could kill they probably will” in “Games Without Frontiers” by Peter Gabriel?

Simon Taylor, London, UK

Dear Simon,

Indeed, this is a clear example of inconsistent verb tense, but why would you suppose it is unintentional? Not only does “will” create a nice internal rhyme with “kill,” but the sudden shift from the hypothetical subjunctive to the future indicative active creates the most jarring—and best—lyric in the whole song. It’s a similar effect to what the masterful novelist Muriel Spark achieves in her story “The Portobello Road” with the immortal line, “He looked as if he would murder me and he did.” In both cases, death goes from hypothetical to real in a split second. So Peter Gabriel’s verb shift isn’t just intentional; it’s brilliant. I wouldn’t say rules were made to be broken, but in the right hands they can be, and to good effect.

Got a question for the Grammar Lover? Click here.

A Grammar Lover is a syndicated journalist whose advice column, “Ask a Grammar Lover,” appears in over 0 blogs worldwide.

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About the Author

Introduction

Who is the guy behind albertnet? It has occurred to me that my so-called “complete” profile on Blogger doesn’t actually say much: just that my gender is “MALE” (their all-caps, not mine); that my Occupation is “specialist”; that I live in Albany, CA; and that I’m interested in cycling, food, literature, and parenting.

Of course you could learn all that from the blog itself, but that would take effort. Before making the commitment to spend any time on albertnet, I suppose you deserve the equivalent of the “ABOUT THE AUTHOR” blurb on the jacket of a book. That’s what this post is about.

About the author

DANA ALBERT is a graduate of UC Berkeley, where he earned a degree in English (not such a significant achievement since he grew up speaking English at home). He is a company man turned blogger (though still a company man) and is a regular contributor to albertnet. In fact, he is the regular contributor to albertnet. In addition, Albert’s Letters to the Editor have appeared in the Boulder Daily Camera, the Colorado Daily, the Rivendell Reader, and The New Yorker. He has also written holiday newsletters, chalkboard graffiti, lists of all kinds, and lots of checks. He lives in Albany, California.

(Hmmm. I don’t think that came off exactly right. Let me try again.)

About the author

DANA ALBERT is the author of “Everything You Wanted to Know About Getting A Vasectomy - But Were Afraid To Ask,” “Ode to the Corn Cob,” “Stop Pushing STEM,” and “From Farting Liberally to Liberal Arts - The Flatulence Files.” He has dreamed of winning the Man Booker Prize, The National Book Award, and the lottery.

(Gosh, that didn’t really work out either. Take three!)

About the author

COUNT DANA ALBERT was born on the family estate of Albertus Alberticus in the Pannonia province. He studied Barbaric languages and law at the Sorbonne but left before completing a degree. In 1985 he joined an artillery regiment in the South Orkney Islands. He took part in the Great Orkney Food Fight and after the defense of the Junior Enlisted mess hall table wrote “The Pizza Crust & Thousand Island Dressing Massacre,” which cemented his literary reputation. After leaving the army in 1988 he spent time in San Luis Obispo, California where he got involved in radio stations and bike shops, establishing himself as a world class troublemaker. Albert wrote two great blogs: albertnet and … okay, one blog. So far.

(Getting closer, but perhaps I ought to stick to the facts.)

About the author

DANA ALBERT is one of the top 30 million bloggers in the United States. His posts have been read less widely than the Bible, Shakespeare, and all other published works combined. His output has surpassed more than 1.5 million words, many of which have been read by others. His posts have been translated into dozens of foreign languages by countless users of Google Translate, surely. He died in 1976. Wait. Scratch that. He is alive and well. Relatively.

(Dang it! This is much harder than I thought! Bear with me…)

About the author

Born and raised in Boulder, Colorado during the ‘60s and ‘70s, DANA ALBERT made a full recovery and now lives in California. He is the author of albertnet, along with “Driver Keeps Warm by Seething About Chain Requirements,” “Campaign Signs – the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,” and, most recently, “Autocomplete Zeitgeist Revisited.” His work has been praised by family members and sarcastic critics alike.

(Nope. That’s not it.)

About the author

LINDSAY ALBERT’s delightful sketches atop the pages of albertnet have earned her a dedicated following of parents and grandparents, and a reputation as one of America’s finest blog illustrators under the age of twenty. Her work, alongside such posts as “Ask a Sinead O’Connor Fan,” “Never Discuss Politics,” and “Helping Teens Cope with COVID-19,” has surpassed even that of previous albertnet illustrators.

(Hmmm. Maybe I can actually use that. But it’d have to be alongside my own. So I have to keep working at mine.)

About the author

DANA ALBERT is a longtime staff writer at albertnet and a syndicated columnist. His columns, including “Ask a Sea Kayaker,” “Ask a Middle-Aged Guy,” and “Ask Dr. Tyre,” appear in more than zero blogs worldwide.

(Oh dear. Not quite there yet.)

About the author

DANA ALBERT is the author of an untold number of unread poems including “Ode to South Park,” “Urination Poetry,” “Ode on a Belly: Mine,” “Ode on a Chain Lube,” and “Ode on a Double-Edged Razor.” In 1989 he was nominated at the UC Santa Barbara Cycling Awards for “Most likely to form a rap group.” He was also considered, though not seriously, for an Honorable Mention in Retail Quarterly magazine for his essay “The Lotion Sniper.” He is almost unanimously reviled by hipster/poseur douchebags for his groundbreaking “Velominati’s ‘The Rules’ – Brilliance or BS?” and has been pestered by his children for almost two decades.

(Damn. That ain’t right.)

About the author

DANA ALBERT left his native land of Boulder, Colorado, to attend college in California in the late 1980s. His literary career was delayed by his dizzying climb up the corporate ladder (dizzying not due to heights achieved, but due to the ladder swinging around, and all that coffee besides). Albert is considered by many of his readers to be an authority on the spelling of “kindergartner.” He lives in Albany, California with his family, though his children keep moving away and his first cat died.

(Man, WTF. I think I’m getting worse at this.)

About the author

DANA ALBERT is a British-influenced unpublished short-story writer who was born in America and stayed. His first book, The Cowboys and Stagecoach, was indecipherable because he hadn’t yet learned the alphabet, and (probably as a result) it was never published. Albert won the Gold Plunger award for best writing about toilet emergencies, with such groundbreaking essays as “Train Trip – Part 3,” “Everest Challenge 2013 (Stage 2),” and “The Toilet Paper Hoarding Conundrum,” though he was subsequently disqualified due to conflict of interest, as he totally made up this contest and was the only entrant.

(Nope. Cannot use that. No way, no how.)

About the author

One of the twenty-first century’s most masterful prose stylists (according to his mother), DANA ALBERT was born at a hospital in June. After learning to read by essentially memorizing Cowboy Sam, Albert went on to be educated in an elementary school, following which he pursued a high school diploma, graduating on time in good standing, and then attended college at a university. Following his formal education he remained in the western hemisphere, where he launched a brilliant literary hobby. He has coached fifth graders in math; seniors in the use of the Android operating system; and high school kids in mountain biking. All of these activities are the rough equivalent of teaching literature at a prestigious university, at least as far as effort and noble intent are concerned.

(Yeah, I know, that pretty much went off the rails.)

About the author

DANA ALBERT is the bestselling author of the Princess Dariella series of children’s books, the basis for the hit Netflix original series Dariella, in his dreams. He would be the recipient of the Food Writers of America Rubber Spatula award for amateur food memoirs, if any such thing existed, based on the potential success of his essays “Easy Recipes for College Kids” and “Homemade Pasta.” He would go on to contribute to the Hulu/BBC adaptation of “My Humiliating Senior Prom,” if any such project were undertaken. He lives in Albany, California with his wife, one of his kids, his cat, and probably about 100 species of arthropods, if his home is typical.

(Perhaps there is a reason this book jacket task is typically carried out by publishers, not writers.)

About the author

DANA ALBERT was trained as an office worker. He has worked as a bike mechanic, an underwear canner, a radio station receptionist, and (though not professionally) as a dishwasher installer. He lives indoors. This is his first blog.

(Okay, that’s a wrap. Here’s the finished product … but I just realized my blog doesn’t have a jacket to put this on.)

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From the Archives - Bits & Bobs Volume I

Introduction

I’d say albertnet isn’t really a blog, per se, in the sense of a “web log” (i.e., diary or journal). I try to write essays, reports, or humor pieces that have a point other than simply documenting my life. (After all, who cares about my particular experience?) All this being said, I’m emboldened of late by recent published volumes of David Sedaris’ diaries, which people seem to like well enough, and by an account in The New Yorker of the upcoming publication of (part of) the journal of Claude Fredericks, a classics professor in the ‘50s whose output exceeded sixty-five thousand pages. Fredericks extols the virtue of on-the-ground immediate reporting of one’s experience; as the article explains, “A journal is a ‘living thing,’ he says; a novel is a ‘taxidermist’s replica.’”

All of which is a roundabout way of saying that I’m publishing here choice snippets from old letters to my brothers, which I think can give the reader a flavor of the era during which I wrote them. These bits and bobs should be better than diary excerpts because at least I wrote them with an audience in mind, so I had incentive to make them good. This post comprises a handful, in chronological order; others will follow in these pages periodically. I’ve provided, for each snippet, the locale I was writing from.

January 26, 1989 – Isla Vista

My roommate S— came home today telling me that Joe, the owner (and sole employee) of MicroPro, where I bought my computer, was busted on a felony computer piracy charge. Joe was S—’s roommate here last year. S—was bummed about the news, of course, but also seemed a bit titillated. I myself was kind of worried, not so much for Joe, but for myself if anything goes wrong with the computer I just bought. S— tried all evening to call Joe, giving me the impression they were best buds or something. “He must be in jail!” S— ultimately concluded. But finally the phone rang and I picked up. Sure enough, it was Joe. I asked, “So, how’s everything going?” He said, “Oh, okay I guess.” I asked, “Are you calling for S—?” He said, “No, I actually called for you. This girl left a message for you on my machine. Her name’s Lisa. Let me give you her number.”

Now, as you can well imagine, I was pretty confused. A presumed felon, who we’d thought might be in jail, had instead called me to relay a message from some random girl. I took down the phone number and was about to ring off when Joe said, “By the way, I think I fixed your WordStar 4.0 program. It should work now. I’ll bring it by tomorrow.” By this time, Scott was practically ripping the phone away from me, bewildered and perhaps hurt that the big shot criminal hadn’t asked for him. I told Joe, “S— wants to talk to you. Should I put him on?” Joe replied, “Uh, well, I guess so.” (I reckon he gets as sick of S— as I do.) They talked for about thirty seconds, S— offering to give the judge a character reference.

You’re probably wondering about the girl by now. Gosh, this sounds like a spy thriller, doesn’t it? The elusive computer hacker, the nosy roommate, the mystery girl, and the microfilm (okay, MicroPro). Turns out when Joe moved out of this apartment last summer, he took the phone number with him—but somehow it’s listed as my number in the student directory. (I didn’t even know I was listed!) The girl, Lisa, is in my French class. I guess I’m flattered she reached out to me, because it’s not like I’m her boyfriend or anything (though I’ve been trying to insinuate myself into the role). She called because her cat got run over on Wednesday, so she was too distraught to come to class, and she needed the homework assignment for tomorrow. She’s had a run of bad luck lately: over the weekend, she fell asleep driving and crashed her car into a ditch, sustaining a minor concussion. I guess these are the perils of college life.

October 6, 1989 – Isla Vista

You know how you always wish you could get one of your bike crashes on videotape? Well, I did. I was cruising around on my mountain bike and reached this big concrete boat ramp that goes down to the beach. (I assume the ramp reaches the water at high tide.) There was a guy standing at the top filming with a little VHS camera, and I asked if it was cool for me to ride down. He said yeah, so I went down at top speed and then locked up the rear wheel and did all these sweet fishtails (showing off for the camera, I confess). What I didn’t realize was that there was like a foot drop-off at the end. But I figured no big deal, I still had plenty of speed, so I jumped off it and made a perfect landing, rear wheel first. Thing was, once the front wheel landed it bogged down in the sand and I was flipped right over the bars. I landed in tons of sand, and tucked and rolled, so it didn’t hurt at all. Like twenty people were out there sunbathing and they all cheered as I leapt to my feet and put my hands up in a victory salute. I wonder how many times the guy with the camera will watch that footage, laughing his ass off.

August 17, 1990 - Oakland

It’s kind of a trip living in Oakland. I mean, this place is huge. I’ve never lived in a big city before, but so far I like it. That said, sometimes the complexity of it all can be intimidating. Here’s an example. A couple of friends and I went to this Thai restaurant, and ordered this big fancy soup. It’s served in a ring shaped bowl, which has this chimney deal that comes up through the middle of the ring. A flame at the bottom of the chimney is supposed to keep the soup hot. Our waitress struggled to light it. Not that the chimney was the problem; she just had no idea now to strike a paper match. She was trying to squeeze the head of the match between the striking surface and the folded over book, and I half expected her to catch the whole book on fire, or inadvertently fling a burning match at me. She finally got the match lit, dropped it in the chimney of the bowl, looked at it with an air of uncertainty, and walked off. Remembering a waiter who failed to successfully light my flaming baked Alaska a few years back, I was pretty sure it hadn’t lit. I looked down the chimney of the bowl to see. Never, never do this. To my horror, it ignited very suddenly and the ensuing fireball completely engulfed my face for a split second before I pulled my head away. The bright blue flame extended a good six inches past the top of the chimney!

I could smell burning hair. Fortunately there were mirrors on the wall and I ran over to survey the damage. Sure enough, my eyebrows had been singed. It really doesn’t look very good. At least I don’t have the shoulder-length hair I was sporting last summer. If I did, I’m sure it would have caught fire and I would have burned to death, right there in the restaurant. I can envision my last dying moments: my life flashes before my eyes as the hapless waitress fumbles stupidly with the fire extinguisher, eventually giving it up and returning, with a shrug, to the kitchen.

I wasn’t very pleased with the whole situation, so I dipped the tablecloth in the flame and very quickly the entire table was on fire. We were out the door and running down the sidewalk when the massive explosion hurled us to the concrete. (Okay, I’ve exaggerated quite a bit about my response, but the part about my eyebrows is 100% true.) I’m going to have to be more careful until I’m accustomed to the sophisticated cuisine of the big city.

November 19, 1991 - Berkeley

So help me God, I’m going to make this the best letter I’ve ever written. This is my goal. It has been stated. Were it possible, I would get you a few sandwiches to munch on while you’re reading. Anything to make this a special time for you. I would do that for you. I would.

Jesus, Geoff. Just think of all the letters I’ve written, always just writing along, knowing that I’m not being graded, you won’t send it back with all the errors circled, little arrows to show where I left out something I should have put in, no general comments like “Little or no relevant material. See me.” No, it’s a simple job, I just write for a change, nothing to get stressed out about. But who says that’s good enough? Things are gonna change. You’re my brother, after all, and you deserve at least as much hard work as a stupid TA who’s paid to write tetchy little comments like “watch your pronouns” in my margins. (Why should I watch my pronouns? Are they misbehaving? Do I need to take them outside?)

Ah, but I also have selfish reasons for wanting to write well. I want to be a great writer someday. No matter what I write, it is nothing more than a stepping stone towards this goal. Writing this letter, or indeed anything, is just a chance to polish my style into the one which will propel me to fame, fortune, and maybe a gig on “Hollywood Squares” or “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.” So I must confess that through all my correspondence I have only been using you. And that’s not right. This is your letter, not an exhibition of the literary machine I am trying to build: a machine that so far requires eighty tons of coal, a tanker truck of natural gas, twelve gallons of premium unleaded and eight D-cells just to produce passels of pointless pages of trite, trifling text. It’s a machine you would expect the military to build. Tons of money, marginal promise, dubious worth to future generations. All unacceptable. So I’m going to double down and improve my letters. They will henceforth be of the highest quality I can muster.

Maybe a running account of my latest exploits isn’t the right approach. Perhaps I need to look back over my past, determine the most salient events, and recount them as vividly as possible, while framing them in the context of why they were so formative. I’ll try that out. Here goes:

That summer ended childhood. I hoped there would be work in San Luis Obispo, my new home [during my gap year before college]. Every day is the same: I collect the paper and move swiftly through it, starting with the comics. Charlie Brown is about to get laid for the first time. Nancy finally put a good one over on Sluggo and they say he’ll never walk right again. Garfield has slumped over on the fence, killed by a clock thrown at him. Now, on to the Classified Ads: unspecified work for Ernie Ball under the title “day laborer.” A data entry job in Grover City, a fifteen mile commute for $5 an hour. Dishwasher at Sizzler. Well, so much for that. What else is here? A letter to the editor insists that for all Sarah Riordon’s trouble at the free throw line, she is a valuable asset to the Mission College Prep team. Front page: REAGAN SAYS “EVERYTHING’S JUST PEACHY.” Yeah, now if he could just solve unemployment, starting with mine. I head down Foothill to Spirit Cycle Works. Jay, the obese head mechanic, is sitting on a stool popping plastic bubble wrap in the vise. Garrett is cussing about a bottom bracket adjustment he can’t get right. You’re reaming a seat tub, violently, viciously, a tyrannical grin on your face as you subvert the soft metal to your will. I would take a job here for two bucks an hour, just to work with you. But Spirit isn’t hiring.

It was fun hanging out with you for that year, but I couldn’t ever act excited about it, nor can I reminisce fondly about it now. Maybe it’s because I was un- and under-employed and needed to act cynical. I wonder if you saw through my cool front. (I never did.) But was this front my own idea, or was I unconsciously mimicking your own tough guy act? The thing is, you veer between hard-boiled and almost cloyingly nostalgic. Which one is the real you? Let’s admit it, you yourself are, and have long been, a hard dude to try to figure out. And “figure out” implies that there is an answer, which there is not. There is no solution in the back of the textbook for Geoff Albert. He just is. You just is. We just is.

August 18, 1992 - Berkeley

Let me tell you a little story about my roommate A—’s brother, Robert (I think it is). He’s been couch surfing here for weeks, and even stocked the kitchen with all his own food. He had the cheek to label it all so we won’t steal any. His stash consists mainly of hot dogs, cold cuts, Oreos, white bread, and milk. This guy has no idea how to cook. He prepares a hot dog by putting it, raw, on a slice of bread and microwaving it for thirty seconds (just until the bread’s hot).

Well, one night A— had cooked himself a meal (some weird South American thing) and offered his brother his leftovers. Robert hemmed and hawed, as if put off by the notion of secondhand food, or perhaps by the cuisine being outside his norm, and finally asked us what nearby restaurants delivered. He wasn’t interested in pizza so I suggested a few takeout places within cycling distance. “The bike is kind of what I wanted to avoid,” he said, peering down forlornly at his big belly, which sagged down below his belt. Okay, so no leftovers, no pizza, and nothing beyond walking distance. For a guy who doesn’t even have a place to live, he sure does seem picky.

Finally I thought of a barbecue place like four blocks away. A— explained how to get there, but I guess Robert wasn’t satisfied with the directions so he asked us for a map, which my other roommate eventually produced. After studying the route a while, Robert finally embarked on his daring solo mission. Well, like half an hour later he came back empty-handed, looking totally grief-stricken. Apparently a street hoodlum spotted an easy mark and grabbed the bag of food right out of Robert’s hands! Poor dude was too upset at this point to go buy more, and settled for a couple more hot dogs.

Is there any moral to this story? Yeah: don’t be a dork.

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Ode to Cat

Introduction

If you are a cat person, you might be predisposed to like the following poem … unless, of course, you decide it fails to do cats justice, though judging me harshly might also be enjoyable. If you’re a dog person, perhaps this poem will help you to see the light and change your ways before it’s too late.

The Poem

Ode to Cat

“To be or not to be,” that’s just BS.

“To do or not to do?” is what I ask.                          2

Are weekends best for resting, to de-stress,

Or time to chase down countless little tasks?

I ponder this and then I see my cat.

As if to taunt me, all she does is nap.                       6

She looks so wise … could this be where it’s at?

I pick her up and put her on my lap.

The cruel, accursed beast—she never stays!

A rescue cat, she’s skittish as they come.               10

To run for cover’s just how she allays

Her fear (though nothing’s what she’s running from).

Some weekend mornings, I will rise at dawn

In quest of precious, peaceful writing time.           14

I creep downstairs and put the kettle on.

The stars line up: the moment feels sublime.

Warm mug in hand, I settle down and start

To gather up my thoughts—but what is this?        16

My kitty’s joined me … bless her little heart!

She kneads my lap … O what a treat this is!

But now I can’t get any writing done.

I can’t disrupt my cat, she needs this lap.              20

My little plan will have to be postponed.

I must hold still throughout this creature’s nap.

By chance I find a novel close at hand

And just like that, my morning plan’s recast.        24

Before I’d had such grand, ambitious plans

But now I want to make this moment last.

    To do or not to do: my cat knows best.

    With help from her, the matter’s put to rest.     28

Footnotes & commentary

Title: Cat

I could have written this for my cat in particular (i.e., Ode to Freya), but I want to give a shout-out to housecats in general. (Note to Berkeleyites: I know that by city resolution, the term “pet” is out in favor of “companion animal” and “owner” has been replaced by “human guardian,” so the phrase “my cat” may startle you. Yeah, yeah, I know you can’t “own” an animal. I’m tempted to apologize, but then Freya just feels like “my cat” and I refuse to be disingenuous about this. I also gather that in some quarters “Berkleyan” is strongly favored over “Berkeleyite” so I’m tempted to apologize for that, too—but haven’t you folks derailed this commentary long enough?)

Line 1: BS

Is it verging on blasphemy to call BS on Shakespeare? Hey—not so fast. I’m actually calling BS on Hamlet, not his creator. Why does Hamlet consider suicide, when he’s such a bright guy he can spew perfect iambic pentameter off the cuff? Okay, fine, his dad died and his mom is marrying an asshole … boo hoo hoo. Get a backbone, Hamlet, would you please? I can answer his hand-wringing “to be or not to be” quandary in one word: be. It’s too bad Ophelia couldn’t take a page from Paloma Faith’s playbook (well, songbook) and tell Hamlet, “Don’t say nothing/ Just sit next to me/ Don’t say nothing/ Sshhh/ Just be, just be, just be.”

Line 3: resting, to de-stress

The phrase “de-stress” irks me a bit, summoning as it does the cliché-ridden lingo of corporate America. But that’s exactly what I need to connote here, because working in this realm is what tires and stresses me out so much.

Line 4: countless little tasks

I feel like during the week, I can barely keep my head above water on the home front. This means anything extra—fixing my bike, organizing the garage, mailing a package—can feel like a really big deal. If I dig deep and take on this kind of crap, I head into the next work week more tired than ever and gradually start to augur in. On the other hand, if all I do all weekend is rest and recover, I feel like I don’t have a life outside of work. It’s an ongoing dilemma.

Line 6: as if to taunt

No, I don’t think cats are actually sophisticated enough to taunt anybody. Conversely, I’m sure they aren’t attuned to sarcasm, which is why I feel completely free to say to my stretched-out, luxuriating cat, “Freya, you really need to slow down—you can’t keep burning the candle at both ends like this.”

Line 7: looks so wise

Would we love our pets so much if we didn’t project positive traits onto them? Just like dogs appear to smile, or to have thoughtful, penetrating eyes, cats surely look wiser than they are. It’s an illusion I enjoy, so I let myself believe it most of the time.

Line 8: put her on my lap

In my experience, there are two kinds of cats: the kind that love to jump onto your lap and do so freely, and the kind who generally avoid your lap. I have yet to encounter a cat who is blasé or ambivalent about this, so it’s pretty pointless to put a cat on your lap and expect him or her to stay.

Line 9: cruel, accursed beast

Given what I just said, isn’t it totally unfair to deride my cat this way? Of course it is, but frankly, as foolish as my behavior is, everyone in my household feels affronted, every time, when Freya bounds away. I never said humans were wise either.

Line 10: rescue cat

What, you haven’t heard the term “rescue cat”? Well, I haven’t either. But we all hear the phrase “rescue dog,” usually spoken with just a whiff of self-congratulation. Not that I would take anything away from someone kind enough to rescue an unfortunate homeless dog. But I got this kitten from the pound … isn’t that a rescue, too? Not according to the Pet Adoption page on Wikipedia on which the phrase “rescue dog” appears six times  but “rescue cat” not once.

Here’s the Frey when she was very young:

Line 10: skittish as they come

As a tiny kitten, Freya was a stray, and this has left its mark. A car door slams a block away and she races across the room and hides. A shoe drops upstairs and she stiffens, eyes wide, threat level orange.

As a tiny kitten she liked to climb into this tiny basket. It’s amazing she even fit. I suppose she felt secure there, perhaps almost like being swaddled.

Line 12: nothing’s what she’s running from

Sometimes Freya is just bored and pretends there’s danger, just to have an excuse to race across the house. After five minutes of this she’s ready to sleep it off, of course.

Here she is in a playful moment.

Line 12 would be near the end of a standard sonnet (just before the rhyming couplet at the end). I’m not a good enough poet to condense all my content into so few lines, so I just kept going.

Line 17: bless her little heart

Though I’m not real clear on the details, I’m vaguely aware that “bless your heart,” at least in the South, isn’t exactly a compliment. That’s about right, because the first moments, when Freya has decided to try out my lap, mean nothing. This is her nervous period when I’m expecting her to suddenly change her mind and leap off my lap, so this seemingly loving expression could well be followed immediately by “you little shit.”

Line 18: kneads my lap

I have a little claw trimmer that I use to keep my cat’s claws from getting too sharp … thus, it is neither painful nor ruinous to my clothing when she does this classic pet trick.

Note how her tail is hooked around her front leg there.

Line 20: needs this lap

You might accuse me of using this phrase just for a nice poetic shimmer so soon after “kneads my lap.” After all, I’ve made the case that Freya is on the antisocial side, and it’s commonly theorized that cats only sit on us for the heat. But in this case, I had the heater going! Nine times out of ten she’ll take a heater vent over a lap, but that tenth time? Remember, this cat had a traumatic kittenhood. It just might be that some modicum of feline-human connection is actually important to her. Maybe she also treasures this particularly quiet time when she can finally relax enough to succumb to a  lap.

Line 21: have to be postponed

So often, postponing writing for even twenty minutes during this enchanted morning time means losing that twenty minutes forever. When the family is up and around, I kind of want to be distracted. When my daughter says, “Dad, let’s get a bagel!” I wouldn’t even consider saying, “I’m busy [needlessly] writing [endless prose that nobody will ever read], sorry [but not sorry enough to get over my self-importance].” Full disclosure: we’ve gone for bagels only like twice, but it’s a matter of principle. (It sure isn’t a matter of gastronomy; I’ve come to accept that you can’t actually get a proper bagel outside of NYC.)

Line 22: must hold still

Do I really have to hold so still that I can’t even type on my laptop? Most of the time, yes … especially when I’m juggling a coffee cup as well. Plus, early in the morning before the caffeine kicks in, I’m still pretty vulnerable to sloth and the cat plays a big role in that … she’s a terrible influence. If she were the kind of cat who always wanted to be on my lap, it wouldn’t be special and I’d probably make her leave so I could work.

Since I’m a sucker for “the exception that proves the rule,” here’s a photo of Freya sitting on me without preventing me from writing. In fact, here’s a bit of irony: if you zoom in, you’ll see she’s sitting on me even as I compose the very poem you just read.

That said, it’s a terrible photo, which attests to the rarity of this scenario. If this happened a lot, I’d have a lot better photo of it.

Line 23: by chance … a novel

Well, it’s not actually random chance that there was a novel within arm’s reach. My wife and I were both English majors and our house is filled with books. I read a lot—not nearly as much as I should, actually, and I could easily imagine spending whole weekend reading. The problem is, this would feel extravagant, almost profligate, since reading—for all its value and ability to improve my mind and soul—is still a form of consumption, and everything I consume dies with me. The impulse to write constantly competes: shouldn’t I be creating something, even if it’s only an amateur record of an ordinary life, that will probably be casually deleted shortly after my death when my kids neglect to pay the Internet server bill?

Line 25: grand, ambitious plans

You’re not allowed to laugh at me over my assertion that blogging represents a grand, ambitious plan. I was making fun of myself, so you’re required to laugh with me or not at all.

Line 25: make this moment last

I refuse to strike or modify this line because it happens to exactly capture what I’m doing here: I expect this time with the cat to last only a little while, and I do want to extend that as much as possible. That said, I concede that this phrase sounds pretty cheesy, like a Kodak ad. So now you can laugh at me.

Line 27: to do or not to do

This return to my opening salvo would be punchier if my poem didn’t drag out to twice the length of a regulation sonnet. What can I say? I’m no Shakespeare.

Line 28: to rest

This last word, rest, seems like the perfect way to end a poem about a cat, doesn’t it?

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