inquiry

whatever comes to mind

Yeeeeeah....

So, huh... I can type about my life here... and feel good about... 20 reads? Maybe 50 with a disingenuous title (i.e. implies/promises way more than post content itself).

And then... the added bonus of probably landing permanently in the modern day equivalent of a USENET killfile of any who ever find anything uncomfortable/offensive in any post.

In other words, given participants are human, it's basically going to be the same 'ole hooray-for-our-team-and-goodbye-to-all-others.

Well... unless I prostitute myself to write only content I imagine to meet a median level of tolerance of members of tribes I imagine will maximize ongoing reads.

Am I missing something, here?

How does one un-realize all that so that grinding out a post doesn't feel like a silly exercise in futility?

Yeeeeeah....

So, huh... I can type about my life here... and feel good about... 20 reads? Maybe 50 with a disingenuous title (i.e. implies/promises way more than post content itself).

And then... the added bonus of probably landing permanently in the modern day equivalent of a USENET killfile of any who ever find anything uncomfortable/offensive in any post.

In other words, given participants are human, it's basically going to be the same 'ole hooray-for-our-team-and-goodbye-to-all-others.

Well... unless I prostitute myself to write only content I imagine to meet a median level of tolerance of members of tribes I imagine will maximize ongoing reads.

Am I missing something, here?

How does one un-realize all that so that grinding out a post doesn't feel like a silly exercise in futility?

> Amazon is abysmal. No one should use them, really.

I'm not going to pay more elsewhere for a product because people I don't know – who are almost certainly teeming with bias – have an issue with what they've heard about a store's politics.

Now, should I do my own research and feel confident I've weeded out biased reports, and then conclude a store made it their primary purpose in life to harm others, well, then I'll pay more elsewhere. But apart from that, I have to consider the “evidence” hearsay (is there anything online that isn't?). Also, people make mistakes with respect to others that I think behooves forgiveness more than boycott, or at least punishing the actual doer(s) instead of everyone (“Amazon”) arbitrarily associated with each other by a common employer.

Then again, Cancel Culture (i.e. a key “feature” of religious fundamentalism)....

> Now with more banner! This is something I had been meaning > to purchase since forever. A “welcome eagle”, if you > will. Got it (+ sticker) from Yellow Beak Press, and I am > happy with how it looks.

Coolness!

Also, I'm getting a kick out of how similar the carpeting looks to what we have in the living room of the previous dwelling.

> on complicated applications > > They're annoying.

Sure. But are they Amazon Annoying™? ;–)

> OK, sorry for the rant, but I was trying to discover music > and I felt like I belly-flopped into an ocean of random > crap, when I thought I was entering specific keywords to > filter through it all. Not the case with Tidal. Not the > case with Spotify. And YouTube and Apple are actual crap.

And yet most probably think all that's still better than “terrestrial” radio, which in fact has no changing menus or annoying interfaces. I'd also argue “terrestrial” radio's advertising model is far less distractive than the online stuff.

The big <insert your favorite gender because if I pick one for the readers at least one will have raving hissy conniption fits for not expressing one or more genders correctly>s boys of the online joke have precisely one person in mind when it comes to their products: themselves. Grant it, so do the <same gender miasma as before>s of “terrestrial”. But at least they can't/don't get listeners involved in ways involving interactions that give away more personal information than one really ought just to listen to friggin' music....

Much to do this fine Saturday.

And praise Deity, next to none of it involves screens.

It's occurs to me maybe the meaning of screen in the sentence “I screened the applicants” laughs quietly in how said bastions of pixellation literally screen the world from us, i.e. get in its way, have us elsewhere, elsewhen. We might have had a really amazing reality, but, you see, we screened it away.

One definition I found that nails the fuck out of it: “something that covers or disguises the true nature (as of an activity or feeling)”

Uh-huh.

We've been back out to bars and such more of late, and the difference in fulfillment speaking to others “in person” and pouring verbiage into /dev/null, as it were, is stunning. I almost never leave this keyboard from writing, say, a blog post without feeling closer to shit (knowing in advance few will read, and even fewer grok) than the “Awww, do we really have to go?!?!” elation of body-to-body (I'd have typed “face-to-face” except these idiotic screening devices can do that.. sorta...).

My wife and I had perhaps our biggest argument, last night.. lotsa kitchen sink et. al. dragged into it (“... and then you <something more evil/inconsiderate/stupid than one things oneself capable of> ...“)

Then she stewed outside as I stewed walking the neighborhood alone. Then I returned, got ready for bed. She eventually joined. And, oh, did we join. I mean... last night's ode to population explosion was epic. I mean total loss of control... loss of everything save the burning need to keep this fucking life ball rolling. Sure, it's trying to roll uphill. But, hey.

Mmmm... mmm mmm mmm.....

Of course, merely typing about it has this body leaning in the direction of hope for a morning repeat. Love morning. Yeah, it has its issues. Literally. But I swear I'm at least twice more capable in the morning than night. I mean, including awakening “ready” <coughs> and the whole (dad humor in three.. two..) shebang....

Is anything not cliché anymore?

Honestly.

And what familiarity breeds.

<next day>

> This blog has zero direction whatsoever, but I wanted > to let you know that I’m here, I’m happy, and I’m > enjoying life. I hope you are too.

Ups. Downs. In betweens.

> For me, it is perfect anyway. The second I lay eyes > on other people, I see stress and distraught worries > in their expression. Insecurity in their place in the > world. And for some, outright depression. This could be > an outward perception of what may actually be happening > with me – but I feel fine, so I will not do a voodoo > “flip-around” and tell myself some bullshit that > wouldn't be true unless I bought into it, anyway.

What the recurring thought of “I” – aka in-divide-duality – breeds.

<next day>

> And if at the end of the day, after doing your research > on it, you still don't want to get the vaccine — Okay, > that's fine, I can respect that. But please be sensitive > when discussing this matter online and offline. Words have > meaning and they can hurt just as much. People have lost > loved ones, parents, friends, co-workers, to this darn > virus. And talking about the vaccine as if it's something > only meant for idiots is extremely infuriating.

The Trump (especially the anti – aka derangement – aspect) and COVID ordeals seemed like such textbook mass-auto-hypnosis outbreaks that I'm beyond being able to take much anyone says/writes as constituting facts worthy of serious research. I prefer my facts cool and unbiased, not served off the end of a flailing torch or pitchfork. But even if there be genuine facts somewhere, I can't find them in the noise of what's hilariously a sort of religious fundamentalism pouring unabated from those on record as despising religious fundamentalism.

Actually, I'm so disappointed and disturbed that I've absolutely no problem with significant thinnings of this pathetic species, even if it includes me.

> I read this out of a desire to get a more finely-grained > picture of the recession of the Black Freedom Movement in > the 1970s, and what came after.

I'm still not understanding how including the color of a person's skin in a statement as though that skin color is significant (Why else mention it if it isn't?) isn't racist, because racists are people to whom skin color matters.

Right?

Wonderful day in progress. A little breezier, but still beautiful outside. Having turned the corner on the property improvements, I was able to address/resolve a lot of other matters, including throwing away a lot of no longer relevant paperwork. The way things are going, I just might wind up organized before June – the month, not the glorious actress who played mom in “Lost In Space” all those years ago – is in the books.

Dealing with what I'm so far calling a “repetitive stress situation” in the right hand. The pain is less than yesterday, but I'm definitely going to need a week of doing as little as possible with it – which is not in the cakewalk zone for it being my dominant hand.

Prolly finally get with cutting the lawn of the primary property when my shift is over in about half an hour.

<later>

> Governments rarely even help homeless.

How dare you mock the liberal tribe of The United States, given they believe in the possibility of the mathematical inverse, despite millenia of evidence to the contrary.... :–)

> Anyway, I got the ride to go get groceries, got groceries > (incl some of the best mangoes EVER!), and also got my > hair cut. Feels VERY good to have my hair trimmed on the > sides/back. Looks dapper, too :)

I gotta say.. damned good example of a descriptively fun installment of a great life blow-by-blow, AKA blog.

> I just paid 18 British Pounds (what that amounts to in > USD? IDK) for a pair of scissors from PresentAndCorrect > (.com) (not an ad, obvs) and I am not surprised at the > cost, because they are a cool looking pair of scissors > ✂️ (which look nothing like this emoji). But really, > EVERYTHING from Present and Correct looks cool. Very > vintage-esque, 1970s, cerebral, throwback classroom type > of writing gear, notebooks, calendars, pencil sharpeners, > posters, and even typewriters (which are usually sold > out). Just a neat shop.

And again!!!

> Repetition happened across contexts — a couple times in > work and then off the clock. That context shift allowed > the repetition to take on new meaning. I'm sure it could > happen the other way around as well — repeating something > from a personal project in a work project. Perhaps that > context shift is but one of many places where that thrill > in repetition comes from. I'm hungry to find more.

The re-petition of concepts is the essence of this dream.

> Medications suck, though. I mean I will take them, and > feel better at the end of the day for having done so, > but, meds are a pain because you have to cycle on to them, > and then there is the cycling off period, and everything > about being med-reliant just sucks. Wholesale.

Yeah. But what a relevant topic just a few installments past some HST reverence! ;–)

> Everywhere I look it is the same thing: a million websites > here, a hundred-thousand forums there, a two-second video > on the left, an 8-week course on the right. What to choose, > what to choose?

linux + vim + lua + perseverance

> It's weird how I have this fascination with Thompson, like > I did with Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee (who I idolized > as a kid, but am not too amused by any longer). Maybe it's > the same with everyone who knows of HST? A weird empathy > (or sympathy) for him, or maybe because his writing always > seemed like it was written “for you” (or, for your > kind/type of person)?

Tommy did nothing for me... but, oh, The Hunter!

Not sure I could read him again, though – not because of anything about him or his work, but because I'm not sure I could read enough in a sitting, anymore, to ever finish a book.

I'm also a lot less interested in others opinions anymore, now that I'm pretty such most thoughts are more evidence of automatonic conceptual kneejerks than of orderly arrangements of at least semi-stable selfhood material/essence acting as centers of purely dreamed loftiness like “free will”. Kind of reminds of how I'm not sure which corn kernel is going to pop next.

And yet when a kernel does pop from somewhere just past the ear, the ego dream titilates itself into a sparkly foam of self adoration for having thought something “so amazing”....

> An ancient Zen teaching: “Do not manipulate the > experience”

Not related to the spirit of the post I'm quoting, but while reading it it occurred to me the reason “The Woke™” know without a shadow of a doubt manipulation is evil is because one of them noticed in a peak state of intelligent that the word 'manipulation' begins with 'man'....

> That's about all for now. Hope you're all doing well :)

Not bad. Beautiful morning in meteorological and atmospheric senses. Still pretty danged sore from the plethora of atypical physical activity the last week or two. But thankfully it doesn't rise to the level of ruining my Papa John's leftovers.

> And that your reading is causing my writing as well.

Yes!

Absolutely fantastic morning for the senses in progress in which these potentially infectious words were typed: sights, sounds, leftovers tastes. It doesn't hurt I was up early, enjoyed a sorely needed shower. It also doesn't hurt that last night's bedroom activities had me feeling as though in my 20s again.

(HINT: rhymes with “culpable floorspasms”...)

Typing of performances <coughs>, we've our first music performance in well over a year, tonight: 6pm 'til sunset on the open air roof of a building alongside a decent-sized lake. I'm a little apprehensive due to some, um, “rust” in the fingers and/or vocal chords and/or lyrics memory, also wondering how we could possibly have much audience with it likely being around 50F at start time in a venue that has a mildly prohibitive parking fee. You don't want to go through all the setup, performance, and tear-down for just a couple/three handfuls of people.

Assuming we survive that, Monday will be mostly about finishing touches at the short-term rental. There are a lot of them (I just sat through a reading of The List..). But we're also not in a super big hurry.

<later>

But dang am I sore from installing the indoor lockable metal gate to keep visitors from accessing the upstairs, yesterday....

> > Given believing any such for-shit sources has generally > > led to outcomes of lesser quality than when acting from > > gut/experience, I think I'll take my chances.... > > Says the family members of people who picked up COVID and > are on the brink of death.

I've heard of exactly one in my extended family, so far. I consider that way too small a dataset to predicate a reasonably scientific “MUST HAVE VACCINE” theory upon....

(where “MUST HAVE VACCINE” quickly morphs to “I'M AN INFINITELY BETTER PERSON THAN YOU BECAUSE I GOT THE VACCINE AND YOU DIDN'T NANNY NANNY BOO BOO”)

> Why cancel WiFi?

(I know I'm late to this party, but..) Because most of what it delivers rarely even rises to the level of mediocre excuse to procrastinate on anything genuinely fruitful?

> Therein lies a problem I, personally, had with Internet > communication: there was simply NO mature or positive way > of doing it.

Maturity definitely has a way of evaporating in the presence of audience.. and is there a bigger audience than Internet?

> Macob and beautiful, youth forever locked in a dance

<nods>

> And I am just going to keep WiFi, and screw the mobile-only > approach to computing like I mentioned last night. I > just...don't want to go without WiFi at the moment.

For me it's more I can't imagine bothering with any of this if it didn't involve typing on an actual keyboard. The joy of the re-enactment of that muscle memory is, oh... oh my....

<much, much later>

Managed to get lost in where I was at with read.write.as. Dang. Rather enjoy staying abreast.

Hell of a day. Weed/feed'd the yard, installed an indoor collapsible gate (not sure that's what it's usually called), replaced a wheel on the bottom of a mobile cabinet, this and that. Next to zero online. So no wonder it amounted to something amirite?

And yet here we on. On the line.

Worse yet, it amounts to next to zero actual interaction.

And yet the species – especially the woke-est thereof – remains befuddled as to why getting along fails to evolve in the direction of getting along....

Sad...............