You might remember the song “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore.” It was popular when the Ink Spots recorded it in 1943. If you do remember when the Ink Spots sang that song, you know why a few of us spend our time eating, napping and either looking out the window or at a computer screen.

For, much like panning for gold by Sutter’s Mill, there is a wealth of information on the internet for anyone with patience and a lot of spare time. This morning I read: “Vacations are often more work than regular life, but we do it because we know it will feel so good when it’s over.” I learn from my friends.

Most of us have Facebook friends who are right up there with Carl Sagan and Marcus Aurelius when it comes to the well-tuned aphorism.

Nowadays, no one is really sure of the difference between an aphorism and a meme. Don’t Google to find out, for it leads down a rabbit hole of endless examples of memetic aphorisms which could make you miss your nap.

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Have I mentioned the book “New York 2140”? Yes, I saw it on the page of a Facebook friend. I got one on a whim because I was able to buy a good copy cheap. Yesterday, when I couldn’t see the computer screen, I read the last 20 pages of this 600-page tome. Perhaps like you, I always like to know how a book ends before I take the time to read it. Plus, if you know who is going to be left at the end, you know who to keep your eyes on from page one.

So yes, from the 20 pages I read, Kim Robinson writes about interesting things. He’s written 20 books, so he obviously has the Asimov sickness of needing to write, write, write day and night.

Without reading it again, I’ll try to tell you how that book ends.

Greedy people who run the banks stuff their pockets until the banks crash. As usual, they ask Congress for a taxpayer bailout, like they’ve done every 20 or so years for as long as anybody can remember. But this time, because the voters brought in a different kind of administration, the U.S. Treasury containing your tax dollars is controlled by a sneaky character who says that they will only bail out the banks if the banks are nationalized, owned by the American people.

No, no, no, no. They couldn’t do that. The sky would fall. But at last, one bank gives in and the others fall into line. With the resulting profits, universal health care and education up through postdoc becomes available for all. No one is hungry, no one is poor. And although the oceans have covered the low-lying cities, people survive and live happily ever after.

Although this is fiction, anyone from Norway who read it would wonder why it was a big deal.

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Please do not get the impression that I am married to my computer, for I enjoy a rich and fulfilling home life with my nasty-neat wife Marsha, the Almost Perfect Woman.

We had a very exciting close call on Wednesday. When I went out to help her out of her chair, I saw something that needed to be done. And, even as I helped her up, without me saying a word as she struggled to her feet, she mentioned the same thing. This happens often when you’ve lived together for a long time. So, even though I was struggling for breath and should have gone right back to my chair and oxygen, I started the vacuum cleaner. Just before her friends arrived, I was able to vacuum up a dead fly.

Wednesday is Marsha’s Scrabble day with her female friends. I wish more would come. I get 65 cents for a hotdog.

***

So often it is not until you are old that you have time to figure out things that have puzzled you for years. We live on a dead-end road, and I now know why many cars go by our house at 5 in the morning. They are people from Massachusetts who have moved here but can’t get out of the habit of leaving for work two hours before rush hour.

**

Yes, I learn a lot from my friends. Today I’m going to take my afternoon nap on the floor. It will feel so good when I can finally get up and go to bed.

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