#485

Ah! It appears, lost in contemplation and the hustle and bustle of the modern day, I missed my window to hit five hundred posts in 2024. So it goes. Perhaps it is just and meet that 2025 gets the rights to five hundred. Fives go with fives, mathematically. Fives like a five. 

Been playing tons of Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII; Reunion or however it is most proper to arrange that title. It's a real good story, real fun game. Lots of game in the crannies of it, where Final Fantasy does best, at least to me. I am such a sucker for all of their systems, though. I go hog wild, screw around in menus for hours and hours, tweaking and rebuilding everything they let me tinker with. 

*

The difficulty of finding the place between taking pride in your work and working too hard--to stay steady, excelling whenever possible, without burning out or making a tool of yourself--has always borne down hard on me in my professional life and other endeavors. All endeavors, I guess, except school, the one area in which I am gifted in the opposite sense entirely. There, I can see so clearly that pride is a false virtue, everything in front of my eyes and at my hands is total fucking bullshit, and the obvious and correct thing to do is to coast on my personal qualities in the service of doing the absolute bare minimum while devoting all my proper energies to my own ends.

Even here, athletics and music proved a weak spot. I don't especially seek out intrinsically social endeavors, but when present, I abhor not pulling my weight, and dread underperforming or quitting out. However resentfully, I am wired to put in an honest effort, because I'm not made to say that kind of fuck you to people who are engaged in something they care deeply about. I can even make myself care. Lo and behold, sometimes this praxis finds me actually caring deeply. It can become a problem, as eventually, I can care more than is strictly required or even wise. I can care so much that I quit, which, y'know. I could have saved myself a lot of time, there. But again, I am wired to earn quitting in many cases. Not all! Thank the lord. But enough.

Yet what price personal growth? 

It could probably be worked out, actually, and winced at. 

*

Real life is some fucked up shit, man. Never stops coming at you. People get covid, motherfuckers have a plan to denaturalize and deport you, other motherfuckers want to make every house in America a lethal-force compound, so like, maybe that's ok? 

Guess I'll just keep going to work and like, doing laundry and playing games and shit. Hang out with my cats. Dunno what the fuck else I'm supposed to do. 

--JL

#437

Liking the movie theater work. Perhaps I was born to be culture's most open and servile gatekeeper. 

Actually it barely seems real. Too wild not having the superhuman demanded of you. Normal, human expectations around normal, human work?

I keep expecting someone to tell me they need to pull two gruelingly physical doubles in a row or I'm fired. And instead it's like, "are you okay with sweeping up these ten popcorn kernels? I can get someone else if you're not feeling it right now, though. It's enough that you're standing there. I appreciate you."

Could I have been working here this whole time? Is this even real, here, now? What other shoe will drop, possibly from airplane height to kill me on the spot?

*

Some kid asked me if I knew how to fill a 3-compartment sink when I said I was down to wash the ten whole objects that need washing at the end of the night.

Perhaps too well, I had to tell him, suppressing real belly laughter. Never in my life have I even conceived of such an easy time at the triple sink. Astonishing. Can't believe people live like this.

*

I am grateful, awed even. But I have a lot of other feelings, too. Like, what? What?

*

Everyone is really, really nice and fun to talk with, also. WHAT? 

*

Mustn't let my guard down. Everything has its cutting edges and tragedy isn't something that only happens to strangers elsewhere. 

S'nice, though.

--JL

#432

Had a nice shift. Once again, totally human. The first couple hours took too long and made me feel a little claustrophobic, but as time passed I relaxed.

Spending time alone is something I crave and treasure, but it may be time to reckon with the fact that too much of it makes me strange in my head. That will involve admitting that there is such a thing as too much alone time, rather than the mindset I have always tended to exist in, which is that there is never enough alone time, that it is a precious resource to be fought for and safeguarded.

Well, it is. But meeting people and talking at their faces and having your face talked at is actually important.

Have to admit it. Aloud, too. Repeatedly. As a matter of some long-term urgency.

*

Kids really are incredibly great. They are the point of it all. Yesterday was May the 4th, Star Wars Day, a shining beacon to my people. The theater was running Phantom Menace, and some families came out with their progeny. Man, that was so fucking great to see. That gave me so much life. These kids were losing their bananas about seeing Star Wars on the big screen. I was their age when Phantom Menace dropped. It was a huge blessing to see them get to do the same all these years later, and their joy was as my joy. I also got some undecided customers to see Phantom Menace, so I have already used this position to do some public service--some good in this existence. 

Have to admit it. Have to admit it. It is important to be among people. To have encounters and relate.

To remember what this is all actually for. To keep myself sane, even if people drive me batshit a lot of the time.

*

Kinda burnt out on painting, but it's not the kind of project you can just stop. Kinda gotta finish.

Ok, ok, then. Here we go! 

Final note: ONE PUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUNCH

--JL

#414

Uh-oh! Number four one four! Kind of cool-looking. Yeah.

*

Did so much stuff yesterday, dear reader. Too many things. My body is sore and my mind mainly eager to simply settle into itself and read books.

Dug a little firepit. Raked a bunch, mowed, whacked at tussocks with a tool I don't know the name of but which functions as a scythe and chopper by looking a little like a crooked golf putter with a dull serrated blade instead of a club end.

Also a bunch of emotional and psychic labor. All of it was good, a good day. Then I did not sleep well. Ho-hum.

*

Here's a dope thing: the way I've rearranged my office, the desk, still set up so I can use my laptop standing, is closer to the window, and I can type without pants on. Well, I guess I always could. But now the breeze is particularly refreshing, and it feels less likely that someone could somehow work it so they could achieve a view of my private splendor. 

Sure, I'm about 99.7% certain no one at street level or at any second-story window could personally get the angle to snap a juicy blackmail pic or the fuel for a deepfake--but we live at the dawn of the drone age, already beset by silent, hovering probe droids equipped with cameras exponentially superior to the human eye and getting better all the time.

But yeah, man. Picture me standing here, buckass naked, typing delightedly like Percy Aldridge Grainger writing shitty pastorals. This detail about him is apocryphal, but compelling and relatable. That was one weird dude.

I would also like to dress as an improvised jester at times.

My old high school band directors were into him for some reason--the reason basically has to be that they were freaks. 

One could tell when the main director's wife was on her period because like clockwork, once a month for about a week, he would become unbearable. He could be an asshole any time, but that shit hit different. The man's libido was clearly a clockwork-type mechanism which did not handle service interruptions well. If you fucked up in front of him when the times were lean, it could be much more unpleasant than any teenager should have to tolerate. The day after he could get laid again, he was a man wreathed in smiles and good humor. Shit was uncanny. My theory was largely rejected by my peers, but I remain compelled by the evidence of my observations.

Certain that he and his assistant director (at the time) had traveled to Grainger's crazy-ass museum and oohed and ahhed over the BDSM gear the man handcrafted. Gotta admit, incorporating a conductor's baton into a homemade riding crop is DIY move that hefts panache.

Guess ole Percy fucked his mom? Well, it's no less than I expect from anyone who believes in Nordic superiority. His compositions are also not good to my way of thinking, and I hated playing them. 

*

ANYWAY today is not a day I can devote to quietude and literature. Finally offered a job, and I have to go hand in paperwork to make sure I get it. It is seasonal part-time work for which I will make just one dollar more than half of what I used to. But it's something, and right now, the way things have been, it feels like a miracle. I will endeavor to be kept on as a permanent hire, and seek promotion.

Gotta get ready immediately, in fact. Then, a laundry list of duties follows in short order. Off I go.

Hope you liked Percy Aldridge Grainger Day here on Factually Pointless. That was fucking weird.

--JL

p.s. I don't mean to kinkshame the BDSM community here. Or anyone whose lives have been affected by incest. It's not like anyone yelled at me, but I do spend some time thinking about the things I say after the fact, and I realize that trying to be funny comes at somewhat of a price in damn near every instance.

#362

Fuck, good people. Fuck me up. Saturday morning went and got the freshest corona jab plus my first flu shot since I was a teenager, and I was laid low, low out there. The weekend was a corporeally drained, cerebrally fogged mess. I would think I was ok mentally, and then I would attempt to communicate through any medium with another person, and that illusion would shatter. Got my first hard-on since the day of the jab today, though, which is good despite an admittedly listless performance. Corona jabs will eventually render me entirely impotent, I expect. So it goes. Final analysis, I'll take breathing over erections. I did the flu because my aging body has been seeming to reccommend it, particularly after Thanksgiving, as I mentioned. 

Then Monday the current and hopefully final semester of my effing life kicked off, which bore with it tasks, which took up all of my juice in my weakened condition.

Doing it all over the computer this time, the distance learning I was so unwilling to interface with a year ago. But that was a different man entirely, eh, dear reader?

*

For the sake of my mental health and the health of my burgeoning novel, I will make it a point to post regularly. The first daily blast of energy must go towards written assignments, then my own projects till the well runs good and dry, and then reading, of which I have enough to keep me happy. I shall try to be as assiduous and efficient as possible with my academic obligations, so that I might devote as many hours and as much power to what is most vital.

Stated. Intended aloud. Nine blessings. Amen.

*

Though my financial straits are approaching uncomfotable margins, I am experiencing a dread paralysis when it comes to finding employment. The plain fact is I'm not on a big tip of leaving my house much for business reasons. What I want is to work exactly where I'm standing, doing exactly what I'm doing. 

Another intention: I am going to borrow money if I have to, but this is the year I take getting published seriously. I think I've offset a sufficient amount of the guilt I feel about having money with the amount of shit I've had to do in the service industry and beyond in order to barely get the fuck by and never have been able to save a cent. I might as well be in the same condition, but just scrambling to get published, its own shitty job; more time to write. And if things go well? Well, that maybe fucks me up worse, but there comes a time when a dude has to just get over how fucking disgusting cocksucking motherfucking money is and let himself have some in exchange for his privacy and his ability to just tinker by himself unnoticed by all, for the privilege of not having to wear editors down because I'm so precious that once something is done to my satisfaction, to entertain editorial advice is tantamount to ripping a piece of my own skin off with my fingernails. In my defense, except for in the blog, I take a million careful fucking years to finish anything, so by the time someone sees something it is word-fucking-perfect, I unequivocally and with extreme conviction feel I have earned the right to not care what any living soul thinks would read better. It stands there to be read as written, by me, for a host of extremely cogent reasons. All I require is proofreaders for those misspellings that embed themselves in a document sometimes, having become invisible to the author's brain.

Ok. I don't even know where all that really came from. I guess I'm just outlining how ill-suited I am to be a professional writer, uncovering the deep pools of hubris that sabotage me so. But I'm a professional in multiple fields, dammit! I can will myself to do this. I can do this. Please let me be able to do this. Humility NOW

HUMILITY NOW

*

Jesus, man. Time to lie down for a little while. My health is clearly not quite back up to the high water mark.

--JL

#317

This is one of those posts written on the cusp of something, a border post, overlooking uncharted lands. Often, these posts are the final post before the blank, terrifying void of a hiatus, but pray with me, dear reader: this cusp is different. This cusp, this cusp right here? This is the cusp of heretofore unprecedented productivity, the cusp of rich, thick, ambrosial bounty.

When it was time for me, as a newly minted adult, to attend a four-year college, well, I didn't feel like doing that. What I wanted to do was ingest a bunch of drugs, drink till I went fucking blind, and smoke enough cigarettes to sound like Tom Waits. Wanted to work and earn only enough to pay a small rent and support my habits, at a restaurant or other food place so that I could mostly eat for free, and write. Also, play music on my bass guitar.

Also, die. This last wish went unexpressed, but was really the head of the pack. Funny how psychology works.

Over ten years and many adventures later, it is time to concede and accept that I did not die, and that the many reasons I gave and feelings I felt that prevented me from continuing my education and taking up a post in society that befits a whole and balanced individual were fabricated from that tempestuous mix of bloated arrogance, particular traumas, and corrosive self-hate that defined my tender youth. However, life has worked upon me, and I am a different man, a man that has been to the brink, back to the beginning, and ready for a new adventure. So on Monday, I go back to school, at the community college, and later, when I am done, I will secure work as a teacher. My feeling is that my experiences and skillsets will serve me very well in this endeavor, to which I feel unmistakably called.

Indeed, having withstood what I have withstood, and dealt with what I have dealt with, the idea of being derailed in my academic endeavors by what once derailed me is laughable. Once, I stopped attending a class because the teacher didn't deal with a student in a way I felt the situation called for. This other student stole about twenty minutes of class time from the rest of us because she could not see, and had to be informed, how understanding Nietzsche was supposed to help her with her business degree*. She hijacked the class, coarsely and witlessly, I might add, which incensed me greatly. After the allotted time had passed, I wanted to talk to the teacher about why that had been allowed. The man fled from me, literally, avoiding my eye, brushing past me, and exiting the building at such a rapid clip that I would have had to jog to catch up. Before this, I had liked and respected this teacher enough to have quite a bit of enthusiasm for his class. 

That's it. No more. An autodidact is all that I can be. It's all that I ought to be. I will not be taught by that kind of coward, I told myself, and left school; forever, I thought. 

Don't get me wrong; I love and live for being an autodidact. My only reservation about this process as I embark upon it is a reduction in the time I will have to pursue my own academic interest wholly unencumbered by outside demands from an actual academy. But on the balance, I believe it will only serve me to double my demands. No longer do I fear I lack the bandwidth to pursue my own interests and others at the same time. My time in the service industry and other brute workforces has taught me otherwise. Disengaging myself from various social and material pressures unique to the young and drug-addled has also broadened my perspectives tremendously.

For example, I have come to understand various hows and whys as related to that teacher allowing that sincerely idiotic individual to do as she did, and his subsequent ignominious behavior. It's not how I hope to comport myself if similarly tested, but yeah, I get it. We all have rights, and boundaries, and rights to our boundaries, and this creates untenable situations sometimes. So it goes.

Guess another basic worry is money and will we have enough, but that's never bothered me too much. This attitude, I believe, has kept me relatively unwrinkled and spry in the step, albeit light in the wallet, so I shall continue with this policy and hope it continues to serve me in more or less tolerable stead.

--JL

*this avenue of inquiry still repulses me viscerally. Fuck you, lady. Fuck you and may you have failed yourself utterly.

#308

Drove to work bright and early this morning only to find the parking lot empty and the garage and gates locked. As I cruised the scene to make sure to myself that there was truly no one else there and no one was going to show up, the realization dawned: spent too long in the service industry. Too many years working every single holiday except Christmas Day and New Year's. Worked some of those, too. 

Pour one out for everyone consigned to the more permissive levels of modern slavery today. I need hardly mention that many should be poured out often for all those consigned to any form of modern slavery. A lot of bad shit happens to a lot of unlucky people every day, and in most cases, the people with the power to do something about it are prevented from doing so for a multitude of reasons both legitimately constraining and merely selfish. All those of us without such powers or constraints can do, we ought to, even if it's just to bear witness in our hearts, and feel something about it.

*

Indeed, being as we're already talking about this particular national holiday and gross, avoidable human misery, perhaps I'll allow myself a word or three on the way this Supreme Court majority is popping off. "Happy fucking fourth of July! Abortion is literally murder because of twelfth-century British common law, so fuck 2022, fuck society, and fuck women. The EPA can't tell anyone nothing! Every company that wants to belch all the carbon they can into the atmosphere can do so with impunity as far as we're concerned. And we're just getting started, you godless cumsluts. Lube those shitty little assholes while you can, 'cause we're coming in full bore."

Honestly fucking grim. I joke but do not laugh. Is it even a joke? Everything bad I was afraid would happen six years ago is happening, because every bad thing I was afraid would happen fourteen years ago happened. You don't even want to know the shit I'm afraid of right now. Happy fourth of July, we might not have another because our government is no longer a republic or a democracy. A cadre of unelected officials are dictating public policy with formal impunity to the detriment of the population, a corrupt and totally ineffectual legislative branch whines for the camera--all the majority of them know how to do, seemingly--and an ancient, doddering figurehead moans and gestures from a discredited office. 

I dunno, man. Just looks shitty. Like some fast-forward fall of Rome shit. Checks and balances right out the fucking window.

Ah, well. What can you do but watch it play out and try to make the best decisions you can based on what you see. Personally, I'll just keep going to work and reading books. Perhaps lay by a goodly stock of nonperishable goods and potable water. Pray and think, and think and pray. Practice dying an honest man in my mind, that I may be ready if called upon.

--JL

#299

Well, it's been a considerable interruption in factually pointless service around here. Goes like that sometimes, unavoidable this time, but I never like it. Me, I like to deliver. Yet, the conditions have to be right--not perfect, but right. My laptop got moved to the new house before I was ready to have it moved, and we didn't get internet in here till earlier this week. Didn't leap at creating this blog post first thing because:

a) it was already begun but unfinished, a state which is not the best for me--I like, whenever possible, to bang these out in one swift torrent. 

b) still working hard at learning the ins and outs of the bus driving gig, and sadly I must report that the training may have covered most of driving the actual bus and a few points of the day-to-day, but it in no way represented adequate preparation for the actual job in its detail, nuance, and code. So learning it has taken up considerable bandwidth, plus they changed my route after a week. So basically I worked two first weeks in a row.

Sidebar: the breakdown is, I love twenty percent of this new job, like/dislike fifty percent in varying measures, not sure about another twenty, and hate ten percent. Not too terrible, but don't know if I'll stay, or if I stay, whether or not I will for longer than a year.

c) there's been plenty to do about the new house and its yard. Plenty remains, of course, but we're living in it now, apartment and most everything to do with it behind us. Excelsior!

Ok. Cool. Cool. You have been reasonably updated, dear reader.

*

Wish I had more to say for this particular post. But we got Kirby: The Forgotten Land as a housewarming gift to ourselves, and really, playing that game and rereading the Animorphs books are most of what I'm up for these days. Having a house is really cool and it feels really good, especially as I'm still somewhat overwhelmed and psychically occupied by the newness and process of it all, job and house changing, life just coming at me, so I'm gonna go enjoy the peaceful, restful things. 

Peace and love, friends, and we raise a glass to posting again! It sucked to be gone most of April, but May will be fun and cool. 

--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

#283

Main trouble with Album Week is that the shape and weight of a whole album makes the discussion of any one track somewhat unwieldly, and sometimes that's all I'd like to do--discuss Joanna Newsom's song "Go Long" without having to talk about Have One On Me, which is rather a sprawl of music, or talk about "Radio Ethiopia" without necessarily needing to touch on the rest of Radio Ethiopia (Patti Smith Group). The first post of Album Week 2022 was pretty long in order to say just a few things that I wanted to say about Bach's "Toccata & Fugue in D minor" and still get to the rest of it (all in brief--much as I value concision, long-windedness is my curse, and it can be assured that wherever I choose to stop, I could have gone on and on), and I could generate a post twice as long still to discuss that composition further. Part of me wants to! 

What I did last post was kind of fun and refreshing, though. Short bits. Love some short bits. 

Comes down to it though, I am the one in charge of Album Week, and if I want to discuss an album primarily through the vehicle of a single one of its tracks, I guess I can give myself that permission any old time. Could even talk about it through just the album art, I guess. 

So! What sojourn shall we drag ourselves through today, dear reader? Well, read on, my friend.

*

Real quick: I love reading Wikipedia very much, but because I can't look at how much of it there is to read, like with a book, it's painfully difficult to know when to stop, and to organize my approach. Also its authority has made it difficult for websites of a certain flavor to survive. I remember, early days on the world wide web, surfing over to various homemade pages full of information and art about myths and legends. These basically don't exist anymore; sadly, who would read them? We have Wikipedia, and because it is meant to be counted on as a reliable source, much embroidery is lost. 

Mentioned because I got sucked into their featured article yesterday, on James A. Garfield, the 20th president of the United States. Pretty interesting. It's always such a time to be alive, and people sure do get busy with stuff.  

*

Okay. Album Week 2022, day three, let's talk about Waking Season, by Caspian. 

To do so properly, we would be well-served in skating back to Caspian's first offering, The Four Trees. First heard this album while I was tripping acid, and it was a revelatory, sublime experience, notable for its non-dilution in sober circumstances. Caspian is just the best band in the post-rock quadrant as far as I'm concerned; I remember the friend who showed me the music (a culturally nomadic hummingbird; he sips, he moves on, he never comes back to the flower again, which, as a magpie who clutches all treasures close in his nest, I find perplexing, frustrating, and even somehow depressing) frowning at me about how "there are better bands", when I just wanted to listen to Caspian some more. This was at a time in our lives when most of our hours not spent working at a Chinese restaurant were spent drinking and smoking while listening to and playing music together for hours on end. Maybe he's right, but I don't think so, and even if he were, my feelings about things are more important than some potential standard of correctness. The patterns they established and explored in The Four Trees, especially in the first two tracks, "Moksha" and "Some Are White Light", are simply very close to my heart. Music that has always been playing within me, expressed by another. This vibrational recognition is a special aspect of the godhead, a feeling I get from Caspian in a way I get from no other band, with the exception of The Mountain Goats.

The Four Trees promised more; Tertia, their second album, didn't deliver it. It's a good album, a necessary step in their journey, just not an escalating one. They dodged a weak sophomore effort--a well-documented curse in art--by producing an an album that functions as a bridge. It is with Waking Season that what is reached for beyond the exhilarating accomplishments of The Four Trees and the buildup of Tertia is attained: hybridization, ascension, expansion, a full bloom. 

*

Been going back and forth on the merits of a track-by-track breakdown of this record, since it is one of my very favorite albums of all time, but I can't hear it in my head without sounding foolish. Another time, maybe!

*

To put it simply, Waking Season is spiritually orgasmic, a coming together of powers and feelings that surges and climaxes without loss. And while their next LP's and EP's are also amazing, really truly amazing, full of incredible music that goes even further and never disappoints, songs and albums I listen to over and over and over again, Waking Season inhabits a plateau where it lives alone; a place I come back to and experience cleaner, purer air more than any other in Caspian's oeuvre. 

*

Started going through the hiring process for local school bus drivers. Think the first part is behind me and seemingly positively; the next step is the physical tomorrow, then getting my commercial license and going through training. By the middle of March, I expect to be driving a route! I also have an interview on Monday to work at the local recycling center. We will see how these events play out, how these potentialities unfold or retreat. All things are in the palms of God's hands. 

Yeah, that movie. I still plan to make it, and maintain my writing output, but life requires a backbone, patterns, routines, and most particularly, steady money coming in. Can't blithely live off the savings. Hopefully these jobs and opportunities will result in a weekly schedule that serves the community, puts enough cash in the till, and leaves me time and energy for endeavors creative and domestic. Can't involve myself the same way as I did in the last kitchen, which may well be the Last Kitchen. That's how I'm feeling now. If I absolutely have to return to food, I'll look for work at farms. Cooking ought be a home project for me henceforth.

Alright! Enough rambles! I finished that book about the Gospel and Sopranos. It kind of only got worse, but remained pretty good and quite readable. Then I started reading The Power of Myth, which is a conversation/interview between the legendary Joseph Campbell and the journalist Bill Moyers, recorded around the time the PBS series of the same name was being produced, later compiled and edited. It's awesome. Like, it's really fucking fantastic.

Cool. Cool. Even though I don't smoke anything anymore, because I am old, I remain with the feeling that compels me to say that it would be well to smoke marijuana on the daily, baby, party on. Really I just mean you can let yourself live life how you feel.

Peace!

--JL

#266

Working on a project. If God wills it, I can finish another project or two as I plug away steadily at this project, and also meet the responsibilities and challenges of everyday life. Demanding, but doable. It requires of me a certain concentration and drive, under prevailing conditions which must be met, and that life shit is sure a lot. So who knows the time it will take. I will endeavor. Oh, how I will endeavor.

This does mean I cannot make any promises about posting in the blog too often, or much effort when I do. Always something somewhere has to give. This universe has laws about balance. Also it's extra hard because I want to play a lot of video games right now. This, like reading, aids me tremendously survival-wise, but takes time.

So there's that! It's December. I wish my job was to cook fancy soup all day for approximately twice what I make now, ten fewer hours per week. That's my wish. If I weren't such a fucking idiot in so many ways I would absolutely be doing that right now, but I am who I am instead. Woop woop. Bam!

--JL

#262

Jesus Christ. Look, I'm fucking depressed, I'm buying a house, my job has provided me with enough to deal with given a surplus three of me--between the four of us, I would have no problems except for the other two problems I just mentioned plus all the other problems. 

But problems are not the issue, dear reader! As you know, I strive to be a man of solutions.

*

Reason I ain't been posting is really that I have been working at a feverish pace (well, as feverish as that paragraph one bullshit has allowed for) on the first print collection of the blog. As you know, I am all about value for money, so I have been giving the process of annotating the hallowed words that have come before in this sacred text field all my available energies. It is hoped that the results will please.

Okay. I am also playing a lot of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Thank you. Goodbye.

--JL

#226

Logitech. All these damn library keyboards are logitech keyboards and man, there is a reason they do not cost very much. They're pretty new, I haven't seen this iteration of their logo before, but logitech is just reliably shitty. One rung above the kinds of brands that only exist long enough for the upper management of the company to abscond with conned millions, leaving unpaid hourly workers and ripped-off consumers in their wretched wake. 

Dunno, maybe this new logo impresses a new durability. I will say that it does not equate to improved ergonomics.

*

There is that school of thought that implies that ripped-off consumers are a section of the free market that has only itself to blame for its gullibility. Maybe it's a correct claim, but it's not really a fair one. The problem is that even simple maxims like "you get what you pay for" don't fill your pocket, so the countertautology to that is "you get what you can afford to pay for". And now we are circling down the drain of total uselessness together, one of us thinking it is rad and cool to basically steal from poor people and is impressed with someone who knows how to pick low-hanging fruit and one of us can only gesture weakly at the notion that it is better to not do that, though there is no cogent reason not to. 

You are free to con whoever you want. A sucker is, after all, born every minute. But if you have balls, I don't know why you'd pick on suckers. I guess the same reason people climb mountains. But the creature derided as a sucker is much more often merely desperate, merely hungry, so the nobility of conquering an obstacle simply because it is there is absent, at least so far as I can see. Anybody can piss on a fucking anthill. Punching down doesn't make you anything but a bully and a louse, in my opinion, but I can't argue with the fact that the world will treat you like a champion and suck your dick for it.

*

Hey, I'm mad that my local library, one of the most well-funded in the nation for the size of the population that it serves, buys crappy cheap keyboards! There's like thirty computers in this area I'm sitting in, plus special fancy computers for the blind and deaf and otherwise differently abled in another part of the library, but I'm mad that I can't punch the keys. Do you see this, my cried river?

Fuck it. You should see the size of the monitor. Hella crisp display, too. Nobody gives a fuck about keyboards as long as they work and this is a rich person's library, even though they let homeless people chill in it.

If you're bitching, the bitch is usually you. Nine times out of ten, you are the bitch. So it goes. 

*

Been missing teaching, so after this post is done and I kill whatever time is left before they open the doors, I'm going to go down to the local youth center and see if they have any paid writing instructor positions that I qualify for. Got decent experience, much of it through the center itself, so chances are even. Most writers ditch this town, see. Most writers try to go where the action is supposed to be. My action is wherever I happen to be. So there is hope. I will probably volunteer if they can't pay me, but if I do that I'll either demand and receive a raise at work or I will find a kitchen that isn't being strangled by managerial incompetence (or outright sabotage, I can't decide which because they tend to look so similar) and pays an adult wage. 

There are dishwashers around here making two fifty an hour more than I get for prepping and cooking two hundred pounds of food a day on average, plus running the shift and making the schedule and doing part of the orders and stocking the orders and putting out fires and whatever fucking else needs to get done. I have mentioned having to clean human feces. 

What I am getting at is that the punishment I have felt it is necessary to take by working my job is feeling pretty much over. I am now feeling like my rent is punishment enough, and it should be easier to make enough dough to cover it.

This has been more bitching, and once again, I am probably the bitch. Time to change that situation, one way or the other.

*

Keep forgetting to roll myself an after-work joint. That is another thing that has to change. I mean, it's fine today, because I prefer to do interviews sober (I am a square like that) but damn. Not doing the post high takes a lot of flavor out of it, honestly. A lot of writers and artists would look down their noses at me for this, but fuck them. I'm here to have fun.

Smoke weed every day, children. Go to sleep stoned and wake up to get high. Tell your parents I said so.


--JL

#214

This year, the first of September, summer died all at once. Autumn was present immediately, with a finality and a completeness that startled, but with such correctness, such inarguable factuality, that the calmest sense of the harvest season blankets the spirit. 

Some grieve the end of summer, but autumn is far and away my favorite time of year, and it was a privilege indeed to be out and touched by its very first breeze of the year, complete with the first sparse and gentle fall of little yellow leaves.

Spent at least a couple hours outside almost every single day this summer like I do, also. Feel like I got a real good strong pull of the season's bottle all the way through, which helps very much with transitions. Transitions can be rough.

*

Yesterday on my usual Sunday double I sustained some real hardcore burns. That was the fun part. The main thing was I had to clean putrefied human feces and shit-impregnated compost from an upright plastic bin, the wheeled kind with a hinged lid. This was quite a process, during which I heated, carried, and poured about forty gallons of soapy water in stockpots. I also used pine floor cleaner. Why not bleach, or any disinfectant, Joseph? That is probably what you are asking.

Because of the kind of workplace I choose for myself (bleach is poison with no excusable human use in those circles, much like canola oil), there is no bleach on the premises. Probably for the best; should I have had some handy, I cannot guarantee I would not have poured undiluted it over my legs and feet when I lost control of the bin and released a tidal wave of rotten shitwater into the back alley, dousing everything below mid-shin. Then again, I would have felt considerably more confident I wasn't going to develop a staph infection in the time it took to finish the job, drive home, wash off, change pants, and drive back to close out the shift, which I did by shattering a  huge panel of safety glass on our salad bar--if there had been any bleach around. But there wasn't. 

Also a dude called off a three-person crew, so it was all suitably overwhelming. 

*

It's a fucking gorgeous autumn day. I'm having a rough time, but because of how bad yesterday was, today feels exultant and unquenchable, and would even if the light weren't golden, the breeze cool, the trees blushing beautifully, the sky that lightest evening blue, extra distant, extra keen.

Sometimes it's be thankful or die. I mean to stay thankful.

*

Picked up more Stephen King books on Saturday, as I read The Shining again and have never read Doctor Sleep, which was among the ones I had not yet grabbed. I saw the trailer for the upcoming movie when I went to see It: Chapter Two and it reminded me it'd been years since I reread The Shining, which used to be a favorite and which reliably made me mongo-freaked the living shitfuck out. That book is still a hellacious creepshow. It creeps. Thank heavens.

Loving Doctor Sleep so far. I had no faith that I would when it was released, but I was wrong, which is kind of always the consequence of lacking faith. Faith bears disappointment better than certainty, which is vanity in the first place. But it is amazing how consistently faith bears out; miraculous.

I need this book right now, in fact. With that magic pertaining to wonderful books, it waited till I needed it most. The feeling of needing a drink might be on me very strong right now, were it not for these two books. 

One year sober, folks. No one to give me a chip to carry on my keychain, no cake or candles, but I guess I can share that here. Actually it was a year back in August, but it don't matter.

'Course, I been sober for a year before. Haha! Staying thankful.

*

Anyway, the books:

Saturday

Doctor Sleep

Mr. Mercedes

End of Watch

Dolores Claiborne

The Institute

Sleeping Beauties

Today

Blockade Billy

And, other books not by Stephen King that I also obtained:

Saturday

At the Fights: American Writers on Boxing edited by George Kimball and John Schulan

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (recovery, given to my younger brother)

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

Today

Neuromancer, by William Gibson (recovery, given to my youngest brother)

The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents by Terry Pratchett

What is the What by Dave Eggers

The Kitchen God's Wife by Amy Tan

The Song of Roland translated by Frederick Bliss Luquiens, introduced by Nathan A. Smyth

The Waste Land and Other Poems by T.S. Eliot

Jangle the Threads by Scott Beal, Aracelis Girmay, and Rachel McKibbens

Empire Falls by Richard Russo

I Am the Messenger by Marcus Zusak (recovery, given to a friend a long long time ago feels like. I guess twelve maybe thirteen years is a long time but when I use the numbers it feels like less time. so weird)

Dragon of the Lost Sea, Dragon Steel, and Dragon War by Laurence Yep (I checked this series out from the library like a dozen times as a kid, I fucking love the shit out of them. Now I am heedlessly driven to obtain Dragon Cauldron, maybe the best of them and definitely the creepiest. I read that one the most as a kid, and was able to get my hands of Dragon Steel fewer times. The first and last of the series were around about the same frequency. I don't know why things just play out like this sometimes but there is always this kind of reverse play in life with stability mixed in. Wild)

Airborn by Kenneth Oppel

The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg, by Rodman Philbrick

After Dark, by Murakami Haruki
The Ruby in the Smoke, The Shadow in the North, and The Tiger in the Well, by Philip Pullman
Animorphs #51: The Absolute by K.A. Applegate

*

Been driving around a lot. I drive again, I guess. All part of the endless healing. Gonna go do that now.

Peace, you golden clits

--JL

#208

Hey, blogland! I took August off and it was fucking excellent for me. I read and bought so many books I’ll have to type up massive lists. Does that excite you? It makes blue steel of me, ladies and gentlemen. I could cut glass thinking about how things have gone with books this month.

Plus I quit smoking cigarettes again (been using the gum this time around), my computer appears to have destroyed all of my documents and I am tapping this out on my dad’s old iPad and do not know if I will be able to recover any of my projects in process (not the first time such a thing has befallen me, kind of a bummer but, forward, forward, always forward, not a glance backward!), and my heart is full of love. 

Also I work six days a week now with a scheduled double on the second day. It’s tiring but I know folks work way harder than that. I appear to be entering a time in life in which a sixty-hour workweek seems only right and proper. Feeling pretty strong, pretty lucky. There are far worse things than having plenty of work in front of you.

*

Yeah, this vacay was pretty necessary. Rediscovered some fundamentals in selfhood long-neglected and joyfully embraced. Remembered some stuff about myself. Sounds silly and simple, but it is frankly fucking amazing, fucking ridiculous what a person can forget, can let go of without realizing. 

More on that after I take two more weeks off! Bwahaaaaa! Tho long, thuckerth!

—JL

#192

Damn, doggies, a dude is tired from the day, and must wake early on the morrow, and would fain rest his head upon the pillow, but I bought a knife today, and that marks a day particular, so one feels bound to punch the record.

Forsooth!

*

When a dude drops two hundred of his own dollars after tax on a tool, which in his case equates to half of the average monthly rent he has paid throughout his adult life and close to seventeen hours of work before tax, it is natural and correct that he should feel it is a proper day to take stock of oneself, to see where one stands. 

What kind of man is this, that spends this kind of money on a knife? And then, of course, spends a hundred more on blade guards, a carrying case, and a paring knife to exactly match my new Wüsthof Classic Ikon 4596/23cm (nine cool inches of full-tang German engineering with that hybrid ergonomic handle for relaxed-grip comfort).

*

Well, it is a tool of my trade. I spent this money for work, which is special way of spending money on myself. It is not a hand-forged, unique carbon-steel masterpiece; it is not the dream knife that I am not even sure that I want. But it is time I had a knife for work that is mine, whose edge no one is allowed to scrape across a cutting board, which will not be stuck into an industrial dishwasher or run through a shitty hand-sharpener, a knife no disrespectful, careless, unprofessional-ass hand will ever fucking touch and therefore a knife worth caring for, care for which it will reward me with leal and untroubled service for years, and faithfully keep its edge for more than fifty fucking minutes after the knife guy brings the fucking freshly sharpened knives back to the kitchen after which each knife is a ketchup hammer to a tomato and cannot so much as leave a mark on the skin of an onion.

Also stainless steel is in now, the sharpening game has caught up to it and it is a perfect choice for the kind of kitchens I work in.

Most importantly, after trying a couple eight-inchers and pretty much resigning myself to just a basic work knife I would not really enjoy, the dude at the store (I chose a local vacuum store with a Wüsthof stock) asked if I wanted to try the niner, it being discounted in a damaged box and all. I could give a shit about the box (stainless, suckaz!) and gave it a shot. The moment I held it in my grip and felt the balance travel up my arm, I knew it was my knife, said wow out loud, and reached for my wallet.

It was like that with Stray Dog*, too. Some of the tools we encounter in life, well, we've all hurt ourselves and known in our heart of hearts that this one was not on us, this time the motherfucking tool came at us with evil intent and no one can convince us otherwise. I believe this is perfectly true; malice aforethought can  reside in the inanimate and tools, being made with purpose and thrown into the world to exist as vessels of purpose, quite naturally react as subjective individuals to the purpose of the user to varying degrees. Energy acts upon energy. Some groups of molecules come together and something lights up. This knife and I were meant to cut together, as Stray Dog and I were meant to do our thing.

People are kind of like this, too.

*

So what kind of dude is Joseph Lidd, on the day he meets his knife? A dude that got up at four in the morning after about three and a half hour's worth of sleep, walked the old five miles to work in his brother's birkenstocks, put breakfast out on a hot table, got so tired of the gee-dee work knives that he resolved out loud to go buy his own knife after work, put lunch out on a hot table, closed the hot table and pulled the leftovers and cleaned and closed his station, walked six blocks to a place to get a certain lovely lady of intimate acquaintance a welcome-home present (presents?) for when she returns from her overseas vacation to that most emerald of isles, walked a little over a mile to the vacuum store, thinking over the notion that this was it, hell or high water come crashing through the world he was going to walk into a store and drop more than one hundred and fifty dollars on a single object, which he did, and having accomplished these errands, walked the mile and bit back nearly to where he works; rather, cruised into the shoe store in front of his workplace, inquired after a pair he has under their charge for resoling, was told they would likely be ready in a few days, and walked home barefoot the five miles on the burning asphalt and cement, backpack loaded quite to the maximum healthy capacity, system perhaps not having been provided with quite the recommended calories for all of the above, mind and body full of the special clarity that comes with determining and carrying out acts demanding of such a blend of endurances undertaken for the purpose of tempering the body and mind like steel in the forge, of sharpening the self like a knife, until he got home, to the dog so glad to see him and his mother's good cooking which has made him strong, to his feet hurting like the proverbial son of a bitch and walking around extremely gingerly, to saying fuck it beautiful day let's do this thing let's not be done with this sun I still got more juice behind the hose, so he puts on socks, which hurt, and shoes, which also hurts, and he fills his backpack once more with clothes he's getting rid of as they are ruined by wear and tear and honest accident, walks them a mile and a half to those bins that are a tax scam but who can make themselves really give a fuck without enjoining upon themselves to also give a fuck about the invisible insects we cannot but crush underfoot or fret over the bacterial genocide which is the act of drawing breath**, walked a mile and a half back, pain completely forgotten, pushed aside by the natural medicine of continuing to walk and the ease of spirit that comes of listening to Blind Boy Fuller truckin' his blues away.

Hardly necessary as it is to add, nevertheless it should go on record that I periodically vaporized THC throughout all of this. I am a dude who does that stuff plus a bunch of other stuff I ain't got time or spare wherewithal to detail. I mean, like I said at the outset, I'm pretty beat.

--JL

*ideas like this are why I would make a poor Buddhist, which would nevertheless not prevent me from being an exemplary Buddhist, the great genius of this mode of spirit being that it should be impossible to tell if anyone is doing it correctly merely by observing, or even probing. For who would know the right questions, and still have to ask them?

Hoooooly fuck I gotta go to bed

Anyway I know there are better ways but like I said, can't care about everything all the time

bed

#154

Had kind of a weird little breakdown on shift yesterday. My job is physically demanding and my schedule is not the most humane for me sleep-wise, on top of all the walking, and I worked an extra consecutive day this week because months ago I requested today and tomorrow off to go to Chicago for a specific reason. This I chose not to do. Wisely, for the schedule change destroyed me and if I had gone, it would have been taking my system past the red lines, on top of all the good personal reasons not to go. Buying the train tickets was a mistake made out of a desire to force the universe to comply with my selfishness in wishing to rectify past mistakes. Gotta catch these things if you can, master yourself before you do any damage.

They say not fixing a mistake is a second mistake. I consider most mistakes incomplete; trying to fix them usually finishes the job.

But yeah, I hit a kind of wall yesterday. It was embarrassing for me. For all the people around me might think to the contrary, because I go out of my way to act tireless and robustly sane, I am a basic regular human in a body with physical limits and a pretty weird headspace. The act is essential for everybody; it's a morale thing. Yesterday it broke down a little. I cooked well and sold food and did my job all the way, but the cracks in the armor showed and you know what, fuck it, so it fucking goes and fuck it all anyway. I deserve an ounce of fucking slack once or twice a fucking year. Can't believe I've put any energy into feeling bad about this.

Every day I take on psychic burdens and extra labor to make sure everyone around me feels safe and good and I'll be god damned if I let myself feel bad because my equipoise slipped some for a little bit one day.

*

Started reading some early essays of Derrida's today, which I haven't checked out before. Made me want to revisit Kierkegaard. So it begins.

Good. I need to lose myself in the hard shit.


--JL

#133

Postscript for yesterday: basically I think we have an endemic cultural resentment towards the times that we live in and the centuries that brought us here, and suffer from a combination of mass resignation and mass olfactory revolt, which makes us useless, embattled, neurotic, desperate for absolution we don't believe is real, chronically ill, constantly sorry for ourselves, and either insufferable to each other or lost in another. 

What we need around here is amor fati, and to strengthen our fucking stomachs. That is all. We are each and every one of us lucky to be alive and lucky to be facing the challenges that we are facing. We are lucky to have the opportunity to be the smartest, strongest individuals that have ever lived free and we are lucky to have such great and terrible psychic and material obstacles to overcome. We are lucky to have problems of this complexity and breadth to tackle, lucky to have to deal with such a cacophony of ideas, lucky to have skin in this game. It is a blessed fate. 

Die trying.

*

As for me and my time these days, I've just been smoking all the cigarettes I can fit into my craw. Disgusting myself in general. Living at least thirty percent of each waking hour in the past, reflecting on the wherefores, flows, dynamics, and details of how I have fucked up. Working hard.

Been raising some strong Pokémon. There is always deep satisfaction in this pastime. Also the chiptunes and sprites of Blue Version take me back to the past in a different, much more pleasing way.

*

It's okay to be having a bad time. Lucky to have that, too, frankly.


--JL

#124

Worked a double yesterday! Had a pretty good shift. There are always a few good seconds in even the grimmest of shifts at the worst of workplaces, in my experience--and after eleven-plus years of swapping stories and accruing the misery that is the right to tell them, I can say I've worked some dark, truly regrettable shifts in my time. My spirits were up pretty much the whole time yesterday, which is really an incredible gift when you think about it. Lucky stuff.

*

Having bookshelves again has disrupted my life considerably. My room is in somewhat of a transition phase. To bring about form, to trend towards order and organization and hold a pattern, the universe must undergo changes. Changes are chaotic and disruptive. Patterns are never perfect in their repetition. Forms, never identical, interact. This is the paradox that describes being and time.

*

Well, I boiled it down a lot.

*

My room is a mess. Difficult to concentrate.

*

Perspective truly is the only thing that has any chance of saving your life.

Might as well throw that into the pool, while I'm casually saying whatever.

*

Okay, peace. I want to play some video games before I go to work, and also read, and have some nutrition. Again, peace. Peace out.


--JL

#100

One hundred is not important to me. But! I think the end of double-digit posts is wild; a brief, frenzied infancy. It is wild that the posts will be three-digit posts for a long time to come. Feel no pressure to write anything special for such an occasion, though. 

Matter of fact, the only reason there's a post at all is I really don't like going more than three days without putting something up. I'm tired. It was negative twenty-two degrees Fahrenheit this morning as I walked into my seventh straight shift. I have really used up a great deal of human energy over the last seven-day period. A great variety of expenditures in a great variety of fields. Many returns and gains, of course. Life. Exhausting in its quotidian richness. 

Oh! And I don't have to work that eighth day. I am okay with that.

*

I said this out loud to my coworkers, duly warning them that it was going to be pretentious: one excellent perspective is to take as much comfort in paradox as in tautology. 

*

See? I think that's the optimal amount of sparkle and palaver required celebrate the hundredth post, though, pray: no one pretend that I am any better than a fool, that I am ever more right than I am wrong or more knowledgeable than I am ignorant. May peace born of what understanding we may foster reign over all humankind, and may we one day come to know one another as we really truly are.


--JL