albertnet Pledge Drive!

Introduction

Wait, don’t leave! I know there’s almost nothing more annoying than a pledge drive, and when I was a kid and some damn telethon came in the TV, my brothers and I would almost injure ourselves diving for the channel-changer knob. But this is different! For one thing, you weren’t about to passively enjoy a bland visual spectacle on this page anyway. Also, albertnet needs you and time is running out! (Okay, it’s not—it never is—but still.)

I’ve been doing this blog for over seventeen years and I’ve barely asked readers for anything. So it’s time for you to step up. Don’t worry, I don’t want your money (not that I’d turn it down). Instead of asking for money, I’m asking for other pledges. Consider the words of Don Corleone: “Someday, and that day may never come, I’ll call upon you to do a service for me. But until that day, accept this justice as a gift on my daughter’s wedding day.” Okay, so neither of my daughters is getting married, but I’m tired of waiting around. So I’m calling on you to make a pledge to me: maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon—and for the rest of your life. (My pledge to you: that will be the last cinematic reference of this post.)

Why support albertnet?

How much do you pay for the cable TV that mainly shows you stuff like depressing documentaries of hoarders, or grisly footage of women’s cage fighting where at some point they’re too tired to continue jumping around and throwing punches or kicks and they’re just sprawled on the mat, one woman grinding the other’s face into it, and you feel terrible watching but can’t take your eyes off of it? And how much do you pay for carry-out  coffee that is so boiling hot it scalds the roof of your mouth so you don’t enjoy your next overpriced restaurant meal? If you could work off the credit card debt that these indulgences create, just by adjusting certain lifestyle behaviors, wouldn’t you do it? And wouldn’t those adjustments be even better served supporting a blog that has educated and entertained you for seventeen years without making you feel bad about society and yourself?

Where else but albertnet are you going to get the definitive spelling of “kindergart[e]ner,” with a deep investigation of who spells it how, and why? What other blog has done justice to thorny topics like bicycle inner tubes and Presta valve locknuts? Who else but I would deliver a biting critique of our national anthem? And if you’re contemplating a vasectomy, what other blog could possibly answer your every question, and in such vivid detail?

Sure, you probably think of albertnet as an infinitely renewable resource—but like all renewable resources, it takes wise use and careful stewardship to keep it flowing. Maybe you think that once was enough, that time you anonymously commented, “If somebody wants expert take on the main topic of blogging next I advise him/her to go to this site, continue the fussy job. car locksmith Dallas.” Or maybe you can’t even remember the last time you supported albertnet. Well, if you can’t remember, it’s probably been never. Think about that, and not just from a semantic viewpoint.

Now, before you make some BS excuse for yourself and close this page, hold up a second because you’re probably deploying one of the classic fallacies people conveniently maintain about pledging:

1. I can’t remember the URL
2. Our taxes pay for albertnet, don’t they?
3. Someone else will do it
4. I can’t afford to make a pledge
5. Blogs are free, aren’t they?

Let me briefly refute each of these in turn. My own dad couldn’t remember the URL to this blog, and when a friend asked him for it, he said he hadn’t bothered to bookmark it because my posts are too long and he didn’t have time to read them. Well, you know what? He’s dead now. Is that what you want? Look, you’re here. You got here. Nice try. Moving on to the second excuse, I don’t get any funding from the federal government, and in fact, thanks to that tax-and-spend liberal we’ve got in the White House, I usually owe every April. As for excuse #3, “someone else will do it,” you know in your heart that’s not true—nobody supports albertnet and most of the time nobody even reads it. Almost the only praise I ever got was for a race report I ghost-wrote for a teammate; thinking this teammate had written it, two members called it the “best race report of all time.” When they discovered I was the actual writer, the praise ended instantly. Moving on to “I can’t afford it,” I’m not asking for money. And this last excuse, “blogs are free, aren’t they?” is patently false—I have to pay for my domain names, and then there’s the blood, sweat, and tears that go into every post. (Yes, I am literally bleeding and crying right now, and probably have BO.)

Now that you’ve moved past this foolish knee-jerk reaction and want to help, I’ll tell you how—and more importantly, I’ll explain what’s in it for you.

Membership tiers

Look, making a pledge is really its own reward, and you’ll feel different after you pledge—better involved, and more important, not like a bystander anymore but like an owner. Still, we could all use a leg up socially … I get that. Therefore, I am hereby establishing albertnet membership tiers to richly reward your engagement. Consider which of these you’re in a position to achieve.

Friend – This is the entry level. And this isn’t “friend” as in “Facebook friend”—I’m not going to abuse your privacy, spam you, or get into that ridiculous quid pro quo of liking your post so you have to like mine back. I’m talking about real friendship. I will take a bullet for you—not a real one, but a metaphorical one, or maybe even one of those rubber bullets if you find yourself in the mêlée of a peace rally gone sour. If you reach this tier, I will mention you at the bottom of this post in the special Honor Roll section. (Terms and conditions apply. Void where prohibited.)

Supporter – This is a little more serious, like a 5-series BMW instead of the tacky entry-level 3-series. You’ll begin to establish yourself as a person who can be counted on, not just a dabbler. Members of this tier will be listed in the Supporter section of the Honor Roll, which will be reachable via a hyperlink I’ll put at the bottom of every albertnet post for the next year!

Patron – This will cement your public persona as a person who has a little weight to throw around, but not in a bodily way or anything—I’m talking gravitas. Given the rich heritage of albertnet as a premier journal of professional cycling, you’ll also gain status through the widespread connotation of the term “patron” in the pro peloton. Patrons of albertnet will be listed in Honor Roll and get to include a profile picture (which can be of themselves, their avatar, their pet, or their brand logo).

Cornerstone member – This is the kind of reader I can really count on, who lives and breathes albertnet’s coda and mantra every day with undiminished passion. And what is the coda? If you’re this kind of member, you already know. And the mantra? It’s “I … WILL … NOT … LOSE … EVER.” As a Cornerstone Member you will be featured in the Honor Roll with a short video selfie of yourself (embedded YouTube or GIF format, your choice!) delivering any non-political, non-profane, non-copyrighted message or interpretive dance you like.

Baller – This one speaks for itself as the very highest membership tier of this, or any, blog. In addition to getting an Honor Roll video, Ballers get their profile photo or logo featured on the albertnet masthead for three months! Whoa!

(Note: if you’re shy, but still want recognition, I can use your first name and last initial, or just your initials, or your nickname, or a pseudonym, or a code name … whatever you want!)

What you’ll pledge

Anonymous readers are encouraged to pledge self-directed behavioral changes for their own benefit and the warm, sanctimonious feeling of self improvement. While no profile attainment is involved, these are surefire ways to become a better person. But if you want to achieve one of the prestigious albertnet membership tiers with all the benefits that entails, read on to see what specific changes you can make, and how high you can get! Some  of these require only a simple pledge (emailed to me here) while others require specific action that you can report to me once completed.

Friend

• Delete your Meta account.
• Pledge to switch to drinking non-alcoholic beer at least some of the time.
• At the gym, don’t sit there on the machine looking at your phone between sets.
• Pledge to swear off microwave popcorn forever, since air poppers are cheap and work so well.
• Pledge to swear off aerosol whipped cream since a whisk does a great job whipping fresh cream.
• Pledge to throw away your Keurig machine.
• Pledge to consider the environmental impact when you use GenAI.
• Pledge to never purchase, accept, or otherwise trade in cryptocurrency.
• Pledge to switch from SMART goals to DUMB goals  as described in these pages.
• If you’re over fifty and haven’t had your first colonoscopy, do that immediately.
• Try writing a sonnet.
• If you have a child applying to colleges, read this post and help your child understand that all the paranoia about college acceptance rates, etc., is overblown.
• Switch from oil to a wax-based chain lube for your bike.
• If you’ve always held out for wild salmon, get over yourself and try out responsibly farmed salmon with guidance from this post.
• Pledge to be more compassionate with yourself.

Supporter

• Delete your Meta account with the parting message (i.e., reason for leaving), “Zuckerberg is an asshole and Meta can gargle my balls.” (This is the sign-off I used after deciding the utility of WhatsApp didn’t justify supporting this evil company.)
• Pledge to abide by my AI-themed new year’s resolutions described here.
• If you don’t have a library card, get one.
• Pledge to never pressure your offspring in any way to major in any STEM subject. Note: subtle hints count as pressure!
• Pledge to be completely evasive whenever somebody asks you what you do for a living. You can tell them, for example, “I’m a vegetarian,” and if they say, “I mean for work,” you can reply, “Yeah, I guess it’s a lotta work.” And so on.
• Pledge to drink your coffee black from now on, and with no sugar.
• Pledge to take better care of your teeth.
• Read the post Undeterred: A Critique of a Book About Life Without Free Will and, if you agree with that post, leave a comment below the post saying so.
• Try writing a Kroopian poem (i.e., in dactylic trimeter); you can check out this one for inspiration.
• Develop a Family Internet Use Policy and pledge to enforce it.
• Pledge to develop, configure, and use a “firewall for your mind” as described here.

Patron

• If you are a cyclist interested in helping kids, register with NICA, take the required training, and join a high school mountain bike team as an assistant coach.
• Next time you travel on vacation, take a train instead of flying.
• Switch from disposable razors to a proper old-school razor that takes double-edged blades.
• Visit the Velominati website listing “The Rules” and post a comment pointing out that most of these rules are silly (or however you decide to comment) and include this link: https://www.albertnet.us/2014/05/velominatis-rules-brilliance-or-bs.html

Cornerstone member

• If you struggle with smartphone addiction, switch to a basic flip phone (aka feature phone) such as this one or something similar, and get rid of your smartphone so you won’t go back.
• If your email inbox is currently and perennially a mess, achieve Inbox Zero and pledge to maintain it.

Baller

• Switch from the QWERTY keyboard layout to Dvorak. Click here for details.

The albertnet Honor Roll

Here’s where I list the Friends, Supporters, Patrons, Cornerstone Members, and Ballers! If you don’t see anything below, you got here too early. Get going on your pledge(s) and maybe you’ll be among the first listed!

Friends

Your name could be here!

Supporters

Who’ll be the first?

Patrons

Can you imagine your profile pic or logo here? Wouldn’t that be amazing?

Cornerstone Members

Who will reach this exalted teir?

Ballers

Will anybody survey the blogosphere from this magnificent summit?

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

More Advice From a MAMIL

Dear MAMIL,

In my regular “non-cycling” life I like to think I’m a natty dresser. I don’t skimp on my cycling kit, either. And yet I get the sense that when I roll up to the coffee shop for a group ride, the other guys are kind of snickering at me. What am I doing wrong?

John D, Oakland, CA

Dear John,

Right off the bat, I’d guess this is all in your head. Your cycling pals could be snickering about anything, or nothing, or the snickering could be a figment of your imagination. That said, cyclists can be a judgmental lot so let’s proceed with the assumption that they’re actually judging your costume. Starting with your assertion that you don’t skimp on your clothing, I’ll advise that one can spend a lot of money and still look foolish. For example, you could be wearing a WorldTour pro team kit when you’re clearly not on the team, which 41% of a panel of veteran cyclists deemed “laughably Fredtastic” (i.e., demonstrating the tone-deafness of a newb). Or, you could be wearing Rapha in a cycling community like mine where we all shun that brand as overpriced hipster apparel too closely associated with Team Ineos and Chris Froome. Or, you could be underdressed or overdressed, or rocking arm warmers with a sleeveless jersey, or doing something similarly silly. But don’t sweat it. You’ll develop a sense of style on the road just like you have in your non-cycling life. If you’re impatient, go ahead and query your friends (however politely or bluntly you wish, from “Is there something untoward about my choice of apparel?” to “Fuck you starin’ at?!”). Or, consult this article, bearing in mind that “fitting in” is not a fundamental, necessary, or even commendable aspect of the sport.

Dear MAMIL,

I am somewhat new to cycling (in my late thirties) and have lately been doing group rides. A couple times I’ve heard this or that MAMIL talking about “digging deep.” I kind of have a sense for what this must mean, but can you explain it to me?

Virgil S, Louisville, CO

Dear Virgil,

As a former bike racer, I use this term to describe the kind of over-the-top suffering that we racer-types assume can only be achieved by the likes of us; that is, cyclists who have frequently found themselves in do-or-die race situations requiring the kind of massive effort that would frighten a recreational cyclist. Through trial and error we realize that we’re actually capable of more pain than we’d ever thought possible, because it means the difference between glorious victory and heartbreaking defeat. Do this enough times and you begin to think you’re special, and that casual cyclists couldn’t even begin to relate to what you can put yourself through. This is the essence of “digging deep.”

The problem with this expression is that if you use it outside your tight cabal of racer-types, and your audience doesn’t automatically feel included (due, perhaps, to not having raced), he or she or they may catch a whiff of arrogance in this usage. And then—depending on the pool of rapport available and/or the number of beers you’ve all consumed—he or she or they might give you a hard time about this usage, not just in the moment but repeatedly over time, almost as if to taunt you for your superciliousness. As you may have already guessed, this has happened to me with a pal who—though he hasn’t ever raced—recently completed a 400-kilometer ride. I don’t think anyone achieves that without digging deep. So use this term carefully.

Dear MAMIL,

You’ve gotta help me. I’m a teenage girl and the Lycra bike shorts my dad wears are disgusting. They’re so worn out they’re starting to become transparent in places! Some even have holes in the sides! It wouldn’t be such a big deal except he rides an indoor trainer and likes to parade around the house before and after his workout. My brother and I even chipped in and bought him a brand new pair of shorts but he doesn’t wear them, claiming he’s “saving” them for special rides. Would it be ethically wrong for me to “disappear” some of his worst clothing?

Lydia L, Portland, OR

Dear Lydia,

That really is a tough bind! Cycling clothing is notoriously expensive, and the Lycra often wears out before the chamois—so it can be difficult for a cheap bastard to part with them. Fortunately, there’s a modern solution: buy your dad a pair of baggy mountain-bike style shorts. I used to think these were pointless since they don’t have a chamois, but actually, that works in your favor: he can wear his thrashed old disgusting shorts under the baggy ones. A fellow mountain biking coach pointed this out to me … he is stoked to be getting a second life out of all his old road shorts. Give that a try!

Dear MAMIL,

I confess that I am officially a MAMIL, but I’m apparently still something of a “newb” since I’ve “only” been cycling for about five years. As difficult as this sport is, I thought I’d get some respect from the non-cyclists in my life. But instead they seem to cast aspersions. My sister-in-law said I’m at real risk for giving myself a heart attack, and a couple of people have said cycling actually reduces bone density. What’s the deal? Did I choose the wrong sport?

Jeff B, Columbus, OH

Dear Jeff,

I’ve been hearing rumors for well over a decade that too much exercise can damage your heart. Cycling sometimes gets singled out, because you can do it day after day. (Nobody runs back-to-back marathons, but lots of cyclists put in hundreds of miles a week.) I’ve written about this supposed cardiac risk here. The question for your sister-in-law is: if Tour de France type riders—despite making a living at this and being tough as nails—don’t tend to ride themselves to death, how could you? I mean, no offence, but if a recreational cyclist were actually putting himself or herself at risk for cardiac arrest, the pros would be dropping like flies. And would humans actually evolve to have the capability of working themselves to death? Statistically, the greater risk is when a middle-aged person who doesn’t exercise at all suddenly does something really rigorous. When I lived in Colorado we’d hear every year about some guy having a fatal heart attack while shoveling the snow from his driveway.

As for osteoporosis, it is true that very fit people, because they carry less weight on their skeletons, are somewhat more prone to it. Cyclists in particular can be at greater risk because it’s a low-impact sport, lacking the thumping-along of running that can help maintain bone density. Another issue is that you can sweat a ton during a really long ride, which deprives your body of calcium. So yeah, there’s something to this. But obesity is a far more common ailment among the middle-aged, so it’s not like cycling is unhealthy. Just add in some weight training to your regimen, and make sure your diet has plenty of calcium. Also, I once did a quick Google search on “is beer good for bone density” and apparently beer has boron in it, which is good for your bones. I’m not going to research this any deeper because I have the answer I want, and now you do, too.

Dear MAMIL,

What is it with the modern cycling sunglasses? They are so goofy looking! Have all you MAMILs (and MAVISes) lost your minds? Why not a tasteful pair of Ray-Bans or Maui Jims?

Julie D, Miami, FL

Dear Julie,

I agree. It’s hard not to find fault when you compare modern cycling sunglasses to classic styles like the Ray-Bans.

The problem is, as much as we’d like to blame the designers for deliberately making their product “edgy” (i.e., dorky), to some degree this actually form following function. I’m not in love with the looks of my own cycling shades, but they really do well at not letting light leak in from the sides, not fogging up, and being easy to stash in my helmet vents so I don’t drip sweat all over them during a long climb. A couple of times I’ve forgotten to put in my contact lenses before heading out for a ride, and instead of clomping through the house in my cleats I’ve just put on my prescription Ray-Bans, and I’ll tell you, they don’t work nearly as well. So maybe this is a matter of MAMILs choosing to feel marvelous vs. look marvelous.

Dear M. Hamill,

Can you put to rest the rumor that your car accident was a suicide attempt based on your humiliation over having starred in the “Star Wars Holiday Special” on CBS, a program so awful one critic suggested it could have been “written and directed by a sentient bag of cocaine”? I’m sure it was just an accident. And I know that TV special wasn’t your fault either.

Irving M, Irvine, CA

Dear Irving,

I think you’ve got the wrong columnist—I’m a MAMIL, not Mark Hamill. That being said, a quick Wikipedia investigation shows that the car accident happened before the TV special, and this article points out that during filming of the special he was still recovering from the facial injuries sustained in the crash, “under a thick coat of make-up and on heavy painkillers.” (Part of me hates to veer so far off my column's topic, but I don’t like the idea of you carrying around such a blatantly false misconception.)

Dear MAMIL,

Someone wrote in before about whether the real point of Lycra, for men, is showing off their junk. Your answer was totally unsatisfactory—you were clearly prevaricating. What’s the real story? Why can’t you admit feeling sexy is part of biking’s allure?

Kim G, New York City

Dear Kim,

I assure you, MAMILs and even their younger counterparts have no exhibitionist tendencies. In fact, I have seen widespread evidence of teenagers being as modest as possible. When I was growing up in the cycling mecca of Boulder, Colorado, a fad started among those teenagers lucky enough to stand on the podium after a race: they would put on regular shorts (Ocean Pacific brand, usually) over their cycling shorts, for modesty’s sake. After all, to be on the podium is to be right in the public eye. I myself partook of this tradition, but with my own spin: I would roll up the cycling shorts under the regular shorts, to be less nerdy, to buck (part of) the trend, and because I was actually trying to prevent that ridiculous tan line cyclists get. Here I am on the second place tier rocking that look.

I had some influence at that point, but not enough to start a new tradition, as you can see above with the race winner, Pete, sticking with the previous tradition. But later that summer, in the Red Zinger Mini Classic, he’d adopted my rolled-up look and—given his dominance of that 9-day event—had driven 100% adoption in the new style across the podium by the end. You’ll have to take my word for it that he and the second place rider, David, were still wearing their cycling shorts in the photo below. (I didn’t have a second pair of shorts handy this time as I’d ridden to the race, which goes to prove how unnecessary this tradition even was.)

The double-short tradition persisted until the bike clothing industry wised up and started extending the padding in cycling shorts in the name of modesty. Fortunately, this evolution was complete before I hit puberty. ;^)

Dear MAMIL,

What’s the deal with power meters and Strava? Why do we even use these? Sometimes I wonder if I’m just trying to make myself feel bad by scientifically tracking and documenting the decline in my strength. I know you can’t answer for me in particular, and I wish I could, but I can’t other than to say I’m a blind follower of trends. So: why this trend?

Larry M, Atlanta, GA

Dear Larry,

I think I can take a stab at this. Starting with Strava, surely it succeeds for the central reason social media in general does: repeated doses of dopamine through the social traffic of the platform—kudos, comments, etc. There’s also the gamification of it: the KOMs, the PRs, etc. I’m not on Strava myself, but a friend tells me it has age-group-specific leaderboards to encourage ageing athletes.

As far as power meters, to some degree it’s just a cool new toy which fits in naturally with all the tech that cyclists enjoy. Beyond that, I find that—since I’m pretty new to having a power meter—I appreciate how it actually helps me feel better about certain stretches I ride. There’s a particular part of Wildcat Canyon Road that always made me feel weak and worthless because it looks like a fairly steep downhill but actually isn’t; I always felt like I should have been able to go faster through it. Now I see that, though my speed is barely over 20 mph, I’m putting out close to 400 watts, which ain’t too shabby.

The other thing to bear in mind is that those of us who are middle-aged now didn’t have power meters in our prime because they hadn’t been invented yet. So instead of comparing my time up South Park Drive to what I’d done in my 20s or 30s, I’m comparing my power output on it to what I did just last winter. Not such a comedown!

Dear MAMIL,

At the coffee shop this past weekend I overhead a couple of MAMILs talking about “luft.” Apparently it’s to do with cycling caps. I’ve been at this sport for a couple decades but never heard this term before. Care to enlighten me?

Sarah B, Boulder, CO

Dear Sarah,

“Luft” refers to how a cyclist wears his or her cycling cap. It should be worn high on the head, not pulled down tight; the higher up and puffier it is, the more luft it has. Below you can see Miguel Indurain getting it right, and your humble columnist getting it wrong (due to youth and ignorance, I must point out).

Not long after the above photo of me was taken, my brother Geoff schooled me about the proper way to wear a cycling cap. He did not use the term “luft” but he got the point across, and I learned my lesson. To this day I always employ plenty of luft.

Dear MAMIL,

How do you veteran cyclists tolerate having practically no body fat, particularly on your butts? How do you survive and sit comfortably? I’m a regular guy and my butt hurts after pretty much every ride.

H.Z., Princeton, NJ

Dear H,

First off, not all MAMILs have low body fat … only the former racers who somehow tamed their appetites in retirement. It’s the huskier MAMILs that earn us the reputation for being the wrong people to wear Lycra. But even those of us on the skinny side are just fine, because the padding is in the saddle itself, and the shell of the saddle, made either of plastic or carbon fiber, is designed to flex in just the right way. The saddles may look barbaric and torturous because they’re so narrow, but really it’s just your “sit bones” that need to be supported. If there’s pain involved it’s either due to chafing, or the saddle being set too high, or perhaps the rider putting too much weight on his butt and not enough on the pedals. Invest in a nicer saddle and you’ll probably be a lot happier.

I say all this because even at the peak of my fitness I really suffered when I tried too hard a saddle. The modern ones seem to be a step forward. Some even have a big valley down the middle, which is supposed to spare your nether region, though I can’t tell any difference. Such saddles do provide a nice way to stash your sunglasses, though.

Dear MAMIL,

I’m not a biker and have resigned myself to witnessing it (and being baffled) as a bystander. And I’ve always wondered this: why don’t biking gloves have fingers?

Julie D, Santa Fe, NM

Dear Julie,

There are lots of official reasons. Many a cyclist would tell you the gloves are mainly for crash protection, to keep your palms from getting scraped up, without any need to protect the fingers since they tend to curl inward. Or you might hear that the gloves are to pad your hands but the fingers don’t bear any weight, and/or the gloves are fingerless so they’ll be cooler. But I’m going to give you the truth. The number one reason for cycling gloves is that soft fabric, almost like terrycloth, on the back of the glove, between the base of the thumb and the wrist, which is used for wiping the snot from your nose. Other than that, most cyclists wouldn’t wear gloves at all. And cycling gloves are fingerless to facilitate nose picking. I know this is gross but that’s just the way this sport is.

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

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

Should We Be Using GenAI?

Introduction

As you have likely worked out on your own already, Artificial Intelligence is not going away. It has gone from being a joke to a novelty to the bogeyman to a tool that many of us use all the time. And yet, there are still holdouts, perhaps you among them. In my workplace, it’s a mixed bag. As recently as 2024 I was forbidden to use ChatGPT or other AI platforms at work; now, my employer  is wheedling, exhorting, begging, and all but requiring my colleagues and me to adopt it. On the family front, one of my daughters uses it a fair bit (sometimes frivolously), the other not at all. My wife is wary of it.

So should you use AI? I consider myself fairly well qualified to answer this. I have been dabbling in AI for almost fourteen years; have devoted a fair amount of research to kicking its tires; and now use it extensively both at work and at home. I’ve blogged about it a bunch of times. I’m unbiased, since I don’t work for the AI Industrial Complex, but I also don’t have a knee-jerk fear of technology.

I’ve blogged before (here) about how we can use AI, describing two fundamental ways—operationally vs. creatively—that people do use it. Today’s post is more about whether we should use it, and how often, particularly in light of the resources (electricity and water) that it consumes. Is environmental responsibility a compelling reason to curb our use of GenAI?

Some housekeeping

As I’ve explained here, AI is much bigger than the Large Language Model (LLM) chatbots that we consciously use as the natural successor to Google. We generally speak of AI as a productivity tool, but a whole lot of AI is devoted to the invisible algorithms on social media, YouTube, etc. that grab and hold our attention, threatening to reduce our productivity. I think of this as secondhand AI (like smoke). Meanwhile, you’re surely hearing a lot of hype about “agentic AI,” which can supposedly act on its own volition to achieve a goal. At this point I’m scared of agentic AI and think you should be, too, but that’s another post. The AI I’m considering here is Generative AI (GenAI), which is the type of chatbot (e.g., ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Claude) that you feed a prompt to as a way to research something, or as a way to quickly compose an essay, letter, or picture. This is how I believe most people think of AI, which is why the terms “AI” and “GenAI” are so often used interchangeably.

(Note that if you are reading this post long after April of 2026, and there isn’t a single living human not using GenAI, and/or the robots have taken over and enslaved you, treat this post as a historical artifact. At least you’ll get a sense of how society initially approached this technology.)

GenAI at work

If you work for a corporation that is clearly embracing GenAI, providing you a commercial, “walled garden” version of it, and the training to go with that, adoption is a no-brainer: do as you’re told and embrace GenAI immediately. My employer is already monitoring my use of it (though they haven’t said exactly how), showing my compliance on a dashboard. (My “AI Tools Usage” is showing 87% and green.) I could bristle at this, but a) I have always know my use of company assets is monitored, and b) my employer’s expectation that GenAI will make me more productive is reasonable, as is their expectation that I will be as efficient as possible. 

It’s remarkable how quickly all this has changed. I have seen GenAI’s use go from something my colleagues formerly tried (in vain) to hide, to something that my manager will outright ask me about. When asked, “Did you use AI to help you with this?” I now assume that the correct answer is a version of “yes.” (This answer is necessarily nuanced. Both in terms of being honest and articulating my ongoing value as an employee, I am sure to explain both how it helped and how it fell short of doing the task for me.) This week my boss tasked me with figuring out how to create a NotebookLM chatbot specializing in expertly summarized minutes of every meeting anyone on our team attends (or previously attended), which updates its training data automatically. So if our colleague Joe is on vacation we can ask the chatbot, “Why did Joe Blow switch out the vPlan in Blascorp’s EZ-Pluck profile?” and hope to learn the history. I feel like this assignment would have been unheard of a year ago.

But what if you work for a small business, or have your own? This is a greyer area, of course. A member of my family is a sole proprietor, and so far has shied away from GenAI because she’s concerned about becoming too reliant on the technology. I get her point, and have blogged before (here and here) about how doing our own thinking and writing prevents us from falling into intellectual torpor. But isn’t a tool that legitimately improves efficiency something we ought to rely on? After all, we wouldn’t even think of trying to run a business without email, a laptop, a smartphone, in many cases videoconferencing capability, and (depending on the business) various types of specialized software. All of these tools were new once, and any small business owner still using a typewriter to generate invoices is surely a) in the minority, and b) wasting a lot of time. From that perspective, it’s all but inevitable that any small business owner will ultimately adopt GenAI for his or her business … so why wait?

GenAI at home

Using GenAI outside the workplace is a more complicated matter, since it’s not helping put food on the table. I mentioned earlier in this post that my older daughter has occasionally used it rather frivolously, such as to punk me. Consider this drawing she had ChatGPT create to memorialize an accident I had at a hotel pool back in 2024, when I got out of the hot tub too fast and fainted:

Her prompt for this was, “Can you create an image of a tall skinny white man feeling faint after leaving a hot tub?” As you can see, the man portrayed looks more hunky than skinny, and my daughter tried three more times to get the picture more accurate. Given that these were throwaway efforts (or would have been had I not used them in an early AI analysis here), this was devoting rather a lot of computing resources to a pretty trivial problem, or shall we say exercise. (Of course part of the point for my daughter was exploring the early technology; it’s not like she’s stuck with throwaway art as her primary use case for GenAI.)

On the flip side, her sister won’t use GenAI at all, somewhat on grounds of intellectual authenticity but mainly due to its environmental impact. The constant construction of ever-larger data centers is all over the news, with some shocking statistics thrown around about how much power and water a single GenAI prompt requires. Today I decided it’s time to vet this claim a bit, studying the available data and describing it in a context that could help guide our behavior appropriately.

How much electricity does GenAI use?

With the help of Claude, because it works better than a Google search, I did some light research and found some great analysis (here) on the website of Epoch AI, a nonprofit founded to “help people understand what is happening in AI from a neutral perspective and grounded in the best possible evidence.” Epoch AI partners with Stanford’s AI Index, which I’ve come across in my professional life and seems well respected, as well as the UK’s Department for Science, Innovation, & Technology, which I trust even more (since it doesn’t have ties to the tech industry like Stanford does). I must acknowledge that truly disinterested AI research is hard to come by, because almost every organization doing serious work in this realm has a business relationship with it. So to spread out the risk of misinformation I also put this query to ChatGPT, which came up with similar numbers but from other presumably trustworthy sources, including ScienceDirect  (which Gemini says “is considered one of the most reliable and authoritative sources for factual data in the world”) and Cornell University.

So: Epoch AI, in an article from about a year ago, examined a widespread previous claim that “an individual ChatGPT query requires around 3 watt-hours of electricity, or 10 times as much as a Google search.” Epoch AI, leveraging “more up-to-date facts and clearer assumptions,” arrived a the following conclusion:

We find that typical ChatGPT queries using GPT-4o likely consume roughly 0.3 watt-hours, which is ten times less than the older estimate. This difference comes from more efficient models and hardware compared to early 2023, and an overly pessimistic estimate of token counts in the original estimate. For context, 0.3 watt-hours is less than the amount of electricity that an LED lightbulb or a laptop consumes in a few minutes.

For further perspective: according to this article, “Google says that its median text query uses around 0.24 Wh of electricity. That’s a tiny amount: equivalent to microwaving for one second, or running a fridge for 6 seconds.”

But that’s just text queries. Creating a picture uses a lot more resources. According to this article by the University of Southern California, using GenAI to create a picture uses 2.9 Wh—over ten times as much as a text query. I had Gemini come up with some household use equivalents to give this number some context, and here’s what it came up with:

• Phone: charges your battery about 19%
• LED bulb: about 19 minutes of light
• Dishwasher: about 14 seconds of a cycle
• Clothes dryer: about 2.6 seconds of a cycle

These seem pretty trivial, but if you consider all the millions of people using GenAI, it can add up, especially if people get it the habit of iterating a dozen or so times to get the image just right. (For what it’s worth, I got the cover art for this post in two tries.)

How much water does GenAI use?

Water is another matter, and very difficult to quantify because the location of a data center has a lot to do with how efficiently it can cool all its servers. This“ Washington Post” article documented a study, involving research from the University of California at Riverside, that found that using ChatGPT to write a 100-word email consumed 519 milliliters of water, which is a little more than a standard bottle. Obviously that is really high, especially considering how many people use GenAI and how much that’s growing.

At the same time, as pointed out by this article, many other industries also use a ton of water, and people don’t seem up in arms about it: “A single burger takes more than 400 gallons of water to produce; a humble cotton T-shirt takes more than 700. The United States’ 16,000 golf courses, meanwhile, each have the potential to use on average between 100,000 to 2 million gallons of water per day. (For comparison, Google says its thirstiest data center in Iowa consumed about 2.7 million gallons per day in 2024; most of the company’s data centers used substantially less.)”

A less abstract comparison

To be fair, it’s not like we all sit around eating burgers all the time; for most of us, that’s a treat. Meanwhile, I would hope most albertnet readers are enlightened enough to hold out for grass-fed beef, which uses a lot less water to produce. And if you’re like me, you buy a lot of clothing secondhand, which helps mitigate the resources required for your wardrobe. So what’s a better comparison that can help us frame the environmental cost of using GenAI? I propose: beer. (I know what you’re thinking: that’s my answer to everything.” Well, okay … guilty as charged.)

So here is my thought exercise: how does using GenAI compare to cracking open a beer? And what is the value of the former vs. the latter? Obviously this is a wide-open scenario so I’ll narrow it down to how I most often use GenAI: when researching a blog post.

Here’s what Claude had to say about the electricity required for a 30-minute research session:

Based on current estimates, a substantive text exchange with an AI like this one — say 20–30 back-and-forth exchanges — is probably in the neighborhood of 5–10 watt-hours of electricity. Google has reported that after major efficiency gains, the median Gemini prompt consumed about 0.24 watt-hours, representing a 33× reduction in energy per prompt compared to a year earlier. At that figure, 30 prompts would use about 7 Wh — roughly equivalent to running a phone for 20 minutes or leaving an LED bulb on for half an hour.

Regarding water use, a Mistral AI lifecycle analysis citied by the Brookings Institution found that a typical 400-token exchange consumes about 45 milliliters of water—about three tablespoons. Multiply by 30 exchanges and you’re somewhere around 1.5 liters of water—very roughly two or three bottles’ worth attributable to the 30-minute research session. (This varies enormously by data center location and cooling method, so we should treat it as an order-of-magnitude estimate.)

To compare the electricity cost of the GenAI session vs. the can of beer, I downloaded a spreadsheet-based waste reduction calculator directly from the EPA’s website. It is designed to help consumers like me understand the value of recycling something vs. tossing it. It calculated that recycling a 12-ounce aluminum can saves 0.3 kWh—which is roughly 40 times more energy than what’s consumed by an entire 30-minute GenAI research session. Granted, I often generate a picture to go with my post, but even if we assume it takes five tries to get it right, the energy cost of those five images is still only about one-twentieth of the energy wasted by tossing a single beer can in the trash. And since this is only the energy cost of recycling, which is less than producing a can from scratch, these numbers are highly conservative. (Meanwhile, I haven’t even factored in the energy required for brewing and transporting the beer itself.)

Meanwhile, the Water Footprint Network, as described here, estimates a total water footprint of 298 liters per liter of beer—so a standard 12-oz can of domestic beer takes over 100 liters of water to produce. More than 90% of that water comes from the agricultural supply chain (e.g., growing the barley) while the brewery uses about 6–8 liters per liter of beer (though a large facility may achieve a 3-to-1 ratio). So my 30-minute research session uses something like 1–2% of the water embodied in the can of beer I might have next to my keyboard. (Full disclosure: there’s a now-empty pint glass on the arm of the sofa as I type this. Yes, drinking while blogging: a rhetorically risky and planet-impacting combination. So sue me.)

Factoring in value

So that covers the environmental cost of researching a blog vs. drinking a beer. But what about the value of each? Discounting pub crawls with my friends—which occur far more seldom than I would like, to the point that they’re a rounding error—I’m really talking about unwinding with a solitary beer at the end of the workday. So in general the value of that beer accrues solely to me.

So does my blog-related GenAI research create any value to justify its water and electricity use? In the interest of humility I won’t merely assume this, and will instead dive into the data. Pageview stats across my blog wouldn’t be very representative, as at least half my posts don’t require any research at all. So for lack of a better idea, I’ve decided to analyze the pageview count for each of the albertnet posts that are about AI. After all, those have to be among the most GenAI-intensive of all, because in writing them I was test driving the various platforms. Here’s a brief summary of how these posts have performed:

• Total pageviews across nineteen AI posts: 15,578 (so far)
• Average pageviews per AI post: 819.9
• Average pageviews per AI post per month: 35.5

I could conclude that, from a somewhat abstract viewpoint, each post is seen by a person a day. But averages aren’t very reliable, and greater specificity is more revealing. Lurking in that “average pageviews per AI post per month” is a bit of (GenAI-performed) number crunching, accounting for the fact that the posts that I published years ago have had a lot more time to accrue pageviews. Ranking my AI posts by pageviews per month shows that they are gaining in popularity, with the more recent ones averaging two to three views per day. Here’s the ranking of all these AI posts over time, so you can see the momentum:

№	Views/Mo	Total Views	Title
1	102.5	1,742	Tech Check-In – How Good is the Latest A.I.? – Part II
2	85.7	257	New Year's Resolutions — AI Edition
3	82.8	1,077	What Is ChatGPT Great At (and Not)?
4	69.9	1,189	Tech Check-In – How Good is the Latest A.I.? – Part I
5	62.4	312	AI Smackdown – ChatGPT vs. Copilot vs. Gemini
6	58.0	290	More AI Smackdown – ChatGPT, Copilot, & Gemini Write Poetry
7	51.2	256	Tech Reflection – Two Sides of AI
8	27.4	1,040	A.I. Smackdown – English Major vs. ChatGPT – Part 2
9	27.1	1,031	A.I. Smackdown – English Major vs. ChatGPT – Part 1
10	23.0	597	Will A.I. Steal Our Jobs?
11	20.0	739	Schooling ChatGPT
12	11.1	719	Could Artificial Intelligence Replace Writers? – Part 1
13	10.6	680	Could Artificial Intelligence Replace Writers? – Part 3
14	10.0	1,230	A.I. Smackdown – Moto vs. Cortana vs. Siri
15	8.8	563	Could Artificial Intelligence Replace Writers? – Part 2
16	7.3	1,201	Almost Intelligent – Part I
17	6.3	838	Smartphones & Artificial Stupidity
18	6.2	1,016	I, Chatbot
19	4.9	801	Almost Intelligent – Part II

It would be reasonable to conclude that the more recent posts, which leverage more GenAI research, are reaching more readers, thus providing a better ROI. Of course I can’t account for all the possible reasons these posts are more popular, but I reckon that to some degree it’s because of the better use of GenAI. Using this tool won’t make be a better writer, but I’ve always been pretty lazy about research and there’s no doubt GenAI helps there. And whether or not this ROI calculation is completely airtight, I hope this helps you at least appreciate my effort to weigh my GenAI “footprint” against its value.

The bigger point here is that the can of beer is consumed once, quickly, leaving nothing behind (except maybe a nice belch). In contrast, the energy that goes into researching a blog post has an effective cost-per-view that keeps dropping every month it’s up, in perpetuity. If you use GenAI to draft an email, how many people will it reach, and low long is its tail? Could you have drafted it on your own—thus exercising your brain—or did you really need GenAI?

I’m not trying to imply that only bloggers should use GenAI; this is just one illustration of a cost/benefit analysis of the use of this tool. If you are doing something useful and an AI chatbot is helping you do it better or more efficiently, then it’s arguably worth the energy and water—or, at least, is a more worthy use of it than shopping for a bunch of clothes, going out for a burger, and then having a few beers.

The point is to be aware of the environmental cost of this technology, the same way so many of us do when we decide among driving, biking, walking, or taking mass transit  somewhere. Just because GenAI takes less water than beef or cotton doesn’t mean we should ignore its environmental cost, since it’s a whole new way people are consuming energy and water. As recently as three years ago, almost nobody was using GenAI in their daily lives; now, it’s an increasingly entrenched behavior, data centers are expanding rapidly, and in some regions power grids are struggling to keep up with demand.

This being said, I truly don’t believe opting out of GenAI is the solution; just reflecting on how much it helped me write this post, I can’t imagine not taking advantage of it. Instead, I’d like to see the millions of people already using it stop acting like it comes without a cost. It’s the same as driving: did I really need to surround myself with two tons of steel and burn a cup of gasoline just to travel a mile to the gym and back? (That was a rhetorical question. I always bike to the gym.)

Speaking of cost: one way to keep yourself honest with GenAI is to not pay for it. If you are on an unpaid account and use up your tokens, so that your chatbot cuts you off for some number of hours, maybe that should be your indication that you’ve gone overboard. Come to think of it, video games, YouTube, and social media should have that “feature.”

A final note on GenAI at work

Now that I’ve examined the environmental cost of GenAI, it’s worth pointing out a final wrinkle: using it in the workplace is actually much more efficient than using it at home. Corporations get the most benefit out of GenAI through Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG), which is where, instead of asking a large language model to answer from its entire trove of training data, the GenAI retrieves relevant documents from a corporate knowledge base (contracts, manuals, research reports, emails, whatever the organization has indexed), then passes those retrieved chunks to the model as context for its answer. Tools like NotebookLM, most enterprise Copilot implementations, and corporate deployments of models like Gemini or Claude typically work this way.

This is much more efficient than “raw” GenAI like consumers use. The retrieval step is computationally cheap—essentially a sophisticated search. The generation step is shorter because the model doesn't have to work as hard to “remember” or construct relevant context; it’s been handed it. And the answers tend to be more accurate and require fewer iterations, which means fewer wasted queries. For a user to opt out of using it on environmental grounds makes little sense, because the big resource expense has already been incurred. As Claude puts it:

The infrastructure cost of a corporate RAG deployment is largely fixed relative to usage. The vector database has to stay current whether 500 employees query it or 5,000. The embedding pipeline runs continuously. The API connections to the underlying model are on retainer. So each additional active user essentially dilutes the per-capita environmental and financial cost of that overhead. An employee who declines to use the tool isn’t reducing the infrastructure footprint; they’re just reducing the output derived from it. In accounting terms, they’re lowering the return on a sunk cost.

Synthesis

Wow, I just threw a ton of words at you, didn’t I? Maybe I’m the most verbose Large Language Model since, well, ChatGPT! Anyway, here’s my final conclusion: of course you should use GenAI. It’s an amazingly powerful tool, and it’s getting better all the time. Now that it’s here, declining to use it makes about as much sense as blending a smoothie with a knife and a whisk, or doing arithmetic with an abacus, or churning your own butter. But use GenAI judiciously. Ask yourself: is this improving the quality or efficiency of my output? Or am I just being lazy?

Other albertnet posts on A.I., in order of publication

• 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)?
• Tech Reflection – Two Sides of AI
• AI Smackdown – ChatGPT vs. Copilot vs. Gemini
• More AI Smackdown - ChatGPT, Copilot, & Gemini Write Poetry
• New Year’s Resolutions — AI Edition

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

From the Archives - Bits & Bobs Volume XXVIII

Introduction

This is the twenty-eighth installment in the “From the Archives – Bits & Bobs” series. Volume I of the series is here, Volume II is here, Volume III is here, Volume IV is here, Volume V is here, Volume VI is here, Volume VII is here, Volume XIII is here, Volume IX is here, Volume X is here, Volume XI is here, Volume XII is here, Volume XIII is here, Volume XIV is here, Volume XV is here, Volume XVI is here, Volume XVII is here, Volume XVIII is here, Volume XIX is here, Volume XX is here, Volume XXI is here, Volume XXII is here, Volume XXIII is here, Volume XXIV is here, Volume XXV is here, Volume XXVI is here, and Volume XXVII is here. I never expected my collection to be so, well, voluminous, but here we are.

So what are albertnet Bits & Bobs? They’re the closest thing to tweets or X posts you’ll ever get on albertnet, in that they’re rather short bulletins. But then, they’re nowhere nearly as short as the original 140 characters of SMS and Twitter updates. (In fact, today’s post might include one of my longest-ever Bits—or is it a Bob?— at over 500 words.) These are excerpts from letters or emails to friends and family, which I’ve decided ought to be amusing to a much wider audience (i.e., all 6 billion users of the Internet).

Since many of my friends and family probably ignored these bulletins originally, you may be the very first living human to pay them any attention! Read them all at once; one at a time over days or weeks; randomly; sequentially; capriciously; deliberately; repeatedly; not at all; or according to your own scheme that I haven’t even thought of. For each dispatch the date is provided and where I was living.

April 5, 1989 – Santa Barbara

I showed up late to my English final, and started in on the first part, which was looking at ten quotes from stuff we’d read, and identifying the work and the character quoted. Assuming (for some reason) that the exam was open-book, I started flipping through one of my books. The professor said, “Dana … what are you doing?” I was like, “Uh, just looking up one of the quotes.” The prof stated, “The identification section of this exam is not open-book.” The entire class started laughing. I said, “Uh ... sorry.” Then the whole class was on the floor. “You’ll go far in life, I can tell,” said the prof.

April 12, 1989 – Santa Barbara

Today I gave a pal a ride home from the cycling team meeting. He’s big for a cyclist—over 175 pounds, looks a bit like Bob Roll—and he was sitting on the handlebars of my mountain bike. I had the tires (Farmer John’s Cousins) at real low pressure because of an incident I suffered a couple of days ago. But that’s another story. A good one, though, so I’ll share it with you. 

It all started when I went to visit Geoff [in San Luis Obispo] for spring break and took my Tioga City Slicker tires with me. Why, you ask? Well, we held the first SLO Parking Garage Invitational Midnight Criterium last week. The parking garage, a brand new building that has received harsh criticism for its avant-garde architecture, has five, count ‘em five, floors, with hairpin turns all the way down—perfect for testing people’s bike handling skills. If you take the turns too wide, which can happen when a competitor forces you out, you hit these six-inch-high domes of painted cement. Gnarly! It was a total blast. 

Anyhow, when I returned to Isla Vista, I forgot to bring the City Slicker tires back with me, and had to mount up the Farmer Johns. They were really old, had been sitting around a good while. Well, on Monday I was just riding along, minding my own business, on the celebrated UCSB bike path when all of a sudden . . . BLAM! The rear tire just blew clean off the rim. Everybody in the vicinity jumped about three feet in the air. Being late as usual, I had to just keep riding the dang thing. It was pretty funny. Anyhow, upon careful inspection when I got home, I noticed that about a four-inch section of the rear tire had a severely damaged bead. I should have replaced the tire altogether but don’t have the time or the money, so I’ve continued to ride that baby, just at real low pressure. 

Which returns us to my original story. So I’m giving this guy a ride on my handlebars; the bike’s squirming around everywhere due to the low tire pressure; I can hardly see around the guy; I can hardly reach the brake levers; his full backpack is smashing into my face; it’s dark; and we’re wearing sunglasses. (Okay, it wasn’t dark and we weren’t wearing sunglasses … just couldn’t resist the “Blues Brothers” reference.) But hey, none of this is any problem because I’m a bike racer, right? We crash up and down off the bike path a number of times, narrowly missing other bikers and pedestrians, wobble quite a bit during slowdowns, and I actually enjoy some success in creating the illusion that I’m in control. That is, until we come within a block of [my apartment building] La Loma and a tiny Chicano kid, a toddler really, rides right out in front of us on his tiny bike. 

Well, his reflexes obviously haven’t developed yet, and ours are severely limited, and we’re on a collision course! I don’t know which way to go around him because I can’t predict what he’s gonna do, I mean it could be anything, or nothing. So my friend and I both begin yelling, like the two convicts in “Raising Arizona” when they realize they have left a man behind: “AAAAAAAAAUGH!” After narrowly averting disaster through my expert bike handling and our ability to remain cool in a pinch (well, okay, maybe it was just luck), we look over at the parents of the kid, expecting them to be super pissed, ready to kill us for recklessly endangering their child. But instead they’re laughing. Laughing! Cripes, don’t these parents know danger when they see it? They certainly wouldn’t have been laughing if little Junior had been trampled into the asphalt by over 350 pounds of man and bike, the unmistakable tread of the Tioga Farmer John’s Cousin embedded in his face!

October 12, 1991 – Berkeley

I need to find a dentist out here. I’ve asked my pals for recommendations and usually get kind of a blank look. But a guy at the bike shop, B—, who looks and acts like Bill or Ted from “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure,” did give me the name of his guy. I think I’ve mentioned B— to you before, he’s the guy who separated his shoulder mountain biking and then sold all his prescription Vicodin so he could buy ganja. Anyhow, he said his dentist is “totally kickback” to the point that B— talked the guy into dispensing unnecessary laughing gas, just for the hell of it, and for free no less. (B— is quite the salesman.) That doesn’t seem entirely professional to me. And then, as if an afterthought, B— told me about the last time he had a cavity filled. He’d had all this Novocain, of course, and then afterward he decided to smoke some weed, which of course gave him the munchies, so he went and bought this big sandwich, and he was eating away on it and then something seemed wrong and he looked closely and the sandwich was all covered in blood. Turns out he’d been chewing on his tongue because he couldn’t feel it! Daaaaamn!

March 13, 1992 - Berkeley

A couple of my roommates and I have a Thursday tradition of boys’ night out. (Not like there are any girls in our lives to exclude from these outings, of course, and if there were girls in our lives, we’d surely bring them along, or more to the point they’d bring us along … but I digress.) We sometimes start at the Come Back Inn, which is a barebones place, not much furniture, mainly linoleum, and I think their name is based on how they routinely get shut down for serving alcohol to minors, and then they do their time and re-open. It’s not uncommon to stand around there with a pitcher of beer since there’s no place to set it down. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen dudes drinking right out of the pitcher. But we also like the more upscale places, Henry’s and Raleigh’s. My roommates are always hoping to hit it off with some hot coed, and they have this theory that if they pump iron right before we go, their muscles will look bigger and they’ll become irresistible to women. (They have a home weight set, including  a bench press.) That strategy just might work for them one of these times, but as you know I don’t have any musculature to speak of and if I tried to pump iron I’d just injure myself.

So anyway, we were at the pub and E— was scoping out the babes, kind of like a lion surveying the savanna deciding what prey to go after, and finally decided on this cute blonde. He caught his reflection in a mirrored beer ad, checked his hair, straightened his red Ralph Lauren Polo shirt, shot us a quick look as if to say, “Watch this,” and set out to start a conversation. He headed over and exchanged what couldn’t have been more than a few words before turning away and walking back to us, tail between his legs. Man, he was pissed. “NorCal sucks,” he said. “In L.A. and San Diego women were actually cool, they’d give you the time of day. But you get a chick up here who’s even halfway good-looking and she’s totally stuck up.” M— and I gave him a hard time for getting shut down so hard, but we held back a bit as he was clearly smarting.

Well, then he spotted some other young beauty but speculated that she’d be just as snooty, even though her blond hair was obviously dyed. Somehow we got to daring each other to go ask her what color her hair really was. We all liked the idea in principle but nobody was volunteering, so we ended up doing roshambo (i.e., rock-paper-scissors) and of course I lost. So I went over, sat next to her at the bar, said hi, took a few moments and a few sips to get my courage up, and then—looking her right in the eye—popped the question: “What color is your hair, really?” She said, “Oh, this is my natural color.” What could I say? Looking at her dark eyebrows, I said, “Well, what about your eyebrows, then?” Without missing a beat she said, “Oh, I dye those.” Wow. I was impressed. Such quick thinking, totally unrattled, and best of all not hostile! I replied, “Well, you did a great job. I never would have guessed.” 

I was kind of pleased with myself for not seizing up completely at her retort. And since she was pretty fly to begin with, it seemed well worth trying to turn this into an actual conversation. So I tried, and I’d say I lasted at least another 90 seconds before completely running out of things to say. I suppose I felt like how a rodeo rider must feel, where every second he stays on the bucking bronco grows his achievement. It didn’t even occur to me to buy her a drink, which would have bought me at least a few more minutes. But what can I say? I got no game, and eventually I wandered back over to my pals. “Well, you didn’t strike out as fast as E— anyway,” M— remarked. Gloating just a bit (I have to admit), I tried to deploy some swagger: “You know, that’s actually a pretty good pickup line. At least it was novel. I’m gonna use that again. I totally could have gotten her number, if I’d wanted.” Of course my pals just laughed in my face. That’s what friends are for, right?

July 15, 1997 – San Francisco

For my birthday E— bought me this cool a magic lamp thingy. It’s is a cube-shaped wooden frame, open at the top and bottom, with rice paper for walls. Inside is a cylinder of thin paper with figures cut out of it, with colored cellophane covering the cutouts. The cylinder’s roof is a paper pinwheel, and the center of it is a tiny glass dome that sits on a little needle, to form a bearing. Beneath this there’s a little light bulb. Heat from the bulb is turns the pinwheel, and thus the cylinder, so that the figures of colored cellophane are projected on the rice paper walls. The effect is a moving picture of the figures (dancers, animals, etc.) that seem to dance across the rice paper, seeming to grow in size as they near the edges. I guess this would typically be a nightlight for a kid’s room. We’d seen it in a shop window in the Marina when we were out for a walk and E— noticed that I liked it, so she sneaked back there and bought it. Anyhow, we had a friend over who just stared at it, perplexed, trying to understand the point. Finally her eyebrows went up like she’d had an “aha!” moment and she said, “Oh, I get it! It’s because you guys don’t have a TV!” Um… right. That’s it.

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