Well, I forgot to bring the lapcom again last night, so again, this is being written (by me) on my smartphone. Hey, how was that for turning a bit of passive construction into a slightly comedic moment? By which I mean the whole “being written” thing, not the fact that I forgot the effing lapcom again yesterday.
I suppose that could be comic in the right circumstances, but as it is, it’s just rather pathetic. It certainly doesn’t rise to the level of tragedy. It’s just very mildly pitiable, but not really in any dramatic way.
Enough of that. In case you can’t tell, I really have no idea what to write today, even for me. I’m also particularly tired (even for me). If it were not Wednesday, I might not even go to the office today, but it is Wednesday, of course. It’s Wednesday the 21st of October in 2026. Perhaps it, or yesterday, will be a remarkable or auspicious day in the future*. I won’t talk about why I might imagine it could be, though. It’s a mystery, Charlie Brown.
So, yeah, I’m really tired today, even for me. And I’m already running out of steam for this blog post. Mind you, the footnote took a good bit of my energy, and probably has more substance than much of the rest of the stuff in the post.
You can’t see it (of course), but I’m making an absurd number of typos and so on today. Some of that is just a function of using the smartphone, but it’s usually not nearly this bad.
I think I’m going to call it good with this for now. I’m really tired (I originally wrote “rited” there, see what I mean?) and I’m not thinking or typing very clearly. I feel as though I didn’t sleep, though I did sleep a bit, if only for me. Maybe I slept too much (I doubt it). Anyway, let’s call this done for today, and hopefully tomorrow I’ll be in better form.
I hope you are all well and continue to be well in this best (and worst) of all the possible worlds we can experience.
*By which I mean that in the future they may look back on the day(s) as having been auspicious. Neither today nor yesterday can actually do anything in the future, for they are in the past (or present). Some things can exist both in the past and the future, of course‒you and I for instance, at least in some sense‒but one cannot claim that a particular measure of time, specific to one time, can exist in the future. It would be like saying the first centimeter in a meter stick is still present at the 47th centimeter. It doesn’t make sense. Centimeters and days are fungible in some senses, but not in this way.
Well, today I am writing on my smartphone because I simply, and stupidly, forgot to bring my lapcom yesterday. I don’t always know where my mind is, to tip a hat to the Pixies, but it often seems not to be with me.
Of course, that’s a figure of speech. I know that my mind is me, whatever that ultimately means, so I am never anywhere without my mind, anymore than a square can be said to exist even if all its sides are removed‒really, even if one side is removed (though in that case, it can be implied, somewhat like the famous square illusion made of four incomplete circles).
Anyway, I’m going to keep it short today, partly because I’m feeling somewhat queasy, and that takes away a lot of one’s energy‒at least, it takes away a lot of this one’s energy. I don’t feel like I’m going to throw up or anything; it’s not that bad currently. I just feel a little like my upper GI tract is not happy with me. Perhaps it’s a bit like a frowning parent: not angry, just disappointed.
It’s not a great way to start a day, but there are many worse ones, so I suppose I shouldn’t complain. I will complain‒I am complaining‒but I shouldn’t.
Here’s a peculiar question that occurred to me after writing that last sentence: are there cases where one shouldn’t do something, but one ought to do it (or vice versa)? Or are those two words such nearly complete synonyms that such a thing would be contradictory? One can speak a contradiction, or write it, etc., but one cannot actually bring one into being. “Talk is cheap, mother fucker,” DMX said. Reality, on the other hand, has a huge cover charge at the door and you have to pay à la carte for what you get.
This reminds me (I’m not sure why) of a brief, mainly inconsequential writing error I found yesterday in an article related to the new Spider-Man movie. They used “i.e.” when they were providing an example and should have used “e.g.”. I know it’s a minor error, but come on, they went through this difference in Get Shorty, for crying out loud (the movie, at least; I don’t remember if it was in the book).
Anyway, it’s not a very auspicious day, for me or for the world, so I’m going to try not to drag this on. I don’t feel very well, physically or mentally, and what’s more, I don’t expect to feel well, physically or mentally, in the future.
That doesn’t quite reach the level at which I expect not to feel well, physically or mentally. It’s a subtle difference in wording, but conceptually the states are quite distinct. One can vaguely not expect that things will necessarily be good, perhaps based on past experience, but not really be inclined one way or the other, or one can frankly expect that things will be bad.
Of course, in the end, no one here gets out alive, but even that isn’t necessarily a bad thing (nor is it necessarily a good thing). It’s just the way reality appears to be, as best we can tell right now, no matter what anyone claims based on “belief” and “faith” and centuries old to millennia old hearsay (also known as religious writings).
A delusion embraced by millions or billions or even quadrillions of people is still a delusion. You don’t make dog shit into fillet mignon just by telling yourself and others repeatedly that it is, and if you eat it, that’s on you. Don’t try to feed it to me, especially not by force.
Of course, you can sort of turn excrement into steak, such as by using it to fertilize grassland on which cattle will graze before eventually being eaten. But the fact that nature allows this particular remarkable transformation does not mean (for example) that a cracker becomes the body of an ancient rabbi, or that some wine becomes his blood, just because someone said something in Latin near it.
All the pseudo magical crap distracts from the actual good messages that can be found (occasionally, here and there) in religions and ideologies. People don’t want to have to do the work of really turning crap into burgers, though, because that involves actual farming, which is hard and the results are not guaranteed.
Of course, one can consider or imagine oneself more or less guaranteed to get certain outcomes from religious practices, but the actual outcomes are almost certainly going to be largely the opposite of what people want and tell themselves they will get.
Humans can be very stupid a lot of the time. But they can also be brilliant, even the most unassuming and humble of them. Like Ultron said, they’re grotesque and yet lovely. Like him, I’m often torn between reveling in the human works of art and science and engineering and exploration and so on, and doing my best to wipe every last one of them from the face of the universe.
Unfortunately, right now my tummy is too icky for me to put much energy into either one.
Here we go again. It’s the start of another “work week”, and unfortunately, I am writing this on my smartphone. I just didn’t feel like bringing the lapcom back with me on Friday, because I had some other items in my backpack that already made it a bit heavy. It shouldn’t have daunted me‒it wasn’t really very heavy‒but it did.
Anyway, I’m hoping to keep this post brief, since there’s really not much to say and not much going on and my thumb bases have by no means recovered to a normal baseline. I am also sweating a strangely large amount this morning considering that I am currently sitting still. It’s not even really that hot in here.
It’s too much to hope, probably, that this sweatiness presages some acute, life-ending illness, but I guess some day that will happen. When it does, I’ll likely end up as one of those dead bodies that’s only found because of the smell of rot that develops. It’s not as though anyone would be seriously affected if I just stopped being around, so no one would miss me very quickly.
I mean, okay, the people at the office would probably wonder, because it’s not like me even to be late (at all) to work, let alone not to show up without some kind of notice. In addition, my absence would make things at least temporarily inconvenient.
Mind you, I live in a house that has another family living in the other section, and they would probably notice pretty quickly if I died. Their dogs would, anyway, though I don’t know if they would “say” anything about it.
I’d rather die out on the road, walking as if I were intending to reach some destination. But we only get limited input into how we end up dying. Even if you take the matter fully into your own hands, you’re not guaranteed that it will work out the way you’d prefer‒this fact has stayed my own hand on more than one occasion. Life is complicated, and even the process of leaving it can be hard to predict.
Speaking of walking, I did a decent amount of it this weekend. On Saturday, I walked just shy of eight miles, and yesterday I walked about five miles. That’s not too bad. And thanks to some precautions I took, it hasn’t so far led to any serious pain exacerbations, nor to any knee or ankle issues (of significance). That’s something, at least.
I did not get anything else significant done this weekend, of course. I did not write any fiction, and I did not play any music or do any singing, nor did I draw or paint or study physics or mathematics or any other science. I basically just vegged out. Probably that was part of what allowed me to have the energy to do my walking, but it is a bit disappointing to me, though probably not to anyone else.
I’m rereading Stephen King’s book On Writing, hoping that maybe I’ll get some inspiration to write some more fiction, because it has worked to help my enthusiasm for writing in the past. And, admittedly, it does make me feel a little wistful dreaminess about, say, Outlaw’s Mind, or my planned Changeling in a Shadow World, or even HELIOS. But it’s not enough to get me to work on any of them. More’s the pity.
I think I might take a break from reading soon, too. Every time I finish one book, I have a terrible time mustering interest in another one. I can read even without such interest, of course‒it’s a powerfully ingrained habit that I have had effectively all my life‒but it feels very dreary to have to force myself to read, and to go through Amazon trying to find books that grab my interest, only to find that they all seem dreadfully boring.
Remind you of anything? Maybe the blog you’re reading now? It’s hard for me to avoid dreariness here. To paraphrase The Wall, disc 1, side B, 4th song from the end: Day after day, life turns grey, like the skin of a dying man.
I’m really tired, and it’s only just now the very beginning of the week. Maybe by tomorrow I’ll feel better. I doubt it. There’s no good reason to suspect or expect that I will, other than perhaps the natural cyclicity of things. Thank goodness for the complex numbers, which make dealing rigorously with rotations and cycles much easier than they would be otherwise, and in which to multiply by i is to apply a rotation of 90 degrees (or pi over 2 radians) counterclockwise.
On that circular note (ha ha) I will draw today’s post to a close. I hope you all have a good day, and hopefully a good week, even if I do succumb to something and am never heard from again. No sane person would make their happiness dependent upon, or even merely linked to, me or my happiness, as experience has demonstrated.
It’s Friday, now, and I’m writing what should be the final blog post of the week, since exclusis improvisis I will not be working tomorrow—which usually means that I will not write a blog post tomorrow.
I am writing this post today on my lapcom, again. That’s because I am still at the office from yesterday; I did not go back to the house last night. I had called my sister on the phone after work, in the office, and by the time we were done, it was quite late. It was too late for the train, so I would have needed to get an Uber back to the house, which would have been expensive, and by the time I got there, I would basically just need to go to bed and then get up and come back in.
What a waste that would have been.
Of course, the neighborhood (nayborhood?) cats will have had another evening and morning without food, but they are stray cats, after all. They can handle themselves pretty well. Actually, maybe this hiatus will discourage the stupid little family of raccoons that keeps coming in and eating the cat food after the cats have the eaten their initial amount.
They are cute, of course, bordering on adorable—the raccoons, I mean, though so are the cats—but I do not buy cat food to feed to raccoons, who can do an even better job of taking care of themselves than cats can. They just get annoying, and although I have learned that silly string and silly foam do kind of freak them out (fire doesn’t seem to, not when it’s just seen, and I don’t want actually to burn them) it’s not enough to discourage them for long*.
I will occasionally lob a coconut (there are scores of them on the ground) in the raccoons’ general direction, which does freak them out some, but it also freaks out some of the cats. I have even more harmful means at my disposal, but I would have a hard time using them.
It can be quite inconvenient and irritating sometimes, how much I empathize with things like raccoons and opossums (and stray cats) and even with lizards and spiders**, and even with ants and stuffed animals and—occasionally–furniture. Heck, when I’m in the right state of mind, I can even empathize with palmetto bugs.
But it’s not a deliberate kind of empathy. It’s certainly not done consciously. It’s not the kind of empathy termed “cognitive empathy”, in which one can sort of tease apart and understand how the emotions are unfolding in another person’s mind, without necessarily sharing those emotions***. I can do that if and when I put my mind to it, at least to a point. But my issue is the sort of automatic, emotional empathy, in which it’s almost possible to feel what the other being (or thing) is experiencing, or at least to imagine that one does.
I experience that with humans, too, at least to some degree. Actually, it’s often rather overwhelming, especially if there are significant numbers of people around. I don’t think that it’s a literal sense, like sight or hearing or smell or touch, but those mirror neurons—or whatever other functions in the brain turn other creature’s reactions into literal feelings in one’s own mind—seem to want to try to take in as much of everyone’s percussive passions as they can, and that process cannot readily be shut off, as it wasn’t consciously shut on.
This can be, and has been, useful, such as when dealing with patients one on one as a doctor. One person at a time is just about manageable, though even that can wear you down when it’s many “one persons” throughout every day.
But still, it can be done. However, being around many people, especially ones who are not necessarily regulating themselves much, can be damnably irritating and overwhelming. It’s a bit like being at a rock concert in which every individual crowd member’s favorite band is playing at the same time, all different songs and genres and everything, and the members of the crowd are each and all trying to sing along with their band.
It’s not a pleasant situation, as I’m sure you would agree. That’s at least part of why being in social gatherings can be quite daunting. It probably also at least partly explains why things like arcades, which are certainly noisier than most parties, are not nearly as overwhelming as even a small party can be. Plus, video games can be much more entertaining than trying to talk to various people you’ve only just met, who may or may not have any shared interests with you.
A key indicator or barometer or highlighter of the comparison between the two is the fact that, if you drink alcohol in an arcade, your performance on the games is likely to suffer. On the other hand, alcohol is all but an absolute necessity at a party just filled with milling humans.
Why do humans insist upon repeatedly arranging activities for which even they, the arrangers, need pharmacotherapy (e.g., ethanol) to enjoy? I would ask one, but I am almost sure that none of them would have a well thought out answer to the question.
Okay, well, don’t mind me, I’m in an atypical state, for me (which doesn’t necessarily mean that one has become more “typical”, as I discussed yesterday, using the entropy diagram). I’ll draw this post to a close now, and I wish you all a very good weekend. I will next return here neither before nor after Monday…
…yet again, exclusis improvisis.
*I’ve read somewhere recently that raccoons are starting to show signs of early pre-domestication toward humans, much as dogs probably did way back in the day. Cats, on the other hand, mostly domesticated people.
**Okay, I could leave them out of this list. I like spiders quite a bit, and I more or less always have, so I don’t feel bad about empathizing with them. In fact, as I’ve said here before (I think) when I accidentally wreck a spider web because it’s too effective at not being seen, I tend to feel really bad. That is, after all, their extended phenotype, as Richard Dawkins coined the term, and they put a lot of effort and literal bodily resources into it.
***Psychopaths are, apparently, often quite good at this.
Hello and good morning. It’s Thursday (obviously) and I am writing this on…my lapcom!! That’s right, I’m pleased to say that after all my discussion yesterday about trying to give my thumb bases a break, I maintained the impetus into the evening to bring the mini lapcom back with me, and I am now using it to write this post.
I’ve probably already said more about this than was merited, but I’m rather pleased with myself. That doesn’t happen all that often nowadays—me being pleased with myself, I mean—so I am trying to indulge it as much as I can, hopefully without overdoing it.
Let’s see, now, is there anything else to talk about today? Hmm. Nothing comes to mind right off the top of my head. Perhaps I should just call it good and wish you all a good day and say “Ta ta for now” in abbreviated form.
But, no, I don’t think I’m going to do that. Not having anything to say has rarely stopped me (or lots of other people, I suspect) from running off at the keyboard/mouth. I don’t know if that’s healthy or good or not; probably there is no specific absolute “value” slot or slots in which to put that fact.
The goodness (or badness) of a thing is often largely dependent on that for which some particular person might use it, or the semi-arbitrary tastes of any given person. But as for absolute goodness or badness, I’m not sure those concepts ever fully apply.
Even nuclear weapons can at least be argued to have had some modicum of benefit. It’s an ill wind indeed, as they say, that blow no one any good. There can be little doubt that the atomic bomb shortened the war in the Pacific in World War II, and that was good for Allied soldiers, though clearly not good for Japan, at least not in the short term.
Then, of course, there was the Cold War, which was terrifying and had the potential to send civilization back millennia or more. Thankfully, it did not. It’s a bet I wouldn’t encourage the world to make again—that the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction would prevent most conventional wars that might otherwise have led to the death of many millions and the immiseration of millions more, albeit without destroying civilization in the process—but we got away with it that time (so far).
So, yeah, good and evil are largely viewpoint dependent, though they are not absolutely subjective. I suspect there are quite a few things in the world, or in the potential of human behavior, about which if you surveyed many hundreds of thousands of people, the very large majority would agree on whether they were generally good or generally evil. Child sex trafficking comes to mind as one of those more or less universal evil things, I suspect. On the other hand, saving innocent children from violence or disease or catastrophe would probably pretty generally be considered good.
But of course, all this is very anthropocentric (or anthropoidocentric, maybe). If you were to canvas the opinions (if they existed) of various sexually transmitted viruses and bacteria and protozoa, they would probably be in favor of all forms of sex trafficking, and of indiscriminate, unprotected sex in general. It might be their equivalent of clear-cutting the Amazon rain forest to make room for non-native crops.
Blowflies would surely be quite satisfied, at least in the short term, if humans had massive, bloody wars that left bodies strewn, unburied, in the streets. But humans—selfish bastards that they are—are unlikely to do such a thing just because it would be nice for the flies. They might do it for other—arguably no better—reasons, but not for the flies.
Shakespeare said (or, well, Hamlet said*), “there is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” And, of course, in Paradise Lost, Milton’s Satan says, “The mind is its own place, and of itself, can make a Hell of Heaven, a Heaven of Hell”, though I may have left out some archaic contractions.
To be fair, we should expect Satan to say something like that, shouldn’t we? And we should not give too much credence to his viewpoint. Hamlet, on the other hand, is much more morally ambiguous than, say, the leader of the fallen angels, so it’s more convincing when he says his line during a semi-philosophical interaction with his two former friends.
Well, I feel that this has been a rather peculiar blog post, even for me. I suppose one might expect that, if one normally wrote peculiar blog posts, one might expect that a “peculiar for me” blog post by such a person would be a “normal for someone else” blog post. But that intuition is misleading and usually wrong.
There are many more ways to be “peculiar” than there are to be “normal” in most cases, so, like the phase space that can be used to diagram entropy, when things move from one spot semi-randomly to another, they are much more likely to become more peculiar than to revert to more normal.
The other way only works in strictly one-dimensional situations, though in those situations it is worth noting. For it is a fact that, ceteris paribus, the lesser of two evils is the greater of the two goods, just as a less negative number is a more positive number, by mathematical definition.
On that, I’ll draw this lapcom blog post to a close, with a deep, sincere thank you for reading:
Thank you, deeply and sincerely, for reading.
TTFN
*You cannot assume that an author agrees with a point made by one of the characters in the author’s works. This is true of many a celebrated quote. The famous Oscar Wilde line “I can resist anything but temptation” is spoken by Dorian Gray, who is not a particularly good person, and probably does not represent Wilde’s considered ethical opinions.
Well, there’s no lapcom here today, alas. I just didn’t feel enough drive or urge or energy‒or perhaps impetus‒to bring it with me when I left the office. Maybe I should say that the magnitude of the vector for taking the lapcom with me was overbalanced by the net vectors that summed up to pushing in the other direction in this (very) high dimensional phase space that is the description of the state of my nervous system and its effects on my activity.
You’ve heard of Hilbert Space*? Well, you can call this “Robert Space” if you wish.
Anyway, so, yeah, I’m writing this on my smartphone today, and I’m already regretting it a bit. The arthropathy in my thumbs is complaining rather vociferously (and quite metaphorically) just from the little writing I have so far undertaken. So, hopefully, I will be able to keep this relatively short today.
That doesn’t always happen. Like a lot of people, I suspect, sometimes when I get rolling in habitual behavior, I keep barreling through even when I can feel the negative effects already as I do it.
Conversely (or whatever the proper term is), it has occurred to me just in the last day or so**, that my thumb pain may be part of why I haven’t been playing guitar. It’s not that, when I think of playing it, it occurs to me that my thumbs hurt and so I consciously choose not to do it after weighing the fun versus the pain. If it were that conscious, I would (clearly) know it already.
But the thumb pain can make the process of playing less pleasant, and that can decrease the emotional reward and reinforcement I get from doing it, and so, in the fullness of time, make me less likely to do it in the future. It’s sort of a very low-level application of the aversion training from A Clockwork Orange.
If so‒it’s strongly possible, but I cannot swear that it’s really, definitely the case‒that may mean that what I really ought to do to increase my playing is to try to increase the magnitude of that “take the lapcom home” vector.
But, of course, it’s not some axial vector, aligned along only one unit vector, with a cross-product (or outer product, I think, if memory serves) of zero. And it’s not a fundamental vector, with only itself as its input, either. It’s a vector that is, itself, the sum of many vector inputs (and heck, maybe some scalars, I don’t know, but I don’t think tensors would apply to this situation), some of which would probably surprise me.
Still, it might be worth a try. It’s not as though the thumb arthropathy is something I like and want to keep. So, if I can find ways to counter it, maybe I can see what effect that has on my tendency to play guitar, and thus, finally, on my tendency to sing.
I used to sing a lot, especially when I commuted by car and could play various CDs (but not treasury bonds, ba-dump-bump) and sing along but no one could hear me.
Even when driving my scooter*** to and from work, I had a Bluetooth enabled helmet, linked to my playlist on my phone. When you sing inside a motorcycle helmet, in traffic, you don’t need to worry about being overheard.
Now I don’t commute that way, and since I have housemates, I don’t often feel comfortable just singing when I’m in my room. But early morning in the office, when playing guitar, it can be good. That is, as long as playing guitar is good, which is apparently not the case for now.
Oh, well, I guess I shouldn’t dwell on it. Everything is futile, everything is imperfect, everything is chaotic, everything is entropic. And to paraphrase the Stones, I’m neither waiting on a lady nor am I waiting on a friend. I’m just waiting on the end.
Speaking of the end…
*Maybe you haven’t. Let me know.
**You wouldn’t think it would take so long for this possibility to occur to me. I mean, I’m reasonably bright, and the connection is not a distant or particularly occult one. Unfortunately, you cannot choose to think of something before you have thought of it. Likewise, you cannot choose not to think of something once you’re thinking it, but you can let such thoughts go and do your best not to identify with them. Oh, and also, by the way, no one has ever been able to “unsee” anything, ever. The expression is idiotic. Also, there’s no hour (or other period of time) in your life that you’re going to get back. Noting that fact about some specific, unpleasant hour just makes you sound semimoronic.
***I say “scooter” because I guess that’s the official term, but it was a 650 cc Honda Silverwing, so really it was a full-on motorcycle that just had continuously variable transmission. I’ve always been clumsy with manual transmission vehicles.
I hope nobody was worried about me yesterday when I didn’t write a post. I was out sick. I had some kind of gastrointestinal bug, or perhaps some type of bad reaction to something I ate. I’m not sure. Anyway, it was unpleasant, as such things tend to be.
I often find myself wishing, in such situations and even less severe ones, that I didn’t ever have to eat at all. Of course, if you see me, you’d know that I’ve tended to err in the other direction, but I would very much like to lose my sense of hunger, or perhaps more my sense of pleasure in food. My current life is almost completely devoid of any real, reliable joy of any kind, and I am chronically depressed, so I unfortunately tend to go for biologically reliable sources of “feeling good”, however minor and evanescent, such as eating.
I suppose it’s a good thing that I don’t have any kind of drug problem, since I’d probably be stuck going to that for my diminishing returns of transient joy. I suspect many people with drug problems do just that. Actually, I often kind of wish that I did have a drug problem, because then I would be (a) more likely to be thinner than I am, and (b) might die of a drug overdose, which is comparatively faster and less painful than dying of a food “overdose” over time. It’s a moot point, though. I’m not the sort of person who could really manage an illicit drug habit; I would find the whole process stressful and irritating. I didn’t even like taking opioids legally when I was given them for my chronic pain.
Alcohol, which is legal, has many drawbacks, not the least being that beyond a certain point, it doesn’t really do anything for me and exacerbates my chronic pain. It can be useful as a social lubricant, and in that it can be very useful, considering how socially awkward I am.
But alcohol doesn’t make me feel much euphoria past the initial relaxation stage, which is definitely pretty good for short times. However, one trouble with alcohol is that it impairs one’s judgement—it certainly impairs mine—and so when one feels a little relief from anxiety and a consequent bit of euphoria because of it, one falls into the cliché, “if some is good, more must be better, and a lot more must be great”. Most of you probably have direct or indirect experience with how that line of “thinking” turns out.
Now, I will say that I took one medication a few times, in medical circumstances, that could probably become a problem for me, and that was diazepam (brand name Valium®). I’ve written before about how, when I was given diazepam, even though the circumstances were far from pleasant ones—wisdom teeth extraction in one case, and a heart catheterization in the other—I felt tremendous. I felt normal, if you understand the sense of what I mean by that—and even if you don’t.
Anyway, that’s a prescription med, and I’m not really interested in taking it. I know too much about how rapidly diminishing are its returns, and about its long-term effects on cognition, and worst, about how tolerance to it tends to lead to increased anxiety between doses, so it pretty quickly becomes counter-productive.
This leads me to wonder if it might be somewhat useful to people with chronic anxiety to take medications or similar that increase their anxiety, and to stay on them for a while, then to stop. It wouldn’t address any underlying issues, of course, but not all such chronic states are due to Freudian-ish causes in experience and upbringing. Some of them are genetic or at least congenital. Sometimes, a person’s biology can just give them an anxiety set-point that is significantly higher than average. Some other people, of course, will have the opposite. And most people will be somewhere in between.
This is the nature of traits in populations of sexually reproducing species (e.g., humans): there is variability in nearly every attribute, as genes get shuffled and reshuffled, paired up with different alleles and other genes in the genome, reacting in highly complex ways, and providing the broad variation on which natural selection does its ruthless work.
This is what is largely behind the famous phenomenon of the moths that changed coloration in industrial age England compared to their pre-industrial age colors, matching the new soot-encrusted bark of trees. They did not develop the trait or attribute de novo; there was always a variability in that physical aspect (color). But in different circumstances, different colors were more likely to survive to reproductive age, and so they began to predominate when a persistent change in circumstances happened.
The same sort of thing surely has happened with humans many times, over and over, as civilization changes, and our own effects feed back on our natures and alter their own causes. If people could step out of their little, provincial world-views, this would likely be obvious to all but the most benighted of souls.
How did I get to this subject/topic*? I don’t know, though maybe it will become obvious while I’m editing. Anyway, I’m going to draw this to a close just with the revelation that I’m writing this post on the lapcom. Was there any difference between its style and that of one written on the smartphone, now that I reveal the fact to you only at the end? Inquiring minds want to know.
I truly hope you have a good day. And I really wish I could actually hang out with some of you or with someone today with whom I could have a comfortable interaction. But I am not good company anymore, if I ever was. So I will probably, and appropriately, continue to be alone, and will die alone, and hopefully fairly soon.
*I never really have been able to discern a consistent and sensible difference between these two terms, but people often use them as if they are two different things, rather than simply synonyms. Possibly that’s just a function of pretentiousness. But maybe I’m just ignorant.
It’s Friday at last! I get the impression that a lot of people feel an “at last” feeling when Friday arrives, so I am simulating that response, though it doesn’t really pertain to me this week. There are only 22 shopping days left until Halloween. Then the year goes a bit downhill. I guess everyone can watch and see what happens then, if anything.
I don’t know why, but that last sentence sounds like a sort of hinted threat or worry about the future. Yet all I really meant, if anything, was just that we can only wait to see what the future holds, though we can make predictions to some degree. Also, I just like to hear myself talk, as it were. I’m damned if I know why (and apparently, I’m damned even if I don’t know why).
I’m going to try to keep this a bit short today, despite the preceding statement about hearing myself talk. Yesterday’s post was too long. Yet, despite its length, it accomplished nothing that did me any good whatsoever as far as I can tell. It’s all just me oversharing online, because I have no one with whom I can overshare in person.
And while there is some degree of a chance that such oversharing might be used to harm me by someone in the future, nevertheless, as far as I can tell, there’s almost no chance that it will be used by anyone anywhere ever to help me. That’s just the way it goes, I guess. Or maybe it just goes that way for me, because I’m particularly…I don’t know, particularly weird, particularly unpleasant, particularly disgusting, something like that.
Anyway, I believe I’m going to be working tomorrow, exclusis improvisis, so you can feel justified in expecting that I will write another post tomorrow. As for today, I already feel exhausted. I wish that meant that, if I tried, I would be able to sleep, perhaps for quite a long time, but I experience leads me away from expecting that to happen.
I think I’m going to try a more concerted, formal bit of meditating again, at least for a bit. I have to try to do something. If it makes me more depressed, as meditation often does, and therefore more actively self-destructive, then let those chips fall where they may…and any other trite figure of speech that might apply here.
I don’t know if I’ll play any guitar or sing today, but I guess I might. If so, I will probably play many of the same things I did on Tuesday, and about which I spoke on Wednesday. I might throw in Pigs on the Wing, or One Headlight, or Ashes to Ashes, or even play A Space Oddity again. I haven’t played that in a long time, probably not since I made the video of me playing it. It’s weird, but once I’ve made a video of something, I rarely play it personally anymore.
It’s like, “Well, ‘me performing that song’ is out there in the world, so I don’t need to do it anymore”. It’s strange. I can’t even recall the chords and stuff from my own original songs since I released them; I would need to relearn them if I were to try to play them again. It may sound strange, but I don’t think it has anything to do with ego, whether good or bad. It is more that, whatever force created the pressure to write and then record the song(s) was released by doing them, and the pressure has not reaccumulated.
It’s weird, yeah. There is more ego involved in my fiction writing, I think‒I want people to read and enjoy my stories and to appreciate me for them‒and maybe that failure is part of why I don’t feel capable of writing fiction anymore.
I don’t know, probably most of my troubles spring from my chronic pain. I’m quite sure that many, many things would be easier and would go better if I were just able to get the pain under control.
Maybe meditation will help that. It never has before, but “past performance is no guarantee of future results”, despite the supposed pop culture idiotic “definition of insanity” falsely attributed to Einstein.
I wish that I had brought the lapcom back with me to the house yesterday evening after work. Alas, I did not, and so I am writing this post on the “smart”phone like some Zillennial. It’s annoying.
Although, I want to be clear, putting the word “smart” in “scare quotes” as I did just now is merely rhetorical. It’s snarkiness. It is a true fact that modern cellular phones are indeed quite smart compared to all prior generations of phones.
They’re smart compared to most prior generations of home computers. They’re smart compared to many prior iterations of the operating computers on board real space ships, for crying out loud.
And if rumors are correct, they’re smarter than our current strategic defense computers. Though that could be false intelligence, just a negative rumor about the military, because such rumors are enticing and so spread easily. I don’t know.
I’m just annoyed to be so susceptible to using the phone to write, simply because its presence is convenient, even though I very much prefer to write on the lapcom, or on any other real (as opposed to virtual) keyboard.
Of course, I use the phone for many other things that I previously would have done with something else. Calculator functions are one of those things, and I have no complaints about being able to use the smartphone for them.
It’s quite convenient, though I can do relatively simple mental arithmetic pretty well without any calculator at all. Still, it doesn’t take much for it just to make more sense to use a calculator, because the way it processes arithmetic is more direct and logical than repurposing a general biological intelligence to be able to do arithmetic via relatively elaborate algorithms.
You can use an LLM to multiply two three-digit numbers together, and it may even do better than most people would do at the task‒I don’t honestly know‒but it would be a waste of that machine’s capabilities, when you could just tap on your calculator app, or even just use an old-fashioned physical calculator.
You don’t use a VTOL fighter jet to go to the corner store for a candy bar, after all. I mean, it would be pretty cool to see someone do it once, just for a stunt, but it’s not a sensible way to go for a snack. Heck, it’s not really sensible to drive to the corner store, unless you have some physical infirmity that makes it necessary. In general, walking is better. You’ll not only get there nearly as fast as (and sometimes faster than) by driving, you’ll also be making yourself ever so slightly stronger and healthier because of the exercise.
A bicycle would probably also be a sensible way to go. But it has the disadvantage that you need to park your bike and chain it up (unless you live somewhere far less petty-theft-prone than where I live), and in general bikes require more maintenance than feet do, or at least they require additional maintenance.
Anyway, I’ve had my troubles with bicycles, so I have a hard time talking them up, though I recognize that they have many advantages over motor vehicles and over plain ambulation. My difficulty with bicycles is one of the many things about myself that frustrates me. Still, there are many places that one can walk where bicycles or other wheeled vehicles are not going to work. There are reasons why the Incas, for instance. didn’t really use any wheeled vehicles.
Well, enough of that weird little set of mutual tangents. It’s the last day of September today, which means tomorrow will be the first day of October. That’s just the way that works. I’ve noted before, recently, that October is my favorite month, but the reasons for that favoritism have eroded over time.
Birthdays and holidays become just reminders of the fact that things are worse for me than they’ve ever been in the past; I have no one with whom to share any of them. And the notion of changing leaves and bright autumn colors is just a cruel joke in south Florida, as is the notion of weather cool enough to require a windbreaker.
Whatever. It doesn’t matter. I’m sick of all this bullshit, anyway. I would say it’s a waste of my time, but my time is wasted no matter what I do, so that’s not a good point. But it’s also a waste of mental energy and effort, for something that does almost nothing for anyone, if it does that much.
I need just to shut all this shit down, and I don’t just mean the blog. I’ve been gradually phasing out most of the relatively productive and creative things I do, though that hasn’t been deliberate or conscious. It’s just happened, like I’m petering out.
Of course, given that “peter” is a word derived from the Greek for rock*, saying I’m petering out could be construed as meaning that I’m rocking out (dude). But, of course, I am doing no such thing.
No, I’m just winding down, I think. It can’t happen too soon, can it?
*Thus Jesus’s famous play on words when he said to Peter, “Upon this rock I shall build my church” or whatever the specific wording was.
It’s Tuesday now, the 29th of September—the 2nd to last day of the month—and I am writing this post on my lapcom, for the second time in three days. Well, okay, it’s four days if you count Sunday, but with respect to blog posts, I don’t count that.
It seems that the last time I wrote a blog post on the lapcom on the 29th of September was back in 2022, based on the saved files on the lapcom.
I know, I know, I need to slow down with all this craziness or some of you readers are going to have trouble with your blood pressure or asthma or generalized anxiety or what have you. It’s all so very…exciting, isn’t it? Sometimes you have to step back and take a slow breath, just to keep yourself from feeling overwhelmed.
Anyway, I’m writing this on the lapcom today because I slept in the office last night. It wasn’t any bad thing, though, don’t worry about that. I just stayed late in the office doing a Discord call with my youngest so we could watch a couple of episodes of Doctor Who together. That’s definitely a good thing, at least from my point of view.
But it did get to be late enough that there was no real point in heading back to the house for the night just to come back here in the morning. It’s expensive, relatively speaking, it’s time-consuming, and frankly there’s nothing very interesting about the house. It’s only real benefit is the shower (but I’m pretty good at doing “bird baths” in the office bathroom). It’s not particularly comfortable nor welcoming nor personal. It certainly doesn’t feel like home to me.
I guess the cats will have to scrounge a bit for their food for the extra 24 hours, but they’re cats. They’re good at stuff like that, believe me. They’ll be fine.
So, yeah, anyway, I slept on the floor on the office again, using my hoody as a blanket and the backpack as a pillow, and it was fine. I slept no worse than I usually do (though admittedly, I didn’t really sleep any better than usual, either).
And that’s about all that can be said about my life. I go to work, I go back to the house, I write this blog on workdays, I watch YouTube videos which are becoming increasingly uninteresting on average (though there are intermittent ones that are good). I’m reminded of the line from the Beatles song I Don’t Want to Spoil the Party: “There’s nothing for me here, so I will disappear.”
There really is nothing in my daily life that’s worth sticking around to experience. Only things like watching Doctor Who with my youngest over Discord are of any real interest to me.
I suppose writing this blog is somewhat interesting. Certainly, I keep doing it (so far). I’m not sure whether that’s particularly good or not terribly good or what. I suppose that depends very much on one’s criteria, doesn’t it? After all, for something to be sensibly called “good”, one must first lay out one’s standards, because goodness very much depends on the purpose for which one is evaluating something.
A particular car may be a very good car, but might be lamentably bad at being a paperweight, and even worse at being a dining room centerpiece for a dinner party. And someone can be quite a good doctor but a terrible administrator of a medical practice. And of course, one can be a good singer-keyboardist but a terrible physicist. Or one can be good at both, like Brian Cox (the physicist, not the actor).
Anyway, the point I’m trying to make is that goodness must be good according to some relatively objective and coherent measure, otherwise it’s just a vague adjective (or noun in the case of “goodness”). As far as I’m aware, there’s no large-scale, global, ultimate measure of Goodness, despite what various religions and other dogmas might claim.
I’ve yet to encounter such a notion that’s even approaching coherence. And goodness really ought to be coherent, if it’s claiming to be something universal and crucial. But the real moral world is messy, even when compared to the world of myths and fairy tales, so there are no clear-cut absolute criteria. Such things are just not terribly useful.
Maybe usefulness is the criterion that should be applied in the real world when speaking of goodness. And usefulness implies a purpose, which implies some kind of criteria. Maybe we would all be better off if we stopped worrying about Good and Evil with capital letters as if they were titles or offices or forces of nature. The laws of physics themselves apply locally; maybe we’d be better off with a slightly utilitarian approach that evaluates goodness versus badness relating to the specific, local circumstances.
I don’t know, I haven’t thought all this through very carefully; I’m just thinking out loud as it were. So don’t expect me to have arrived at some finished outcome, some theorem or system of thought. I’m just spit balling as they say, or brainstorming, or…well, thinking out loud, like I said. Though, of course, this is not literally out loud, unless you count the very faint sound of the keys being pressed as I type.
All right, that’s enough. I’m tired, so I’m not going to push it too much to try to say anything profound. I hope you all have a good day today, on this penultimate day in September of 2026 (AD or CE). You might as well have a good day, by whatever criteria you measure such goodness, if you can.
