Michael Nathan Walker

Hello internet. Again. 🙂

Just in case you’re part of the 99.999% of all humans who have never read anything from my blog before, allow me to take you on a brief tour:

There are (currently) five major categories of articles (Books, Humor, Movies/TV, Philosophy, and Politics), although there is significant carry-over from one category to the other. Some of the “humor” articles have political references, some of the “politics” articles have jokes, etc.

Also, it should be noted that “Philosophy” is more or less my default category. I used it in place of “Musings” or something, I suppose, and many of the articles in that category are just me rambling about whatever happened to be on my mind at the time. You may have noticed that this article is categorized as “Philosophy,” well, that’s just my go-to category.

I am not a philosopher, is what I am telling you. And I don’t really have a well-defined “personal philosophy,” but it’s somewhere along the materialist spectrum, though I am not sure exactly where.

Perhaps you can tell me… here are a couple of “musings” I wrote that at least use the word “materialism” in them:

Here’s the first one…

And here’s the second one.

Moving on, my “personal philosophy” also includes a heaping dose of nihilism, but I would not describe myself as a “nihilist” per se. I.e. I agree that morality and “meaning” and that sort of thing are not an intrinsic part of human existence, but that is not (is *not*) to say that I don’t place any value on morality, nor do I contend that life has no meaning.

On the contrary, I contend that morality and “meaning” are two of the most valuable things about life as a human, it’s just that each individual person has to work those things out for themselves. People aren’t born with moral values encoded into their DNA, I mean. Morals are things people are taught by other people, and they vary significantly from culture to culture and person to person.

My own sense of morality was taught to me by my parents, grandparents, other relatives, friends, and so on as a child. And after that, by various books I’ve read, TV shows and movies I have watched, people I have interacted with from different backgrounds than mine, and even through music I listen to.

That particular song (click the link in the previous paragraph) helped me distill my own sense of morality down to one question, one I ask myself whenever I consider any issue, whether it’s a political issue or whether it’s something mundane, like whether to kill a non-poisonous spider I find in the house or just catch it and take it outside. That question is, quite simply:

“Does this cause harm?”

In the case of a non-poisonous spider coming into my house, the spider itself is not causing any harm, beyond giving me a temporary surprise/scare when I first see it. But ignoring it could lead to a spider infestation in my house, which could potentially be harmful… or at least gross.

So, the way I see it, this non-poisonous spider is not causing any harm now, but just leaving it alone *could* cause harm later. So naturally, I want to get rid of the spider.

So what should I do? I see two options:

1. Squash the spider.

2. Catch the spider (these things work amazingly well, btw) and take it outside.

Both of these options eliminate the potential harm of a spider infestation, but are both of these options harmless?

No. Option 1 snuffs out the life of a harmless spider, who didn’t do anything other than startle me. Option 2 gives that spider a chance to set up shop elsewhere and perform its tiny little spider function of catching and eating insects, who, unlike the harmless spider, may end up biting me.

So squashing the spider directly harms the spider, and has the potential to harm me. There’s no way I know of to calculate the actual odds that a spider I don’t squash will end up catching a mosquito (e.g.) that would end up biting me (those odds are pretty low, I would imagine), nonetheless, that spider can’t catch anything if I squash it. And mosquitoes carry diseases, in case you forgot.

As a matter of fact, I caught the non-lethal strain of malaria from a Korean mosquito years ago. Needless to say, it was not a pleasant experience. Maybe I will tell you about it some time. 🙂

So anyways, I generally try not to squash spiders that aren’t harmful to humans. Though I don’t hold anything against anyone who does, for the record.

Getting back to the point, my “philosophy” posts aren’t always about philosophy. But I like to at least tell myself that my own “personal philosophy” bleeds through, and that the reader will at least get some semblance of it as they read. The things I write about are meaningful to me, and hopefully they’ll find their way to at least a reader or two who can also derive some meaning from them.

Back to my flirtations with nihilism: the things that I find “meaningful” are only “meaningful” because I find meaning in them. On some level or other, I choose to assign “meaning” to them, or else they remind me of other things or people that have given my life meaning.

I regret that I can’t write the previous paragraph any better than that. I am not a philosopher, to repeat yet again.

I’m not a bad cook, though.

And since this particular aspect of my personal philosophy is also political, now is the perfect time to mention that I am also a feminist, and as I mention in the linked article, I don’t ever expect anyone to talk me out of that, though you are welcome to try.

For all practical purposes, I am a Democrat. In my personal life, I definitely have libertarian leanings, but I do not support the Libertarian Party in any way, shape, or form. (See here and here.)

That second article is one that could fit into the “humor” category (unless you support the Libertarian Party, I guess), but none of that stuff is inaccurate. Exaggerated a little, maybe (*maybe*), but not inaccurate.

And yeah yeah yeah, I know: not everybody who votes Libertarian just does it because they want “legal weed” or whatever. But there are a great many Libertarian voters who were attracted to the party because of things like that who don’t realize that the LP’s economic policies are further to the right than those of the GOP.

And just in case you didn’t realize this, DEMOCRATS are responsible for marijuana decriminalization, nine times out of ten. Gary Johnson’s medical marijuana initiatives in New Mexico were significant, but that goofy-looking SOB is also a big supporter of private prisons, which incarcerate thousands and thousands (and thousands and thousands) of non-violent pot offenders.

So yeah, I am a Democrat. And I am all for legal weed, for the record. And yeah, I have something of a personal vendetta against the Libertarian Party: they tricked me into supporting them briefly a few years ago. I went around telling people I was a “Libertarian” without really looking into their actual platform, and I am willing to bet there are a lot of people like that.

As to the Green Party, strictly going on ideology, I am probably a little more closely aligned to them than I am the Democratic party. But I can’t support them in good conscience because, quite simply, they have no chance whatsoever of making any sort of actual impact on the nation… other than (like the LP) taking votes away from Democrats.

Here’s another key aspect of my “personal philosophy”:

Ideology < practicality.

For example, the Green Party and I would both like to see single-payer universal healthcare become a reality in the USA. The Green Party and I agree that the ACA is far from ideal, in that it maintains a largely unnecessary (and arguably parasitic) corporate entrenchment in people’s lives.

Ideologically, the Green Party and I agree on the healthcare issue. But practically speaking, the ACA enabled millions of people in the USA to get healthcare when they had been denied it before. And practically speaking, for me to vote Green in the last election would have put those people’s healthcare in jeopardy, simply because a vote for the Green party would have been ipso facto a vote against whichever major party ended up losing the election.

Let me explain that:

There were four candidates in the 2016 election. Only two of those candidates (Trump and Clinton) ever had any chance of winning. I know that, you know that, and every American voter with any connection to reality knows that.

But before I start ranting and raving like my cousin Ronald, let me just provide a graph with 2016 election data and go from there.

President Trump got 46.4% of the popular vote. Clinton got 48.5% of the popular vote. Trump won because of how the electoral college works.

Just for the record, no, I am not going to blame third party voters for Trump’s victory, even though I am well aware of the results of Arizona, Florida, Michigan, and possibly other states that went to Trump by a narrow margin, where that margin was smaller than the percentage of third party voters. Johnson got way more votes than Stein in all those states, and to assume a Libertarian Party supporter would vote Democrat over Republican is a seriously misguided assumption. LP economic policies are not all that different from Trump’s, whether Libertarian voters like it or not.

As a sidenote, pay attention to how my “ideology < practicality” statement is essentially reversed in that article; i.e. the author admits that LP goals are being realized under Trump but insists that his personal ideology insulates him from being compared to Trump, and that simply because the author defines Trump as “aggressive,” that means he can’t be a Libertarian. But I will save that rant for another post. 🙂

Getting back to numbers, let’s ignore the electoral college for now and just think about a hypothetical election with four candidates, one where two of the candidates have no chance whatsoever of winning. For convenience’ sake, let’s just say that there are only 100 voters voting in this election, and we’ll round off Trump’s percentage to 46 and Clinton’s to 49. The remaining 5 votes will be split between the other two candidates. And just to avoid confusion (since the winner of the popular vote in 2016 isn’t President), let’s just call the candidates A, B, C, and D.

Follow me? OK:

Candidate A has 49 votes. Candidate B has 46 votes. Nobody has voted for C or D yet, let’s say, but the five people who haven’t voted haven’t decided who they will vote for, and none of those 5 voters wants to vote for A or B. All 100 people are required to vote in this scenario.

Assuming that the 5 remaining voters vote for candidate C or D, candidate A will win the election. And while those 5 votes were made with the intent of supporting candidate C or D (and made in good faith), the practical effect of those votes is to support candidate A’s victory.

It’s not quite the same as “support,” but it isn’t quite the same as non-support, either. If, hypothetically, candidate B is ideologically closer to candidate C or D, supporters of candidate C or D *could* have voted for candidate B, and thereby put a candidate in office that would support at least *some* of the things they cared about.

Look, I apologize for going on and on about this. If it wasn’t something that happens over and over again in presidential elections in this country, I wouldn’t flipping have to keep going on and on about it.

The sad truth of the matter is that *if* Donald Trump is still President in 2020 (and he probably will be) and *if* he runs for re-election (and he probably will), chances are he’s going to win.

I am basing that assumption on the fact that Republican voters vote Republican no matter what…

And also on the fact that “the left” is hopelessly divided in this country.

And during that election, there *will* be third party candidates, and they *will* be telling you, the voter, to “vote your conscience” when you go into the polls.

I would absolutely encourage you to do exactly that, with one addendum:

Voting third party (i.e. supporting a candidate with no chance of winning) in an important election, one that will have a huge impact upon the nation, is not “voting your conscience.”

It’s voting your ego.

Yuh-huh, it is, too.

And that’s all I am going to say about that right now.

Moving on:

To say that I have a weird sense of humor would be an understatement. I mean that sincerely. I have been told I have a “dry” sense of humor many times in my life, and more than one person has compared me to Stephen Wright, though that’s more due to my general low-key demeanor than anything else. (He’s way funnier than me, is what I am telling you.)

Anyways, I find funny what I find funny. I think this is hilarious, and I think the same thing about this.

You may not find either of those things funny… and if you don’t SCREW YOU!

(That was a joke. Humor is subjective. Tee-hee.)

Moving on to “Books”:

I haven’t written as much in this category as I should have. I spend more time than I should watching TV and playing on the internet, and not enough time reading books. Nonetheless, every now and then I guess that’s a good thing. Or maybe it’s not. I still haven’t written part one of this series, which is going to be me reviewing a novel I wrote.

Yep, I wrote a novel. You ought to check it out; it’s pretty good, if I do say so myself.

And on to the last category, probably my personal favorite category, “Movies/TV”.

The last couple entries in this category have been a little haphazard. But there are a couple I really like, such as this one about M*A*S*H and also this one about a Korean monster movie with political overtones.

My next “Movies/TV” post will (tentatively) be an informal Marxist critique of the Canadian comedy series Trailer Park Boys. Emphasis on “informal”.

And before anyone who didn’t click the “Marxist critique” hyperlink in the last paragraph gets confused, no, I am not a communist. All I plan to do regarding Trailer Park Boys is take a largely superficial look at the socioeconomic aspects of the show, how Ricky, Julian, and Bubs et alia function in the arguably minarchist environment of Sunnyvale Trailer Park, and how Sunnyvale relates to the rest of Canada, etc.

It’s going to be fun… at least for me, ha ha.

And if anybody is wondering why I intend to inject politics into an awesome and funny show like Trailer Park Boys, first of all, I am not injecting or otherwise putting politics into anything. Politics are already there, I just intend to take a look at them and tell you what I see.

Everything is political, on one level or another. Including apathy toward politics.

So anyways, thanks for reading, and I hope to see you in the comments section. For the record, I allow all comments from actual people. I delete spambot comments, but I allow literally everything else, including personal insults against me.

So… if you read something here that just really makes you mad, don’t hesitate to say so.

Have fun!

So, in my most recent blog post, I sort of obliquely discussed the philosophy of materialism.

I would have to do more research to confirm this, but the type of “materialism” I was referring to in that post most resembles dialectical materialism, but I am not confident that I would necessarily agree with everything in that particular philosophy.

In fact, what I am talking about might better be described as physicalism rather than materialism. I am honestly not sure.

At any rate, what I was (and am) talking about is the idea that everything in the universe is explainable through “material” or “physical” terms. And yes, that includes all types of “spiritual” and/or “supernatural” experiences.

My use of “quotation marks” there should not be misconstrued as reductive. I am not trying to delegitimize anyone’s subjective experiences, nor am I trying to say that things like religion and “spirituality” are useless.

On the contrary, I think both of those things can have an enormously positive effect on people at the individual level, and as long as religious people don’t try to force any of their views on other people, and as long as those views don’t oppress anyone within the religious group in any way, I have no problem whatsoever with anyone’s religious views.

Religion (and membership in any other sort of ideologically-based group) provides its adherents with a sense of community, a common set of values and beliefs, and so on. To repeat, I think that membership in such groups can have an enormously positive effect on people at the individual level. And heck, it can have an enormously positive effect at the group level, also…

Have you ever heard anyone say (or have you ever said), “I want to feel like I am part of something bigger than myself”?

That feeling, I would venture, is one that is common across all religious and/or ideologically-based groups. It’s also, I would venture, a feeling that is common to all (or at least most) human beings. The desire to feel connected to something or someone outside of and separate to one’s own physical self.

I certainly have this desire. And I have come to realize that my relatively recent (like in the past few years, I mean) attraction to various strains of materialism is a product of that desire.

This may not be immediately apparent — it wasn’t immediately apparent to me, at least — based on that last post I wrote. Someone could easily read that post as “human beings are just physical things, thoughts and emotions are just the result of physical processes, nothing means anything, we’re all gonna die” and not see anything more than that. That’s my fault; actually after publishing that post I remembered that I didn’t post it last July because it might be interpreted like that, and I didn’t quite know how to articulate how and why I didn’t intend for it to be interpreted that way.

I am not sure I can articulate it now, but I am gonna try:

I think it goes back to a phase I went through a decade or more ago when I was fascinated with transcendentalism, specifically its attempts to integrate/appropriate various spiritual traditions into one philosophy. This led me to Taoism, Buddhism, and Hinduism, though only in a philosophical/intellectual sort of way. I never converted to anything — in “the anthropological sense,” I remain a Southern Baptist — but philosophically (and more importantly, politically), I have very little in common with most Southern Baptists, beyond “love thy neighbor as thyself.”

Anyways, I have personal views and beliefs that prevent me from being able to honestly say that I adhere to 100% to any of the various philosophies and/or religions I have listed so far. I don’t quite “belong” in any of those groups.

That’s not me trying to prove I am special, or that the objections I have to various aspects of these philosophies and/or religions make me “unique” or something. I am just relating to you, the reader, that I don’t feel especially “connected” to any ideologically based group… although I am certainly “more connected” to some than I am to others.

So, what’s a person to do, once he (or she) has explored various philosophies, gone by various labels (I used to tell people I was a “Taoist,” for example), and subsequently found that he (or she) doesn’t quite “belong” in any of them completely?

Especially when this person acknowledges fully that he (or she) *wants* to belong to a group, because as mentioned above, group membership can have an enormously positive effect on one’s life?

Should he or she start (or join) a group of philosophical misfits, whose only reason for belonging to the group is that they don’t belong in any other group? Sure, one *could* do that…

Or, one could attempt to do what I am attempting to do, though I admittedly am not doing a very good job of explaining what I am trying to do: put every philosophy and every religion under one umbrella.

I wish I were able to articulate it better than that, but alas, I’m not. Let me try again:

The desire to feel connected to something larger than oneself can be satisfied (or perhaps “realized”) without even bothering to join any group. (And yes, I borrowed this idea from someone else.)

You *already are* part of something larger than yourself. You are part of the whole of humanity. You are a member of a species that inhabits the planet Earth, which is part of a solar system, which is part of a galaxy, which is part of the universe… which may be only one of many universes.

You are part of that. The process that produced lil’ ol’ you began around 13.8 billion years ago. It will keep going a looooooong time after you’re gone. After I’m gone; after everyone currently living is gone.

At any rate, that’s what sits at the heart of my own personal attraction to materialism: the desire to feel “connected.”

Does that make *any* sense whatsoever? Honest question.

*and what it can’t describe yet will probably be described at some point in the future, assuming humanity doesn’t destroy itself first.

Hi there.

If you’ve read my blog at all, like pretty much any post, you already know that my approach to blogging is haphazard at best.

And if you haven’t, i.e. if this is the first of my I don’t even know how many posts you’ve taken a gander at, well, you’re about to find that out.

Here is what is happening right now:

My brain is sending bioelectric impulses to my spinal cord, which provides a pathway through the muscles of my arms to my fingers.

These impulses compel my fingers to strike the keys on my keyboard.

The muscles in my hands and fingers have been trained by decades of interaction with QWERTY-arranged keyboards so that it is not strictly necessary for me to look at the keyboard while I am typing.

Most of that last sentence was typed without looking. I did have to fix a couple typos, but I did so without looking for the “backspace” button. And I did involuntarily glance at the keyboard a couple or three times, despite making a concerted effort not to.

Why? Because my eyes have become accustomed to glancing down at the keyboard.

That is to say, the muscles that control my eye movements have become accustomed thusly.

But back to the keyboard: after my fingertips strike the keys, the mechanism under each key sends a signal through my computer, and for every letter I type (and for every punctuation mark I type), the corresponding character appears on my screen.

When I click “save draft” (as I just did a few seconds ago), what I have typed is recorded onto a hard drive connected to the WordPress server, the exact location of which is unknown to me.

After I finish and publish this blog post, and you (whoever you are) read it, your computer, tablet, or smartphone will have sent a message the WordPress server requesting to access it, and the WordPress server will have replied by sending your device the data saved in the file on their server.

Forgive me if any of that is “off,” with regard to exact terms.

My point is that “blogging,” from the impulses that prompt my fingers to strike the keys on my keyboard to the light being focused by your eyes’ lenses (and the corrective lenses you may or may not have sitting in front of your eyes) on the retinas at the back of your eyes, to your brain interpreting the signals sent through your optic nerves (the awkward plurals here being a result of most humans having two eyes) to you having any sort of emotional reaction (from bored indifference to anger) to what you are reading is an entirely physical process.

Do I understand every detail of this process well enough to explain it? Unfortunately, no. Much to my chagrin, I do not in fact know everything.

I am quite limited in what I know. What I know is a result of what I have studied and what I have been taught, and the subjects I chose to focus on were largely a result of my environment and my own personal set of genes.

Which one of those two things (environment and genetics) played the bigger role is up for debate. And that’s a debate for a more knowledgeable person to comment on; my point in mentioning those two things is that they are both quite physical. Genes are actual physical things, I mean, and the environment one grows up in acts upon a person in an entirely physical way.

This includes the things that are said to one as a child. I was fortunate enough to grow up in a pretty positive environment (I have no complaints, really); I just want to state that before I continue.

Things that are said, like things that are typed, originate in the brain. The difference is that the muscles involved in speaking are a different set of muscles than the ones involved in typing. And also, of course, things that are said out loud are heard when sound waves strike the eardrums, and so on and so forth.

None of this is magical. None of this requires any sort of magical explanation.

At one point in human history, before far more intelligent and intuitive persons than I figured all of this stuff out, we believed things like this were magical.

They’re not magical.

My fingers striking the keyboard is not magical.

Your retinas sending images to your brain is not magical.

Your brain interpreting those images is not magical.

The emotions you feel or don’t feel are not magical.

Emotion. What a thing, huh? Despite all high-minded attempts to suppress them, they still dictate to us (to a degree) what we do or don’t do in any given situation.

But what are emotions?

They are neurochemical responses to external stimuli. And/or the result of our brains over- or under-producing this or that chemical, or various glands over- or under-producing this or that chemical, or the result of any number of physical occurrences within the body.

People who live with chronic pain, for example, may be more likely to suffer from depression than other people. And what causes any sort of pain? Either an external physical force (like getting punched in the face) or an internal malfunction of some bodily system.

Pain is a physical thing. And on the flipside, so is pleasure.

What is pleasure? At the risk of sounding like a broken record, it’s a response to external stimuli. Etc.

It isn’t magical, any more than anything else is. It can certainly seem to be magical, but it’s the result of physical processes, just like everything else.

It’s unfortunate that I am not knowledgeable enough to explain all of these processes in detail. But if you’re reading this, you presumably have access to the internet, and you can look all this stuff up for yourself.

Thinking of yourself as a material thing, as an object that has been acted upon innumerable times, as an object that acts upon other objects, as an object that consists of various systems that interact with each other, etc. has its advantages. It allows you to look at yourself and your actions in a much more, well, for lack of a better term, non-magical way. That is to say, you can begin to understand why you do the things you do, and you can control those things to a much larger extent.

Don’t get me wrong: you’re still going to lose control of yourself sometimes. Sometimes you’re going to do things you regret. Sometimes you’re going to say things you wish you hadn’t said.

But instead of blaming some irrational thing like “the devil” or else just throwing your hands up and saying “well, that’s just the way I am,” you can take steps to correct yourself and prevent the same thing from happening again. Or at least reduce the probability of it happening again.

That’s not to say that “rational” is always preferable to “irrational.”

Have you ever been in love? You don’t have to tell me or anyone else, but have you?

Doesn’t it feel good to be in love with someone? Doesn’t it feel amazing to become emotionally attached to another person, someone who seems perfect in every single way, even though it’s objectively quite easy for a disinterested outsider to point out that person’s many flaws?

Doesn’t it piss you off when somebody points out your love’s flaws?

In a world of billions of people, there’s a pretty significant chance that there’s somebody else in the world that is even more physically attractive than your love (like to you personally, I mean), but here’s the thing:

Being physically close to another human being, especially one you find sexually attractive, causes neurochemicals to be released in your brain (oxytocin, for one) that cause you to feel attachment to that person.

That’s an oversimplification, to say the least. If you find that or anything else interesting, I hope you’ll look into those things more.

At any rate, you are a physical being. You act and react entirely in the physical world.

Is there anything beyond the physical world we live in?

If so, what would it consist of?

Would it have to consist of anything?

Can you even conceive of something that consists of nothing (physically speaking) without employing a physical process in your brain?

Let me remind you that reading this and thinking about what I have written is an entirely physical process.

Is the unknowable worth thinking about?

Why or why not?

🙂

The summer after my 10th grade year, when I was 16, I went on a trip to England with my grandma, her sister, her sister’s grandson, my grandma’s cousin (about my grandma’s age), and my grandma’s cousin’s grandson.

The traveling party was, basically, three teenage boys and their grandmothers.

We went on a bus tour around the south of England. It started in London, then went around to various touristy spots, then circled back to London. All in all the tour lasted around two weeks, and it was a lot of fun.

We went to Stonehenge on the tour. I remember thinking that it looked a lot bigger on TV.

There were New Age hippies there, like meditating in a circle or something. Which I guess was cool.

The other people on the tour were mostly other Americans. One older fellow, probably 80, maybe, approached me and asked if I knew how they got those big stones on top of the other ones.

“No,” I replied.

“Helicopters,” the old man said. His name was Blake.

I stood there kinda dumbfounded for a second before realizing that Blake was cracking a joke.

“I’ll be danged,” I may have said. “I never thought about that possibility.” I may not have said that at all, but at any rate I laughed and went along with the joke.

A few minutes later, I watched as Blake tried the joke on my cousin D____, the grandson of my grandma’s cousin. That makes D____ my third cousin? I honestly don’t know.

D____ didn’t quite get the joke, I don’t think. His reaction was different than mine, at any rate. He replied in more of a “humoring the old person” sort of way, as opposed to a “ha ha, that’s funny” sort of way.

“You sure are a nice young man,” Blake said to D____. “If you’re ever up around the Great Lakes, drop in.”

“I sure will,” D____ replied. “Thanks for the invitation.”

“And if you’re ever in the Rocky Mountains,” Blake continued, “fall off.”

Do you recognize that fellow? That’s Alex Rogan, the hero of the 1980s sci-fi/adventure film “The Last Starfighter,” a film I am a pretty big fan of, mostly for sentimental-type reasons.

Actually, that might be Beta, the android sent to replace Alex while Alex was off in space, fighting the Ko-Dan Armada. Beta looks just like Alex, and his purpose was to cover up the fact that Alex was gone, so his family wouldn’t miss him.

It’s Lance Guest, I know that much.

If I hadn’t told you what film that screenshot was from, would you have known? I’m sure some of you would have… but honestly if I hadn’t been the person who took the screenshot, I’m not sure I would know, despite having watched “The Last Starfighter” about a hundred times growing up, and even after watching it again recently.

Now, if somebody had shown me a picture of a Gunstar, the type of spaceship Alex ends up flying around in, or of Grig, the lizard-y alien guy who pilots Alex’s Gunstar, or even a picture of Alex in his Starfighter uniform, I would probably have recognized it instantly.

But just going on that shot up there, no, I’m not sure I would recognize it.

***

Why must I spell it out for you?
All of the images you see
Are just a tiny part of me.
The images I see of you
Are just a fraction of what’s true.

***

I remember sitting with you under an umbrella. It was drizzling rain. We were sitting on the curb in front of that one convenience store on the opposite side of the block from Lotteria. We were drunk, as we often were.

You died nearly a decade ago.

***

I don’t remember the last novel I read. Which novel it was, I mean. I’ve started a couple in the past several months, but I haven’t had the attention span to finish them.

***

There was a barber shop a couple blocks away from my fraternity house in Fayetteville, years ago. I had happened to mention, among a group of fellows hanging out at the house, that I needed to get a haircut. Or quite possibly someone mentioned to me that I needed to get a haircut. At any rate the subject of haircuts came up.

A frat brother suggested I go to “Crazy Eric” to get a haircut. “Crazy Eric” was the barber at the aforementioned barber shop. Crazy Eric talked everyone’s ear off, I was told, and he had some pretty interesting ideas about the government, conspiracies, and things like that.

So I went. Crazy Eric’s barber shop doubled as sort of an antique shop, I think. There were all sorts of old antique-y things in there. Crazy Eric’s wife also worked there.

I got my hair cut by Crazy Eric several times. I tried to get him started on conspiracy theories the first couple of times, but he never really bit. He actually didn’t talk much at all while cutting my hair, which was kind of a disappointment.

***

Etc.

So as I mentioned the other day, I am currently “on vacation” from my job. I didn’t actually go anywhere on vacation, I am just taking a few days off.

I am currently sitting in P.J.’s Coffee on the square in El Dorado, Arkansas. I just had a chicken fried steak, two hard-fried eggs, hash browns, a biscuit, and coffee for breakfast, from Johnny B.’s Grill just a couple blocks from here. It was fantastic.

I paid $2.48 for a 20 oz Dr. Pepper here at P.J.’s. “Good Lord” is exactly what I said when the woman rang it up.

“We do coffee here,” was her reply. Something along those lines, ha ha.

I sat in one of the comfy chairs and tried to get on the free WiFi, but the WiFi is apparently down today. I didn’t bother asking about it; I just activated my phone’s WiFi hotspot feature, put on my headphones, and started this up:

Yes, in the world of electronica and popular music in general, this particular video may be old hat by now. The Field has put out a newer album than this (“The Follower”) and anyways I hope he puts out another one soon. But in the meantime, his older stuff is still amazingly good, in my opinion.

There’s no point to this blog post, in case you were wondering. I am just typing whatever comes into my head.

“Philosophy” is pretty much my default category, in case you were wondering. I don’t exactly have any one idea or whatever that “informs” my outlook on life; it’s more of a mishmash of various things I have picked up over the years, from anything from religious and philosophical texts to novels I’ve read to movies I’ve seen (“Blade Runner” possibly being a bigger influence than, say, “Tao Te Ching,” for example, with “White Noise” by Don DeLillo out-influencing both of them) to Saturday morning cartoons (ask me about The Smurfs some time) to song lyrics to poetry to…

You get the idea, hopefully.

It looks like it might rain today. I hope it doesn’t; I am going to be on foot most of the day. When I’m not sitting in a comfy chair somewhere.

As I have mentioned, my current job requires me to do a lot of typing. And I am usually sitting when I type. I do the “standing desk” thing sometimes, but not as often as I should. I always get up and go for a walk after an hour or two of typing, but apparently I have not been getting up enough lately.

Pardon me if this is inappropriate to share, but I have developed what is apparently a “pressure sore” (a.k.a. a “bed sore”) on my ass, apparently from sitting too long in one position on hard surfaces. The chair at my normal work desk is an unpadded wooden chair, and my desk in my bedroom is one designed to be used while sitting on the floor.

To be fair, this pressure sore (no, it has not ruptured or anything) was first noticed by me after a long session of sitting at my work desk while “on vacation” watching TV on Hulu. I tend to shift my weight around as sort of a nervous habit while I am working, but I don’t necessarily do that while marathon watching “The X-Files” or “Rick And Morty” or “Twin Peaks” or “Peep Show” or what have you.

At any rate, yes, sitting in one position for too long on a hard surface can cause problems.

Hence my seeking comfy chairs today. 🙂

And yes, it’s disgusting of me to write about something like that. But that sort of illustrates (sort of) another aspect of my own “philosophy”: I find it’s best to be open and honest about most things, even unpleasant stuff like having a sore ass.

But I don’t share everything. Believe it or not. At least not publicly.

Sun’s coming out… wait, nope, covered by dark clouds again. I really hope it doesn’t rain today.

My academic advisor from college has told me many times that I should write every day. And I guess I have been writing most every weekday for the past… eight months? Writing for my job, of course, not writing on this blog, or fiction…

I wrote a novel, in case you didn’t know. 🙂

The main difference between writing for my job and writing blog posts and fiction and stuff is a pretty significant one: I make money writing for my job. I don’t make doodley-squat writing on this blog or writing fiction. At least not yet.

I don’t really expect to, actually. Make money from “creative writing.”

So why do it?

Good question.

I guess it acts as sort of a release valve for the constant internal dialogue going on in my brain. I guess.

I honestly don’t know why I like writing stuff like this. I guess I just do.

Etc. etc. etc. Blah blah blah.

I kinda have to pee. I think I will do that, then head on over to the liberry.

Thanks for reading.

***

So here I am at the liberry…

I had thought about writing a blog post about chess today, having something of a swollen head regarding that game, after finally beating a buddy from high school yesterday at online chess, following approximately 1,684 losses in a row to him…

Well, it hasn’t been that many, but he usually beats me. And I finally won again yesterday. I have beaten him I think… three times? Maybe four?

(Maybe two?)

We’ve been playing off and on for a couple years now. Plus, I like to play random people online.

It’s a hell of a game, I have to say. There are tons of openings and defenses and attacks and things that all have specific names… but I have to confess that I don’t know more than an opening or two by name.

Chess.com, at least when you play in desktop mode, shows the name of the opening you or your opponent is using, as well as defenses or whatever (you don’t see this if you play on a smartphone, at least not on my smartphone), and anyways here is the opening I used in my most recent victory against my buddy from high school:

After reviewing the game on my phone just now, this isn’t exactly the opening game we played… it must have been some variation on it. I played as white, my buddy played as black, and he moved his kingside knight to f6 on his third move, as opposed to moving his kingside bishop to c5 like the guy does in the video, as you can see:

You’ll note that I drew over my friend’s username. There’s a reason for that:

While I am confident my friend would give literally less than half of a proverbial crap if I shared his chess.com username here, well, it isn’t my place to go sharing stuff here on my blog (or anywhere else online) about people other than myself.

Note that I didn’t draw over his rating, which is significantly higher than mine.

At any rate, stuff like that (the discrepancy between the video and the game screenshot) is why trying to study chess openings and defenses and things and memorize the names of all of them basically confuses the hell out of me. So I don’t really spend much time doing it, although I do scan Wikipedia articles about various openings that have cool names like “Giuoco Pianissimo” or something.

Which is what my dang comprooter said the game was. I couldn’t get the game to come back up on my computer, and I got tired of messing with it.

“Giuoco Pianissimo” is actually a variation of “Giuoco Piano,” I guess, and (I also guess) the particular game my friend and I was a variation of a variation, because every variation on Wikipedia shows black moving the kingside bishop to c5 on the third move…

And long story short, this is why I don’t even try to memorize the names of chess openings and whatnot.

Moving on… let’s listen to some more of The Field, shall we? Awesome…

Listen to that with headphones, not quite as loudly as possible, a few notches under “as loud as you can stand it.” Let it play in the background of whatever you’re doing.

Here’s an interview I watched/listened to the other day with The Field/Axel Willner:

He talks about how the human brain fills in the gaps, sometimes, when it expects to hear something, and how his music actually probably sounds different to different people because their brains fill in the gaps differently.

I love this dude’s stuff, at any rate.

Moving on…

I have actually recorded some low-fi electronica myself, if you can believe it. I say “low-fi” because I used a free drum machine app, inexpensive recording software, and a USB headset microphone to record it. Check it out:

“Sensory D” and “Chago” are both members of an imaginary band called Meander Kittens that is essentially me dicking around at home with guitars and whatnot. Sensory D is a rapper and producer, and Chago is a singer/songwriter.

They’re both actually me, of course.

Here’s a song Chago did a few years back:

The Chinese characters on the video mean “error” or “mistake,” and if you use their single-syllable Korean pronunciation (excluding the definition that often precedes Hanja readings [“Hanja” being the Korean term for “Chinese characters”]), they are pronounced, roughly, “cha-go.”

“Chago” means “mistake,” is what you should take away from this. Chago leaves mistakes in his recordings, partially because he thinks they add sort of a human element to them, partially because he’s flipping lazy.

Here’s Sensory D’s debut EP:

The video pic/”album cover” features every “instrument” used in the recording.

Meander Kittens have released quite a few recordings as a band on YouTube as well. The band members (all of whom are actually me, 99 percent of the time) tend to rotate, and so does the instrumentation.

Meander Kittens like to include at least one “cover” song on each of their albums and EPs, but they don’t always do so. Quality tends to vary on these “covers.” Sometimes they try to play covers as accurately as possible; sometimes they don’t.

Here’s an example of when they don’t:

Just in case you’re not familiar with the original version of this song, here it is:

The name “Meander Kittens” was made up by me many years ago, when I lived in Fayetteville, AR with a roommate, who also would probably give less than half of a proverbial crap if I gave his name here, but I’m not gonna.

We didn’t have a TV, and we had a computer in the apartment (it was his computer), but we didn’t have an internet connection. So, to amuse ourselves, we started creating fake album covers for fake bands using Microsoft Paint. “Meander Kittens” was one I came up with.

Here’s a song we recorded on his computer all those years ago, with fake album covers we both made as the video:

I’m playing guitar, bass, “drums” (beating on the computer desk with my bare hands), and singing, and he came in later and added extra vocals. The song sucks without his contribution, in my opinion.

Anyways, I am about typed out. It’s still kinda overcast outside, but I think I am gonna go grab a bite to eat somewhere.

Probly gonna try to find an umbrella first. Don’t want my laptop to get soaked.

I left my umbrella at home because Accuweather claimed it wasn’t going to rain today in El Dorado.

Time will tell, I guess.

***

It is now 3:13 p.m., and it hasn’t rained yet.

I spent most of the day just sort of walking around. Believe you me, I needed the exercise. When you sit still so long you get a bed sore on you your ass, you gotta get up and move around some.

That route is from P.J.’s to La Villa and back, along with a short stretch where I walked the opposite way down NW Ave, thinking I was going to go bowling over at El Dorado lanes.

Luckily, I checked online. It was a little after 1 at the time, and I found out El Dorado Lanes doesn’t open until 4. So I guess it’s good I checked.

I turned around and walked the other way, up to the mostly empty mall.