I don’t wanna go to St. Paul’s to get my eyeball lasered tomorrow.

Intellectually, I know that eyeball lasering is an extremely safe and well established procedure and that there is no chance whatsoever of me, to pick a random example, ending up with two smoking craters in my eye sockets where my eyes used to be.

It’s not that kind of laser.

In fact, according to the nice fella who will be wielding the laser scalpel, Doctor Mackay, I won’t feel a thing and the whole thing will be over before I know it.

I have my doubts, but I will tentatively believe him for now.

I mean, again, scientifically, I know that’s true. These lasers only zap one molecular layer of cells at a time, which is why these laser treatments can take a while, but that’s way better than them burning the eyes out of you in a hurry.

And all Doctor Mackay will be doing is cauterizing some blood vessels in my left eye that are looking like they might leak at any moment and then I would end up with the big black spots in my vision again… if I’m lucky.

It’s not like he’ll be reshaping my entire eyeball like with laser correction surgery.

Still, I am scared and weirded out by the whole idea of it all.

For some reason, I think I would feel better about it if it was happening here in Richmond. I guess combined eye zapping with being far away from my home territory makes it all the scarier.

And I know I will get over it. Probably before I get there. In fact, my real purpose in writing and therefore dwelling on my irrational fear of the Eye Cutter is to try to burn through all the fear ahead of time so that I can hopefully be calm when the time for the procedure comes around tomorrow.

After all, I don’t want Doctor Mackay to think I’m a wimp!

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Other than pre-lasering jitters, I am doing alright. I feel fairly good. No new medical horrors have emerged lately, knock on an entire northwestern state’s amount of wood.

Had Wound Care this morning. Something rather odd happened. We showed up at the time they had given us, which was 8:45 am.

And I made it to the waiting area ^[1] and sat down with my usual groan of relief.

The journey from the car to that waiting area (it waits… for you!) is always very hard on me. By normal, healthy people’s standards it’s nothing.

But for me it’s a grueling marathon every single time.

Anyhow, I got there, and waited for the nurse to come get me.

And waited. And waited.

Finally, after about 20 minutes of waiting, I got up and went to look for my nurse to see what was up.

When I got there, one of the nurses said she’d be with me shortly.

A tad galling given that I had already been waiting 20 minutes, but whatever.

Then the nurse came to get me, and I sat down and took my shoes off as usual, and she said that I was a little early.

And I said, “Uh, what? When is my appointment?”

She said, “11:30!”

Fut the wuck? Apparently it somehow got changed and nobody told us. It said 8:45 am on the schedule they printed out for us.

The really galling thing is that if I had known the real time, I could have stayed in bed!

The nurse saw me anyhow, so no real harm done.

More after the break.

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Today’s wonderful/terrifying AI miracle is…

A mindblowing little site/app called Suno. A simple little site that only lets you generate entire songs, vocals and instruments both, in any style, just from a text prompt.

I shitteth thee not.

You can even write your own lyrics, which of course I do.

Here’s something I just threw together in five minutes.

Interestingly, the first thing I immediately wanted to do with it was write rap lyrics. Apparently I have wanted to be a rapper for a long time now, possibly since I first heard Eminem all those years ago, and just never knew it consciously.

But often after I listen to a good rap song, my mind starts spitting out my own verses spontaneously. And judging by the example above, they are not terrible.

I love that the program did what I would have wanted it to do with “slick hip trickster”. And there are effects and tricks added that make it sound awesome and that I never would have thought of myself.

It’s like having my own private record producer. Amazing.

I actually learned about the app Sunday night, but I have been too awed by the power at my fingertips to do much with it until tonight.

But I will NOT let this magic slip through my fingertips just because I am too chickenshit to use it. I will confront the swarm of possibilities and make something – anything – rather than cower in a corner somewhere.

I don’t care if it’s terrible.

I don’t care if I didn’t do it “right”.

I don’t care if I get lost trying to figure out what I “should” do.

I didn’t that stop me from making AI art, and I am not going to let it stop me from making AI music either.

But wow, what an age we live in, eh? Never has so much artistic power been unleashed into the world. This is truly the dawning of a new age and everything is going to change.

I have no idea where this all is going to take us. But I’m not worried. All this business about AI “taking over” is errant nonsense.

What is really going to happen, though, is a democratization of talent. People with no inherent talent for the physical production of music, videos, and animation will nevertheless have the ability to share their visions with the world.

We are all the dreamer now. Anyone and everyone can turn their dreams into reality with something as simple as a text prompt.

I, for one, find that prospect terrible exciting. And terrifying.

It’s always scary to be in the water when the sea changes.

You get existential vertigo when you are looking over the edge of a change far too big and amazing to truly fully encompass in your mind.

We are dancing with infinity.

And I love it.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.