Tuan: So what have you been doing?
Bud: I told you, going to the wakes and funerals of strangers.
Tuan: How incredibly weird. Like “Harold and Maude.”
If memory serves, Maude took her own life at the end of the film.
Bud: Let’s hope I’m Harold.
Tuan: If not, maybe I can have your office chair?

—

My gym advertises itself as being “state of the art.”

My gym also uses a drawing of a 1965 Nokia phone with a little antenna on its signs on the track.

This sign drives me nuts every time I pass it. And because it’s a track built for garden gnomes, I pass it a lot. Like 38 times today alone. 3.4 miles at same ol’ 15:30 pace. Someday.

Oh, sure, the silly phone icon is annoying. And yes, EVERYONE except me on the track seems to be constantly using their phones. But that’s not the worst part.

AP STYLE SAYS CELLPHONE IS ONE WORD, PEOPLE!!! HAVE YOU NO RESPECT FOR AP STYLE???

Oh, well. My subscription ran out a long time ago anyhow.

I have been reading a book about an obituary writer who accidentally published his own obit. Hijinks ensued. Funny how all this stuff seems to come together. My love of “Harold and Maude,” my state-of-the-art AI coach who keeps pointing out that my fitness numbers would indicate that I’m dead, my half-hearted defense that I’m not. A Yusuf Islam refrain:

Trouble, oh trouble please be kind
I don’t want no fight
And I haven’t got a lot of time

And so the state-of-the-art Fancy Training Plan © starts tomorrow. After a spirited discussion late last night, we came to the conclusion that he’s a computer program and therefore must be right. I’m picturing “2001: A Space Odyssey, The Live Show” coming up.

I think I’m feeling better after the infusion (cue John Lennon singing “can’t get much worse”), so here goes nothing. Worst case scenario: A guy once wrote a touching obituary for me that’s somewhere on the old blog, so it should still be a fitting memorial. Although I increasingly realize there’s not much to memorialize. “He was a weird little man obsessed with AP style and an irrational fear of cows while running” and then pad it out with, um, huh. I guess that’s it.

Cue up the Cat Stevens soundtrack. Hit the play button.

I’ve seen your eyes
and I can see death’s disguise
Hangin’ on me
Hangin’ on me