#268

Well, it's the new year. 2022 is quite a number. I was born at the tail end of the eighties, almost 1990; to my parents, the year 2000 was the distant future, but I was eleven years old the year 2000. Now, and only now, have we reached year numbers that sound as space-agey to me as 2003 did to the author of Achewood on the morning of that year. It tracks; he was thirty-two or thirty-three at the time, and I am thirty-two now.

Yes, I think about Achewood literally all the fucking time, in all kinds of weird contexts applicable mostly or exclusively to myself. A friend of mine does the exact same thing with One Piece, and never you mind whether you know it as well as he does (placing you in a firm minority worldwide, by my lights), liked it but don't remember which pirate ate what devilfruit or uses only kicks in combat, or even know what One Piece the fuck is--my boy will explain at length, for as long as it takes, until you understand what he means and why he made the brain connection he just made or until you walk away from him. He is also like this about Dungeons and Dragons.

Me, I can be like that too. Specifically, about Lord of the Rings, Achewood, Star Wars, Legend of Zelda, Pokémon, Twin Peaks, Bleach, Animorphs, and Sopranos. Also, Mountain Goats lyrics. These are the fundamental pillars of my cultural being, and I can connect their payload to anything in the world, so far as I know. Deeply autistic about a lot more stuff than just those things, way more and very varied, but those are the things I can always thought-step over to at any given moment in a single effortless motion. Technically, also Jesus Christ plus the Word and Immanence of God, but that's like, superluminal and supraliminal and not really subject to what I'm talking about here. It might be more informative to discuss runners-up and materials which are very very nearly in that top-tier zone, such as Jurassic Park, the works of Friedrich Nietzsche, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Gabriel García Márquez, Charles Bukowski, Kurt Vonnegut, Ursula K. LeGuin, James Baldwin, Haruki Murakami, and a dozen or twenty more, why not; bestiaries scientific and mythical and other books by naturalists, A Song of Ice and Fire, Halo, Dune (Frank Herbert books only, and also, other books by Frank Herbert), Unsounded, Ancient Greek, Roman, and Chinese classics, fairy tales and myths worldwide (special mention to King Arthur), buncha superhero shit, the other works of David Lynch, and for fuck's sake all of this shit is too much and no one cares. I choose to end this paragraph here, and move on. I'm into a lot of shit. This barely touches comics, or nineties cartoons. 

An exhaustive list of the shit I could autistically and realistically talk about for hours could drive a regular person fucking insane. In ancient times I would be considered nothing short of a madman, a wizard, or an alien. That's just how brains are, mine and everybody else's. Some people's brains make them suitable only for statesmanship, or physically torturing other people, things which would drive regular people, to varying degrees, fucking insane. In modern times, we are all insane, and therefore suitable for a wider variety of roles with less meaning and durability than in properly organized societies.

There is no need for me to discuss any of the material extant in the preceding paragraphs with strangers for entertainment or clout, since such discussions rage in my subconscious eternally and satisfy me tremendously on a personal level. Don't need to win about it at anyone, though I'm of course happy to talk about it face-to-face with people who want to (never online, never, ever). The complete selves in me which have recorded every scrap of information I have ever been exposed to about the underlined material and related interpretative material constantly grow and give input to my ur-self about my life, other creative works, the world at large, memetic generation, everything. It would be fair to state that my opinions and ideas relating to these topics are, speaking concisely, developed. And, still developing. The process will end with my death, maybe. If it does not, I will be quite well-pleased to carry on indeterminately. 

*

Good digressions today, dear reader, good mental flexibility, but getting back to the fact that it is a new year, I have to go do life in it, and there's more than enough words in this post. Maybe I'll do that thing where I finish talking about what I started talking about in the next post, and maybe I won't.

All I know is that we are in another year and anything fuckin goes, baby. Who knows what'll happen. Only the Good Lord and the wargamers, know what I mean? 

PAT YOURSELVES ON THE BACK BITCHES WE DID ANOTHER LAP

ONE MORE LAP

ONE MORE LAP

UNTIL THE SUN EXPLOOOOOOOOODES

--JL

#267

Life is ever full of surprising blessings. Never would I have imagined that parting ways with a company over the ethics of my job the week of Christmas could be one of them, but it's such a classic trope that I find myself chuckling about it over and over. What a joke. 

Entirely my own decision anyway. Saw it as a definite probability when I took the job. That it should happen this week, under the circumstances that it had to happen under, is added layers to the joke of having to make so damn sure to myself of being right and doing the right thing that I would literally let myself be fired on purpose the week of Christmas just to prove a point. Just to be able to say that I tried everything and be honest. To prove I'm not a liar to liars to who do not give a fuck if I lie or tell the truth, I practically made them fire me, and they don't give a fuck Christmas or no Christmas and never have. Hilarious.

Anyway. Fuck all that nonsense. It's over. Kept my word and did what I thought and felt was right. If I feel like I could have or should have done more, that's my own weird brain problem. I went in at three in the morning at one point and stayed till three in the afternoon.

Last night I slept better than I have in months, maybe over a year. That shit was killing me, and only me. Let it be done.

For my part, I like Christmas and try to keep in my heart the year round. Happy to not be working this week. If the advantage of being an idiot is literally sleeping easier, I'll take it as a win.

*

Ok, so I wrote that first part six days ago, then shambled away from my monitor, loathing myself and the very concept of recording so-called human progress. 

Currently, today, the 27th of December, one full week after I lost my job, I am very close to doing the same thing, so that's that. Guess I'll bang out some sentences quick as I can while there's a degree of warmth in my blood.

Sleep continues to be better. I have typed that. It's sort of a sentence. Now I'm gonna take a shit, make more coffee, and smoke some weed. Maybe I'll finish this post after that.

*

Holy crap! It went just like I said it would. I took a shit and lived to type about it, which is great--you always hear and read about someone dying on the toilet because the process was in some way too much for their system that one time out of the many thousands, due to whatever circumstance. Every successful bowel movement is truly something to be grateful for. 

Christmas was pretty wonderful. Good to be with family. Good to have it be Christmas. I don't think so much about the birth of Christ as incident or general whatever come Christmas these days; I did as a child, of course, living in a culture that drilled the significance of the point home with a lot of emphasis--Christ was born. Later in the year, we discuss his death. Thus we remind you and give you to understand that all men live, and die, and in this particular case, live eternally after death, whatever that may be like, whatever that will be. 

What I think about these days is: there is birth, there is death, and there is Mystery, which our small lives witness and investigate but can never, individually, fully illuminate. In this dark universe, we all rely on light, which is what this celebration is all about; making a sacrifice of some kind to our hope that light will continue to shine. Light is God, and what is God in us is light. On this world of ours, we cast a light in the darkness, shining in our togetherness, in our apartness, in our joy and our despair. 

Been in something of a haze since being out of work. I felt extremely depressed about it, and everything. Feeling a little better, and this week I will try to get a job. Start with something I don't really care about, probably. Who knows, though.

Ok, I gotta make breakfast. Time to be done with this post and wait for the next one.

Peace on Earth, past Earth, beyond all limits

--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

#265

Wonder if I ought to recover the twitter account I attached to the running of this blog, way back when. 'Twas only good for a couple hits a day, and twitter literally breaks my fragile mind, but it is ahead on page one google search of my actual author page on amazon, where my content lives. The top result on google relating to me and my activities is post number twenty-seven, where I mentioned Google+ and Blogger in the same sentence. Soon this post, too, will enjoy unwarranted spotlight action. Ha! 

Man, visiting twitter in order to inform this decision was like briskly rubbing a sheaf of sandpaper across my bare abdomen. One clean stripe of burning, unnecessary pain. I have said my piece about twitter in this text field, don't need to go over it all again. Some would say it would be hypocritical of me to even consider using twitter to garner readership or communicate ideas, given what I have said about their foul dark magics in the past.

In fact, I feel quite unfettered. Twitter's brand of petty evil is exactly the sort whose combat momentum is best thwarted by the gymnastic of hypocrisy. Of course, this gives one pause to wonder if that is not yet another level in the basement of their cruel and barbarous factory. Naturally, one does need a twitter account in order to criticize twitter on home turf, in order to win the hearts and minds of those afflicted by twitter most directly. 

The account does serve as the blog's alt text, which makes it an archive, and since it does already exist, and since I--wait. No. As information addict, as twitter addict, as completionist--all these truths about myself in their competition and complicity cried out together just now, and the answer must, can only be, no. That way lies madness and personal demise.

Last time I talked about twitter was that long, long Sinfest post, a post basically also about twitter, and way too much other shit. Drove across every goddamn lane I could in that post. Not sorry, but it was indeed something of an act of ridiculous lunacy, and the most exaggerated overtures in that direction were fueled by looking at twitter for all of five fucking minutes. Brain poison. The answer is no. Been sounding like an asshole up in here. No.

If only I could close that account. Such a thing, in this day and age, is impossible; moreso because I have forgotten and lost the relevant access data. So hey, this whole thing has been a total wash.

*

Read the title of the blog one more time, motherfuckers, and have a happy turkeygobble day; good day for shoving that turkeybird up in your gobblehole

--JL

*originally was going to write a post about something else entirely. I've forgotten what that was now twice as I loaded up the text field. Hmm. Well, it's nice to be here again. Always happy to be with you for even one moment more, dear reader. 

Oh! I was going to discuss how sometimes I feel as though the way the blog repeats itself and revisits certain topics again and again and again is in one way something of a failure, speaking in terms of pure creative fertility. Here in this text field I have been extremely disparaging of the Achewood man, the man of Achewood, for basically quitting the strip because he didn't want to plow any furrowed ground, and of course I am disparaging of him because I am of a similar bent in my nature. Aware that there is nothing new to be written here under the sun, nevertheless the compulsion is to offer freshness, dammit. Cooking requires base parts which, at the time you do something to them with the intent of transforming them into an ingredient, must be fresh. It doesn't matter if we are talking about a tomato, an idea, or the idea of a tomato; even the idea a tomato might have. What matters is the freshness of the ingredient, and of course what technique you apply to deliver the payload, which is flavor. Flavor is everything, everything, fucking everything.

Musically speaking: there are only eight notes. With eight notes we must make infinite multiverses of permutations. Repetition is integral to permutation, and without pattern, there is only meaninglessness, which is only interesting and valid in the context of that which has meaning. So, in the end, I have to say to myself whatever, I don't care if I repeat myself for seventy years. Who cares about playing the same song every day. Everything is in how the chord is played in this newly minted and never-before lived moment, the little improvisations, the age of the strings, the little variations in the pressure of the fingers and the stroke and tension of the arm. Do birds worry about repeating themselves? They sing every morning and maybe it's identical and maybe it's completely different each time, but at the day it's fuckin birdsong, which is what it is, and what more do you want.

What you do can be the same, but the way that you do it, who you are and what you bring, that's different every day like it or not, and being as aware of that and the necessity of that, the structure of arcs and loops and wheels and parallels that make up our lives except when it all comes crashing down around us, or when we leap off the rails and throw ourselves into formlessness that will either develop fresh structure out of itself or be our demise--that is what makes existing within the structure of repetitious fractals bearable and even majestic. 

Yeah, whatever. Maybe I've said all this before, in so many ways. I think of posts I've written where I discuss helical structures diametrically opposing one another yet both essential to the superstructure of reality, of posts I wrote about the world being a forest, the universe as forest, of reality composed of infinite simultaneously disrupted and flawlessly perfect spheres, simultaneously homogenous in their perfection and representing spectra ranged between two poles. Or it's all the layers and angles of bismuth, levels and levels and spars and spars, regular and varied. Or everything being part of an infinite and infinitely expanding and collapsing crystal structure, irrationally perfect and not even real, but the only reality there is.

Again, whatever. So fucking what? Who gives a shit how long a scene is, to paraphrase David Lynch? I get off on writing that kind of shit. I get off on writing. As long as that's true, I'll churn out whatever weird crap I want and sell it by the pound.

All this by way of saying, apologies to the Achewood man for being a jerk to him (indirectly) about his choices. They are, of course, his own to make, as all our choices do be also.

#264

So, couple days before I wrote the last post I sent Factually Pointless vol. I off to print. So disgruntled and tired was I that the critical wherewithal to mention it was fully lacking, even up to this moment. And what does it matter? Not one particle of a fuck, dear reader. Nil.

Anyway if you're one of those people that loves to pay for what they can have for free (barring footnotes, which does add that wonderful metatextuality that some readers [me] crave), click this here shit. It's not on my author page yet. Hope that happens soon? Publishing through a megacorporation that doesn't give a cold damn in winter about what you write (at least, I haven't run into any problems, and I use plenty of cuss words and wacky notions) grants a beautiful and heady freedom, but with freedom comes a near-total relinquishing of control that is the comfortable provender of traditional publishers. How could I ever possibly be empowered to make them do jack-all? I don't know, and I happen not to give a hot damn in summer, either. It's all just fucking words. Literal sex words, over as they happen. Here today, gone tomorrow. 

Fucking and writing: two things ostensibly done for the sake of posterity, of ennobling and significant continuity, but in actuality just done on the white-hot wire of the moment for the pure animal deep kick.

*

Poof. Vanished! 

--JL 

#263

The sum of the digits of 11/21/2021 happens to be nine, and expressed as 11/21/21, the sum is seven, which makes this an extremely powerful day. Anyone turning nine this year may be in for a hell of a run around the calendar, one for the record books. A seventh son born on this day could very easily one day rule the shattered remnants of this suicidal planet, and raise it from its sad ashes. 

Of course the practicable significance of all this is zero. We will one day wake from all this ridiculous nonsense as though from a dark and distant dream.

*

Till then, whatever entertains us, even for a second! Amirite? Is not entertainment our true God, venerated in the one true Temple? Always think how entertainment is just entrainment with a twist.

If only we had the freedom to think about something else, do something, anything. But that would run counter to our training. We are at our most profitable when receiving programming, going from training to training, in actual pain when not being actively stimulated by familiar patterns, resolutions, endorphin packets.

*

Ok, whatever. Punchline goes here. Signing off. Russ Crowe in Gladiator meme. Right? Yes. Cool. Bye.

--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