Look At Me

Although it seems a little silly now, Geoffrey Lewis gave me nightmares for a while after I saw this scene in Salem's Lot as a kid:

Dang, I kind of regret watching it right before bed, now. :-)

Pucker Up

Whistling is good for the soul.

It's Eye Opening

You can sometimes see something you never knew existed and it totally changes your world. Right before you saw it, everything was right in the world. Now, it's incomplete.

You can never go back to ignorance. You can feign it for a time. Pretending it's not there just makes it stay in your mind.

What do you do? You have to learn to live with it. Accept it. Deal with it.

The longer you wait, the worse the consequences will be. Do you act? That's up to you.

The Blood's Too Warm

Come on, football weather. A little north wind will cool things down. It will be here in a matter of days or weeks.

Maybe this malaise, for lack of a better term, will pass when the heat passes. It mercifully seems to ebb, from time to time. Something always seems to trigger a bit in the nervous system, though, and there it is again.

Issues to Deal With

I need to play music. Playing really helps one deal with frustrations. People need to be offended.

*BIGGRIN*

Dissonance

We love to convince ourselves that lies are true. Makes things real convenient. We can go back to the way things were or the way we want them to be.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA... sucker.

Mowin' 'em Down

The clouds parted. The sign was seen and taken. The grass has been cut! Now, the hunger rises.

Place Holder

Must you have perfect timing to get the ideal things in life? Where I am is my place in this world. Always has been and always will be.

Where is your place in the world? Do you even know? Who are you?

Bakshi and Chill

While trying to watch the new Matt Groening show on Netflix, last night, a conversation got started about 80s animated movies. I looked up a few, today, and watched them. Boy, they really had no fear of making uncommon types of movies, back then. I suppose those movies seemed cutting edge at the time but they were still weird.

Here's an example:


I don't know why, but those Bakshi movies always make me pleasantly sleepy. There has to be some sort of ASMR element to them. *Yawn*

Thems the Breaks

Rained out grass cutting. Comedy of errors in the tire department. Information Technology issues.

Got most of the grass cut. Truck made the trip. Didn't have major issues.

Perspective counts. It's all small stuff. Mostly.

At least it still pumps.

Silence

Gab Away

There have been many posts on this blog regarding the evolution of 'social networking'. GeoCities, ICQ, YahooIM, AIM, Myspace, to name a few, have come and gone. Facebook, it's been opined, has outlived its usefulness... as have Twitter, et al.

The Twitter and YouTube on this page have gone unused for years. Facebook has been used only to keep up with close friends and family. There are no longer links to entries on this blog posted on social network pages.

At one time, this blog was all politics. Liberty and free thought started taking it over not long after it was started. However, there aren't many political posts on here, anymore, because it became tiresome.

This post will be a slight exception to the new trend. I signed up for Gab.ai. Gab has a LOT of controversial political and social views. Along with the typical normal folks, there are Antifa, Socialists, Communists, Nationalists, Nazis and any other controversial kinds of people you can imagine. Some have posited that it will become a breeding ground for violence, due to the lack of censorship. Some want it shut down.

Ask yourself this question, though: Isn't it better to have those who might act out of hate OUT IN THE OPEN instead of hiding in some secret meeting place plotting their violence? At Gab, you can try to talk some sense into them, or, at the least, get a better understanding of why they exist. If those who perpetrate violence based solely on the difference in appearance or belief were able to hear a counterpoint, it may not be enough to change their mind, but it might just be enough to keep them from acting out.

That's why we believe in free speech. It's much better to know what someone thinks who doesn't like you than to just have them unexpectedly start hurting people. Communication of any kind is imperative to peace.

Bitchute

Differential Equations: Mixing Problems: Example 1

Bitchute seems to be a decent alternative to YouTube for those who don't support arbitrary censorship. Here's hoping they do well. The free exchange of information is imperative to the future of the internet. More competition is always good and hopefully will inspire those who censor solely because the views expressed are in opposition to their own to reverse their course.

ASCII Reality

Can you imagine the world without text messaging or social media? Some of us don't have to imagine... we grew up without it. This isn't an ageist post, knocking young people or their proclivity for these things, it's more of a reflection on how the lack of instant communication may have made us appreciate human contact a little more, back then. Now, we're all just a few taps away from anyone and maybe we think that's real human contact.

Being just a click or tap away is deceiving. Body language is gone. You're not really in contact with that person... you're in contact with the preconception in your mind of who that person is. The few characters you see appearing on your screen don't give a full message, only a part. It's like that photoshop plugin filling in missing parts of an image. The mental picture you see is not really there; It's just auto-generated fill.

Maybe that's why, even with all this communication, you still find a lot of people are lonely. We fool ourselves with all the digital contact, trying to fill our social void that will never be filled with bits of data. Our bodies and minds know the difference.

Then again, this might be a complete misunderstanding and distortion of an instant communication marvel. Maybe it's better that people don't have to face the reality of the person on the other end. They can keep whatever image they want as real as they want, only rarely punctuating it with a few hours, here and there, of actual physical proximity.

Being Your Ally

Carl Sagan explaining, years ago, that the unseen isn't necessarily the nonexistent.

There may even be more than 4 dimensions. The current accepted scientific theories one can find suggest there may be around 10 dimensions in our universe. In the case of the theoretical multiverse, there may exist dimensions numbering in the 20s in some unstable universes.

In any case, we weren't born with the tools to observe more than 3 dimensions, although we can deduce by observing the indirect evidence, or 'shadows', of more. Is it important enough to spend precious time thinking about them, then? You be the judge.

Just know that the sum of those observations is something currently indescribable.

Drugs for Sale

Why are there prescription drug commercials on TV? Who goes to the doc and says, "Gimme summa dat stuff I seen on the TV bawks?" It gives me the heebie jeebies.

It also gives me hypochondria when they start describing side effects. Not only do I have to think about the potential for getting the disease the drug treats, but now they're talking about nausea, angina, and a host of things that are just subtle enough to make the mind play tricks. Just stop it!

Ursigram > Instagram

Dah dit dah dit dah dah dit dah. A lot of things in life are worth the hard work. Some just ain't.

Especially when you find out how easy it really was and feel ripped off. You can still have the pride in knowing you worked hard. Nah, all noise. Just noise.

Maybe in the remaining four years the 37% won't catch up. Let's hope not. There have been sacrifices made.

Missspelled?

No one is impressed by affect. It's best to be yourself. Too bad most of us don't know who we are.

Perhaps we should just say what's on our minds. If that were a real option, it would be cool. Cool.

Keep trying, though. Everyone has foibles. Remember that.

Travelling with the Buzzard Cult

Who am I kidding?

NASA's Next Nine

These will be the first astronauts to fly commercially to the ISS. Much respect and, frankly, a bit of envy. First manned flight is scheduled for April of next year on the SpaceX Dragon.

You Got Your Chocolate in My Peanut Butter

There is no battle of the sexes. It's part of La Grande Illusion. People are all basically the same. A little bit of physiological difference doesn't change the DNA we have in common.

If there was only one gender, we'd invent another one just so we could point out subtle, unrelated differences. That's what pointing out differences does; It divides. Still, for some reason it's seen as a unifying practice to exaggerate differences.

Yes, there are differences in the sexes. Men and women DO have differences. They are wonderful differences. It doesn't, however, benefit anyone to point them out for some denigrating purpose.

Mesmerizing

Magic can be creepy. Even though it's usually an obvious sleight of hand, there is still some measure of disconcertion. The fact that people repeatedly practice this kind of trickery for the purpose of confusing the observer is a little off-putting. Performers even practice their facial expressions as part of the illusion.

Still, that doesn't mean magic isn't intriguing. Magic is a very curious and mysterious art. Done well, it very easily entrances the observer. It's mesmerizing.

Music has this property, as well. The difference is that musicians don't typically rehearse to trick the audience. To the contrary, music often exposes the performer. The effect is no less magical, though, if done properly.

Mesmer called it 'animal magnetism'. It's probably more like a previously unknown, sudden and deep curiosity that must be satisfied. With magic and music you feel compelled to repeat until you understand, but you never will.

Smile

I don't like my smile. Maybe I don't know what it really looks like. The few times I see some depiction of myself smiling, I feel like it isn't very friendly or genuine, even though it is. :-) See what I mean?

Steak, Cake and Belly Ache

Sometimes life is a wash. Something bad happens. Then, something good happens. The bad is counter-balanced by good.

What really sucks is when the good is counter-balanced by good, which becomes bad. You aren't allowed to enjoy either of the good. Two steps forward and three steps back.

You want an example? Ok. Say you go back for seconds of your favorite meal. Then, you have cake afterwards. At this point, due to the amount of goodness in your belly, your belly aches and you feel sick.

It's just like that.