#455

Here's a little parable for you, drawn from life.

A man pops popcorn as one of the main parts of how he makes his living at this strange time in his oddball life. On occasion, he has occasion to take the occasion to take a big plastic trash bag of leftover popcorn home, and does so. Occasionally, you see. The bag may sit around and be drawn from for a month or more, and each time, the man marvels at how this food item, perishable and delicate though it is, retains freshness and bite, even crunch, for more than two weeks, and in a diminished state is still a quality product for another three or even four weeks before at last going properly stale--at which point it is still perfectly edible, though not exciting. 

The second man approaches the first man accompanied by a woman at the place at which the first man is employed and purchases popcorn. This popocorn was popped within the last hour. Twenty minutes later the woman approaches the first man and tells him the second man wanted her to inquire whether the popcorn had been popped fresh, because it tasted stale, and to have the first man pop more if the batch had been sitting around. 

I don't know exactly what this parable is about, but I think it's probably about how different approaches to life can yield different results from the same phenomenon. I mean that is pretty basic but I guess all parables sort of are, in an obscure sort of way.

--JL

#454

Well, well, well. Bitching and moaning about having to participate in an economy again, eh, Joseph?

Sure. Yeah. It's the most demonic imposition in modern times, with infinite nested impositions that serve to make our existences incredibly stupid and subject to the most unnecessary pressures and mandates.

As Tony Soprano says, eloquently as any human being ever could: "Cocksuckin' motherfuckin' money."

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But whatever. The actual point is I didn't have anything useful to say, or fun to look at. That defeats the purpose of engaging with the fifty million layers of money and bullshit I accept into my life when I plug in a laptop and use it to interface with anything. 

A flash of insight, a moment of entertainment. That's the best I can do for you, and the best we can grab for ourselves day by day in this fucked up T.S. Eliot poem we call life, the Beckett play of history.

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Sadly, I don't have much to say. I just want to make visual art right now. And play Final Fantasy. Played through and beat VII again recently, which spurred me to VIII, which I am within a hair's breadth of completing, and then I shall play IX. Probably X after that, very likely, and maybe X-2, XII, XIII and XIII-2 after that. We'll see. I'm pretty into that jag at the moment.

As for other media, well, how about a list? Just of movies. That and the games are all that have been up aside from the odd Star Wars book or splash of comics. More details on those another time. Movies!

Only Yesterday

Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children* (yes, this marinated for a while and then gave rise to the subsequent intense reengagement with FF, said series having had an instrumental hand in making me the person I am today)

Cadet Kelly*

Men In Black *$

Basquiat

Pig

Leaving Las Vegas

Topsy-Turvy

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Chef

The Island *

The Marvels

Captain Marvel*

Alien: Covenant *

Bram Stoker's Dracula*

Your Name.$

Everything, Everywhere, All At Once

Muppet Treasure Island*

Also, documentaries:

Jim Henson: Idea Man

Game of Thrones: The Last Watch

*

Probably Ezra and I will go see Alien: Romulus on Sunday morning.

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What else is up, and good? Put some cute Pokémon stickers on my metal water bottle, whose current stickers were getting hella decrepit despite their mod-podge coating. But it's brightened up and freshly coated, so that's nice. Got a Magikarp on there, one of my favorite little dudes ever. In one or another of the latest Dex entries, the developers went so far as to call Magirkarp an idiot. Actually an idiot, right there for the children! Perfection.

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Work is cool because it is easy, and I get to sketch and doodle there a lot. Also it is a great place to have fun conversations, including with one of my best friends. What more could you want, frankly? All that and free movies, when you can get 'em. Part of me still marvels that it can be like this. I should indeed be grateful--and am--to an adequate measure. No reason I shouln't get universal basic provisions as well, amirite boys?

*

Nest time I'll probably write about how fucking cool Final Fantasy is. 

K peace

--JL

#453

Can't help but notice...no one is talking anymore about universal basic income, even though all the test balloons flew great, even though y'all might as well, since the way you manage the world has been so wrong and so bad that most of us will probably die. Your stupid race to beat heedless excess with scientific "advancement" has been a shitty plan, and at this point, might as well relax the resources into making sure everyone is comfortable before the end.

Least we could do for each other at this point, and we won't do that. Though I guess it's kinda noble to keep trying. 

But man. What a fucking feeling. The world at a melting point--a real and true apocalypse after all this asinine noise about a hundred fake ones, millions of people already dying for dozens of needless reason on multiple fronts all over the planet, and it's like, go to work! Those who do not wish to participate will be enslaved if apprehended, so drive your fucking car to work, right now, and keep working, or DIE. 

--JL

#452

Man, I was doing good with bank accounts there for a couple of years. Well, not good, but not scraping my belly every month to clear the rail, which is where I am now and feeling quite familiar. Kind of agonizing, but experienced and manageable. Just gotta skate on one foot on the edge of a cliff like one does. No problem.

No, I don't really like it, but I don't wish I was different. Well, a little, in a wistful way. But I am who and what I am, and the test of life is saying yes to that every day and living it according to one's inhabited reality and the interpretations and principles derived thereby. Every life and manner of being has its unavoidable conditions and subsequent drawbacks and complications. So it goes.

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Office is almost set up again. The progress has not been as fast as I would have liked, but it's drawing to its temporary conclusions before enduring a period of hard use, as is its purpose.

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Dude, the world is so fucking crazy right now. How the fuck indeed am I supposed to care about my stupid little numbers and the angry little clock that yells at you for no good reason, waving its sheaf of stupid little papers?

--JL