Exercise

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Add title. Beat until foamy and stir until well mixed

It’s Wednesday morning at almost exactly 5 o’clock, and I’m writing this on my phone today, because I did not take my laptop with me yesterday afternoon.  I did walk from the train to the house in the evening, though, even though I got out of the office slightly late.  It was a decent walk, and I had a nice talk with my sister* while I did it.

Today, except for the phone conversation, I plan to do a repeat, which would be good.  Between yesterday and the day before, I walked a total of about 15 miles.  That’s not too bad.  I was very thirsty by the time I got back to the house, and I drank a largish bottle of seltzer nearly all in one go (not quite, of course‒that’s hard to do with fizzy water because of the carbonation).

Otherwise, let’s see, is there any real news?  Oh!  Well, I was able to get the payroll done a day early yesterday, because the report we usually get on Wednesday is going to be practically nonexistent.  At most there might be minor adjustments.  So, that’s good in its way; there will be far less stress during the day today.  I only wish I had other ways to engage my mind when things are not as busy.  Unfortunately, as I think you know, I’ve been having real trouble finding even any nonfiction reading that’s engaging, let alone any fiction.

Oh, yes, and I certainly haven’t started writing any new fiction, whether HELIOS, which I mentioned yesterday, or any other of the ideas I have about which I could write.  There’s been no sign that anyone is even politely interested in that prospect.

I sometimes‒often‒envy some other bloggers who have a vibrant comments section.  Indeed, there is a site to which I go every day, on which I find the posts interesting and also often find the comments interesting.  Many days‒perhaps more often than not‒I will even leave comments, myself.  Usually it’s nothing very deep; I leave compliments on pictures shared by other readers when I like them, or I’ll make a stupid reference or joke of some kind.  I don’t know if my few comments are ever very interesting to anyone.  I often suspect that I’m just annoying to pretty much everyone else who uses the site.  But it’s nice that they always have some comments.  It makes the whole thing feel like discussions more than articles, really.

Of course, that particular writer has a few tens of thousands of people following his site, so I can’t expect his engagement, even if the percentage of people who comment were the same.  Also, let’s be honest, my stuff isn’t necessarily all that interesting.

I suppose, in the age of social media, it’s possible‒in principle, at least‒for almost anyone to get a large following, at least by old time standards, but the barrier to be cleared is actually to reach people who might be interested.  Of course, I share my posts on TSFKAT**, and on Facebook, and even on LinkedIn, but I don’t have many followers on those sites, and I don’t know how the algorithm pushes any of my posts, or Xpostulatiions, or links, or whatever.

Back in the day, when I was promoting my books (sort of), I paid to boost a few posts on Facebook, but I don’t know that it did much.  I couldn’t afford to boost them much, let alone to do a paid Amazon promotion or anything of the sort.

Advertising or even asking people to “Like” and “share”*** always feels somewhat suspect to me.  I feel as though it’s a sign of poor character for me to try to get people to know about my work through anything other than word of mouth.  I have a species of very low self-esteem.  Perhaps it’s a defense mechanism.  I fear that if I were even somewhat narcissistic or entitled or whatever, I would end up doing a tremendous amount of damage.  Maybe even that fear is rather egotistical.  Probably it’s just that I honestly don’t like myself, and so have a very hard time pushing my stuff, even when I think that stuff is pretty good.

And I do think most of my fiction is pretty good.  It’s never going to rival the works of Tolkien, or Stephen King, or J. K. Rowling or anyone at that level.  But I think there are readers out there who would like the stories if they ever became aware of them.  It would be nice at least to be able to do that tiny little amount of good in the world entailed in writing a story that some people enjoy reading, even if they only enjoy it a little.

Of course, there’s no point promoting anything I do on YouTube.  It would be a bit weird for me to make a video to promote a blog.  I guess reading some of my stories out loud and sharing those “videos” is promotional, in a way.  Maybe I should read some of my blog posts as a YouTube video or something.  If so, which ones would I choose?  Any suggestions?

Of course, though I automatically have an Instagram account via Facebook, I certainly don’t use it.  And I sure as Hell don’t have TikTok.  I think I made a Tumblr account once, but I have no idea what it was or how to access it, and in any case, I don’t really look at Tumblr.  I know I had a Pinterest account, and I think that site is still up and running, but again, it doesn’t do too well with written matter.

Oh, well.  I like WordPress.  It’s nice to be able to share daily thoughts in writing, and for the most part, not to torture anyone with my face and/or voice.  And I like to read a lot of the things other people write, though I wish I could read more‒not just that I had enough time, but that I had the will and capacity to read.  Anyone who knew me back in the day, so to speak, would know just how horrible it is for me not to be able to read fiction (or even much nonfiction).  It’s a bit like not being able to breathe, but it kills you much more slowly, so the torment is drawn out.

Anyway, if any of you feel like it, please do like, share, and even comment on this or other posts of mine.  If you’ve read any of my books and want to share info about them, that would of course, be welcome and greatly appreciated.  Likewise (but less likely) for my music.

And if anyone actually would like to watch/listen to me reading any of my blog posts via a YouTube video, and you have any posts in mind, please let me know.  You can leave a comment anonymously if you like, so you don’t have to fear too much backlash for encouraging the likes of me.

Thank you for reading, no matter what.  And please, do have a good day.

*On the phone, which I guess is obvious; she didn’t come down to Florida just to accompany me from the train station to the house.

**The site formerly known as Twitter.

***That reminds me of a song…

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Le Démon de Laplace, ce n’est pas moi

Happy Labor Day, to those of my readers who live in the United States.  It’s not a terribly big holiday, in a certain sense, but when I was growing up, it was almost always the occasion for a big family get-together, usually with some cooking out on the grill and, when I was little, playing outdoors.  It was a sort of celebration of the end of the summer, if you will, or perhaps rather a last hurrah‒a final weekend of enjoyment before the waning of the seasons.  Anyway, I don’t have the day off today, so I’m at the train station now, waiting for the train (they are running only once an hour due to holiday scheduling).

I walked to the station this morning, and in fact, I went roughly a half a mile (total) out of my way to get something to drink at a Race Track gas station that’s not quite on the route.  I almost badly mis-estimated the time it would take!  I expected to be waiting for quite a while here at the station, but I actually arrived a mere ten minutes before the train.  It’s a good thing I didn’t do that on a regular day, or I would have had to take a later train than that to which I am used, and that would have caused me significant stress.  Actually, just screwing up my schedule would have been what really would have caused me stress and distress.  I get very angry at myself for stupid mistakes.

Anyway, I’m on the train now, and I’m headed in to work, and it’s all very (un)exciting.  I wish we didn’t have work today, honestly.  That’s not because I’m averse to working‒I’m certainly not‒but because I honestly don’t feel like I want to do anything, anymore, as I think you all know.  I keep moving and acting mainly just out of habit and duty and guilt‒mainly preemptive guilt‒but not out of any positive, proactive, beneficent desire.  Well, maybe not wanting to make a certain few people feel sad is a somewhat beneficent impulse, but it’s not all that impressive.

We had a terrible day at the office on Saturday, unfortunately, at least as far as business goes.  We did none, to be specific.  It’s one of those frustrating situations in which, if you knew ahead of time that you were not going to make any sales, you could just have everybody stay home for the day.  But of course, you cannot know ahead of time that you will not do business on any given day.  And if you don’t work on a particular day because you think you might not do any business, it might be that, on that day, you would have done a great deal of business.  So, since we are uncertain about the future, we have to hedge our bets, and sometimes waste effort that would have, in hindsight, been better to conserve.

“Laplace’s Demon” would know when to go and when not to go to the office, but then again, it’s hard to imagine such an all-knowing entity needing to have a regular job.  In fact, a Laplace’s Demon that lived within the reality in which it knew the positions and momenta of all particles (so to speak) would know itself and its own future just as completely and inevitably as it does everything else.  It could not take any action in response to that knowledge though, or so I think, because that would change what it knows about the future.  And if it were a victim of being unable to change its actions in response to its knowledge, it might even be difficult for it to know that its knowledge was correct.  Maybe that’s incorrect; I haven’t thought it through very carefully.

Of course, it could simply be that the Laplace’s Demon can know itself and everything else in a predictive fashion, an “if…then” sort of situation.  Then it might well know what action to take, exactly, to ensure a desired outcome.  This doesn’t avoid the problem of how a mind can know itself completely and entirely, in all aspects.  Is it even possible?  As I’ve conjectured in the past, for a mind to know all of its own workings in full detail would require an exponential, possibly infinite, expansion of that mind.  The capacity to understand everything about, say, a human brain,  would require something much larger and more complex, overall, than that human brain…and then to understand everything about that larger brain, in full detail, would require a larger brain, still*.

Of course, it’s possible to understand the gist of the workings of a brain, and just to say, in a sense, “more of this same kind of thing is added”, but that’s very nonspecific and I don’t think it’s what Laplace had in mind when he imagined his all-knowing entity.

I think he was sort of imagining a being outside of the universe, looking in, though I could be wrong.  At least that would obviate the problem of the recursive acts of its thought and actions on the universe and thence back upon itself.  Such a being might well not have a full, internal understanding of itself in all details, but might be able to understand completely everything happening within the realm it was observing‒like a spectator looking down upon flatland from a three-dimensional perspective.

Anyway, that’s enough stochastic nonsense for today, going from walking to the train to the desire not to do anything, to the fact that work was bad, to the notion of not being able to know a bad day ahead of time, and so on to Laplace’s Demon.  I hope you all have a good day, whether it’s a holiday for you or not, whether you’re working or not.  Thank you for reading.

*This may mean that no so-called deep learning system can ever really know how it makes its decisions and what it understands, just as we don’t know about our own deep systems in precise detail.

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I’ll give my jewels for a set of blogs, my gorgeous palace for a hermitage

Hello and good morning.  What follows is a very brief experimental attempt to see how well I can do voice to text while walking on my way toward the train station.  I don’t expect it to be a major way for me to produce this blog post, but maybe it’ll be entertaining, and if it turns out to be pretty good then I may actually go along with it further at some point.

I’m not sure how well to do things like line breaks and paragraph starts and so forth.  I may have to add all those after the fact by hand.  I don’t even know how it’s coming out right now so far, because I can’t really watch it while I’m walking as I speak/write.  I’ll have to learn at the end how well the voice to text process has worked.

In any case it is what it is, and I guess I’ll just have to see how it turns out.  It’s not that difficult in principle to add paragraph breaks after the fact.  I usually break up my paragraphs after my initial draft anyway.  But I’m not going to be doing this portion of this blog post much longer than to the end of the block.  It’s an interesting experiment and question, but until I find out how well it’s gone, and how well the computer has actually understood my spoken words to turn them into typewritten words, I don’t want to put too many eggs in that basket.

If that cliché is not your liking, please feel free to insert another.

It’s also a little bit awkward to speak too much when one is walking at a decent pace.  Okay, now I’m getting close to the end of the block and so I think I will draw this experimental portion of the blog post this close, and I will then finish it up by hand starting after I get to the train station.  Thank you for indulging me in this experiment.

***

Okay, that was the experimental section, which the smartphone says consists of 342 words.  That’s a fair few words to have spoken (to text) by the time I reached the end of my block, but then again, I live quite near one end of a long block, more akin to the space between avenues in Manhattan* than the space between “streets” in Manhattan.

I also tend to be rather garrulous when I get to talking, and I probably say less than the number of words used would imply.  In between such floods of verbiage, I am often at least somewhat taciturn, especially in the morning, and especially relating to “small talk”.  I really don’t like idle conversation at any time, but especially in the morning.  In fact, people who ask me “how I’m doing” or “how I’m feeling” in the morning can only be thankful‒though they know it not‒that I am not strong with the Force, because otherwise I would litter the morning floor with so many choked out bodies that Darth Vader would probably be moved to say, “Hey…dude…come on, man, you need to try to lighten up.  They didn’t do anything to deserve getting killed.”

Touché, Lord Vader.  Touché.  Actually, come to think of it, if you’re fencing with lightsabers, a touché is a pretty serious situation.

I’m sorry if I’m a bit bizarre today; I hardly slept at all last night, well under two hours.  I suspected this might happen.  As I stopped the melatonin, my daytime energy went up because I’m no longer groggy from the persistent hangover effect.  Then, yesterday, I walked 5 miles in the evening and got back to the house around 9, then showered and ate something and so on.  I was perhaps too physically wound up to easily get to sleep, and then staying asleep has never really been my strong point.  So…that happened, as they say, and it will probably affect my mood (affect my affect, if you will) today.

This is a deliberate and calculated thing I’m doing.  Quite apart from the fact that it didn’t seem to help my sleep much‒perhaps a slight amount‒the melatonin left me with less mental energy during the day.  Anyway, I’m trying to divest myself of most of the things I have and do that might make me meta-stable, that might hold back my depression, but not enough actually to treat it, only enough to keep it from completely destroying me.

I want to say to it, “Come on then, depression.  Here I am.  Do your worst.  No one’s coming to help, and I’m tired of trying to help myself.  If you’re capable of destroying me, then come on and do it, you piece of shit.”

It’s sort of a King Lear, “Blow, wind, and crack your cheeks…” moment:  An old man stands in the storm and invites it, or dares it, to destroy him.

I think I’ve already used part of that moment as a title of a previous Thursday blog, which is a shame.  It’s a lovely metaphor for many aspects of my life, perhaps much more than, say, Hamlet, which I quote more often.

Even Shakespeare, though, doesn’t have an infinite supply of potential quotes.  An infinite room full of monkeys and typewriters would, in principle, have a bigger body of work, but finding the good stuff would be a hell of a chore.  That’s probably a bit like reading my blog.  To those of you who do, thank you.  I appreciate your patience and kindness.

TTFN

palace in saint petersburgdarker

*I’m referring here to Manhattan Island in New York City.  There is also a Manhattan in Kansas, and there may be many more places named after the heart of New York City.  I don’t know much (if anything) about the street layout in such far flung places, but I would guess that their subway systems are less elaborate than that of the original.

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Perambulating meta-cycles of pointless (but pretentious) contemplation

Well, here we are again.  The cycle continues.  It’s not a motorcycle or a bicycle, of course; that would be silly.  And I’m not referring to something as fundamental as the Krebs Cycle, though of course, as long as I’m alive, that is constantly whirring in pretty much every cell of my body.

No, I’m referring to the cycle of days and weeks of my pseudo-life.  I’m back at the train station this morning, writing this on my “smart”* phone, having taken what I hope will be pretty close to my final Uber here.  I say that because, yesterday, I walked both to and from the train station, totaling over 12 miles for the day, and the ill-effects on my joints and back and so on are minimal.  I have no new blistering, no worsening of or new pains in my back or sides or hips or anything**.  I had a minor threatening back spasm yesterday evening, probably from fluid status changes.  That’s all right.  I drank a lot of fluids during the day and in the evening, and I think that took care of that.  It’s just a bit sore there now, and it’s certainly not more than a standard deviation worse than my average*** level of pain.

I plan to walk back to the house from the train this evening‒I have nothing better to do with my time, and I can listen to audiobooks and/or podcasts as I do it.  Then for the rest of the week, and hopefully for the rest of the time I’m here, I’ll walk to and from the train station every day.  The shoes I’ve chosen seem to be good; I may even get another pair or two, just so I can spread the wear and tear out.

[That was three words that rhyme in that one last sentence:  pair, wear, and tear.  So, there.]

I had a nice conversation with my sister on the phone last night as I walked back, and it even continued once I got to the house, at least for a while.  She’s the only one I talk to at all, really, except in passing to people at work.  It’s no surprise that I can talk to her even when I can’t tolerate talking to anyone else.   After all, I’ve literally known her all my life.  And she’s known me all my life (though not all of her life, since she is older than I am).

I used to call my Mom once or twice a week, usually twice, and we would talk for a while, but obviously that doesn’t happen anymore.  I mean, I could talk to my Mom, so to speak, but it would hardly be a conversation, since she cannot reply.  I don’t expect to be able to speak to her once I’m in the state she’s currently in, alas, though I suppose I could be wrong about that.  I don’t think I am (obviously) but I am not convinced beyond any shadow of a doubt.

I’m convinced beyond what I consider any reasonable doubt, but that’s not an insurmountable standard, as any unjustly convicted victim of the criminal justice system would surely agree (and there are almost certainly many of these poor souls languishing in prison, since we only ever directly learn about the ones who are eventually exonerated).

I’m on the train now, by the way, on my way to the office, ready to face another day at work.  At least, I’m as ready as I’m going to be.  I certainly am capable of doing what I do at the office, such as it is, even on payroll day.  But it’s not as though I’m excited or enthused about it.

Still, I don’t expect to be enthusiastic about work.  It’s work.  They pay you to do it.  Even when I was writing fiction every day, I didn’t feel enthusiastic about it when I did it in the mornings.  I felt a general positive sense about the stories, and about the characters and whatnot, but it wasn’t enthusiasm or “motivation” in the business-speak, life-coach type way the word seems often to be expressed.  Certainly there was never any “ooh-rah” feeling.  It was personal discipline to carry through on a commitment (self made and self directed) that also became a habit.

I think writing fiction did stave off my depression for a while, or at least it kept it more in check.  Those days are gone, though, likely never to return.  I mean, I really like Outlaw’s Mind so far, and The Dark Fairy and the Desperado was fun as far it’s gone (for me), and I think Neko/Neneko and Changeling in a Shadow World would be good, and it might even be worthwhile, someday, to try to recreate my first novel Ends of the Maelstrom or write the sequels of Mark Red or the prequel to Son of Man.  But I don’t think writing and/or finishing any of those is likely to happen.

Maybe if some wealthy benefactor/patron were willing to keep me alive and in a reasonably safe and tolerably comfortable situation, I might be convinced to start writing fiction again.  I know that I can write a lot when I choose to do it.  Just look how much gobbledygook I put out every day here on this blog.

I used to write over 2000 words a day on my fiction in the mornings before work (even when I was “up the road”) and sometimes I got quite carried away.  Unanimity had to be split into 2 parts because it was over half a million words long before I finished.  That’s slightly longer than It and around the length of the unabridged version of The Stand.  And I was not writing “full time”.

But I have no will to write fiction now.  There’s only so much one can do such a thing “into the void”, at least when one has nothing else of value in one’s life, before it feels like a thoroughgoing waste of effort.  Even this blog tends to feel utterly pointless‒it is utterly pointless, like most things I do, but it doesn’t always feel that way‒and I know there are people who read it.

I don’t know what point I’m trying to make.  Oh, wait, I just mentioned that it’s pointless, so I shouldn’t expect to have a point or to make one.  Maybe that is the point.  That would be rather circular and paradoxical and “meta” as they used to say before Zuckerberg pissed all over the word, and even stole the term “metaverse” which I had long planned to use in things like DFandD and CiaSW.  I know he didn’t know I meant to do that, and he surely had no malice toward me.  But, though I do not consider him to have willfully (or even willingly) done me wrong, I still am sorely miffed by his (quite lame) arrogation of the term.

All right, that’s enough for this day, and I’m almost at my stop.  Have a good day…please.  Someone ought to do it, and I’m neither talented nor skilled at such things, so I’m leaving that task to you readers.

*I suppose, to be fair, that it really is smart, depending on how you define the term.  That’s almost tautological, though, now that I think about it.  Depending on how one defines the term, my phone could honestly be called a dleefigle phone.

**My goal is to be able to walk as long as I might choose, indefinitely, without being stopped by any acute occurrence such as new onset of pain, blistering, etc.

***I avoided the more precise mathematical term “mean” level of pain because in the context of pain, “mean” can have multiple and misleading meanings…ha ha.

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Minor meandering, major depression, and a locrian outlook

It’s Tuesday morning now, and if the Beatles are to be believed, we will never see Wednesday morning, because “Tuesday afternoon is never ending.”  We’ll know by tomorrow if they are correct, but experience suggests they are not.

I walked to the train station this morning, and I must say, though the temperature and humidity are no better than before, at least now there is some wind.  It makes a world of difference, at least in the amount of sweat one accumulates.  I’m wearing one of those tee shirts that’s made of material that supposedly “wicks away” perspiration‒presumably while still allowing it to achieve its primary function of carrying away heat‒but when there’s no wind, the things just get saturated.

As I’ve said before (I have been told it; I did not arrive at the conclusion on my own), my sweat apparently doesn’t have much of an odor, at least in the short term.  I also spritzed myself with a bit of “scent bomb” before starting this post and prior to getting on the train.  It’s a mango scented one that everyone I’ve known to have smelled it finds pleasant.  Hopefully that all helps me avoid being too disgusting.  There’s not too much I can do about my face; I guess I could just wear a mask.  It works for Batman and Doctor Doom and Erik, the Phantom of the Opera.  We’ll have to see.

I decided to stop taking melatonin, so I didn’t take any last night.  I’ve been using it for roughly a month, but it doesn’t seem to be helping my sleep, and it’s certainly not improving my mood or my mental acuity, so f*ck it.  If I never have another full night’s restful sleep for the rest of my life, well…what else is new?  I’ll just stick with my multivitamin and stuff like that (and OTC pain medicine) and try just to get more into walking now that I’ve got the shoe situation more or less sorted.

I remain very sad about the fact that the hiking boots seem to cause me more pain when I wear them for long.  Still, heartbreak is the normal, usual state of my life, on scales from the trivial to the profound, so I guess I should just shrug it off as best I can.  The boot debacle is very, very far from my worst disappointment.  It is recent, though, so it still stings a bit; I guess I haven’t cauterized my metaphorical nerve endings well enough.

I listened to a few decent podcasts while walking, and that was beneficial, because they are the sorts of podcasts that deal with ideas in non-simplistic ways, and that approach such ideas as matters for discussion and thought, not for debate and spectacle.  A debate is just a kind of sporting match‒it can be entertaining, and the displays of skill can be exciting.  But the way to come ever closer to ever greater amounts of truth about reality is not via rhetoric and engaging personality (which are mere superficialities that titillate social monkeys such as humans) but by using actual ideas, exchanging information, testing it, and trying to minimize noise and entropy and error.

Truth is not an “Us versus Them”, zero sum game of scoring points and humiliating an opponent.  That which is actually true, in reality, is true for everyone, whether they perceive it or not, whether they know it or not, and whether they believe it or not.

Anyway, that’s a bit of minor meandering.  Today again appears to be one of those days in which I spin from idea to tangent idea here in my blog, for no specific discernable reasons.  At least I don’t discern them.  Maybe some astute and skilled reader can do better.

Oh, if I haven’t already said, I’ve been writing this on my smartphone.  Actually, even if I have already said, I’ve nevertheless been writing this on my smartphone.  That’s one of those truths about reality I mentioned, though it’s not a very big one.

Yesterday at the end of the work day, I just didn’t want to carry the extra weight of the laptop with me.  I was in a horrible, horrible, angrily depressed mood, and was barely able to contain myself, though I think very few people in the office‒perhaps none‒noticed it.  I tend to turn my fury inward, since I know I have the right to harm myself, whereas it’s a much dicier moral proposition to hurt someone else.  So, I quietly burned myself twice yesterday (not severely), and I have a small new blister on my left forearm and a linear welt from a heated paperclip on my right anterior upper arm.

I told you, I’m not doing well.  I don’t just hate my life and myself; I don’t think I can stand it much longer, and I don’t mean that metaphorically, and I don’t think I’m exaggerating.

It’s a month from today until Bilbo’s and Frodo’s birthday, which is also a day before the start of autumn, at the autumnal equinox.  It’s a very good day, I think, for someone to begin an epic journey.  The biggest question, for me, is whether I can wait that long.  I’m not sure that I can.

I guess, yet again, we’ll have to wait and see.  Obviously I’ve been able to endure long enough to write this morning’s blog post, and on my phone, what’s more.  I make no promises about tomorrow.  I don’t even know how good the odds are, honestly.  I’m not doing well, I’m not getting better, and I hate my life a little bit more with every passing day.  I’m also growing less and less fond of the world and of all the people and creatures in it with each passing hour, it seems.

Oh, well.  The world will little note, nor long remember…well, honestly, anything at all.  Everything is effaced by time and entropy, and nothing really has any point outside and beyond itself.  That latter conclusion actually presents a kind of brilliant freedom, really; meaning is not imposed, it is created.  But that can be a heavy burden, and our culture is poorly organized to bring such facts to the clear attention of those within it.

Still, culture has no more extrinsic meaning than does an individual life, nor is it any more planned and finely tuned.  As with all else, it just happens‒or happened I guess, and now merely continues.

Jeez Louise, it’s all both nauseating and boring, and that’s a truly repellent combination.  I have a harder and harder time every day just metaphorically holding my nose and continuing to walk through the sewer of the world.

Ah, well, I’m not getting anywhere with this.  Let’s stop for now.  Please try to have a good day.

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Walking and thinking of the ups and downs of knowing what is or isn’t true

It’s Friday, but that’s not really a big deal for me, since I’m working tomorrow.  Honestly, though, the difference between leisure time and work time for me anymore is mainly just where I happen to be, since I don’t find any significant joy in either situation.  There’s not much I can do about that, other than just lay down and die, which has its appeal.

I walked to the train station this morning, having walked very little yesterday.  I made good time, and my ankles seem to be okay, more or less, which is nice.  I listened to parts of a couple of old podcasts while walking, one by Sean Carroll, the other by Sam Harris, and each one led me briefly to make a voice recording of a thought that came to me at the time.

First, the Sean Carroll one led me to make a rather bad play on words:  “It’s no exaggeration that to say that y equals one over x is to be speaking hyperbolically.”  It’s a silly play on the fact that “hyperbolic” can refer to an exaggeration or to the mathematical shape, a hyperbola.

Hey, I’m be here all week.  Make sure to tip your servers.

(Should you tip your local area network, though?  That’s a trickier question.)

So, that was the silly thought.  The more serious one came as I listened to Sam Harris’s podcast with Nina Schick, the author of Deepfakes: The Coming Infocalypse, in which they discussed the advent and potential impacts of the increasing ability to make (and the decreasing cost of) convincing simulated representations of real people’s voices and appearances.  Of course, among the potential issues being presented was that this will actually increase the deniability of inconvenient events for political and other public figures, but at root, to me, it brings to mind something I wrote some time ago in a blog post on the problem of attribution.

When one quotes a person who said something one thinks is worth repeating, it’s generally considered appropriate to give an attribution, to credit the quote.  But even before the advent of possible deep fakery, the tendency to attribute quotes is a problem because humans are so idiotically tribal.  If you say a quote comes from Karl Marx or from Ayn Rand, you will automatically gain free credit and presumptive agreement from one group and automatic dismissal, disdain, and even hatred from another.

That’s stupid.  It’s not who says something that makes it true or valuable or worthy of note; it’s the actual thing being said.  This is one of the reasons I dislike formal debates, and the techniques of rhetoric in general.  They all boil down to primate dominance displays‒manipulations rather than actual, useful reasoning and sharing of the best available information.

I remember back in the late 90s, when people were getting all excited about the burgeoning web and internet, and about how they were going to make information so much cheaper and more readily available.  I agreed that would be the case, but I also had real misgivings, because I knew that also meant that misinformation, disinformation, and noise would become ever easier to disseminate.  And now, of course, people can “see” things online that never took place, and which nevertheless will influence their sense of what is real.  But reality does exist, outside of any perceptions or biases, though we may always only imperfectly apprehend it.

I think people shouldn’t worry nearly as much about who said something as about what exactly was said and whether or not it was true or plausible or reasonable or rational.  I suppose that being aware of a source’s credentials and track record can make one better able to decide whether to pay any attention whatsoever to what they say or write‒we all have only finite time and attention‒but even so, you should think rigorously about what someone says, no matter who says it.  Your favorite person can be (and is) wrong about many things, and your most hated enemy can say things that are correct (sometimes about you).

Hitler and Stalin were both quite aware that 2 + 2 = 4 and that the sun comes up in the east (so to speak), but the fact that these odious figures accepted such truths doesn’t make the facts any less true.  And the fact that the son and nephew of beloved historical political figures claims (miserabile* dictu) that vaccines cause autism and Wi-Fi causes cancer does not for a moment gainsay all the research that has demonstrated that they do not and that it does not.

Maybe people should just stick to print media and perhaps even only to printed print media.  At least there’s some cost to its production and that might weed out some of the riff-raff.  Though, come to think of it, maybe it wouldn’t.  It’s not as though there haven’t long been whole bookstores full of psychic and supernatural bullshit, and large sections of such material selling quite well even in reputable emporia.

Maybe people should just use online media of various kinds as entertainment but not as sources of information and evidence for too many things.  Then again, there are very good science programs and other kinds of information online that are wonderful to behold, and that can be informative and thought-provoking.  Even some blogs are quite good (this is probably not one of them).

I guess, maybe people should just try to think carefully and rigorously, and to recognize their own fallibility and that of their idols, as well as the potential for their “enemies” to be right sometimes and to be often other than pure incarnations of evil.

Maybe pigs should grow wings and take a skiing trip to Hell.

I’m not optimistic.  But hopefully I’ll be dead before everything goes to shit.  Unless that’s already happened, and this is the dystopia.  After all, how does one know one is in a failed society from the inside?  I suppose there are objective facts to be noticed in such a case, but that’s the heart of the problem.

Heavy sigh.

1 over x adapted

*That was deliberate, not a typo.

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Aqua sea foam shame and be all a pile of cheese

Okay, well, today I’m writing this blog post‒or at least I’m beginning it‒at the train station, having walked here, since I hadn’t done that walk yet this week.  Of course, I’m soaked with sweat and I will probably be in a lot of pain today, but I’ve been in a lot of pain anyway, so I might as well get some exercise.

I’ve had a terrible time with respect to pain, even worse than usual, lately.  Yesterday, after taking three aspirin and two Tylenol at once, about half an hour later‒and for all of less than twenty minutes‒my pain faded briefly away, and it was ecstasy.  It was better than a holiday and a great book and a good movie with one’s favorite person.  Then that effect went away and the pain resurged back to prior levels.  It’s quite frustrating, almost a tease, though I don’t think anyone or anything is actually, deliberately doing any teasing.

And of course, though my coworker was back yesterday, he did that same thing where, even if I just say that I feel tired and worn out, he says that he knows how I feel.  I want to say, “No.  You don’t.  Even assuming your current pain is as bad as mine, try having that for more than twenty years, try losing practically everything that was ever important to you partly because of that pain.”

I of course really don’t want him to do any of that.  I hope his pain steadily decreases and his life improves and his family prospers and so on.  I don’t think I would wish my subjective experience on anyone else, though I know to a near mathematical certainty that there are many people whose lives are far more unpleasant than mine.  Still, mine is unpleasant enough, and I don’t recommend it.

I keep wanting to warn people at the office that I really don’t feel that I’m going to survive for much longer.  That’s what I’ve been feeling particularly strongly over the past few days.  I also feel grumpy and angry and hateful and spiteful, so I dislike my own self more than usual, which is saying something indeed.  But if I say to others that I don’t think I will survive much longer, the few people who take it seriously‒locally, anyway‒are the people with whom I don’t really feel a connection at all, and indeed, are the people I find most irritating (which is unfair to them, but I can’t seem to do much about it).

It’s a bit analogous to this blog, though the analogy is very weak.  I air my depression and pain and despair here, hoping either to be told some new information and ideas or to receive some form of help, either from without or from within, but after a while, if you keep writing about the fact that you feel miserable and your pain is worsening and you have thoughts of killing yourself‒but you haven’t actually killed yourself or tried to kill yourself yet‒people stop taking it very seriously.  I suppose that’s not completely irrational or at all unfair, but it is rather frustrating.  It really makes everything one does feel even more futile than it would have felt otherwise.

That’s part of what makes me think I should just give up on blogging, and on anything and everything else.  I should stop blogging, and I should also just recognize that I am not going to do any more music, nor will I write any more fiction, nor will I do any more drawing or singing or anything else creative.  I will not master General Relativity or Quantum Field Theory to the degree I would like to, which is to a near-professional level.

And I will certainly not make any new friends or develop any new romantic relationships; I will not have any form of new life or family.  I won’t achieve anything else of value in my life, I won’t ever see or rekindle my closeness with any of my old friends, and they are surely all quite happy about that.

I should just stop trying.  I should stop blogging, I should put away, give away, burn or otherwise eliminate all the hallmarks of foolish pipe dreams, I should stop getting new books or manga, cancel my cable and internet and streaming services and Amazon and all that and just let go.  I’m hanging on by my fingernails, anyway, and it’s damned uncomfortable.

Sorry this post isn’t much fun.  I don’t recall the last time I did a post that I thought was probably fun for anyone to read.  I’m even sort of dozing off while writing this, even though I’m now on the train.  I can only imagine how boring it must be to read.

Anyway, this is all almost certainly a waste of my time and of yours.  Sorry.  I hope it hasn’t been too dreary.  Thank you for reading it, in any case.  I really appreciate your kindness and patience.  I wish I could be more worthy of them.

All apologies

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If thou hast no name to be blogged by, let us call thee devil.

Hello and good morning. It’s Thursday, the day of the week on which I wrote blog posts even when I was spending my other days writing fiction.  I tended to start those posts with some variation of “Hello and good morning”, and the title was always a slightly altered quote from Shakespeare.  I’ve kept up that Thursday template even now that I blog daily, because I like to stick to a pattern or routine once I’ve established it.

The above information is provided for the sake* of any new readers of this blog.  Apologies to any long-time readers for the redundancy.

I walked to the train station this morning, after having rested a bit yesterday (I only walked a total of about 3 miles overall), since I’d walked almost 16 miles over the previous 2 days.  Thus far, including this morning’s walk, I’ve done about 24 miles this week.  That’s not too bad.

It would be faster if I could jog the distance; maybe I’ll eventually be able to do that.  I used to really like jogging/running, and even when I was in residency I used to run on the treadmill in the mornings.  I had to stop eventually, as I went into practice and had a growing family; time just wasn’t really available.  And since my back problem began, running has tended to exacerbate it.  Maybe, if I were to get back into shape and lose a bit of weight, that wouldn’t be an issue.

(And maybe if we all wish hard enough, there will be world peace and happiness, and unicorns will appear that poop ice cream that provides all nutrients humans need without any health detriments, and they’ll also pee sweet tea with the disinhibiting effects of alcohol but none of the negative toxicity.)

I’m sorry that my posts have been such downers lately (if they don’t come across that way to you readers, then I’m really not expressing myself well).  I’ve just been feeling steadily and persistently more despondent as time has proceeded.  My optimism, such as it ever was, has declined and declined, and my hope even of the possibility of any rescue or revitalization is diminishing.  I don’t see how my life is ever going to turn around and improve.

I’m just tired, you know?  I’m really quite worn down and nearly out.  Admittedly, that doesn’t necessarily keep me from walking to the train despite the heat, and sometimes walking back from the train in the heat, but some of that fact is because I’m able to think of it as a kind of self-harm.

Of course, it’s self-harm that could backfire and end up doing me good, but that’s the chance a person takes when doing such things.  The best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley.  Which just goes to show that it’s really not a great idea to try to get mice and men together to make plans for things.  Their priorities just don’t mesh.

As for my own plans, I guess I don’t really have any.

I’m getting close to my train stop, and I haven’t written much yet today, and I certainly haven’t written anything of consequence.  I haven’t even reached 600 words yet, let alone 800 or 1000.  Should I try to push for more?  Or is this enough?  Is it already too much?

My life has almost certainly already been “too much”, by any reasonable, objective measure.  I really should do something about that.  But, of course, I don’t really want to make too big a mess for other people to clean up‒though why I should be so considerate is sometimes beyond me.

Also, I have the faintest, residual hope that somewhere out there, someone has some answers, some purpose or meaning that I can learn, or that I can discover.  But it is a faint hope.  I’ve sampled most of the popular, ready-made suggestions and ideas, from religion to philosophy to psychology and psychiatry, and so far have been thoroughly disappointed.  But, as I’ve said before, I don’t want to want to die.  But I also don’t want facile, delusional, banal pseudo-motivation.

Oh, well.  The universe wasn’t made for me‒nor was it made for you, or for any or all of us put together, as far as anyone can tell‒so I don’t expect it necessarily to fit my preferences.  Honestly, I don’t know what I would ask of a universe if I were given the opportunity to special-order one.  Any change I might request would likely have unexpected consequences, much in the way that any pharmaceutical intervention in the human body brings side-effects that can be quite unpredictable.

Now, take that to a cosmic scale.  Everything in the universe has to fit with everything else without producing any actual contradictions.  No part can contradict the whole, nor can it contradict other, actual parts.  You can speak a contradiction‒the rules of grammar allow it‒but you cannot instantiate one.  It’s analogous to the way you can write a computer program with a syntax error or an endless loop or an old “return without gosub” error, but the program will not run.

I guess that’s enough for today.  I don’t know what I’ll title this, or what picture I’ll add to it, but of course, if you’re reading this, you know, which is kind of cool in its way, showing as it does a form of temporal relativity and multidimensionality that has nothing to do with Einstein.  I hope you all are feeling reasonably well and trying not to get too overheated (in any sense).  With that in mind, I’ll close with a rather “chilling” but pithy statement I heard from a climate scientist in a WIRED YouTube video:  “On average, this is the hottest summer you’ve ever experienced.  It’s also the coolest summer for the rest of your life.”***

TTFN

for your own sake

*That’s “sake” with a long A and a silent E, not the transliteration of the Japanese word  酒, which means, in Japan, more or less any alcoholic beverage, but which in the West is how we think of Nihon-shu (日本酒), the Japanese so-called rice “wine”…which would actually be more a kind of a beer, since it’s made of grain, whereas wines are made from fruit (interesting side note:  originally the fermentation was begun after the rice was chewed and then spit into a container, because salivary amylase starts breaking the starches into sugar**).  “Sake” is one of the few Japanese things that doesn’t really do much for me.  I’ve yet to try Japanese whiskey, but since it’s based on Scotch whiskey, and produced with typical Japanese attention to detail, it’s probably pretty darn good.

**You can test this for yourself.  If you take an unsweetened white cracker (no pun intended) or, say, a bit of potato in your mouth and just kind of keep it there, perhaps chewing it, it will eventually start to become noticeably sweet…unless you’re so overexposed to sugary foods that your taste buds are too insensitive to notice.  Don’t do this experiment around other people, though‒you’re likely to get some odd looks.

***Of course, he is basing his predictions on current technology.  And though, as he pointed out during the video, our current carbon capture technology is woefully inadequate to turn things around on any reasonable scale, one must not underestimate the power of human ingenuity when Mother Necessity is standing over the world with a ruler, ready to rap everyone on the knuckles until they bleed.  The next Manhattan Project may well be geared toward developing newer, much more potent, means of carbon capture that could be effective on a scale big enough to correct climate change in a sensible time frame.  This won’t happen on its own and it won’t be cheap, but as more and more‒and richer and more powerful‒people start suffering from the effects of climate change, distractions will tend to fall by the wayside.  If they don’t, then I guess the human race will get what it deserves.

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Quietly turning the backdoor key

Here I am at the train station again this morning, early.  Hopefully that won’t backfire today like it did yesterday.  I guess if it does, that will be a data point telling me I should consider giving up on taking the train, at least in the morning.  I don’t know.  It’s hard to draw too far-reaching a conclusion based on the limited data of one person’s experience.

And now for a little, tangential aside:  It’s frankly absurd how much I’m sweating just from sitting at the train station at five in the morning.  The sweat is dripping into my eyes as I look down at my phone to type, as if I’d just been out for a long jog.

I had a nice conversation with my sister while I walked back from the train station to the house yesterday evening, and that’s a good thing in my life.  Also, that walking brings me to a total of about sixteen miles, between Monday and Tuesday, which is decent.  The shoes I’m wearing seem to be doing what they are supposed to do‒meaning they don’t seem to exacerbate my back pain with long walking, which unfortunately, the hiking boots seemed to do.  I’m still quite sad about that.

I’m sad and frustrated in general, of course.  This will probably come as no surprise, unless this is your first time reading my blog.  Even though I walked so much yesterday, and went to “bed” slightly later than usual, I still started waking up less than two hours later.  This is also despite continuing to take melatonin every evening (since I started it a few weeks ago).  I don’t know why I bother with the melatonin, but I feel as though maybe it’s doing something, though I’m not sure what that might be.

Maybe all it’s doing is letting me get the energy together to take some kind of action, possibly drastic.  I need to do something.  Yesterday at work, in the middle of the day, I shut the door to my office and lay down on the floor (I do this to rest my back a few times a day), and felt like I wanted to cry.  Nothing in particular set it off, but there it was.

I’m sick of everything, physically, mentally, emotionally, however you want to box up and pigeon hole the aspects of personal experience.  I’m tired of being in pain, I’m tired of not being able to sleep, I’m tired of feeling utterly disconnected from almost everyone I have ever cared about, and largely disconnected from those who remain.  Nothing is very interesting.  I get back to the house and watch YouTube videos of British comedy panel shows as I try to get to sleep, which I usually can do, but then I wake up all too soon, way before I’ve had even half of a good night’s rest.  I want to go to sleep.

It looks like my train is only a few minutes late; it’s arriving now.  For most people in this pathetic world, that probably even counts as “on time”, which slackness of mind surely goes at least part way to explaining the pathetic state of so much of our culture.  No wonder I want to escape.

It’s remarkable how cold it feels in the train when one is wet and sweaty from sitting at the station early in the morning.  I hate to complain about it, but it might be more environmentally and energetically sound to have the thermostat set a few degrees higher.  I’ve mentioned all this before.

I just keep going on and on about the same boring subjects‒pain, insomnia, depression, loneliness, nihilism, anxiety, all that‒and for that I apologize.  It seems I have little more to say about anything.

I’ve got to do something.  I can’t keep going on like this.  I don’t want to keep going on like this.  As I think I said yesterday, I have no hope or prospect of anything better in the future.  I have nothing to which I look forward.  I have no goals or dreams or aspirations.  I certainly have no right to feel optimistic, and I certainly don’t deserve to feel good about life.  I’ve disappointed, let down, hurt, failed, etc., nearly all the people I’ve ever cared about.

I really have no strong connection to anything in the world, certainly not to anything local.  I don’t belong anywhere, and I don’t really want to belong.  I want to rest, or at least just to have oblivion if that’s the best I can do.

I’m just about done.  Not just for today, I mean, though that’s also the case.  I’ve been venting and shouting into the void, hoping that it might help, that some insight might be forthcoming, either from my own mind or from someone else, but it’s no good.  It’s just a waste.  Everything is a waste.  I, myself, am certainly a waste.

I’ve done all the good in the world that I’m ever likely to do…and some of it really has been good, I think.  But that’s over, almost certainly.  Every aspect of meaning in my life has been steadily eroding and dissolving and decomposing for a long time, and now there are just ragged strands of residual connective tissue loosely holding together the bleached bones of what used to be my life.

I need just to get on with it and get out of here.  I’m spoiling the party for people around me who are trying to enjoy themselves.

Well, that’s more than enough for today, anyway, and really, it’s more than enough in general.  I hope you all are doing better than I am.  At least you’re reading; that’s good, all other things being held constant.  Keep reading.

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There is no gravity–the universe is just warped

Here I am again, at the train station, waiting for the train, writing a blog post on my smartphone.  I didn’t walk this time, because by yesterday afternoon, I was getting extra stiff and sore again, and that could well have been because I walked the 7 miles I walked yesterday in my hiking boots.  Ironically, they may well have been causing me more trouble when “hiking” longer distances.  It’s rather discouraging; I like those boots.

Today, I’m wearing the new shoes of my other type that were supposed to have arrived the day before but only got there yesterday during the day while I was at work.  I didn’t walk in them yet because I’m still in a bit of exacerbated pain.  I’ll physically rest for today, then walk again tomorrow.  The good thing is I seem to be mostly past any tendency to blister.  Thank goodness for small favors.

So, basically, the thing I look forward to‒practically the only thing‒is doing more walking.  I guess that’s a reasonably good thing as far as it goes; it’s better than looking forward only to one’s next martini or one’s next hit of heroin.  But it’s still pretty dissatisfying.  I really hate my life.  Everything stressed me out.  I’m tired.  I want simply to stop.

It doesn’t help that my coworker who shares some of my duties is still out of the office, though I don’t know if he will be out today (I hope not, since it’s payroll day).  What I mean is, he was out yesterday and Monday.  So, I got called in on Saturday and since then (actually, since Friday) have been doing more work than usual‒while in more pain than usual‒for the last 4 work days.  Even before that, I was already at the threshold of cashing it all in.  So, I’m not exactly working toward a more positive outlook.

There’s a defective announcement sign (that I wrote about the other day then deleted from the final draft of the day’s post) cycling away with a moderately distorted message obviously meant to be the same as all the other boards.  I recognize the similarity of its garbled stuff with the intended message.  If I knew the system and its programming, I could probably figure out what’s wrong and possibly even fix it.  But it will likely take the Tri Rail people a while to get to it.  Only yesterday did they apparently fix a malfunctioning check-in kiosk, the one I used to use regularly, that’s been just off, without power, for well over a month.

I guess all these things take effort and money, but it’s frustrating.  I look around at our society and see the deterioration of infrastructure, and the diminution of what little pride we seem to take in running things well.  Even with a reasonably well-rounded system like the Tri Rail, it seems the trains are late almost as often as they are on time.  And, indeed, my train was supposed to have arrived by now, but it has not, and there’s no sign of its light approaching.  On the tracking software website they offer, there’s not even any indication that the train is coming.

Okay, just now its light is becoming visible.  So it’s not too very late…only about 5 minutes.

I don’t understand how it happens that, when they make their own schedule, they can’t seem to keep to it even the majority of the time.  It’s like at work‒our hours have been the same for years, but people can’t seem to get them right.  Of course, it doesn’t help that the boss doesn’t enforce them, or apply any penalty for being late or for staying late.  I can’t understand it, and I don’t want to understand it.  Of course, everyone encounters unexpected things from time to time.  But if it happens regularly, frequently, then probably the person to whom it is happening is partly causing it.

I can’t, of course, hold it against my coworker that everyone in his household is sick‒including his one year old daughter.  It happens, and there is only so much people can do to avoid it.  But people who are late to work nearly every day are just getting up and/or leaving their houses too late.  The correction to this is obvious, and one should really be encouraged to enact it, rather than be indulged.

Oh, well, the world is shit, or at least the human world is.  And the average person is going to get more and more mentally lazy as LLMs and the like do more of their “thinking” for them.  I’m not convinced that these things in any sense actually think or create, but then again, there are plenty of humans who don’t convince me that they think.

I guess I can’t hold it against the computers.  They didn’t make themselves.  Neither did the humans, of course, but at least many of them have access to resources with which they could make themselves better.  The fact that, for the most part, they do not make themselves better I hold as a defect or failure on their part.

I can say what I want about them, in any case.  They don’t read, so they’re unlikely to ever encounter my criticism.

Well, that’s eight hundred plus words, now, so I’ll start drawing to a close.  I wish I could do that overall, honestly.  I wish I could just lay me down to sleep, as the old nursery rhyme prayer says.  And if I should die before I wake, well…that wouldn’t be so bad either.  It wouldn’t break my heart.  And I doubt it would break anyone else’s heart, though a handful of people might be temporarily slightly sad.  And people at work would be in a bit of extra stick for a while.  But for them, in that, I have only a little sympathy.

And the rest of the world can go to Hell, which is what it’s steadily doing to itself, anyway.