# 0321 030721 “surprise me with words” my request, my hope, my prayer tell me something poetic about cars and i’ll tell you something automotive about poetry tbh this is kinda what i want to work on: https://cheapskatesguide.org/articles/war-on-gp-computing.html computers aren’t as fun anymore because you can’t trust em. that robs an essential grain from the great elevator of awesomeness # new bug Why is pi pi? How could it be anything else? How is it what it is though? What's the [[difference]]? If it’s the relationship of a circle’s circumference to its diameter, OK, makes sense if you get what a fraction or a ratio is, but isn’t the fact that it is the “number” that it is, an indication that our number system is an approximation, like a digital set of dots that will never line up *exactly* with the seemingly analog nature of reality? Or something like that? Like, there’s no reason anything in the “natural world” would have to match up with a base-ten or base-any-arbitrary-thing number system? Or *is there a number system where pi is a whole number?* I am ready for Millie to not identify herself by her deficiencies. If you need to identify yourself by difference? can you find a different kind of difference? until you outgrow the need to identify yourself by any kind of negative space? as soon as you even suggest something might be getting better she’s like shrug, totally noncommittal. it’s like she needs to be sick Words: click them together in a way that makes them glow > People go: “Oh it’s terrible, they’re manipulating us!” or: “They know so much about me!” Well, what do they know about you? Your shopping? That’s it? What they don’t know, actually, are all the things that you’ve forgotten which are your real intelligence, and that world that you live in your head, day by day – which is rich and extraordinary. https://www.idler.co.uk/article/adam-curtis-social-media-is-a-scam/ 030821 we don’t have the kind of basement i had when i was their age. for the girls and me to have space away from each other, we have to create our own basement, our own far-flung wing, sometimes even our own walls, out of thin air, out of our psyches. That takes a certain amount of energy. (Or an uncertain amount.) now here comes the paranoid shit: … how do we know they’re NOT injecting us with shit to keep us docile? what if i’m red pill or blue pill or whichever the fuck the pathetic one was? I MEAN THAT’S THE WHOLE POINT—I WOULDN’T KNOW IT IF I WAS—but then, nobody else necessarily would either, right? RIGHT? 031321 according to megan’s landlord, she and alex and annad are exactly the same as the new guy—the tweaking, violent, alcoholic asshole who has a sherrif checking in on him and who threatens to stab people over some dishes—because they all have bad credit. that’s how it works in America. love it or leave it. 031521 kind of tired of my life, not looking forward to it just starting here and petering out. slowly slouching and balding and slumping over and dragging the trash cans back from the gravel at the edge of the street. kind of a low grade panic setting in, as a year of pandemic-fueled drinking and self-medicating dribbles into a new spring. 031621 how cucumbers taste a bit like dirt 031921 Not can we see color or I don’t see color. We get it. That’s baby stuff. Too obvious and willfully overlooking the point. It’s can I see culture. Nobody really thinks you’re so stupid that you care about literally what color someone is. You think it’s that easy to be virtuous? Get over yourself. I don’t see color means I refuse to consider culture, or it means I assume you have no culture or it means I am magnanimously not considering “culture” which turns into code for I am going to go out of my way not to treat you as exotic. Everybody gets the same treatment from me, isn’t that what you wanted? The problem is, “culture” aka some people are “diverse” and other people aren’t, means that your idea of equity means not ascribing “culture” to anyone which means you are assuming no “culture” which seems on the surface “fair” but it really means you’re asserting some kind of culture blindness, which really means assuming the dominance of your own culture, parts of which you may be unaware of; setting it as the default, the blank page, the neutral ground where everyone gets a fair assessment. That’s what willful ignorance means, it’s not as simple as you’re just a racist asshole. In short, to fight against discrimination “based on color” is to fall for a decoy. It’s what the color has become codified for that’s the real thing? 032021 Voting to cancel some people’s votes is like wishing for more wishes. Should be the one thing you can’t do Everything that “just works” has a messy process behind it somewhere. May be hidden may be deep may be abstracted away from the “user”. May be offset in time or space but it’s there, somewhere, great greasy clanking and pulsing like a carnival 032121 Thinking of yourself as a “good person” can be counterproductive, as it clouds your awareness of your own motivations. If you can’t be honest with yourself (because of unwillingness to compromise your protective illusions) you can’t be fully rational when analyzing your own choices and patterns. See [https://www.vice.com/en\_us/article/v7mwa3/why-your-true-self-is-an-illusion](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/v7mwa3/why-your-true-self-is-an-illusion) I think I could stand to start being a little less negative. Or at any rate to start reacting with less automatic negativity. Decouple that reaction and see if it might benefit from some rejiggering. Your feelings aren’t stupid (Even if the word’s been stupefied by the prattling masses) If the kid at the bike shop says “sweet ride” at you, you have a right to feel good about it. If you want, you can say it’s because your ride, not the purchase itself but all the energy and muscle and love you’ve put into it, reflects something about “who you are.” But even if it’s just plain old “that’s a cool bike,” there’s nothing wrong with that either 032521 Having hard core ADHD-style doldrums last week or so. Work went from smooth sailing to becalmed to stuck in mud. It was those damned presentations to grade that fucked me up. Just have to lump it and kick start back in some anonymous moment, not the right moment, or it’s never going to happen, and I can’t have that. Can I? The underlying rat-fool whisper is there for a reason. The roulette of this is that you are never sure the reason isn’t just “to fuck you up lolz” 3/25/21 I swear to God if Millie doesn’t start getting some physical exercise she’s going to fucking fall over and die one of these days 032621 synonyms are a form of error correction! ---- Do you ever wonder how people from the past *smelled?* Do birds think it’s creepy that we’re *watching them?* 032821 There’s two things I need: I need to make some friends, and I need to take some new risks. That’s it. That’s all I’m going to say about that right now. In MO, witnessing mom in this stage of her caregiver role, Don says seemingly random things in the same knowing, folksy, conversational tone as he’s always had—just most of it doesn’t make any sense. It’s like an echo. A reverberation of a dream. A memory of a song. But, and then, after watching some slick sappy tv show that makes you want to cry a little, we’re all about to go get ready for bed, and mom comes in and says to me and the girls, oh, and I have to tell you—so I’m getting Don ready for bed, and he says, that is a great bunch of girls. And Matthew has done a great job taking care of them. She says you just never know what’s going to come out of his mouth when you least expect it. Reminds me of when Pam and I were walking back out of the woods from Bearfield, stoned as fuck, and she was like how’d you know which way to go? when we didn’t actually get lost, and I said I took advantage of a lucid moment to check which way the stars were positioned, and she was impressed I guess and it was fun and all that but yeah. The places you’ve pretended to go voluntarily you’ll one day be cast into with all the chaotic humor of “the universe” which doesn’t give a shit about anyone or anything. Be ready. 033021 Millie got a formal dress for $5 from teen challenge, where the majority of the morons were of the variety who refuse to wear masks. The dress looks really good on her though. We had fancy boba from a place that seems out of place in cape. Me and lib and cel stole a boat and I’m kinda nervous about that. I guess I’ll put it back at some point. Libby tried to tell me something that was bugging her, and because it had to do with the video catsitting Megan sent of how Angel was petting Tera (though it was really more about Tera, and was probably (maybe?) REALLY about something else), I kinda hijacked the thread and acted like I understood but what I was really doing was trying to get her to help me say my thing about what bugs ME about Angel, sneakily, under the guise of actively listening. She said “that’s not really it” and walked away. I was like wtf, but then again, they say only your best friends will tell you when your breath stinks. So maybe only your most prized confessors will tell you when you’ve fucked up at being a good listener. It’s not like I did it on purpose, but what I *can* do on purpose is get over being wounded and remember to actually listen for real next time instead of wedging my own psyche into the trusted space that she had momentarily been willing to open up. Which isn’t to say that you can’t ever extrapolate from your own experience or POV. But if you’re over eager about it, you can stomp on someone else’s process. Ie, you can’t have someone else’s epiphany for them. And then later after I didn’t freak out, and after Wheel of Fortune, and after the four of us played Jackbox, she seemed in a lighter mood, and when I walked thru the basement on my way to get ready for bed, she intercepted me specifically to give me a hug. So that’s good. 040121 it’s tempting to jump on the “green marketing is bs, it’s not what i choose to not buy at walmart that’s going to make a difference, it’s the corporations!” line of thinking, because, come on, obviously, it makes something not my fault. But we need to remember the perniciousness of the “let’s get back to normal” line of thinking too—if governments and corporations adopted policies that *would* actually make a large-scale difference, then our individual decisions and daily lives would be massively affected too. Do we *really* support those kinds of moves? Is anyone anywhere seriously considering them? Or are they non-starters because of what we expect “normal” to be?