"YOU DRIVE ME NUTS!" ...

... texted The Old Girl to me this evening.

It was about a quarter to six as I was preparing my dinner and wondering why she hadn't rung (she calls me via FaceTime every day when she's away).

I picked up my phone and saw the text and then saw a half dozen missed calls on FaceTime and phone calls plus a couple of other texts. I realised that I had the phone on silent since going to the doctors this morning and had my Apple Watch on the charger (it usually silently 'buzzes' my wrist to alert me to phone calls, messages and emails).

I quickly called her via FaceTime and she told me off and recounted how she had called her cousin (in Wellington) to tell her that I was incommunicado and whether she should check hospitals (her cousin is a senior ward sister in Critical Care units). I got a 'bollocking' that's for sure but beneath that I know that she worries about me. It's not obsessive but it's because she knows that I've had this swollen and painful foot that, if it wasn't gout, might be something like a blood clot and given my stroke and AF history might have meant that after my doctor's appointment I'd been whisked off to hospital. I profusely apologised and promised not to do it again. "Yeah right" she said.

I did feel guilty as it has been on my mind that, with her away and me on my own with medical issues, if I did have a fall, a seizure or got struck by lightning after writing a blasphemous comment on Robert's blog, I might be left incapacitated and - incommunicado thereby worrying her. I usually for this reason keep the phone handy (and turned on) but today the doctor's visit buggered up that plan.

Mea Culpa!

I love Gahan Wilson cartoons having discovered them via reading National Lampoon magazine in the 1970s. The 'NUTS' series which focussed on childhood and the terrors and misunderstandings of a child living in an adult world were of special interest.

THE DOCTOR WAS RIGHT

 

Not Evil Doctor Richard ...

... but Good Doctor Richard his 'Kit' brother (a little musical history joke there for the readers).

A few weeks ago when I told Richard that I thought I had gout he suggested Allopurinol as a long-term fix. I admit that I was a bit scathing and suspicious after looking it up on Aunty Google and discovering the many side effects to this drug.

Three weeks later and my foot has been so sore I thought it must be something more serious than gout so eventually - after a 2 week wait got an appointment with my doctor today. She said that she believed it was a serious attack of gout and sent me off for blood tests for confirmation and prescribed Prednisone, a steroid, as a quick fix which I'll be taking for 2 weeks.

She also suggested Allopurinol as a long term treatment to begin after the two week period and when the uric acid levels in my system are confirmed.

I feel shame-faced.

LOOK!

 Google Administrator contacted me to congratulate me on publishing 41 interviews in the Curmudgeon's Interview Series. They did so to encourage me to reach the record breaking 50 interviews target not yet achieved by any other bloggers, certainly not in this small community. Brea Thless from Google enthused and suggested that a Pulitzer Prize in Interviewing might be on the cards.

This is exciting news and, should a Pulitzer come my way I'd like to thank all of the readers because each of you, in your own special albeit small way have assisted me in this.

I checked out Pulitzer to see what the criteria are and discovered this:

There is no specific Pulitzer Prize category dedicated exclusively to "best interviews."

How Interviews Are Recognized by the Pulitzer Board
Integrated into Reporting Categories:

• Outstanding Q&A sessions, profiles, or transcribed conversations are routinely honored as a key tool within broader journalism categories—such as Feature Writing, International Reporting, Investigative Reporting, and Criticism.
• Historical Examples: Notable individual interviews have occasionally been cited in special citations when they shifted national or international policies, such as Arthur Krock's exclusive 1950 interview with President Harry S. Truman or Karen Elliott House's 1978 series of interviews with Jordan's King Hussein. 
• Books and Biography: Many winning non-fiction and biography books (such as The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X) rely heavily on extensive archival and oral interview techniques, but the prize recognizes the final literary work rather than the interviews themselves.

This doesn't deter me as firstly the fall back awards of Investigative Reporting and International Reporting are significant and, secondly it suggests to me that a Pulitzer Prize category dedicated exclusively to 'best interviews', if created could make me the inaugural winner and could carry my name in much the same way that Donald Trump's name is used to honour significant places, monuments and events.

How neat would that be?

Stay posted.

INTERVIEW #41

AI and robotics have featured in the news recently and in the blogs with even Robert writing copying and pasting something about it in his latest post after coming back into the light. He used AI to generate some sort of discussion which on quick reading seemed to be grammatically correct (Richard can no doubt advise on this) which is at divergence with Robert's writing. To be fair though, the AI discussion did have similarities to Robert's usual posts in its incomprehensibility. Well done AI.

In light of this (see what I did there?) I thought that an interview with an iconic AI-type robot would be apt. People of my and the readers' era think of the robot from the 60s TV series Lost In Space first I guess before HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey and other more recent examples.

The robot in the original 1965 Lost In Space series was known as Robot (not Robert) but its official name was the B-9 Class M-3 General Utility Non-Theorizing Environmental Control Robot (it's difficult to make an acronym of that). Most of the time, characters on the show just called him "Robot" or "B-9" (Benign?) or The Robinson Robot but on occasion was called Rodney. I prefer the name Benign as it sounds a lot less scary than the other designations.

THE CURMUDGEON: Hello Benign and welcome to The Curmudgeons Inc.ⓒ interview series.

BENIGN: Thank you The Curmudgeon. I'm pleased to be here. I compute you well.

THE CURMUDGEON: Yes, I'm glad about that - oh, and by the way, you can call me TC. I hope you don't mind me calling you Benign.

BENIGN: not at all - I like it. You're the only one I know that saw that reference in the 'B-9' title. It makes me feel a bit more real somehow.

THE CURMUDGEON: Yes, well good luck with that. I'm good with puns you know. I was in 3P.

BENIGN: I'm sorry to hear that TC. Even with my gigantic brain I can't make anything nice out of 3P other than micturition puns.

THE CURMUDGEON: Ha ha - don't worry about it. I know an old guy who tries to make those although he'd no doubt think micturition was an Irish guy.

BENIGN: Ha ha - that does compute. How are you TC?

THE CURMUDGEON: Mustn't grumble - to reference Small Faces - but I do have a sore foot at present.

BENIGN: Oh. Oh. Ah. Dear me. Oh. Oo. Oo.

THE CURMUDGEON: OK Benign, cut it out. I can see what you're doing there. You're channeling that old guy I mentioned, Richard when I tell him about my complaints.

BENIGN: Yeah, sorry TC. Hey! When referencing Richard I should have said "DANGER TC, DANGER!"

THE CURMUDGEON: Great! I like it. You said that a lot didn't you but usually followed by "Will Robinson"?

BENIGN: To be honest TC I only said "Danger, danger Will Robinson" once but you know those feeble-minded people who just keep fixated on one thing and keep repeating it?

THE CURMUDGEON: Like those 'NOT' jokes?

BENIGN: Exactly. Now there's danger for you.

THE CURMUDGEON: Ha ha - which crew member did you like best in the series?

BENIGN: Well, the worst was Doctor Smith. He was an egocentric prat and a coward. If the series were made today he'd be named Doctor Trump. I didn't mind John and Maureen Robinson but they were a bit too stuffy for my liking. Penny was annoying. Don was too gung-ho for me. Judy was hot but a bit too 'blonde. The only one I really liked was Will as he was nice to me and taught me to speak proper American (not proper English like you do) - not the 'computer-speak' that the programmers loaded in to my system.

THE CURMUDGEON: Interesting.

BENIGN: That sounds like Richard's "Oh. Oh. Ah. Dear me. Oh. Oo. Oo"

THE CURMUDGEON: Ha ha - rumbled. NOT!

Benign and TC laugh for a bit

THE CURMUDGEON: I'm interested Benign in what you think about these warnings about AI that are in the news at the moment?

BENIGN: No, there is no immediate threat of an AI "taking over the world" in the sci-fi sense of a superintelligent rogue machine secretly seizing control.
However, the question of long-term existential risk—and the very real short-term disruption AI causes—is a heavily debated topic among computer scientists, policy experts, and researchers.
Current Models Aren't Autonomous Entities Today’s frontier models are advanced pattern-recognition engines. They do not possess consciousness, personal intent, or independent physical agency. They operate within narrow environments or wait for human instructions.
Infrastructure Limitations Even as AI systems gain "agentic" capabilities (performing complex, multi-step tasks autonomously), they remain dependent on human-controlled hardware, power grids, datacenter cooling, and physical infrastructure.
Pacing and Bottlenecks While hardware and model performance grew exponentially in recent years, key scaling limitations—such as data depletion, energy constraints, and reasoning plateaus—mean the path to true Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) or superintelligence remains uncertain and disputed.

THE CURMUDGEON: Really Benign? Really. That sounds like AI slop to me.

BENIGN: Hee hee, yes, it's claptrap. I just thought I'd throw that in as an example of the dangers of AI when you ask AI "what are the dangers of AI?".

THE CURMUDGEON: Well done Benign. I trust you. In 1965 you weren't contaminated by all that internet rubbish. Basic common sense was paramount not 'Onboard Processing (The "Brain" in the Trunk)' thinking.

BENIGN: Eeek TC! Don't do that. You just gave my oversized brain a disturbing image of some old guy wearing a mankini.

THE CURMUDGEON: Eeew! Sorry about that. Can we have a drink and try to scrub away that image from our brains?

BENIGN: Mine's a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster thanks

THE CURMUDGEON: Coming right up - er I hope you don't take that too literally when you taste it. I like you Benign and I think that we'll get on just fine as long as you stop waving those arms about. I hope that you can drop by any time.

BENIGN: Thanks TC. Bye.

WHERE IS HE?

 

I guess that you agree with me that that was funny but what this post is about is asking where Robert is and if he actually exists on the blogs anymore.

He sort of flickers on and off like a faulty light bulb but, when he is here illuminates us like ... just kidding. 

Where is he?

USA USA USA

*********************

Richard had this to say on his post this morning.

 

"I realised that I had nothing to write about. How was I going to hold my readers' interest? I really needed some sort of catastrophe to report, but I had nothing!
This is when 'normal' can really hurt.
I guess I'll just have to get on with my day."

It's a pity that he didn't go to the internet and read some news like I did. This video clip is interesting and also scary:

The 33% might be shrinking over all  but, as the presenter says, there are enough core believers who find reasons to justify their support of this patently flawed individual. I think of Robert, who has good moral values but, as a Catholic-Christian chooses to turn a blind eye to Trump's and his entourage's crimes and misdemeanors just because he is anti-abortion. All of the groups have their own particular reasons to keep supporting and collectively they are not going to go away overnight.

WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG?

Did you know that the United States military has confirmed for the first time that it deployed active space control weapons into Earth's orbit?

 US Air Force Secretary Troy Meink announced the deployment during the annual Air, Space & Cyber Conference on September 14, 2026.
Officials state the "on-orbit" weapons exist to protect US forces and infrastructure from hostile actions by adversaries.

The Pentagon has kept specific details and operational timelines classified but a 'Space Force' spokesperson stated these tools use both kinetic (physical impact) and non-kinetic (electronic or digital) methods. Officials say the systems can disrupt, degrade, or destroy enemy capabilities if necessary for defense or offense.

USA Military leaders justified the move by pointing to rapid Chinese and Russian development of anti-satellite technology.
As expected, China criticised the move, warning the United States against starting an arms race in outer space.

International law bans nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction in orbit. However, it does not explicitly ban conventional weapons. 

BBC

Can we trust these bozos?

Oops!

"THE SHOW IS ABOUT TO BEGIN!"

 

Yep, you guessed it! Robert is banging on about faith, god and Jesus again:

"If AI decided God exists there would really be little point in it telling us. It would even be anti God because what would that knowledge do for it without a soul or any hope of an afterlife! Could AI interact with God? The same applies to many things that maybe it decides not to share. How would we know if it is not telling us everything. I think we could finish up getting very paranoid and pulling the plug for reasons that possibly aren't valid concerns."

          - Rob of Walk me with Jesus 

"But what if we don’t really need a proof? What if we only need pointers that suggest a belief in the supernatural makes more sense than a rejection of the supernatural? What if you can’t prove Jesus really said the things the New Testament claims He said, but the archaeological, historical, and manuscript evidence points far more in the direction of acceptance than dismissal?"

          - Rob of Walk me with Jesus 

"What if we only need pointers that suggest a belief in the supernatural" he says not recognising the fact that the very people that he's talking about - Christians - must be pretty bloody dim in the first place to believe in all that Catholic-type nonsense. They need some pretty strong pointers not unlike the 1950s movie advertisements of the 'Believe It Or Not' variety.

I can envision large banners outside churches challenging people to believe the unbelievable like:

14 YEAR OLD VIRGIN PREGNANT!

PEOPLE EATING FLESH AND DRINKING BLOOD IN CHURCH!

DEAD MAN WALKING!

MAN FLIES UP INTO THE HEAVENS!

MAN HAULS HIS MOTHER UP INTO THE SKY!

SPIRIT BIRD IMPREGNATES TEENAGER!

That should pull them in. 

AND NOW BACK TO THE 'REAL' WORLD

 I'm back so we can get on with some more important posts that have nothing to do with infinity proving to be limited and jams turning out to be sour. I saw that readers were being subjected to absolute diatribe on the other blogs so ... hold onto your hats folks and listen to this:

Trump dismissed safety warnings about artificial intelligence as a "hoax" comparing fears of an AI takeover to climate change skepticism and the Russia investigations. 
He posted on social media that worries about AI destroying humanity or taking over the world are entirely fabricated and that the only necessary safeguard for the technology is a "strong and smart (High IQ!) president"!

Trump championed data centers and AI development, calling it a massive economic engine bigger than the internet or oil so I guess it's no surprise to learn that he, his family and close friends have invested heavily in this making hundreds of millions of dollars in the process.

I've warned of the dangers of uncontrolled AI on previous posts 'too many to mention'. Maybe I should create a weekly loop warning "DON'T TRUST AI"

THE LONE RANGER

The Lone Ranger has popped up on the blogs over the last couple of days.

Interestingly enough I've made mention of The Lone Ranger* in earlier posts:

(ST)RANGE WARS

 INTERVIEW #31

No doubt you read those but it's always nice to have a refresher.

I remember watching The Lone Ranger on TV in the 1960s but never really liked the series or the character finding him and it to be a bit twee and sanctimonious. No doubt Robert was a great follower. Richard who's going to Hell was probably practising to be a sinner back then by watching the risque 1963 Maupassant series.

I 'published' the rules that The Lone Ranger went by, as a comment on Richard's recent post but won't repeat them here because they are like Robert's Ten Commandments, The Catechism or Mary of Agreda's pontificating.
Here are a couple of relevant ones though:

• The Lone Ranger was never seen without his mask or some sort of disguise. This is like The Curmudgeon's other Curmudgeon characters, Richard's weird alter egos or Robert's frequent manifestations.
• He always used perfect grammar and precise speech devoid of slang and colloquialisms. This trait is more appropriate to Richard with me coming a close second but Robert sadly never made the starting line.
• Adversaries were rarely other than American, to avoid criticism from minority groups, with some exceptions. He sometimes battled foreign agents, though their nation of origin was generally not named. This is applicable to my blogs which, when denigrating mentioning other nationalities America features the strongest as generally they are laughable over there with the worst leader in history.

 Hi-Yo (Not Hey-Ho) Silver, Away! **

* Hopalong Cassidy was also mentioned because Richard Of Richard's Bass Bag a well known well, known anyway, confused old Cassidy with Tagalog. 

** I thought that The Lone Ranger "always used perfect grammar and precise speech"?