#221

Hello! Hello. Welcome to the two hundred and twenty-first post. It falls upon the twenty-first of October, in the year of Our Lord two thousand nineteen. I should post this on the twenty-first minute of the twenty-first hour of the day, but man, no. I won't. 

There is a pretty good chance this kind of thing can happen again two years from now, if I live that long. Every day is a day you might not have woken up YOLO

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Anyway, coincidences are a fake concept. It is a denial of reason to assert that anything is provably random. At the same time, nothing is provably certain. You might never die, because time might just stop. Or, the eternal recurrence. That good quantum shit. Who cares, actually. Shit happens. Just does.

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Going back to the previous post a bit, for a few a loose ends. If you haven't read it, you might not want to, but it's there, along with many other posts detailing private things and idiotic ideas and bad jokes I must be fucking insane to put on internet. I'll keep it brief.

In truth, there's only one thing to say: shit happens. Just does. It's not easy to accept that, but it does. I watched Hostiles finally, a western worth watching if only to see three perfect forty-minute acts. I mean exactly forty minutes for act one, act two, and act three. Also it is extremely good in many other ways, I loved it very slowly, warming up a little at a time. One line leaped out at me over all the rest: "We will never get used to God's rough handling."

Perfection.The context it was in elevated it tremendously; the case of the movie was proven in that moment; ironically, the one moment where the camera focus was less than perfectly controlled (it is a painstakingly controlled and curated picture, sharp enough to cut, huge, and intimate all at once).

We won't, either. We get stronger and stronger, and things only get harder. The universe rises up to meet us, and the only way to live and die is by grappling, by wrestling with angels and demons. And every good thing you've found and been able to hold onto in order to steady yourself can blow away in a strong wind, in God's breath, and you have to keep going. 

I wouldn't take back what happened to me. It made me who I am, and gave me the life I've had to live. It's a life I'm grateful for. I wasn't always, but I am, and I hope to feel that way every day until I die.

Fuck it. Fuck them. Still get my kicks. Still kickin. Had a lotta laughs and a lotta love since then. Borne shit near as bad. Worth it. I'll take the rest to the last drop, the sweet and the bitter dregs.

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Ok, yesterday's post was the longest ever, and I just gave it a fucking appendix. That's enough for the day. At least, once you get through these lists I'm about to drop.

Stephen King books I have read since last time I wrote about that:


Dreamcatcher, Needful Things, Under the Dome, Elevation, 11/22/63

Other books I have read:

The Death of The Master, by Patrick Kyle

Books I have purchased since last time I wrote about that:

Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
The Throat and Houses Without Doors by Peter Straub
Dracula by Bram Stoker (a recovery purchase)
Military Mavericks by Daniel Rooney
Are Women Human? by Dorothy L. Sayers
The Killing Joke by Alan Moore, Brian Holland, and John Higgins
Squee's Wonderful Big Giant Book of Unspeakable Horrors by Jhonen Vasquez
Alan Moore's Magic Words by the titular dude and like a dozen other people I ain't typin out right now
The Beginning Place by Ursula K. Le Guin
Shadow Box by George Plimpton
The Lives of a Cell by Lewis Thomas
The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay
All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot
The Wonder of Birds and Living on the Earth by the National Geographic Society
The Atlas of Scientific Discovery published by Crescent
Coral Kingdoms by someone named Roessler but it's under a bunch of other books right now and I'm not about to move anything right now to see more. It is published by Abrams.


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Hey! Next time will be the two hundred and twenty-second post. How about that, man? I'm so pumped to see that.


--JL