#294

To continue on a bit from yesterday: a wholly disproportionate percentage of our lives are made up of and/or reliant on pure anecdote. The human being has been raised that way, yes, for lack of many better options. We are memetic animals and that's just how it is. However, there is a difference between a demonstrative meme (which can be concrete or metaphorical) and the other kinds, which can be divided roughly into three groups: theoretical (like hypotheses), recreational (tall tales, jokes, and the like), and bullshit. 

Bullshit's alright in sane measure. Fertilizer, y'know. Problem is, as I said, in the proportion. The huge difference between a demonstrative meme--for example: the sun rises in a direction which is one of four cardinal directions and sets in a second, from which the remaining pair can be derived--and bullshit--for example: masturbating will make you go blind.

Well, see, the sun rises in the east. It might not always do so forever into an infinite future, but it's demonstrable for the present, day in and day out. And while you might masturbate, and go blind, no one can prove that there exists a correlation there, meaning that, for the present, to assert causation is to propagate bullshit. 

Because bullshit can sound so much like a theoretical meme, and theoretical memes can sometimes become demonstrated, or seem to be demonstrated, and therefore concrete enough for honest use, bullshit often passes for the truth. Individuals can build whole worldviews based on anecdotal bullshit and believe they are operating on rational grounds, when they are really being manipulated by tricksters, officers of a nation-state, or sacerdotal entities.

There's nothing wrong with that--as I say, governments bank on this to form order from chaos, and it seems tolerable within certain limits--but it can be frustrating, and get out of control fast, because once you believe a little too much bullshit, it's hard to determine where bullshit-eating has to stop. What is persuasive becomes more real than what is true. The truth has no real sales pitch; bullshit has infinity of them and they almost always sound better. Sophistry.

Anyway. All this is to say that we would do well to instill in ourselves a rigorous metric of verification before incorporating any new information into our thinking, and be engaged in a dispassionate vetting process of what we think we believe. Thus, our Socratic thinking, praise God. 

*

Don't know why I feel compelled to try to squeeze these things out on such a crunch time--after waking up, exercising, and making coffee, before breakfast and getting ready to leave for work. But the hours are quite busy after work these days, what with moving books and painting walls/ceilings and whatnot, so I guess they wouldn't get typed otherwise.

Truth is, while I detest working on a deadline, and won't really do it even if I set it myself for some inane reason, I enjoy the challenge of a time trial. Even if I fail, or generate totally idiotic drivel, it's more of a fun time.

Ok, peace the fuck out

--JL

#293

The importance of the divides between experiential evidence, experimental evidence, and anecdotal evidence has always existed. It can be hazarded, and I will do so, that most people's worldviews throughout the winding course of our (from an individual's perspective) vast shared history is composed of utile and applied experiential evidence combined with anecdotal evidence which amounts to a materially invalid but socially encouraged set of opinions. Experimental evidence is a truly rare and expensive gem, and, like the gems we dig up from the living earth, is valued at even more than it is worth. Again, like gems, more people hear about it or see it in the possession of a select few than are able to touch, use, or own it themselves. Again, like gems, many fakes exist, some very difficult to distinguish from the real thing, some enshrined as the legitimate article. Now more than ever. 

Now more than ever. I truly loathe that construction. Part of that loathing is its legitimate applicability.

How much does it matter to a person who will never travel further than two hundred miles away from where they squat on the daily whether the planet is round, flat, or an irregular spheroid? They're not gonna try to sail a boat to wherever the fuck. They don't have to triangulate or plot jack shit on any chart. How much does the exact speed of the planet hurtling through space--or its static majesty as it sits in state at the precise center of the universe--actually affect how you get your next meal, or deal with local levels of precipitation and humidity?

The quality of the average person's life is so rarely affected by what scientists fight about. Well, formerly. Applied sciences have jacked us into a technological dystopia, and experimental evidence is rammed right up our collective asshole. The idea that science might be a conspiracy is reserved for those who literally cannot perform a simple calculation, one that a man naked underneath his toga could do with a standing pole and its shadow thousands of years ago. Poles still cast shadows, and unless calculators are a conspiracy, the math is easier to perform than ever.

This is still not to say that experiential evidence has lost its primacy. Who in the vast aggregate really gives a fuck about quantum computers? Solid-state physics? Learning a martial art, or stonemasonry--there's news you can use. I love science, history, all the nerd shit--love it--but as I make my way through life, I can't help but think that the world consistently demonstrates to me that these are playthings for me and for people like me; that the root of life is very far removed from these castles in the air. What good is an advanced society if it requires and produces extreme unhappiness even for its most lavished beneficiaries, and worse from those consigned to serve them? Some good, but rather less than optimal potentialities. Who is happier than someone with no idea that a new smartphone is necessary for happiness? No one infected by the concept, I deem.

Yet, we bring these castles to ground, force them into the life-root position, and while the case is very cogent for all the wonderful things we have accomplished with this thing of ours of sharing the results of our experiments, the case that life is extremely close to being completely fucking ruined for everyone, human and non-human, is equally cogent. One thing I feel comfortable stating unequivocally is that we moved too fast, too heedless, with too narrow of a field of vision and too linear an idea of progress.

Agriculture was once an experiment. Maybe Cain wasn't the best dude, but maybe he got a raw deal. Ursula K. Le Guin, when writing about the many possible ways once could conceive of and determine what could be classified a highly developed society or civilization, mentioned the possibility of paleolithic technology and a highly developed and communal contemplative philosophy. We have the exact opposite, and I think we're pretty developed, but what we have simply seems less durable in the long run and less desirable in the first place, at least to me.

Well, we'll see what happens. I'm not really trying to make a point or anything. You know how it is around here. 

*

Oh, I guess my point initially was going to be that people are infuriating when they pretend that hearing about proof is the same as obtaining it for themselves. But I suppose that fury is immaturity on my own part. People are gonna do what they're gonna do. A wise man said: to see the truth, discard all opinions. Think I'm paraphrasing several wise folk. At any rate, I should take that advice myself, perhaps moreso than the people to whom I'm prescribing it.

Damn, what a useless post. Sorry everybody. 

--JL

#292

Instead of learning to drive the bus when I was supposed to begin learning to drive the bus, I was caught by the kind of extremely powerful illness that sweeps previously contact-restricted populations when the operant restrictions are lifted. So, I've only gotten to drive Friday and yesterday, but it is worth noting that since I last posted, I have been behind the wheel of a school bus, a wholly unprecedented condition in my personal existence. Kinda cool. Pretty cool, I should say. I like driving, and driving is kind of like a video game, so it's kind of like learning a new video game. Most of the rest of the time, though, I was suffering under the yoke of a particularly miserable head cold, and that just sucked. Didn't even wanna write. Wondered if the negative forces of the universe had sent this illness into my body to prevent me from writing, which is the kind of thing I think about when I am running a low-grade fever. Being sick inflames my superstition and paranoia, as well as any number of tissues and membranes. 

Speaking of all that, judging by what I've been reading online, signs point to another brutal sweep of very bad illness, epidemic/pandemic style, on multiple fronts. Should...do my health insurance paperwork. Probably. Should...restock my supply of immune system supplements. 

*

Welp! I'll try to generate something interesting next time, which will be soon, maybe this evening. That's all I could reasonably squeeze in between waking up, getting nutrition and coffee, and having to soon depart for more bus driving.

Peace!

--JL

#291

The emotional landscape I find myself traversing, brought about by the work on the final post of Album Week 2022 in relation to the content of said post, is hampering production in general, so the thing to do, I deem, is to continue work without a set drop date. The seventh and final post of Album Week 2022 will be posted when it is finished, however many posts down the line that may be! Bam. There. Decided and declared.

*

Dear reader, as Ezra has recovered from his top surgery--or, the careful and intentional removal of his tits--we have watched so many movies and cartoons and documentaries. I mean for real, the number is so silly I daren't even attempt a list. Forcing myself to keep fit amongst all this reclining media consumption and sympathetic convalescence has been a true effort, a test of discipline to which I have not always risen to my own satisfaction! His compression wrap is off today, though, signaling a pretty much complete recovery, and we can now enter into renovated and refreshed life patterns. 

We are going to move into a house, which my parents bought and shall rent to us until we can buy it off them. Since my brothers got college and cars off 'em and I never did (largely by my own choice), I have decided not to feel guilty or ashamed about this situation, though it is my personal inclination to feel both of these things and also to wonder perpetually if we are not all of us making a mistake we will live to regret. But! Forward, forward, ever forward! Gonna concentrate on being able to paint the walls how we like and put nails into 'em so we can hang pictures properly, and to be able to do whatever we want with the backyard. That is all I can do. In addition, after we buy it, which is another thing to concentrate hard on and expedite, everything will be square.

Passed the commercial driver's license stuff, got my learner's permit, and have fully completed my classroom requirements, so Tuesday I begin learn how to drive a bus! What a trip. A fucking school bus, yo. I mean damn. Had very bad times on school buses as a kid; hope to provide a very, very different experience to the young people placed in my care. 

*

When I was in kindergarten, or kindergarten-aged, I wet myself on the bus. I mean I pissed my pants, but like, hugely. Remember it as a kind of seizure. Held it pretty much from the moment the bus left the school to being dropped off at my apartment building, and about halfway down the aisle, dreaming of blessed relief, either the waterworks must have come to an internal realization that it was down to letting loose in emergency vent mode or busting a gasket, or the mental impetus holding back the flood relaxed prematurely at the sight of the finish line. Whichever, the result was I twisted, twitched, and jerked my upper body, hands scrabbling uselessly at my lower body, feet rigidly planted and breath locked in my breast, face an agonized rictus as I urinated into my short pants with such force and reserves as to soak through them entirely on both sides, the bottom of my shirt, and create a puddle which ran up and down the little trenches in the flooring of the bus's aisle. Too stunned to feel the force of shame, but desperately sorry for the bus driver, I squelched off the bus, socks spongy and warm with runoff.

Took a huge shit in my pants around that age, too. Just one of those situations where I didn't want to go, at psychic odds with the needs of my body, and suddenly, without warning, holding back was no longer an option. Wars of attrition with biological functions are doomed from the outset, but children don't know that yet. At least, children whose arrogance and mania drives them to read in bed for as long as humanly possible without even the smallest of pauses, shitting be damned.

Boy! Life is certainly a phenomenon rich with experience. Things just happen, and we keep on truckin' along. 

*

Celebrate your bodily functions today, everybody! And as always, walk away from this blog with the ineradicable sense that control is a pernicious illusion.

Peace!

--JL

p.s. Finally realized that my basis for changing the blog's font in the gap year from whatever the default is to Verdana--which was that I had thought I was using a different font, before, and maybe I was? And then blogger took it away? Maybe? It's so hard to know things for sure without reliable and durable reference points. Anyway, the whole blog is now set to the default font, which is better. I don't know why I was using Verdana. For some reason, I thought I had to. That's over. Praise the Lord.

#290

Album Week 2022's final post continues to present research and layout difficulties. In addition, adjusting back to even the concept of the working life is strange and tiring terrain. Gotta to go to take a test today in order to secure a commercial driver's learner's permit with endorsements so I can learn to drive a bus so I can take a driving test to get a commercial driver's license so I can drive a bus. The whole concept, plus the pending weight of responsibility for the well-being of children, is starting to bring forth the classic esteem problems that, if not carefully addressed, tend to lead into quitting entirely. And it is a bummer to let half the hoops put you off when half the hoops have already been jumped through. Therefore I must summon deep reserves of character and determination, and no one likes doing that. Digging deep? Plying fortitude? Ugh. 

To top it off, as always, there is the part of me that always wants to only watch cartoons, and nothing else. The toxic and monstrous evil of daylight savings time is also to blame.

*

In the good news department, I ate a very big plate of shrimp 'n rice with andouille sausage yesterday, preceded by fried calamari. This felt like it did my brain some real and measurable good. 

*

The second editions of my earlier books aren't showing up for purchase anywhere that I can find them. I don't want to deal with this problem! But I'll try. Later this week. Maybe Thursday, maybe Friday. Tomorrow is some days before the day before my brother's birthday, and we are doing a thing, after which I will need to watch some cartoons, and after I take this test today I am going to--hello! Watch cartoons. Yes indeed. Work on other writing projects and the recovery and transcription of old projects is ongoing, but secondary to cartoons at the moment. Also gotta plan on moving, which is always so much energy. So much cost to the body and mind. But it is into an actual house of our own, and hopefully will be the last move for a long, long time. Have moved domicile nine times in the last twelve years. Tenth time pays for all? We pray.

Ok. Gotta shower for class, I guess. Haven't missed sitting in a room for hours under fluorescent light watching educational videos, but this experience should refresh my empathy for schoolchildren, so there is that added value to the mandatory learning experience.

--JL

#289

Too many tabs open on two separate browsers. A sign of increasing hubris, which will almost certainly result in downfall and remorse.

As a safeguard against this dark future, for once in my life I am dedicating myself to making backups of all my work. Wow! Really hitting my stride, here, in the computer age. In addition, I have worked hard the last few days in smacking together new editions of my first two books, meaning all four of my books can soon be found on my author page! The first editions are still available on my old author page, but maybe amazon will take that down now? If a single organism from that company would ever deign to contact me, perhaps something concrete might be decided, but all my efforts result in ever only more screens with remotely applicable instructions at best, and perfect opacity the rest of the time. 

Been tapping away at work that I had presumed lost, and I've got the old notebooks out and have been transcribing analog work. This, combined with the work that (I pray) shall be salvaged from my wretched macbook, should mean fresh delights on the publishing front in due time. Finishing that last sliver of a percent of a book always seems to take me as much or more time than composing the entire rest of it, but process is process.

* 

Once I start getting paid for driving a school bus, I plan to start buying computer parts, that I may finally build a safe and stable computer which stands a chance of serving me as computers ideally ought. My bus driver training begins today, and at some point during this process I shall secure a commercial driver's license, which is fun. Air brakes! Gonna learn what those bad boys are all about.

Recycling center job didn't play out because they have no evening shifts. Oh well. Seemed cool, but I must admit, the building and area pretty much stank; like, smelled bad. Carried an odor. So the disappointment factor is pretty bearable. I'll keep a pin in it nonetheless. We may be moving soon, so perhaps an evening job nearer to the new neighborhood, which is in a different township, will be findable and suitable and workable and etc. Or perhaps it's for the best in general, since school bus driving may offer more hours than I currently perceive. Won't know till it's really happening and factual, after all. Finally, perhaps even at this stage, after all the background checks and drug tests and fingerprintings, the bus driver thing might somehow fall through, in which case I will certainly run back to the center and take that job instead.

*

Read recently that optimists live longer and age better. People think I'm a pessimist, but that is only because I am devoted to realistic views; in my heart and soul I possess an incurable jouissance with an apparently immovable faith in the absolute perfection of the universe. Even if the world has already gone to hell, shit, and fuck, and nothing will protect me or anyone I love from a painful and functionally meaningless death, my feelings about it all remain hopeful. I think optimistic outlooks are stupid, but optimistic feelings are justified. No justifications for this beyond feeling that it is so. Guess I could point to some philosophy about it, but why bother? If you'd rather sit in your shitty diaper about how bad life is, fine. Savor the flavor, and apparently, die sooner. 

*

Ok! Bus driver class pretty soon. Time to eat toast and shower.

Album Week 2022 wraps next post, but it may be awhile. It's serious business, this post I have chosen.

--JL

#288

Album Week, 2022, Day Six: Mountain Goats Day.

The Reckoning.

Literally, as no less than four (or, alternately reckoned, seven) new (or, to reckon alternatively, three) instances of Mountain Goats music have dropped since Album Week 2019: Three full-length albums of new music and four discs worth of extemporaneous recordings. This is the sort of embarrassment of riches which stands as evidence for the infinite love of the Almighty. 

So! No need for further chatter. Let us reconnoiter these brave new sonic landscapes.

Songs for Pierre Chauvin

This album is an answered prayer in many ways. I'm not one of those purists that only wants and only recognizes JD alone with a boombox as the best and truest form of MG music, but that doesn't mean it doesn't hold a particularly exalted place on the altar of my heart. In addition, the subject matter itself is Classic. And when John writes about the Classics, I am happy. So this love letter specifically to me at the start of a pandemic felt like a kiss on the forehead, a sacramental blessing, a sign that even if nothing was ever going to be okay again and I was shortly to die of lung failure or revolutionary bullet or fiery nuclear holocaust, at least I'd blasted "Until Olympius Returns" as loud as I could from the speakers of a car, singing along in wild abandon. At least I'd heard new music in these old ways once more in my lucky, lucky lifetime. And dear Lord, if every single song isn't a triumph and a wonder and a beautiful missive. Also this album makes me think of a dear friend whom I haven't seen in too long, and that salt-tear-flavored feeling is always wonderful in music.

We're gonna do it like this: scores out of twenty per track, letter score for the album afterwards. I'd like to write at length about each one, each album, but come on. We all have places to be. A short commentary along the lines of one long sentence or three short ones may sometimes be appropriate; I shall use my discretion.

1. "Aulon Raid": 19/20. 

Beautiful song. Warm welcome. Swelling feeling in the breast. 

2. "Until Olympius Returns": 20/20

Hymn to clench your jaw to. Anthem to survive by.

3. "Last Gasp at Calama": 17/20

4. "For the Snakes" 17/20

5. "The Wooded Hills Along the Black Sea" 20/20

God Damn this song hurts so good. I mean fuck. Wow. 

6. "January 31, 438" 18/20

7. "Hopeful Assassins of Zeno" 19/20

8. "Their Gods Do Not Have Surgeons" 17/20

9. "Going to Lebanon 2" 20/20

"Going to Lebanon" is a personal favorite, so there is bias, but worth mention anyway: lyrically subtle yet significantly intertwined with the first, and a chorus of astonishing beauty and musicality.

10. "Exegetic Chains" 19/20

Songs for Pierre Chauvin: A+

Getting Into Knives

Getting into knives, are we? You know, I'm somewhat into knives as well. Yes indeed. It's a smooth one, even smoother than In League With Dragons. For some, the increasing smoothness and evenness of the albums are a sonic problem, but I think the grain is present always--it just don't hit the same. I don't know what the fuck people are talking about when they talk about accessibility as it relates to music, but people have complained that the albums have become less interesting and lower quality as they become more accessible. To me in personal conversations, anyway; haven't read the internet about it. Probably their recently attained powers of famousness play a role, which I can understand perfectly. Things being too famous is a huge turnoff in general. In this case, well, iconoclast I may be, but sometimes, fame just don't bug me. They can get as famous as they want, fuck it, I'm still here for it. The distaste that accompanies excessive fame can be ameliorated by never reading the comments on anything, getting off social media entirely, and only talking to the same twenty people ever--sparingly. I am capable of stomaching serious discussion on the music of The Mountain Goats with a grand crowning total of two human beings on this planet and don't want or look for more. People just say the same boring shit they read online, it's incredible; a whole society of trained parrots. At any rate while there is a certain quietus over the album and a high degree of polish and control, here lie some of the most interesting and addictive songs they've made. If there is a problem, I have to look for one, and find it only in that maybe some of the songs are a skosh long. So big whoop! I'm into these knives. These knives!

1. "Corsican Mastiff Stride": 20/20

The shortest song on the album and one of the three most perfect. Yeah! 

2. "Get Famous": 16/20

3. "Picture of My Dress": 17/20

4. "As Many Candles As Possible": 17/20

5. "Tidal Wave": 17/20

6. "Pez Dorado": 19/20

7. "The Last Place I Saw You Alive": 19/20

8. "Bell Swamp Connection": 16/20

9. "The Great Gold Sheep": 20/20

Maybe the best song on the album; hearkens to the compositional families of some of the best songs on All Eternals Deck and Moon Colony Bloodbath, which are some of the best ever. In the history of all songs.

10. "Rat Queen": 20/20

Just awesome. Such guitars!

11. "Wolf Count": 19/20

12. "Harbor Me": 17/20

13. "Getting Into Knives": 16/20

 Getting Into Knives: A-

Dark In Here

It's all still rather new, so I don't have a ton to verbalize, but this record has some of the greatest instrumentals of any Mountain Goats release ever. It's an amazing album. Fucking incredible. So many perfect songs. So much unprecedented ground explored with such unerring confidence. So much raw power under such tight control.

1. "Parisian Enclave": 20/20

2. "The Destruction of the Kola Superdeep Borehole Tower": 20/20

3. "Mobile": 17/20

4. "Dark In Here": 20/20

5. "Lizard Suit": 20/20

6. "When a Powerful Animal Comes": 20/20

7. "To the Headless Horseman": 17/20

8. "The New Hydra Collection": 18/20

9. "The Slow Parts on Death Metal Albums": 20/20

10. "Before I Got There": 20/20

11. "Arguing with the Ghost of Peter Laughner About His Coney Island Baby Review": 18/20

12. "Let Me Bathe in Demonic Light": 19/20

Dark In Here: A+

The Jordan Lake Sessions 1, 2, 3, and 4

Fancy live recordings! Well, it's easier to get a real clean balanced sound when there's no giant room full of noisy people to account for. What can one really say about them except that they are, by and large pretty juicy and good? There are standouts and semi-disappointments, rediscoveries and rarities, small pleasures and meaningless frustrations. It's good stuff, worth making, worth having. I give it all an A. 

*

Some may ask themselves: is there any Mountain Goats effort you would not give an A to, Mr. Lidd, and therefore, is not your rambling basically useless? The answer is no, and who cares.

Album Week 2022 Mountain Goats concludes! Woop woop! I'll probably do a non-Album Week post in between this and the finale, just so's you'd know, if you were wondering.

--JL