[INSERT CLEVER QUOTE ABOUT HOW A PERSON SHOULDN’T SIT STILL FOR TOO LONG]

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.