Left to my own devices

The first Matt Awards were dispensed in early 1998 (now a quarter-century ago). By me. On my trusty old Brother word processor. No one else really knew about them. I might have read them off to my mom, or my friend Terry, but they were really for me. They were born out of frustration for how the Oscars typically doled-out awards. Basically, I wanted to have my own opinions about movies - something I do regularly over on the Mashley at the Movies podcast . An annual occurrence since they began, I enjoy doing the Matt Awards each year. Sometimes, I do both nominations and then, a few weeks later, pick the winners. Some years, I just go straight to the winners circle. This year, I'm really late - later than I've probably ever been - on getting to these awards. Life's been a bit busy. So, here's what we're doing: This post will be the list of nominations for the 2023 Matt Awards . Then, in a few days, I'll make another blog post with the winners. Sound ok? Cool, ...

My dad, Lewis, was born on this day in 1945. He would have turned 78-years-old today. As regular readers of this blog may know and remember, he died aged 52. Too few years, though more than some. While it's true that sometimes I give March 21st a brief, passing thought (or have even forgotten its significance altogether), this year it looms more prevalent within my psyche, probably because of my mom's recent passing. So, here I am, writing another blog post about my father.

"Hanging on to the past It only stands in our way" - Tina Turner , I Don't Wanna Fight There he was, being exalted. The man (well, he was a young man then) who'd thrown a basketball at me at point blank range after yelling, "Think fast!" then laughing when I'd had no time to react. The ball had hit me square in the head. To this day, I can still remember the immediate blackness after the impact, of not being able to see anything for a few moments, and then the ringing pain that reverberated throughout my skull for what seemed like an eternity, but was probably only a few minutes. The aforementioned incident happened during high school P.E. class. The person who did it was someone I rarely, if ever, interacted with. He was just a person in my class who liked to bully people, and I happened to be his choice of assault that day. And then, several months ago, I saw him. Not in-person (thankfully), but online. His picture was posted on a mutual friend's ...

The Verge recently had an article about AI - specifically, how humans perceive AI. It's been a pretty big topic of late, what with ChatGPT and the Bing Chatbot on a roll, having millions of users help them learn and become better... er, I mean just toying around with it for a bit. And major companies expanding its reach by the day. The aforementioned piece from The   Verge  considers the "mirror test," wherein we are faced with something that is really ourselves, and the test is: do we recognize it as such, or do we believe it to be an altogether different entity? Animals and other creatures below us on the evolutionary chain have been faced with such a test before, with a literal mirror. Sometimes, they may perceive themselves in their reflection, other times they're confused, and sometimes they flat out believe their reflection to be another being. The author of the article believes too many people are falling into that last camp when it comes to AI.

It's been nearly two weeks since my mom, Sally Newman, died. I've certainly written in these pages before about friends, family and loved ones who have passed on, and want to write something about my mother in these pages that is truly about her - the life she led, and the life that is now gone - but for now it will have to wait. There's still too much going on in my head and in my heart to write something cogent about her. For the best that I could muster, you can read her obituary . I do, however, want to write about me. Specifically, about how Sally's death has impacted me. That may sound odd, or even self-centered. And it is. But, nearly all mourning is at least partly fueled by our own self-pity at losing someone we knew. It's the difference between, say, someone telling you that a random 76-year-old woman on the other side of the world that you've never known has died, and being told that your 76-year-old parent has perished. Our feelings tend to follow th...

A couple of things happened last month that I wanted to write about, but the holidays (along with a serious bout of depression) got in the way. The first was a case that went before the United States Supreme Court, where a Christian web site designer refused to make custom web sites for same-sex weddings. The second was  news of a restaurant in Richmond, Virginia that refused to honor the reservation of a conservative Christian organization that, among other things, opposes same-sex marriage and abortion rights.

I've been meaning to write about something, but life has been busy of late. So, a week later, I'm finally getting around to it. There was an article that caught my attention, about a guy who used AI -- specifically, ChatGPT (you can Google it, if you want to learn more) -- to write a children's book. He then used something called Midjourney to illustrate it. The person in question, Ammaar Reshi, "wrote" (quotations used purposefully) Alice and Sparkle  for a friend's daughter, and self-published it online via Amazon's digital bookstore. He also had a physical paperback version printed. I'm not sure what the intended recipient thought of the tome, but Reshi talked about his endeavor on Twitter, and the reaction there, and on Amazon, was apparently lackluster. Some criticized the writing, others criticized the use of AI-generated art, claiming it stole the work of actual artists.