stream of consciousness

  • books: The Long Earth – Terry Pratchett / Stephen Baxter

    what sorts of books i read: on books

    i was wandering the local library here downtown looking for something that tickled my fancy. i stumbled across the P’s in the scifi section and Sir Pratchett did indeed tickle me.

    goofy concept, that i wish was real. the internal logic for the book was consistent enough, and made for some harrowing mental images in the ending scenes. nothing made me laugh out loud like usual Pratchett books, but the writing kept me engaged all the same. as soon as i was done, i returned it for the next in the series, consider me hooked.

    id give it 5.5 steps out of 7

  • videos: Daniel Schmachtenberger l An introduction to the Metacrisis l Stockholm Impact/Week 2023

    my intent with video posts: on videos

    i rewatch this video every few months. it is an absolute gutpunch i feel like everyone should experience. it feels like a cold splash of water to the face and then an impending depression episode or anxiety attack depending on which flavor you lean into.

    “what is the point of people inducing depressive episodes?”

    in the close of the video he answers the question (im going off memory its not verbatim): “how do people deal with this information and not become depressed”?

    he answers to the effect of this – the depression is a signal your body sends you, that something is deeply wrong. it is wrong, you should feel like its wrong, it is a legitimate response. lean into it, and trust it. what society should not be encouraging right now is more complacency in the face of crisis.

     

     

     

  • on videos

    i intake a ton of content thru video format. it wont necessarily be thru the video portion itself, i use youtube like a podcast service most of the time. but a lot of my beliefs are forged in thought listening to lots of other people. i hope to share some of my favorite, most meaningful videos that impacted me in hopes that they can trigger some thought in you.

    i expect the pages for specific videos to update over time. new thoughts at different timestamps. ill try and honor keeping my original thoughts in place while updating where my thought it later on.

  • on music

    i am an unabashed music hipster. my taste in music is weird and i go out of my way to keep things that way in general. i wont share every little song that tickles my fancy, but ill try to share things i find special. a lot of my favorite songs ive found thru the use of private music blogs, so i aim to try and feed back into that cycle of finding hidden gems.

  • on books

    im not a reader with a bottomless appetite, i read at night before i go to bed almost exclusively. i usually only chew threw maybe 10 pages or so a night unless im really getting threaded. what im trying to say is im a notch or two above illiterate. those 3 sentences are the TL;DR for this post.

    i would buy books i wanted myself to read. many lofty intentions were had. i would want myself to read Leviathan, The Brothers Karamazov, or Thus Spake Zarathustra.

    i looked like a real galaxy brain type. i would pass the “if they have no books, dont have sex with them” test and would be swimming in sexual encounters. only if they did not ask me anything about said books on the shelf though, because lo, those books were not read.

    ive seen it called protein reading, and its what i continued to try and manhandle into my life. some books i was able to force myself thru and they became my favorites. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance comes to mind, but these were few and far between. i honestly think it may just be that one.

    it really started to shift around when i read Kurt Vonnegut with Cats Cradle. its fast paced, its dark, its funny, it kept me engaged thru to the end. at least on my 3rd attempt to read it over 10 or so years. i realized that books werent just slogs to be endured, but could actually be sorta fun sometimes kinda maybe.

    i started reading more of Vonnegut’s books. i started branching out, got into the Wheel of Time series with The Color of Magic. i bought Mort shortly thereafter and started reading it to my wife before bed, would do the voices and everything like my mom used to do for me as a kid. it was fun for us both.

    ive since branched off in a few different styles. i still have some protein reading that i swear to god ill finish someday (im looking at you Jung’s Red Book), i hope i do. as of now, im firmly in my “i dont care what they say about you books, your actually pretty alright” stage.

    over time i hope to post little blurbs or reviews on the media ive read.

  • return to monke

    i just bought a used 1996 chevy c1500. 5.7L vortec engine, extended cab (but no 3rd door). its unmolested in it not being lifted, lowered, or generally messed with. strong grandpa vibes. it looks like this, but its darker blue.

    i am quite excited to have a truck to do truck things like haul dirt, pay too much in gas, and generally be invisible from the police. my wife named it Huckleberry Finn. i will call him Huck.

    as i was limping around Huck, getting off my crutches to crawl underneath him, looking under the hood, i was amazed at how straight forwards all the maintenance looks like it will be to perform on him. im so used to tightly packaged vehicles, cut hands, tons of electronic sensors, and computers reporting my music tastes to the NSA.

    it reminded me of why i refuse to buy any vehicle newer than a 2010. it reminded me of why consumer electronics are such a nightmare to troubleshoot now. how products are designed for ease of manufacture over the longevity of the product. being a manufacturing engineer myself, its a really dirty feeling knowing im often on the wrong side of that equation.

    the older i get the more i just want to farm.

  • why is there a website here?

    i miss the old internet. i miss stumbling on peoples personal corners of the world. sometimes tightly themed, sometimes pages that are only barely related. the only common link is the persons brain putting it all there.

    im hoping to do something similar here. bits of media of various forms that i found interesting, shower thoughts, things of that nature. i hope its vaguely interesting, but its more for me than it is you.

  • first post

    testing testing 123

    “wow, he really has no clue what he’s doing, does he?”

    that is correct.