Another Late Night Idle Talk

Pic of the day:   The Plaster Kiln, by Jean Louis Theodore Gericault

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Life continues, and some mornings, weary of the noise, discouraged by the prospect of the interminable work to keep after, sickened also by the madness of the world that leaps at you from the newspaper, finally convinced that I will not be equal to it and that I will disappoint everyone—all I want to do is sit down and wait for evening. This is what I feel like, and sometimes I yield to it.

Albert Camus

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It’s about 20 minutes after 11 pm eastern time here on Staten Island as I write this.

I’ve written and deleted this particular section at least 3 times now. I’ve written about Adam Curry. I’ve written about conservatism. I’ve written about the President.  And deleted it all.

Not that it wasn’t good, it was up to the standard that I normally write to, but it just didn’t seem to fit.  It just didn’t feel right.

Not that it matters, not today.

I’m hanging out with my wife, and I am happy with that.

I did a good days work and got an honest days pay for it, and I am happy with that.

I ran as hard as I could today, broke a severe sweat doing it, and I am happy with that.

I read one of my favorite books today going to work, and coming back from work, and I am happy with that.

My wife is working next to me, and we are talking while she works and I write.

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We are watching a documentary about the meaning of life while we do this.  I don’t know what the meaning of life is.  42?  I dunno.  I’m 44.  I think  if it’s a number it’s 44 until the day I turn 45, then it becomes 45.  My wife disagrees.  Because she is 42.

The real meaning of life?  It”s different for everyone.  There is no universal answer to that question.  My answer would not be your answer.  Is the meaning of life to be happy?  If it is for you, then it is.  If not, then not.  For me, I have only an inkling of an answer, because I don’t really understand the question, except maybe peripherally.

What does it mean “What is the meaning of life?”  Does it even need a meaning?  You drink coffee, work, worship, shop, fuck, fart, do a billion other things.  Why would one action(worship, work) or one thing (God, sex, anything else) be the meaning of life when there are so many things that make up that life?  Why would there be a need to frame that existence with meaning?

Ask a bull with a yoke on it’s neck what life means.  Ask a horse running a race with a human on it’s back what life means.  Ask a man fighting for his life what life means.  Life’s meaning depends on how your life is going and where you are and how you experience it, and the life you’ve lived since you were a child.

Life is not something to be pondered.  Life is something to be lived, experienced.  Viscerally.  Enjoyed if it can be enjoyed.  Struggle through if you must, fight if the need arises, but the meaning, like life itself, cannot be anything but a personal experience.

Reminds me of a song lyric.

“Why are we here?  Because we’re here, Roll the bones…”

Just saying…

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That’s it from here, America.  G’night.

Things the World Doesn’t Need

The Department of Homeland Security.

The TSA.

Google glasses.  Not glasses that can get any information from anywhere on the internet, just Google branded ones.

Cispa.

Instagram.  A complete and utter waste of time.  I am convinced that Mark Zuckerberg bought the company because he’s friends with the guy who ran it.  No other way to explain buying an app for a billion dollars when it isn’t worth a tenth of that.

Fear of Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

Patent news.

Quality goal-tending in Pittsburgh.

Movies about Steve Jobs.  Who would willingly watch it?  Where’s the excitement?  Sounds about as much fun as watching grass grow.

Calling it Obamacare.  It’s called the patient protection and affordable care act.

More U.N. observers in Syria.  Those poor people need guns and ammunition, not people there to watch them die.  They won’t listen to the U.N.  If they were going to do that, they’d have done it by now.

President Romney.

Candidate Romney.

Mitt Romney.

Anyone from Bain Capital in any kind of spotlight without handcuffs, leg irons and prison orange on.

Prostitutes paid with our taxpayer dollars.  I gotta ask the 11 SS agents who got busted for this stupid crap a one word question.  Really?

The entire Summit of the Americas.  They could have gotten much done, but didn’t do a damn thing.  And the entire thing fell apart because of the United States.  Apparently the United States, being the largest economic and military power on earth somehow gets to dictate how the entire region should work.  That and Argentina thinks that the Falkland Islands are the property of Argentina.  Thought that battle was fought in the 1980′s.  Thought the Brits handled that pretty effectively, as effective as any invading army can.

The Vancouver Canucks.  Why does Vancouver need a hockey team again?  Quebec needs an NHL team.  Nova Scotia needs an NHL team.  Vancouver?  Not so much.  Juneau would be a better home for Hockey than Vancouver.  Hell, Dubai would be a better home for the NHL than Vancouver.

Companies and local governments firing people in great heaps and gobs.  10,000 fired by SONY?  4,000 fired by the Detroit Public Schools? Makes no damned sense.  In March 1,293 companies laid off over 119,000 workers.  And curiously, in many respects these numbers are actually low.  Still, short term profits are apparently more important than the lives of people.

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Pic of the day: Knight , The Devil and Death, by Albrecht Durer

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Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.

Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt

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That’s it from here, America.  G’night.

Washing Of The Lions

Pic of the day:  This child destroyed an entire subway line.  Isn’t he the cutest lil’ terrorist?  His parents should be proud!

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In school they told me “Practice makes perfect.” And then they told me “Nobody’s perfect,” so then I stopped practicing.

Steven Wright

“One thing leads to another”? Not always. Sometimes one thing leads to the same thing. Ask an addict.

George Carlin

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Coolest thing ever.  Head over to google maps and check out the happy 8 bit NES style maps that are there for April fools day.   Just click on maps on the google main page and then look for the word “quest” in the upper right hand corner of the page.  Click and enjoy!  For added fun click on the little guy on top of the slider and place him somewhere on the map.  8 bit love is pretty, and just a little pixelated.

More fun than searching google for “Do A Barrel Roll.”

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I am sitting bathed in far too much light listening to someone  commentating on a motorcycle race somewhere in Japan.  I know this because the man is speaking in Japanese.  Why?  Beats me.  My wife has been flipping through channels on Ustream pretty much at random.  After watching two guys on horses moshing with a cow, we now have a Japanese Motorcycle race. Flip the channel and there is… Japanese people shooting darts!  At least there’s no commentary.  Or Rick Santorum.

Looking forwards to the cats and the penguins, at least they don’t yell indecipherably.  The Penguins sound like tiny elephants and the cats sleep at each other when they aren’t jumping on one another.

But I digress.

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Things to do on April Fools day: (note: don’t do any crazy shit and then blame me.  If your an asshole, it’s your fault, not mine.)

Go to the Syrian embassy, light a bag of dog-shit on fire, ring the doorbell, and run!  Classic mayhem!

Play drawception.

Drink a bottle of tequila and drive blindfolded down an interstate.  In reverse. Naked. With a trunk full of napalm.

Bring a banana cream pie with you to meet Mitt Romney.  Smack him in the face with it.  He LOVES that kind of thing.  He’s such a kidder!

Teach a fish to juggle.

Go for a run someplace you’ve never been before!  (R.I.P. Micah)

Sleep in.  It’s Sunday, dammit, you deserve a little bit of a break!   And when you’re done, occupy your toilet.

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Someday I’ll grow a sense of humor.  But I ain’t holding my breath waiting.

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That’s it from here, America.  G’night.

A Little Light Reading

Dragging.

Beat.

Tired as hell.

Trying to keep my eyes open.

Didn’t get enough sleep last night.

Running around all day doing things.

There is too much to do, and too little time.

But that isn’t the way it is all the time.

I’ve got a minute to myself now.

Watching hockey.

Feels pretty good.

Enjoying it.

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Viddy of the day:  Dragonforce -  Through the Fire And Flames (Video)

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Big houses, small families

More conveniences, less time to enjoy them

More toys, less joy

This is not the world I asked for

This isn’t the world anyone asked for

But it’s the one we have

And the mess that its in is of our making

All a gigantic mistake;

I’ve heard it said we should own our mistakes

It isn’t enough to own your mistakes

You must be responsible for them

You can own a dog, a house, a life and still be irresponsible

Ownership is not responsibility

Owning is not enough

We must make up for them

Undo the wrongs done

Or it is as if we condone the mistakes

And by condoning them, condoning failure;

Someone once said failure is not an option

Has this changed?

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If you examine the highest poetry in the light of common sense, you can only say that it is rubbish; and in actual fact you cannot so examine it at all, because there is something in poetry which is not in the words themselves, which is not in the images suggested by the words ‘O windy star blown sideways up the sky!’ True poetry is itself a magic spell which is a key to the ineffable.

Aleister Crowley, Eight Lectures on Yoga

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It is 1055 days since the last time I had a job

that gave me health benefits;

My wife has gone uncovered since that day

and has been sick several times.

It makes my skin crawl to think something

could happen to her and I would have to worry

about not being able to pay

and she could die because of a lack of money.

I would like to think that someone will pay

for this,

but that someone is most definitely us.

Humans are finite machines, people with money

and power do not think of them as anything but

money conduits for the wealthy owners of

We the people.

And we go through 1055 days of worry, 1055

and counting, because they are more concerned with cash

than life

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Pic of the day:  Suprematist Composition, by Kazimir Malevich

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I have no idea what possessed me to do this today, just some crap rolling around my head, I decided to let it out.  Proof positive that that isn’t always a good idea.  I’m OK with it though.  Doesn’t hurt anyone, and it’s frankly pretty easy to write like that.

Good stuff for when there are no good ideas bouncing around my cranium. 

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That’s it from here, America.  G’night.

Typing Is Hard

My heart is beating hard and fast as I type this.  I am in the middle of doing exercise and am taking the time between sets to write a little here and a little there.

After the first set of today’s exercise, which is chin-ups, I found I was hungry (initially typed decided instead of found, still dunno why.) Talk about bad timing.  As it is getting late for me, and I have only a little while to exercise and do everything I want to do, including write this, I say the hell with it and eat.   That was perhaps the fastest bowl of cereal I have ever eaten.

It’s a little bit after 10 pm, and I am doing sets of 10 chin-ups.  I’ve done five sets so far, in about 10 minutes.  I’m not trying to set records either with the amount of chin-ups I do, or the amount of time I do them in.  Wife is giggling at me, saying this is hella multi-tasking, writing and exercising at the same time.   I tell her that’s what I’m writing about.  She giggles again.

It is very difficult to type right after doing chin-ups.  My fingers don’t want to move the way I am asking them to.  Typos a plenty.  I miss keys, type the wrong thing, type in extra letters not meaning to… at a far greater rate than normal.   The word late isn’t supposed to have a semi colon in it, and the word wrong does not have an I in it, but you would not have known that I knew that, looking over my shoulder as I was typing just a moment ago.

60.

I spent the time before I started doing the exercise and the eating writing more stuff in the long form running story I’m writing on the “Story of the month” page.  I’m up to 6,000 words.  I haven’t read it.  It is probably crap, but it’s my crap and I like it.

I think.

70.

After my 7th set, I am wondering if I’ll have it in me to do 3 more sets.  Not as in actual capacity, 100 chin-ups is not that hard to do over time, it’s wanting to do it, and within forty-five minutes of going to bed.

Oh hell, now I have to.  Can’t sit here and say I can do 100 chin-ups after doing 70, without doing the other 30, even with my stomach muscles bothering me.  I did something to them.  Whenever I cough, I double over in pain, and I can feel them, feel the soreness in them when I start running.

80.

Typing is hard. Especially when you beat your fingers by doing chin-ups right before typing.  More properly put, chin-ups + typing = exercise in futility. 

I’ve been reading books on putting together a novel, how to work out characters, how to focus on creating them properly.  It sounds a hair more complex than I had initially thought, though doable.  Complexity won’t stop me from writing a book, or just much longer form stuff than I write here.  And I am not sure if I want to write fiction or non-fiction.  I could do both. My grandfather’s story sounds fascinating, and I could do that.

90.

I could try for 120.  But I won’t.  I think.

100.

That feels good.  Almost as good as getting the run story to 10,000 words will feel.  I honestly wonder how long I can make it last.  Like I said, I’m 6k words in, but what I didn’t say is that I have described less than half of the 6 miles run that I am writing about.

Having fun with it, even if it sucks, even if typing is hard.

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That’s it from here, America.  G’night.