On Service Animals, Longevity Crystals & Phishing
A monthly subscription for “BritBox” will make you separate the World into blokes, mates, chaps, and the occasional sod. The following is about the ladder. I went recently on a trip to Puerto Rico where the mosquitos cue up at the rental car pickup - an endearing welcome committee, entirely gratis, just for me — in preparation for yet another round of “transfusión-on-‘de-go”. While the island is always breathtakingly beautiful, sometimes unexpected things happen. In the hotel gym of all, I ran into a 40-some mainland American with a dog, and no, the Gringo was neither visually nor visibly impaired. It was a close call what was more non-hygienic, the guy’s bare feet on the treadmill or the dog incessantly licking his (the dog’s) a** while wondering how on Earth he got paired with such a loser. Makes you wonder what happens on these unsuspecting yoga mats when you’re not looking? — other than a continuous assault by overweight tourists desperately trying to work off the all-included, high caloric breakfast with a shaky warrior pose. Perhaps it’s no surprise that my complaint was both unwelcome & unwarranted as the dog was — of course — quickly declared to be a ‘certified’ emotional support animal; in other words, a caped miracle pet gifted with medical qualities that, I admit, where well disguised as the animal moved to lick where his b*lls would have been, prior to that fateful trip to the vet. A word of wisdom: If you need a low-shedding mutt within arm’s reach to avoid pulling your hamstring while adjusting your latest generation Apple watch, you shouldn’t hit the gym in the first place. In fact, do you & your pooch a favor and, while you listen to a Tibetan chime, look instead for 5 min at a Caribbean stock image as opposed to venture into non-continental US travel that can easily stress you out — even if that disappoints the mosquito morning shift at the airport. Sorry, hombres.
Moving on. Just before PR, we visited Sedona and the Grand Canyon in Northern Arizona. I know, I’m a lucky guy! — which was officially confirmed when we got back in one piece from a hot air balloon ride at 3000 ft altitude captained by a retirement-age, gruff guy who I’ve never met before but now entrusted navigating my family safely across the mesa. Apparently, I’m now accepting social media ratings by strangers on Facebook & TripAdvisor as sufficient quality control, never mind my innate fear of heights, starting at about 20 feet — a.k.a. ‘only 2980 more to go, Tom’. I guess some useful self-selection is involved as only those who come back down safely tend to post a review. Anyway, once you got over how recklessly ‘some of us’ deal with assessing risk on vacation and look at the breathtaking scenery which took some 70 million years (give or take a few months) to generate and a fully charged iPhone to document, it’s painfully clear that we’re just a speck on Earth’s time scale. Given our cholesterol numbers, best case scenario, eventually adding another 10 or so years through billions of dollars of venture capital money flowing into longevity startups won’t change a bit on the ultimate outcome. If this turns too dark for you, here’s where Sedona’s reasonably priced vortex crystals may make all the difference. Wearing a newly minted, blue, red or green colored stone bracelet (you pick, no difference whatsoever) — your deep ‘energy’ level is projected to exceed that of a half-open can of caffeinated Red Bull (at 4 x the price), and your heart chakra looks pretty promising from here on out — that is, if you know what a chakra is and are current on your beta-blockers. You still die of course around 78, on average, but up until then thanks to the stones, and with or without throwing back THC gummies from your local dispensary, you grin like a creep pre-Botox, radiate compassion & ooze kindness instead of old-people musk. Let’s keep it real, Dudes — when you’re 56, you tell everybody you feel like 48 and on good (& dimly lit) days you may look like 47, when, in reality, you feel like 87 on most mornings and sure as sh*t look it. So, as I see it, life is just like a membership, at some point, it runs out — and there’s no discount, much less a renewal option. At least that’s my current thinking, until Musk & Bezos figure out some pill to beat this — ideally, at a Medicare rate.
… which gets us to the digital world, finally. A word of free advice for my surprisingly loyal friends and avid followers with speedy web servers in far-flung places like Central Africa, the Greater Russian neighborhood, or the coastal regions of Southeast Asia: I’m afraid, even if you make it through my lazy-a** Spam filter, I tend to erase — apologies, for the most part without clicking on the prominently displayed phishing attachment — anything that starts with …
· ‘Greetings’, ‘Good Day’, or ‘Dear Sir’ — usually followed by a very polite request for my social security number to send me a billion dollars in local currency from a long-lost family member. Rest assured, if I would have even a remotely credible whiff of a relative with that much cash to spare, I would have expensed a pure-bred hound (or spent quality time on ancestry.com) to locate so that I can start mooching off him/her a long, long time ago. No such thing, brother.
· ‘Dear First & Last Name’, ‘Dear Last Name, First Name & Middle Initial’ or short, ‘Dear Last Name’ — firstly, a big compliment as these tech-savvy senders managed to code an automated program in C++ that correctly extracts my name from the email that’s surely listed in the Dark Web by now, ‘for training purposes only’. Still, it does signal a certain lack of familiarity with Western salutation etiquette — hence triggers a quick ‘delete’ action, also to wake up the 3 guys running my ‘trash’ folder in Mumbai — incoming!
· ‘Final warning’, ‘Confirmation required’ and ‘Anything “free” …’ in the subject line is a bit too obvious and, if I may, not up to your usual ransomware standard, although I appreciate the urgency. After all, you’re running a legitimate scamming biz, even if you don’t pay US taxes in an election year. Please understand, it would be tough to explain to my IT admin that I just couldn’t resist getting ‘da’ deal while ‘da’ worm eats its way through my CPU en route to my bank account — being stupid is one thing, but cheap too? That’ll do it.
To summarize, we can all agree, the electric power for any of this could be used much more productively to mine crypto in Iceland — something you can do without an emotional support pet.
In closing, and since now is as good a time as any to reiterate: “Phu-k-et” at its core is both, a popular tourist location in Thailand and a deceptively misspelled life motto. Glad we cleared this up.
