Category Archives: Lucubrations

I’ve been experimenting with the various navigation apps on my phone for several years now, and finally found one I like.  Then I started messing around with the language settings.
A recent update added an Irish option under the category “U.K. Voices,” so I rolled the dice on “Seamus,” whose disembodied artificially intelligenced voice piped up in a brogue that sounds exactly like the Lucky Charms Leprechaun if said leprechaun was on the tail end of a 5-day meth bender and had had nothing to eat except cigarettes for a week.  “Howya lad…what’s the craic?  It’s Sonday…are we off to church, like?”
I like this guy already.  Seamus is going to be my new friend.  I input my destination as the dispensary about 10 miles away.  “So we’re wantin’ a bit of the shmoke, are we?  Off we go, then.”  And off we went.  Seamus got me to the dispensary efficiently and with a minimum amount of stress.  This is going to work out well.
The following day I had a mid-morning meeting for a project I’ve been working on.  I knew perfectly well how to get to the meeting site, which was roughly 20 miles away, but since this particular navigation app does a bang-up job of redirecting one around traffic jams and other hazards, I almost always use it, even when I know exactly where I’m going.  I tested it’s ability in the early days, and paid for my dubiousness by being stuck in inescapable multi-hour traffic jams, so I drank the Kool-Aid and have never doubted its advice since.  And so it was that next morning when I entered my destination address.  Seamus wished me a good morning, asked about the craic, exactly when I needed to arrive at my destination, calculated briefly, and then seemed to send me on what seemed to be a rather circuitous, backwards-ass route, but I was running a tad late and didn’t dare get stuck in some horrible traffic jam again, so off we went.
“You have arrived,” said Seamus, when I very clearly had not.
“The hell I have,” I complained to Seamus.  “This isn’t even the right part of town.  This is a bar.  I don’t even know where we are.  I need to get to my meeting.  And now I’m going to be late.”
“Look, lad…you need to trust me.  I know ye.  You want to go in there.  Fock yer meetin’.  When you go into that pub, and you know the barman knows exactly what you want.  It comes.  You can hear it being planted.  The playful splashing of the bubbles on the top of the glass.  The condensation as it drips coolly, like a shnake, down the side of a mountain.The curves of the glass like some sort of Belgian model’s hips…”
Christ.  Seamus is mercilessly convincing.
 “And you grab that pint and you can feel that condensation teasing the palm of your hand and your fingers.  And once that fluid just flows forth like some sort of floodgate of love.  As those bubbles come through your teeth, you know you’ve come to the right place at the right time.”
Dammit, he’s absolutely right.  Fock me meeting.  This is where I need to be.  So I did as I’d been told, and spent the rest of the day drinking whiskey and beer and eating pretzels.  Made a few friends, all of whom seemed to be veterans of foreign wars.
After several hours of stiff drink, it was time to get going.  I went back out to the car and opened the app.
“Airight, lad, whats the craic, how are ya keeping?”
I need to go home, Seamus.  Tell me how to get home.  Seamus does a bit of calculating, and then continues: “You have arrived.”
That’s not right.  I try the whole deal again, even entering my home address manually.  Still, “You have arrived.”  Three more attempts, three more I have arriveds.  It must be a glitch with the Seamus voice.  In desperation, I press the little gear button on the screen and choose another voice.  The only other option under the Irish tab is the female voice: Fiona.  Select and wait.  In a few seconds, Fiona’s loaded and waiting.
“Hi Fiona, I need directions home.”:
“Don’t you ‘hi fockin’ Fiona’ me, ya lazy bastard, laid up in the pub all day.  Leavin’ me and the baby all alone in this awful gaff.  A grown adult who gets so drunk midweek that he has to get his stomach pumped and forgets his way home. Fockin’ eejit! Well, I hope by the mighty Jesus it was worth it, ya brain dead bastard!  You said you’d do Baby Shark with little Declan!   Well, ya may as well not even bother coming home now, ya drunken shite!  Ya daft prick!  Dickhead!”
Jesus.  Who the hell is “little Declan” and what on earth is baby shark?  I press the little gear button on the screen again and try desperately to change the voice as Fiona keeps screaming at me about how terrible I am.
This should work: English (US) – Jessica.  Fiona is silenced, thank Christ.
“Hi Jessica, I really need directions home.”
“I know, right?”
Shit.  “Jessica, do you identify as a millennial?”
“It is what it is.”
I shut off the car, delete the app, and go back into the bar.
N.P.: “Unglued” – Big Data

So I started writing something to go here today, but it sort of morphed into something that will be better off in a different place, which is all well and good, but now here I am with nothing prepared.  How embarrassing.  At least it would be if it was anyone else.  But it’s you, dear reader, and I know you get it.

‘Twas unpleasantly warm today, for a January day, I thought.  People let their screaming children out to play, which I think should be illegal.  Children should be kept indoors on the weekend.  Probably also on weekdays.  And their parents should stay inside as well.  I know that’s ridiculous.  But a man can dream.

N.P.: “Stack-O-Lee” – Samuel L. Jackson

Yeah, I think I need to take a break.  I’m not going to, of course, Just starting to get into a groove with the writing.  In as much as I’m doing it all the time.  Which makes things feel very strange.  Every day is pretty much exactly the same: Wake up, peck at the keyboard until things get going and then hopefully beat the hell out of the keyboard for an hour or so, take a break, repeat.  Get into bed at about the same time every night and do what I can against the evils of insomnia until the sun gets too high in the sky the next day, get up, drink breakfast, and start pecking at the keys again.  Occasionally there are meetings.  Occasionally there are date nights.  But there is no distinction between days, between weekdays and weekends.  Holidays and social niceties are ignored.  But literally everybody else, and indeed the entire world around me is very much dictated by the calendar and all of its “traditions, superstitions, false religions.”  I feel like an astronaut that has arrived from another planet with humans on it, so we have that in common, but I don’t understand why these humans do the things they do.  And I spent several decades trying to do all of these things that you are just supposed to want to do, but it was very much like trying to learn how to dance to music I cannot hear but everybody else can.

N.P.: “Grind” – Alice In Chains

Weird day, dear reader.  Nothing weird happened.  Just feeling a bit…off.  Just wanted to say hey.

Hey.

N.P.: “Western Ground” – Samael

This stupid aloe plant may finally be dead.  There were originally 3 stalks in this pot.  One died almost immediately, the second hung out for a couple of weeks before dramatically collapsing and oozing aloe onto my table like blood at a crime scene.  This third and final stalk has hung on for 2 months now, and I thought maybe it was starting to thrive, especially since it was no longer having to share the water and soil with 2 other stalks.  I’ve even been putting it on the windowsill so it could get more sun…it seemed to like that.  But then yesterday, it just collapsed.  It’s kind of holding on today, but I think this is plant hospice at this point.
This winter is bullshit so far.  Not a cloud in the sky.  The weather app says, “A good deal of sunshine.”  No, asshole, this is a bad deal of sunshine.  Pleasant daytime temperatures.  Disgusting.
N.P.: “Funky Town” – Pseudo Echo

Okay, intelligent reader…let’s get back to it.  There are one or two more thing I should mention before we get started.  The first thing, which applies to pretty much anything political or cultural I discuss, at least in this context: when I talk about these topics, I generally don’t address them from the perspective of “this is what I think is right and the other side is wrong.”  Though some of the cultural issues I have very strong and clear opinions about, but that is rarely what I’ll be talking about.  Unless stated otherwise, I’ll be addressing methods, as opposed to the “cause” itself.  As for many of the cause themselves (particularly the political ones), the truth is I really don’t care. The transient politics of humans are silly and inconsequential (from a certain perspective).  There are some issues whose causes I publicly support and am completely behind, but I will be brutally critical of the methods chosen to attempt to advance the agenda, simply because the method doesn’t work and is thus a waste of time and resources.
For example, if I say something like. “In present day America, all marches protests, pickets, unofficial petitions, colored lapel ribbons, themed frames or filters on social media profile pictures, and hashtag campaigns regardless of cause, are completely masturbatory, pointless, and utterly ineffectual,” it should be obvious that I mean that about any march, for any cause, including my own.
I’m sensing you would like a bit of justification for this potentially provocative statement (though it really shouldn’t be).  So here’s why marches are a waste of time and effort: Marches and mass political protests are useful in certain environments and situations: if you live in a society where you are not allowed to vote, or there are no elections, then it is time to take to the streets.  If you are officially forbidden from from gathering, from free speech, from pursuing an education, running for government office, bringing a lawsuit, or filing for divorce, then it’s time to organize and “march.”  If your government is internationally recognized as an abysmally corrupt failed narco-state, then yes, collective political action in the street is called for.  But in those situations, I would not call for a march.  The people who are maintaining a constitution which specifies fewer (or no) rights for any race- or gender-based group (in our present world, 2019), a non-violent march is not going to suddenly cause whomever is in power to change their mind(s).  You’re going to have to get much more “hands on” to affect any real change, and staging any kind of “march” to draw awareness to your cause or air your grievances only gives the government in question an opportunity to assemble lists of names and get to know the people involved.
But we’re not talking about that.  We’re talking about the United States in the 21st century.  And though marches had their place and were effective in the past, that mode of political expression and change is outdated and inappropriate for current times.  The reason is that there is simply not much, societally, that is keeping anyone from going out and implementing actual change, whatever that change may be.  For example, police protests have been en vogue for a while now, and those seem to have really ramped up in the last 10 years or so, sometimes turning into community-destroying riots.  Totally pointless.  Somehow, this “us vs them”” mentality has developed, where citizens view the police as somehow “other” (not unlike that nonsense we were talking about a couple weeks ago about thinking that humans are somehow outside of or “other” than nature).  Once that false dichotomy is created, trouble is soon to follow.  It’s not “Them vs. Us,”  It’s just “Us.”  You and me.  So if you have a problem with how your city is being policed and you absolutely cannot tolerate it any longer and you want to see real change, you can put in application with the PD, and if you can make through the academy, you can determine how at least part of your city is policed because it’s you doing the policing.  If you disagree with the way policy or legislation is being written or implemented, then you can run for office and do things the way you want them done.  Rather than congregating with like-minded lemmings and bitching meaninglessly about how sad you are about something, or how upset you are about the job that someone else who actually showed up to do the heavy lifting of policing or governing is doing, why don’t you become a police officer or run for office?  It’s a rhetorical question, but we all know the answer: Because as outraged as you may pretend to be, you’re not upset enough to actually do anything about it yourself.  And that makes you feel guilty, because you’re feeling outraged, but you don’t want to actually do anything about it, but you can’t just not do anything, you have to do something, anything, whether it has any actual impact on anything or not, because at least then you can say you did something so hashtag campaign or march after work or write a little check.  And deep down you know that whatever you did was a futile, symbolic, and empty gesture, but it made that pesky guilt go away and that’s all you can reasonably asked to do.
I have a lot of friends and people that I love who have participated in marches and I’m sure will do so again.  I get why people do it…it’s pretty much the same as believing in God: it is very difficult to accept that there are shitty things in life that you are completely powerless to do anything about.  So you believe in a God and you say prayers and thus you are able to convince your subconscious that you actually are able to do things to deal with your problems.  And that’s fine.  But you can’t expect other people to go along with your delusional coping mechanisms.  If they work for you, great, but don’t expect me to say that there is a Santa or a Jesus or a hashtag campaign with any real world results.
Here’s the deal: stay informed on all of the issues and candidates and vote.  If you don’t like the outcome of the election, stay informed on all the issues and candidates and vote in the next election.  If you don’t like the outcome of that election, maybe it’s time to run for office yourself.
N.P.: “Ordinary” – Train

I spent an unduly long time today working on something i was going to post here, but the work was slow, and it’s just not ready yet, so it’s not here.  Instead you just have me saying Hello.
Hello.
Today was the first day of shooting on my friend Mark Steensland’s new feature film, The Special.  (Get the book here.)
So we got together tonight to discuss the first day.  I saw a few stills…that’s shaping up to be a very cool project.

Alright…back to it.  I’ve got to say, I’m very disappointed in the weather thus far this winter.  Just kind of boring.

N.P,: “I Am a Pig” – 2wo, Rob Halford

What is the plural of Prius?  Prii?  I think Prii get a bad rap.  Jeremy Clarkson has given them all manner of abuse since their arrival, but I’ve spent some time behind the wheel of a Prius, and if you know what you’re doing, those things can rise to most occasions.  But it has never been my Prius that I was driving.  Because it’s highly unlikely I would ever own a Prius.  And I think that’s where the bad rap comes from: it’s not that the Prius is an inferior or particularly slow car.  It’s that the person who is most likely to intentionally buy a Prius is likely to not be inclined to routinely and egregiously violate speed laws.  They are more likely to drive in the fast lane simply because it means the fewest lane changes, not giving the slightest thought to the concept of “fast lane.”  But honestly, the number of Prii that I find myself cursing in the fast lane are far fewer than non-Prii cars, so I do think a lot of the grief Prii get is largely undeserved.

But you know who deserves absolutely every single bit of grief and wrath and contempt and hatred and vitriol and yelling and middle fingers and Molotov cocktails they get?  Goddamn minivans, and I’m assuming their drivers.  I don’t know.  I’ve never driven a minivan.  But holy shit…I don’t know whose fault it is, but these things are just a menace and should probably be taken off the road.  Or at least banished to Oregon.  Most of the time I have the misfortune to have to deal with one, they are lumbering obliviously down whatever roadway they’ve chosen to cause traffic in just then.  Every once in a while, though, I’ll see a minivan come tearing ass up the slow lane, the driver apparently having had (in addition to a big breakfast of bacon and meth) enough of these slow-asses in the fast lane, so they get in the slow lane and just punch it.  But they fuck this up too, and they end up having to slam on their brakes and end up stuck behind a truck or merging traffic.  Why is this?  Are these vehicles just difficult to drive?  Is there sometime about them that renders the driver moronic?  Is there some engine or design flaw that keeps them from driving in an acceptable way?  Regular vans don’t have these issues.  SUVs don’t have these issues,

Okay, enough of this bilge.  I need to get to work on the book.  I’ll try to get us back on track with the discussion we started a week or two ago, about some of the issues you’ve been mentioning in your mail.

N.P.: “Hypothetical” – Emigrate, Marilyn Manson

Ya know what’s funny?  I’ll use big ass complicated Greek words that I haven’t used in a while, and spell check will underline it as a misspelling.  It’s a polysyllabic entanglement that I could very easily misspell, so I click on the thing for recommended corrections.  But the word I’m using is no where in the suggestions.  So I look the word up, and I had it spelled correctly.  That’s not the funny part.  The funny part is the abuse a hurl at whatever artificially unintelligent robot that dared to edit my beautiful goddamn prose. So many fuck words directed at a machine.  Pointless, perhaps, but cathartic nonetheless.  Anyway, back to our regularly scheduled programming of whatever the hell it was I was trying to say before I had to go to war with that idiot editing bot.
Oh yeah:
I don’t think what I experience would qualify as synesthesia [spell check is still insisting redly that I have misspelled it {it apparently has issues with “redly” as well}] per se, but I do experience words (either written or spoken) in a different way from most people.  It’s not that I experience it as music (which is what synesthesia would be) but I am significantly more sensitive to the musicality of words than most other members of the herd (who are apparently totally unaware of any musicality present in language).  When I read and write, it is the rhythms that I am most aware of, and I think it’s my “ear” for such things that people are talking about when they compliment my sentence structure.  The spoken word, however, is substantially more musical, with not only the rhythms of the written word, but also now actual musical notes.  Even though you are not intentionally singing, the tone of every word you speak falls somewhere on the musical scale as a note.  And that’s how I hear it.  And for the most part, it makes being in public fairly hellish.  That is a big part of why I try to avoid being in public as much as possible: it is as if everyone is walking around honking moronically on rusty trumpets attached to fronts of their faces.
But you know who’s just the absolute worst?  That evil goddamn charwoman that’s always lurking darkly in the hallway.  Her voice is like listening to a deaf child with anger issues and a meth habit bang on a grotesquely out-of-tune piano in the middle of both a migraine and and a hangover.  And she’s talking to her stupid dog, which dog doesn’t know a single fucking work of English, Spanish, or any other language and has shown exactly zero interest in engaging in conversation and complete interest in this woman shutting the hell up and making with the kibble.
I may seek more suitable accommodations elsewhere.  Who do I know who has a heavily fortified compound?
N.P.: “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?” – Revolting Cocks

Okay, dear reader, tomorrow is the first of five days I’ve blocked off for working on the book (and a couple other projects, probably, which is fine).  I’ve been looking forward to this.

N.P.: “Dead is the New Alive (Manipulator Mix) – Emile Autumn