words as legos (not ego trophy) “the death of the author” — and that’s OK what *are* we going to do if not “assignments” (in other classes) then? ..... maybe decide what to make the ai do? if you can make a llm write a program for you, WHAT PROGRAM DO YOU WANT TO RUN? snell said “the noodling is fun and all, but programming is about getting things done” -- but what things? why? the house, wood, furniture, plants, the inexorable gravity of disrepair, love aging, loneliness, sexuality, resistance, “love, the real kind, can’t be a ball of fear in your heart” haiku — how the good ones aren’t “smart” 060425 # three things 1. it’s the loneliness 2. if you can relax, you can get happy 3. i need to write (whatever that means) even if it’s bad (whatever that means) 060525 This week’s homework: 1. “what if I weren’t afraid of people” — go out and be around people; challenge your reactions & assumptions 2. look up potential social opportunities you can do 3. at 19:55 (or whenever needed), find an anchor (eg breathing) and let go of night-snack craving # well that’s nice - judy noticed i was “somewhere else” at drumming thing & mentioned it & was kind about it - nancy said she would go next month - craig at sherman perk was seemingly in an outgoing mood and bantered with me after i said “how are you” - tom noticed and mentioned that i havent been posting to the blog lately 060825 a digital clipper a steam powered mri a computer program replete with errors nonsense 062125 #fakelifetriplejournal chips. But she forgave him for that. Nevertheless, a 79 Ford, I think? Maybe? Burnt orange. It was in pretty good shape, for the most part. One of the wheel wells was dented. Squirrels at Downer Theater. Wonder what’s showing? When does this place close? I’m hungry, I guess? Kind of a milling about after the commencement ceremony, they looked so — not lost, exactly, but — not even knowing whether they’re lost or not? Dissociated? Or maybe that was just me. “There’s no saber-toothed tigers,” my therapist is fond of pointing out. But then so what is there, for these kids to run from, or toward? What again, what is “reading,” what is “text,” blah blah blah. Everything is made of text, I’m pretty sure of that. So what we’re a propensity, or even just a willingness to mentally extend things out to their logical extremes. But also a willingness to explore areas *in between* the extremes. In many ways, that’s a more rare is long. She’s fond of these little *bons mot,* and there’s no harm in flinging them about like suds in a and buns. Cheap, white buns. I already have pickles and onion. What the fuck else could I to go swimming. They’re gonna need their mean “to have read a book”? If the goal is “close reading,” what role can off the slightly warped stainless steel walls of the kitchen. He’s been in there washing dishes the whole time I’ve been here, and see someone else’s watch, on his wrist, from here. Does that affect what time it is for Sendik’s right across the street. I guess I could just duck in there, although I oppose Sendiks’ on principle. But maybe it’s time, after quite literally 30 years, to let go of that grudge. Lol. Maybe 062425 Tomorrow is lib’s 18th birthday. 🎂 (edit--off by one??) Chain coffee shop coffee (the actual coffee I mean, not the sugar syrup) is almost uniformly horrible. It tastes like boiled hotdog water, and yet it costs $4. GOD I AM SO FUCKING STUPID. I just wanted a place to sit and type but tbh idk if the rent is even worth it. These kind of places don’t help me type anyway. Especially not the stripmall suburban blandly corporate ones like this one across from lib’s therapist’s office. Honestly, brainwise, it’s better to just wait and type later. The consciousness will still be there. If it was there to begin with, that is. Hypothetical — like axions stretching invisibly across galactic distances, clumping together into ultra-low-mass, hyper-vast superparticles. There is no dark matter, there is no text. There’s words that we apply to the equations that help us maintain our OCD need for order in the universe, which there’s no either. Words aren’t text any more than a hypothetical particle is a “thing” somewhere “out there” just waiting to be “discovered.” There’s a lot of old premium-mediocrity white people in here. Funny how what used to be middle class is now, for all intents and purposes, “rich.” We must invent new differentiators! Can you afford the walmart commodity crap or the llbean commodity crap? Do you have a retirement account? How high or low is your “what will happen to you when shit goes to shit” index number? How quickly will your insurance dump you? How many family members do you have that will rush in to shelter you? How shitty can you be at your job before you get fired? How pointless can your job be before somebody decides not to pay you for it anymore? How many holes are in the roads by your house? How many houses are boarded up? How many gunshots do you usually hear each night? How fucked up are the drivers on the roads you try to walk on? Do you wade through litter or traipse past spiraea and well-groomed arborvitae? You got a bike lane? Do people drive in it? Is there anybody half bent over shuffling around in the median with a soggy piece of “anything helps” cardboard, when you’re on your way to work? Do you drive to work? Do you take the bus? What happens if you miss the bus? Do you even have to leave the house to go to work? Does anybody know if you’re actually “working” or not? What would happen if you weren’t able to do what you’re doing right now? Would you just go on and do something else? Or would you be in real trouble? I dreamed of a mythical typewriter last night. It was an alt-universe Smith Corona, something like Coronna Alistair. It was tall and white and blue. I knew I didn’t need any more typewriters but was about to make an exception for this one because of the font — kind of like “block” or “classic” but even more square and odd looking. Thankfully it doesn’t exist in real life. Thankfully it is perfect in my mind, kind of like the spatial fractal textual universe app that maps onto every point of reality like Borges’ map. > On Exactitude in Science > Jorge Luis Borges, Collected Fictions, translated by Andrew Hurley. > …In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a > single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety > of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the > Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and > which coincided point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so > fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast Map > was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the > Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are > Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is > no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography. > —Suarez Miranda,Viajes de varones prudentes, Libro IV,Cap. XLV, Lerida, 1658 I have ChatGPT to thank for teaching me — because of how non-urgent and non-interesting it got, this thing i’ve been obsessing abstractly over for decades, once it looked like i could actually build it in xcode — that I don’t need to “build” (or god forbid buy or the devil forbid subscribe to) the app, because it already exists, and I’m already *in* it. Kind of like how you don’t have to scrabble after the crumbs of the state of the art in photography by buying the most expensive lens you can afford, because the state of the art is so far beyond what you could ever dream of purchasing anyway, and even if you could purchase the most expensive thing on the market, the state of the art isn’t on the market, and even if it were, an instant after you made your purchase it wouldn’t be anymore anyway. Marketing is the lie that you can buy your way into the art. I guess if it helps fund the province of the art that involves people in laboratories and stuff doing cool stuff with expensive equipment that’s fine, but, idk, I’d rather that whole process were more transparent. If it were, would anybody pony up? If they didn’t, would that necessarily be an existential loss? The art will always do and be and become whatever it’s going to; it’s always there, we’re always already in it. It’s in a throwaway ball point from the bank as much as it’s in the slickest hyperexpensive macbook or gpu or fucking server farm — let people do what they’re gonna do; we’re all just nodes in the app that you don’t have to build because it already exists. Save your money. Spend it on waffles or your kids or save it for when the roof of your house caves in, which it will eventually, because everything does eventually. This bad coffee is making me hungry? Or just dissatisfied in some other way. Could go for some onion rings rn. Five things I can see: 1. faded no-left-turn sign 2. bag of green dragon costa rica coffee beans that somebody bought 3. seven-eighths-eaten scone (not mine, i didn’t buy food at this ridiculous place) 4. fat roll below the underarm & above the ribcage of the squat fairly old lady at the next table, talking with an also fairly old man (who’s nibbling at the scone) — they lean in towards each other, their voices get a little higher, more intense, they’re talking about some indignity, some perplexity, some kind of thing they don’t understand how someone could think that way, or what is the reason this is the policy, or what has become of our world — i get a kneejerk urge to be superior, but you know what? I get it. I feel that way too sometimes, a lot of times. The details may be different. She picks up her phone to search for verification; a moment later he picks up his and taps on validation. This is how conversations are punctuated and perforated now, decimated, gutted, skeletalized 5. a diaphanous ghost ----- # the girl’s voice you said most ppl are cows you meant most ppl are invisible you meant i spend much of my time invisible you dreamed you could use your girl voice and suddenly you started acting light and free and happy and visible 1750923386 what is this day wearing? a breezy scarf, pale blue with a weft of white what is this day doing? hovering, gliding, floating, waiting what are this day’s evening plans? thunderstorms at 7 1750966056 the girl should know about weaving she’s done it all her life but also she knows about ships and the sea and how to read the skies and how to tie a knot and how to gauge the depth she knows about swords and how to respond when the intellect pierces the heart 1750972574 she *does* know she’s beautiful and so do you and so are you and so you sit together knee to knee on the old plaid couch windows open draperies flirting with the oncoming storm 1750984323