I’m not wearing one of these things, or obsessing over the hundred pills I choose to swallow every night, or comparing myself to my sons. I’m not Bryan Johnson, the current joke of a man aging poorly.

According to my calculations, it ain’t worth it. But he also has the penis of a 22-year-old.

He should give it back. To be clear, he has the penile health of someone 25 years younger.

How would you even measure that? By the number, duration and quality of one’s night-time erections.

And how would you even measure that? With an erectile tracker – you wear it to bed and it sends the data to your phone.

So your phone tells you your penile age? After a fashion, yes.

Where can you get one of these devices? Asking for a friend. You can buy them online for £150, but the company that makes them is oversubscribed, so there’s currently a seven-to-eight-week waiting list.

If anyone wants to buy me a present, don’t get me an erection tracker.

Don’t buy anything from Amazon or the big box stores. Shop locally.

I think it’s aiming small, though. Try a week depriving the leeches of their blood meal.

Dang, these people look so happy.

Those are our kids, Alaric, Skatje, and Connlann (l-r) and their Great-Grandma Westad. Of course they’re happy — the kids are thrilled to be on vacation and hanging out with their favorite great-grandma, and great-grandma was always so excited to see them. This was probably the early 1990s, when we were living in Salt Lake City, Utah, and we didn’t get up to Washington state often enough. I found this photo in a pile and it reminded me of how much she loved to see her great-grandkids. She’d usually take them out to Dairy Queen for a Blizzard, or to Arby’s. She practically lived on Arby’s roast beef sandwiches, buying them in bulk and freezing them, and thawing them out for her dinner. Poor, you know, although she owned that house in the background. I think her greatest joy was her grandkids and great-grandkids.

She also had a yard full of flowers. Way back when I was dating my wife to be, she’d cut flowers and tell me I had to bring them to her — she was always telling me I had to marry that girl. I was happy to obey.

Unfortunately, these notices were also in the pile.

I wish I’d visited her a few more times before it was too late.

I had to go shopping to replace my sad, tired, old winter coat, and I got this.

I see that “Carhartt” logo all over stuff here in the midwest. Did it work? Am I fashionable now?

Oh no! I am not one of the cool kids. The neighbors next door (a house full of college kids) is warming up for something — probably a big party tonight — and are out on their deck and throwing firecrackers and woo-hooing. That’s fine, but I noticed what they’re wearing.

That’s from a company called GameBibs, and I guess that’s how students show school spirit nowadays, wearing overalls with stripes in the school colors. I looked over there and my first thought was that it must be National Clown Day, or something, but no. It’s just that I’m not cool. Not cool at all.

I got email from someone calling himself “devoted natural science diletant”, criticizing me for paying attention to Intelligent Design creationism, a fair cop. I think he’s expressing a secular, scientific perspective, but I can’t read it, my brain starts sputtering and sparking as I try to plow through the all-caps stuff.

WHY HAVE YOU SO MUCH OF THIS “INTELLIGENT DESIGNER – STUFF” ? IT HAS THE SAME TREND, THAN “INFORMATION FIRST” SCENARIOS. I THINK AS MANY OTHER, THAT AT THE BEGINNING WAS SOME WIDE-SPREAD METABOLIC AND CATALYTIC ELEMENTS, LAYERED ON GROUND LIKE SILICON AND CLAY-ASHES AND PORES – ON CRATON ISLANDS – HAVING WETTED – DRIED, COOLED – WARMED – ENERGY-GRADIENTS + ELECTROMAGNETIC-NANO-SCALE-FORCES BRINGING PEPTIDE BONDS BETWEEN PRIMARY AMINO-ACID CHAINS . THIS COULD HAVE BEEN THE STUFF, what came first – before there was any INFORMATION ELEMENTS like RNA or DNA . I MEAN that the primary substance of LIFE and its primary catabolics and collective autocatalytics with interactions, must have PRECEDED this INFORMATIVE ORGANIZATION – there must be SOMETHING from where the information can CONDUCT ITS “ALPHABETS” ! SO THIS “DESIGNER” – was the beginning of CELL-like differentiation of OUTER and INNER environments. SO first AGENTIAL LIFE began maybe after many TRIALS in different places and times in EARTH HISTORY – and they were COLLECTIVE POPULATIONS at first without INFORMATIVE structures. When these PROTO-CELLS came bigger – they begin SPONTANEOUSLY divide smaller – (maybe) – the difficult part are from where came those ion-conducting MEMBRANE CHANNELS – which at first had HYDROGEN-or SODIUM -gradients and outer/inner DYNAMIC HOMEOSTASIS.

He sent me a follow-up to make sure I’d read it.

I SEND THIS COMMENT TO YOU. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF “INTELLIGENT DESIGNER” NOWADAYS.

OK. Does he think I favor intelligent design? Do I need to use more random capitalization to get my message through?

I’m feeling better today. At least my gut has stopped spasming, and I don’t feel like I have curl into a fetal ball and dream about dying. I haven’t had the flu in about 5 years, I realized, thanks to all the sensible masking we’ve been doing, but when it finally sneaks past your defenses, it’s going to get it’s revenge.

I went back to work today, but it was a terrible mistake. I have a bad case of flu brain — I was stuttering through my lectures, making stupid mistakes in calculations, at one point I just froze and couldn’t think of a word. I was embarrassingly bad. A substantial part of the problem, I think, was that I haven’t eaten in two days, on top of a terrible sleep schedule. But I have no appetite at all! I’m going to have to force myself to eat something, and go to be early, and hope I’m at at least 90% functioning tomorrow.

Gibs went flying out both ends, and from a few places in the middle. I splattered the bathtub, the floor, the walls. It is not pleasant when the flu comes to visit. I am now trying to reassemble my body from the various bits.

It’ll probably require my full attention until the morning.

My wife and I went on a date to this movie last night. It was OK, not as amusing as the previous one, but you knew from the beginning that everything would be fine.

I had one moment of concern, and I wanted to warn you in case you also wanted to watch it, especially if you take any children with you. There is a scene with a spider, which they said was a purple tarantula, Avicularia purpurea, in which it was resting on an important crank that needed to be turned by a character who had admitted to disliking spiders, and there was a minute of tension. I feared the spider would be harmed, and there was a flurry of slapstick in which the spider ended up on the character’s face, no doubt an unpleasant and terrifying scene for the spider, but it ended with the crank being turned and then the tarantula being returned to its home with a kind word.

It was briefly stressful for me, but I’m happy to report that I was able to uncover my eyes and that the movie is safe for everyone to watch. Eight tarsal claws up.

I know Twitter was addictive, but dear god, you’ve got to stop.

I gotta admit I don’t understand the scientists still posting to twitter as that site’s owner slashes all their funding and mass fires thousands of their colleagues.

I went cold turkey in November of 2023. You can do it!

You’re not on Facebook, are you? Sorry, you need to kick both habits.