Tiny Shopping Cart

The other day I needed a few things at the grocery store so I used one of those small shopping carts. They're easier to push and maneuver, turn sharper, and can be threaded through a crowd with ease. I think they're the best except for one small thing.

Nothing says "loser" louder than a tiny shopping cart.

I didn't notice it at first. The pathetic stares. The looks of sympathy. When you have a half gallon of milk, three ripe bananas, two yogurts and four apples in a tiny shopping cart, people look at you and think,

"Must be shopping for himself. Just himself."

A young woman with three kids in tow, dragging an enormous shopping cart, overflowing with bounty looked at me pushing my tiny cart then turned away quickly. As I zipped past her, she eyed me. I'm sure she was thinking,

"What're you in a hurry for? VCR tape gonna run out?"

Once while I was waiting in line with my little cart when a woman with a big shopping cart, stuffed to the brim, tapped me on my shoulder and asked, 

"Can I go ahead of you? I'm in a hurry. I have people at home waiting for me."

I moved to let her by. Another time an elderly woman muttered something to a little boy as I pushed my tiny cart. I heard her say,

"You see, Tad. If you're not a nice person, you’ll end up like that man over there. Alone."

One time I was making my way down an aisle with my tiny cart when another dude approached, pushing his diminutive cart. He lifted his fist while saying,

"Solid."

I wasn't sure what to say. All I could come up with was,

"Right on!"

Once I thought to add onto my wife's list juice boxes just so it looks like I had kids. As I loaded them into my tiny shopping cart, a woman gave me a dirty look then said abruptly, 

"Those are supposed to be for kids, you know."

"I have kids," I exclaimed.

"Sure you do," she said.

One time a cashier on the express line was talking with her colleague about taking a break when I came up with my little cart. I figured she would process my three pathetic items before her break. She looked me over then said,

"This line is closed. You have to go to the other line."

I moved to the adjacent line with the large carts. The cashier there exclaimed,

"This is not the express!"

A woman ahead of me said,

"Is that all you have?"

"Yes," I answered.

"I would let you go ahead, but you would just get home to your miserable life sooner," she reasoned.

The tiny shopping cart gained brief acceptance during the pandemic when starving people risked their lives by rushing into the grocery store to grab a few items. I miss the days during the height of the virus when it was socially acceptable to yell at an old woman pushing a tiny shopping cart against the arrow on the floor,

“WRONG WAY BITCH!”

I can’t wait for the day when cancel culture finally arrives to tiny shopping cart shaming, and when that day comes we will all know that we’ve truly arrived as a civilized society.

Editor's Note: Originally posted on January 12, 2017.

Robot Apocalypse

Some people believe that someday robots will take over the world. Smart people like the late Stephen Hawking posited artificial intelligence was the biggest threat to humankind. He claimed,

"The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race."

Bill Gates, the cofounder of Microsoft and one of the richest men in the world, said about AI,

"I don't understand why some people are not concerned."

The maker of the self driving electric car and Falcon rocket, Elon Musk, referred to artificial intelligence as the"fundamental risk to the existence of civilization."

That's pretty serious pub talk which usually necessitates more than one pint before men depart from discussing female anatomy for the more sinister subject of a robot apocalypse. Movie franchises like Terminator also paint a bleak picture for mankind. After a month of learning at a geometric rate, Skynet became self aware at 2:40 am EST on August 29, 1997. The military brass, sensing pending doom, attempted to pull the plug after which robots became major dickheads. A similar thing happened at Facebook recently when a group of software engineers tried to create an AI software system which started to communicate in a completely new language, undecipherable by humans. In a panic, they cut the power before the system became self aware and started posting favorable reviews of Ben Shapiro.

The Matrix is yet another film in which a computer takes over the world, albeit an alien backed hardware system that smokes anything Microsoft or Google ginned up. Humans are enslaved as batteries to supply power to the vast matrix even though solar would have been way cheaper and would have involved far less fluids. Agents, software constructs that prowl the matrix, exploit humans at will to keep everything running smoothly. The last installment of the trilogy doesn't offer good news for the human race who don't eventually prevail over the alien super computer. Instead, we agree not to mess with them as long as they don't mess with us which is pretty much the US foreign policy with Russia.

Then there was Transformers which had robots disguised as vehicles waging war on earth. The good guys, the Autobots, wanted to use the AllSpark to rebuild Cybertron, their home planet, while the Decepticons dreamt of an army of machines here on earth. Luckily the Autobots found mankind worth saving, but the Decepticons, who evidently learned about humans from social media, prefer to wipe us off the planet.

I'm inclined to fear technology since for me it's becoming mostly an unknown. There are so many things being developed today on the technology front, it's no wonder old farts like me, Bill Gates and Elon Musk pants shit when someone mentions something new. Take for instance the demise of my TV set recently. A friend of mine who has got ten years on me is convinced that what caused my Samsung flat screen to shit the futon was,

"All that technology you plugged into it."

He was referring to an Xbox, a Wii and a DVD. He also exclaimed adamantly that YouTube was the likely culprit that took down my TV. I tried to explain to him that smart TVs run all sorts of apps, but he was having no part of it.

"All those gizmos are going to cause a fire," he asserted.

Old people always think technology spontaneously combusts. I recall my mother being afraid of the microwave oven, certain that one day it would explode in her kitchen and burn her house down. Instead she used a toaster oven which she left on one time and damn near melted the linoleum. I think all this fear of technology is due to the aging nature of society's brain trust. If you want to see real robots in action, all you have to do is check out the DARPA Robotics Challenge.

The robots are tasked to perform mundane things like walking up stairs or exiting a vehicle. Most entrants move through the course at the pace of a line at the DMV while onboard processors crunch algorithms to calculate the next move. Many robots fall over for seemingly no reason at all. One comes crashing down while trying to turn a doorknob. Another, attempting to traverse a doorway, falls on its mechanical ass. Seems like most robots are a greater threat to themselves rather than to us.

Even Facebook engineers explained that their AI bot was shutdown not in response to a perceived threat, but because it was replaced by a more advanced construct, that is, they canned the original because it was too lame. In Terminator, Skynet made some obvious miscalculations. When holding up in a cheap motel, Arnold Schwarzenegger is blowing it up in his room when the manager comes by and asks,

"Hey buddy. You got a dead cat in there or what?"

The advanced processor in the terminator's head arrives at these six possible responses,

Possible Responses to the Dead Cat Question

and picks the correct answer, that is,

"Fuck you, asshole."

Considering that #4 made the list tells me that robots have trouble understanding simple human interactions. This is why they will never be a real threat to the human race. After all, robots are stumped by this,



Robots can't find all the bridges, and we worry that they're gonna take over the world? It's doubtful that robots are going to get any smarter because fewer and fewer kids are going into STEM these days. I think human intelligence probably peaked two decades ago with the invention of the Flowbee, the home haircutting system. Even though more people are going to college than ever, most are working towards worthless degrees like Hospitality Management which, as far as I can tell, is a degree in being nice. It's unlikely today that a college graduate is going to create a revolutionary microprocessor that will eventually lead to the extinction of the human race.

I'll tell you, Bill Gates, why people are unconcerned with artificial intelligence. Because robots are stupid.

Editor's Note: Originally posted on June 26, 2018.

A Zero Tolerance

Back in 1992, I was a drilling reservist in a submarine repair unit attached to the local naval base. I was the Admin Officer which means I was in charge of pushing paper, and that's what I did. For brevity lets just say that I had less than a successful career on active duty. The most notable evidence of this was plainly visible on my uniform since I was lacking a warfare pin. As a general line officer, I wasn't part of any military community so that made me the perpetual outsider.

The practice of "protecting your community" was widely employed in the reserves which was just a reason to favor your friends. It ran deeper than warfare designation. It included where you got your commission, preferably from the Naval Academy. Membership on a sports team also played a big factor with the lacrosse team being a real asset. I was often passed over for more important jobs in favor of a guy who ran around with a golf ball in an athletic cup on a stick. That was okay with me. I was there for the money and the experience in that order.

One time an enlisted unit member, Tony Borgeses, a squared away electronic technician, tested positive on the urinalysis drug screening. The military has a zero tolerance policy for drug use. Pop positive during "Operation Golden Flow," and you're out of here. No questions asked. It was incongruous, illogical. Borgeses was a top notch petty officer with years of active duty, who I had known for almost a decade. We played frisbee at unit cookouts. He was athletic and a family man. How could he smoke pot? When I finally got to talking to him his response was candid and quite frankly, lacked imagination. You know, boring like reality.

"I have no idea how I tested positive,” Borgeses explained.

Occasionally, someone in the unit failed a drug test. They often had elaborate, imaginative excuses like antihistamines, poppy seeds or secondhand smoke at a concert. No one ever said that they just didn't know. Petty Officer Borgeses elected to fight the charge in a courts-martial. We had a tight unit. A lot of guys came out to testify on his behalf. As a Lieutenant, I was the only officer. On the day the court convened, I spoke to the JAG assigned to Borgeses  He interviewed all of the character witnesses. The prosecutor, a Lieutenant Commander, was an assistant attorney general as a civilian. He didn't bother to talk to any of us because he figured the zero tolerance policy in the military mandated that Petty Officer Borgeses would be thrown out. I learned later that the prosecutor was tough on drug offenders in his state.

When it came time for me to testify, I thought it would be like Aaron Sorkin's, A Few Good Men. You know, Tom Cruise cleverly grilling me on the stand. Something like that. Instead I sat in a chair in front of five captains who didn't say much. Two were women. All were lawyers. I testified that I knew the accused as a squared away sailor who never even drank alcohol at unit cookouts. There was ten character witnesses, and I was the highest rank so my credibility ran deep.

After the testimony, the board agreed to retest Petty Officer Borgeses, and if he passed, then they would go against the zero tolerance policy and let him stay. It was an unprecedented decision spurned on by the impression made by the many character witnesses. That just never happened before, that is, a group of military members supporting one of their own accused of such an ostracizing crime. Most of us were happy with the outcome, but not everyone. The unit commanding officer was openly angered by the decision.

"I got a drug addict in my unit," he emphatically exclaimed.

The CO rallied all the officers and senior enlisted against me for testifying on behalf of Borgeses. I didn't really care. I was already an outsider and used to all the negative treatment. When the results came back from Borgeses's post trial urinalysis screening, the CO was elated. Tony failed the test a second time. When I asked him what was going on, he said,

"I have no clue."

"Well, if you're not smoking it, then you're eating it," I surmised.

Borgeses was Portuguese and worked as a civilian electrician with a lot of Asians. He told me that he and his coworkers participated in a potluck lunch every Friday, exchanging ethnic foods. Borgeses said that most of his coworkers were Cambodian. One was named "Samang." He went by "Sam." The internet was a new thing for the public back in those days, and it was text based, that is, no flashy browser with ads popping up on the edges. I navigated to a bulletin board, the precursor to modern day texting, that hosted a topic entitled "Cambodian Life." I typed,

"Can anyone tell me if Cambodians cook with marijuana?"

"Yeah, we use it as a spice," a participant shot back.

That was the first time I used the internet for useful information. The guy went on describing the amount of pot used and how it changed the flavor. Petty Officer Borgeses also called saying Sam told him that he cooked several dishes with marijuana. He gave me Sam's telephone number. Back then, you couldn't text with a cell phone so I called the guy up. He was very nervous. Although a legal immigrant, he didn't know that cooking with pot was illegal. He thought the law applied only to smoking it. As far as I could tell, this was a cultural difference, not a criminal act. Ignorance is no excuse of the law, but I never though it was civil to incarcerate people who were hard working, tax paying citizens, who just made a mistake. Better to go after drug dealers and habitual users than a Cambodian father who was an electrician and a survivor of the Killing Fields.

Another courts-martial was convened. This time only me and one other unit member supported Petty Officer Borgeses. Before I testified, my Commanding Officer stopped me.

"You're throwing away your military career," he stated sternly.

"But he's..." I began.

The CO interrupted, "I'm from the Midwest. I can look a man in the eye, and tell if he's lying. This guy is a druggy."

"Well, I'm not from the Midwest," I explained, "I have to listen to the facts."

The CO shook his head and waved me off as he said something with the word "stupid" in it. At the trial, the prosecutor wasn't taking any chances. He grilled me in a closed room in front of a master chief, the highest enlisted rank. The prosecutor was short, balding, with a cheesy mustache. He looked like he took a lot of abuse in high school. His assistant was intimating, big and brawny with rows and rows of ribbons on his chest. He wore his dress blues which sported seven gold stripes on the sleeve, each representing four years of good service. This guy had served honorably in the navy when I was picking my nose and watching cartoons. The prosecutor asked me what I was going to testify. I told him that Cambodians cooked with marijuana. He asked,

"Why don't you have a warfare pin?"

There was no hiding it so I answered.

"I washed out of nuke training."

“You get into trouble or something?"

The truth is when I was in Naval Nuclear Propulsion School, I studied just like I did when I got high honors in a tough university engineering program. The same system of academic effort worked two more time in graduate school, but not in the navy. Back then my advisor recommended that if I didn't know an answer, I should "write anything down just to get through." I would like to attest that I understood what he was trying to tell me, and I nobly refused to fake it, but that was not the case. What I didn't know at the time was that military education commands are on the hook to push out graduates so they actively encourage cheating. I didn't grasp what my advisor was telling me to do. If I did, I would have done it. I drew down a lot of flack for unwittingly not going along with the system, one that I didn't fully understand until decades later when I read all the news reports about cheating aboard submarines.

"No," I answered.

The prosecutor grilled me for what seemed like an eternity, taking a lot notes on anything he could use to discredit me. When he finished, I stood to leave. The Master Chief jumped to his feet, reached his arm out to shake my hand while saying,

"It was very good to meet you, sir."

Now, some explanation is required for you nonmilitary types. A master chief never refers to a junior officer as "sir." They almost always use their rank as in "Lieutenant," which is a proper reference, devoid of the respect associated with more formal term. To have a master chief address me in that manner took me off guard. I wasn't sure why this guy with such a stellar military career would pay any respect to a person defending another sailor on a drug charge. I shook his hand then got ready to testify. I met Sam in the waiting room. He told me that he was a refugee from Cambodia. He was very nervous. He felt he should testify on behalf of his coworker. Sam said,

"I didn't mean to get Tony in trouble."

Then he asked, "Can I use your phone? I told my wife, if I didn't speak to her by 2 o' clock, I probably would never see her again."

"Why? What do you think is gonna happen?"

"I'll go to a work camp," Sam answered.

This guy came in to testify when he thought he was dealing with Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. I pulled out my cell phone and gave it to him.

"Call your wife. Nothing's going to happen to you."

That guy was brave. When I was called to testify, the JAG assigned to Borgeses asked me about how I knew Cambodians cooked with pot. When I was cross-examined, the prosecutor asked,

"So it was your idea that the defendant was consuming marijuana, right?"

"Yes sir. I figured if he wasn't smoking it, he must be eating it," I answered.

"How did you come to that conclusion? You a dietitian?"

"No, I didn’t think you’d pop positive for sitting on it.”

The board laughed as did the Master Chief. I didn't break a smile. Truth is, I was scared.

"You think this is funny, Lieutenant?"

"I’m not laughing," I answered.

This got the prosecutor visible angry.

"It doesn't bother you, Lieutenant, that the defendant failed two drug test?"

"No, it doesn't."

"Why not? Please elaborate for the board. I'm sure they would love to hear your opinion given your stellar career in the navy."

The Master Chief stirred in his chair. It was clear he didn't like the prosecutor's remark.

"I expected it," I answered.

"You expected it? Why cause you know about drug use?"

“We’ll, it’s just common sense."

"Please enlighten us."

"When I heard that there would be another screening, I immediately thought that if Borgeses was telling the truth, he would pop positive again."

"Because he's a drug addict."

"No, because if he was lying and deliberately introducing marijuana into his system, he would have stopped whatever he was doing to clear the test. If he was telling the truth, and didn't know how it was happening, he wouldn't have changed anything, and whatever he was doing, he would continue to do, and fail the test again."

One captain, scribbling notes, suddenly stopped writing in her notebook and abruptly looked up. The Master Chief was grinning. The penetrating gaze from all that high ranking military law was unnerving. The prosecutor's bald head turned crimson as he looked at me with contempt.

"No more questions!" he blurted.

I got up and exited. Sam went in next. I heard voices being raised. As the persecutor's case began slipping away, he decided to charge Sam with possession. The captains were having no part of that. They decreed that this "was a navy matter that would go no further than the courtroom." I had some papers to push so I found an empty desk in which I could work. Later, when I left the building, the Master Chief was in the parking lot. He walked up to me and saluted, then declared,

"The board recommended that Borgeses be retained." 

"Really," I said as I retuned his salute.

"In all my time in the navy, I never saw an officer go out on a limb like that," Master Chief offered.

Chiefs in the navy are historically the proponents of the sailors. Officers are the enforcers of rules. The Master Chief saw me assuming his role, but with obvious repercussions. 

"Well, I'll have a good story for my kids someday," I surmised.

“I don’t think so. They put a gag order on the proceedings for twenty-five years. They don't want to give sailors a way out of the zero tolerance policy."

"Well, then it will be a good story for my grandkids."

"Not many officers would've testified. They're too worried about making rank."

"Yeah well. I don't have to worry about that," I said while glancing to my left shirt pocket.

Master Chief put out his arm. We shook hands. He smiled broadly, let out a laugh, then off he went. Unfortunately, the CO of our unit, citing the gag order, never allowed Petty Officer Borgeses to tell the unit his side of the story. He made life tough for Borgeses, telling him that as far as he was concerned he was just a druggy. Borgeses moved to California and retired from the military a few years later. The CO also dinged me on my fitness report, but he eventually left, and I continued on. I made rank twice and retired as a full commander.

Maybe a few times in your life, you'll be asked to do something, defend a principle, state a case in opposition to what everyone else believes. When the time comes, the true measure will not be in distinguishing right from wrong, but rather right over prudence.

It is sometimes said that military medals are worn on the left so they're closest to your heart. That may be true, but true leadership comes from a place far below the uniform.

Editor's Note: Originally posted on May 4, 2017.

The Three F’s of Survival

Einstein Impressing
the Ladies

Many years ago, I found myself in the waiting room of a local law firm when a friend of mine was going through a particularly nasty divorce. The receptionist, an attractive, young woman, was answering the phone with impeccable precision.

"Susman, Shapiro, Woburn and Grey," she said after tending to one of the blinking lines.

Oddly, she seemed to put everyone on hold except line three. After suspending all the incoming calls, she resumed her preferred conversation.

"I went out with Carrie and Sharon to Septembers. Carrie was wearing that totally cool black dress. Sharon went casual even though I told her not to. I looked way hot. So I met this guy, and he was a really, really good dancer. Wait..."

She poked her finger on a flashing button then recited, "Susman, Shapiro, Woburn and Grey. Hold please," then resumed her story.

"He was so good that we almost cleared the floor, but then he had to leave. Susman, Shapiro, Woburn and Grey. Can you hold please?"

Returning to the recap of her latest love interest’s Saturday Night Fever, she continued, “He wasn't feeling good. His stomach was bothering him or something. He took my number."

My buddy and I were eves dropping on her phone dance.

"Susman, Shapiro, Woburn and Grey. Can you hold please?"

Thinking I might be able to ignite a light banter, (I wasn't yet married), in between line switches, I asked, "How many times do you say that a day?"

"About 100 to 150 times a day," she answered mechanically signifying that I was far below her standard, unlike the Dancing Queen who went home with a tummy ache the night before.

I whispered to my friend, "That dude had to leave because his girlfriend was getting off her shift."

"You know it!" he exclaimed.

Being men, we intrinsically knew something about our kind that our receptionists friend hadn't yet learned, namely, no dude is going to leave a woman he is interested in on the account of pain. Men are hardwired for procreation. If it wasn't that way, the human race would be one of those dead ends branches on the evolutionary tree. Right there with homo erectus.

You probably haven’t a clue who homo erectus was because we descended from homo sapiens. Homo erectus was hominids who went extinct. An evolutionary loser who stayed in their cave when their belly ached while homo sapiens were out on the frozen tundra or scorching deserts trying to get them some action. Homo erectus would be around today, fighting for equal rights, if only they lived up to their namesake.

If the receptionist at the law office wasn't so short with me, I would have told her that her new guy is not going to call, but I'm sure she would've never taken the word of a poor dancer like me over a dude who almost cleared the floor.

Nature is all about fleetness of foot and fighting with fists to figure out who is the fittest entity. To become the dominant species, you can't call in sick or phone in your performance. You have to go out there and make a doormat out of the competition. The food chain isn't fair. In fact, it whails on the sick and the old which makes room for the alphas who barge through the front door then toss anyone in their way into the gutter.

Now I'm not talking about the fucked up things men do that gets them thrown in jail until years later an expensive team of lawyers finds a prosecutorial procedural error that gets their conviction thrown out. I'm talking about the drive to find a mate to make more of oneself. If it wasn't that way, we wouldn't be here to discuss what assholes some men are. The drive to procreate propels the world forward. Einstein was once asked what was the most powerful force. He answered,

"Compound interest."

I disagree. Compound interest will never get a lazy guy off the couch to mow the lawn or take out the garbage. A man won't paint a woman's toenails for compound interest. Compound interest will never make a dude launch fireworks from his butt crack or cannonball off the roof into the pool at a party.

My buddy told me a story that he was once out with a few girls at a bar doing shots. He had trouble keeping up. One girl showed a lot of interest in him. At one point, after a particularly potent belt, he felt that he was about to vomit. Instead of dashing off to the men's room to blow spumoni which would have certainly vacated his position next to a new potential mate, he explained,

"Like a man, I swallowed my own puke."

That prompted me to deliver a particular poignant knuckle bump. One time to make my point I was telling a story that after knee surgery, I was zonked out on Percocet and unable to stand without terrible pain. My wife, Christine, helped me into bed, then pulled the covers over me. She asked,

"Is there anything you need?"

"Well, there’s one thing," I answered.

"You got to be kidding," she said incredulously.

I was telling that story to a young friend of mine recently when he said,

"I did it once with a collapsed lung."

He continued on how he was camping with his girlfriend when he picked her up and felt his lung pop. Instead of going immediately to the hospital, he took care of business first. When I asked him if he got to the hospital afterwards, he said,

"Yeah, after the third time."

So there you have it. The secret is out, and I said it. Men like sex. I make no apologies for the way I am because I'm doing what is coded in my genes. I am a man trapped in a man's body. I can't go against the prewiring of biology that created the dominant branch in the evolutionary history of humankind.

The fact is the fate of the human race, the very survival of mankind, depends on men not thinking with the big head.

Editor's Note: Originally published on July 24, 2018.