Cancellation and Culture

There's this great lil' quote from Louis CK that goes, "The only time you should look in your neighbour's bowl is to make sure that they have enough. You don't look in your neighbour's bowl to see if you have as much as them." What a beautiful sentiment. 

But what if you haven't eaten in three days and your neighbour happens to have eight full bowls, and is only eating out of one? What then?

Here's my theory: cancel culture is a symptom of wealth inequality in a pay to win society. Get a hefty speeding ticket? The poor single mother working two jobs to make ends meet will probably lose her license over an inability to pay. The rich dude can cough up a few hundred bucks for the ticket, less than he'd spend on drinks at tomorrow's party, without flinching. Hit a guy while speeding? The poor lady goes to jail, maybe because her public defender worked directly with the prosecution so that he could get the case resolved ASAP. If the dude's rich and can throw a couple hundred thousand bucks at a lawyer, he'll maybe get a weekend of community service.

Politics are play to win, happiness is pay to win, and justice is pay to win. The rich get to coast through and use their money to grease the tracks of liberty and freedom. The rest of us get to stand on the railway ties and face the train head on.

Thus cancel culture. The vast, poor masses are used to seeing people at the top of the food chain get away with what they want. We have very little say or influence on what goes on behind closed doors or how the upper-class are treated. Despite the sheer mass of the masses, we're just along for the ride and don't have much say in the destination. And, just maybe, it's starting to piss us off.

So what can we control if climate change policy, corruption laws, and voter manipulation are out of our reach? We go after public figures for moral transgressions.

Apparently Louis just announced a new comedy special, and people are up in arms about it. How dare he? Especially after what he's done (re: the masturbatory thing).

And I get it. This rich asshole treated some women without any respect, and kinda violated his position to take advantage of them. And you know what? He should be punished for it. He should face the consequences of his actions, without a doubt. I'm not going to download that special. But does that mean he should never get to practice his craft and provide for himself? If someone angers the crowds, are they relegated to poverty and begging on the streets?

Someone once said that after you've been cancelled, you have no recourse. Stay silent and you're complicit and guilty. Make an apology, and you're insincere. Speak out and try to create change, you're just trying to cover your tracks.

So what's left, then? What does one do after the cancellation hammer deals its mighty blow to ego and career and wallet? Should Louis ever be able to perform again? What do we expect from him, beyond the initial fall from grace and into shame?

Maybe nothing, because that's all we want to see: the fortunate fall to our level and languish there and validate all of our own failures and obscure existence? We want to see the pain. See them suffer. I'm not advocating that people like this should get a slap on the wrist and be on their way. There must be a path to redemption after defeat. But if the system fails to level fair justice, we're left with emotional justice. But instead of scales of justice, that woman with a blindfold is just holding a tray of shots.

If you want to get kinda tinfoil-hatty, part of me wonders if cancel culture exists because the Powers at Be decided this would be a good and inconsequential avenue for distraction, rather than affecting actual change. Can't upset the established balance of wealth and power, so sacrifice comedians and athletes and actors to focus the rage in an ineffective direction.

---

My boss said something. "I'd tell you Merry Christmas, but we aren't allowed to say that any more!"

POOF! That's all I needed to complete a psychological profile of the man. Obviously he's extremely right wing, only watches Fox, loves Trump, is anti-vax, anti-tax, climate denier, pro life, and believes everyone on the left are sheeple idiots.

Like, holy shit. Where does all of that came from? How do I extrapolate that entire character assessment from one comment?

Media, that's how. Just as right wing media depicts progressives as touchy-feely communists eager to give their rights away, so does the left wing paint conservatives as self-absorbed, religious fruitcakes. This door swings both ways, simultaneously.

I've been living with a relative the past few months, and the guy watches a whole lot of CNN. A lot. So much. I can't stand it - every piece of news is breaking, every headline is all caps on a red background, and every opinion is stated as fact.

The latter really drives me crazy - the modern tone of opinion commentary lacks any sort of self awareness. I feel like I'm back in Sunday school as a child, where I'm being spoken down to with total kindness, while spouting opinions and personal values as objective fact. There is no debate of ideas or acknowledgement of nuance. I am right. The other side is wrong. There is no in-between, so pick your side and mind the gap.

Remember, folks. Facebook isn't in the business of connecting friends, the NFL isn't about athletics, and journalism isn't about the news. They're all about selling advertisements. Consume, consume, consume. Consume the content, consume the ads, consume the products. As much as I hate to say it, advertising makes the world goes 'round. And it's making me feel kinda nauseous. 

I know and kind of agree with where my boss is coming from. I've worked on a lot of Holiday(tm) campaigns where I haven't been allowed to mention or allude to Christmas. It's a thing. Is it because the holiday is under attack? Probably not. Is it because no one wants to offend anyone? More likely.

For the record, when I was in New York I had a shopkeeper wish me a Happy Hanukkah, and I'm still buzzing from it. I thought it was fantastic. I'm not Jewish even a little bit, but I love that someone wanted to extend the joy their culture gives them to a philistine (or gentile, in this case) like me. Why not? Couldn't the world use more joy, no matter the flavour? Why not wish someone a Merry Christmas, and be okay with them not returning the sentiment?

So, sure, I get the Merry Christmas thing, and I'm otherwise kind of progressive. I'm pro-vax, anti-Trump, and believe in progressive values. So why can't I extend my own values to someone else to build a favourable judgement before I know them better?

Because we're all worked up. Outrage sells on Fox as much as CNN or Facebook or Reddit or Twitter or whatever. Errybody likes drama, and that's become the vocabulary of our society.

Goddamn, this is all getting tiring and it's so transparent. Follow the money, folks. Because if there is a God, that is it. And we all must partake of the holy sacrament.

-Cril

Everybody had a hard year
Everybody had a good time
Everybody had a wet dream
Everybody saw the sunshine
Oh yeah, oh yeah

Everybody had a good year
Everybody let their hair down
Everybody pulled their socks up
Everybody put their foot down
Oh yeah, oh yeah

Yeah, I've got a feeling
A feeling deep inside
Oh yeah, oh yeah

Beatles - I've Got a Feeling

Broken, Yet Effective

I got laid off a couple weeks ago. It was a crap job, so I wasn't too sad to see it come to an end. I should've been prepared more than I was, but I still managed to slide into something new like a pickpocket moving between subway cars. Didn't even miss a day of work.

But it's a temporary gig, so I gotta keep moving. I had an interview on Thursday, and it didn't go too great. Maybe it didn't go terribly either, but it certainly feels that way. Some of my professional deficiencies were highlighted and I made a few missteps through the process.

What's interesting was my internal process directly following the whole ordeal. "Well, I just failed one interview. Let's see how many more I can bomb through before someone makes a mistake and accidentally hires me." What a dark and self-defeating mindset. But not.

I seem to interpret my default state as failure, and I pay for that with self-esteem and whatever tokens of optimism are rattling around my pocket. It's not a great place to be, and I wouldn't recommend it. And yet here I am, harnessing this bleak energy for the better. It's helped me do three things: come to terms with my immediate shortcomings, keep pressing on, and brace for future let downs.

I'm going to keep applying for work not because I feel hopeful and think I'd be a catch for a potential employer, but because eventually someone will slip up and I'll slip through the process of infinite rejection. And maybe once I make it through to that other side I'll find or prove some sort of worth. Until then it's a game of odds.

So I'll keep plugging away and find other places to apply to. I know that tailoring my resume to a specific company won't be noticed. I know the effort I put into personalizing cover letters won't impress the AI filters before it gets deleted. But there's gotta be hole in this wall somewhere. 

I wish that my reaction to these disappointments was closer to "their loss" rather than "that figures". The whole thing's just frustratingly sad. But I guess you can't argue that it isn't effective. The mind is a strange, strange thing.

Onwards.

-Cril

Pending Triage

 I need to make a confession: I secretly want this whole COVID thing to spiral out of control so that all the anti-vaxxers get it, overwhelm the healthcare system, and perish in a fantastic display of schadenfreude. 

There, I said it. It's been whirling around the back of my cranium and I've been doing my best to suppress it. I know it's a perverse notion born of the sarcastic, dark laugh from humanity's inner demon. I want to see the idiots suffer, and suffer fatally, so that we can all learn our lesson and move on as a species. Yes, I know that would be unfortunate and tragic. Yes, I know that such an influx of patients to the healthcare system would cripple services for those that are vaxxed and have done everything right. No one would win. But it sure would be satisfying to see the idiots lose, wouldn't it?

Gah. I hate that I feel that way in the first place; it's so petty and mean-spirited. And it makes the assumption that I a) know more/am more intelligent than the people on the other side of this divide, and b) my opinion is worth more as a result. Is truth not subjective in an elemental way? Yeesh, that last sentence opens an ugly door perhaps left closed. What I'm getting at is that I think there's a need to acknowledge there may be more to the world than my immediate experience and point of view. So yes, maybe the anti-vaxxers are onto something. But probably not. 

It's become clear that humanity is no longer on the same team, at least in this regard. Not only that, but now it has two distinct and opposing teams competing against each other. And if either side has their way, the showdown would result in the total annihilation of the other. It sucks to see that we're so easily so divided.

Lately I've been transfixed on the question of why this has become a divisive issue. I understand the particulars of the debate; I even sympathize with the notion of not trusting one's government. Politicians are, after all, shifty creatures. But the science is dispassionately conclusive. Then there are microchips and autism and magnetizations and freedoms and erosions of liberty, et cetera and et cetera. Quite frankly, all this has been played out and fails to interest me.

What really has piqued my interest is what sort of societal and psychological conditions have resulted in a strong contrasting debate over something that, I thought, was so simple. What has enabled humanity in 2021 for a huge swath of the population to act out so fervently versus 1921? Something has stained the fabric of humanity, and a simple wash cycle won't get it out.

Is it social media? Foreign manipulation? A growing disdain for government? Maybe an abandonment of scientific reason in exchange for emotional and instinctual truth? A desire to belong to a passionate tribe? The need to feel smarter than your neighbours by seeking out conspiracies? Or maybe life has just become too easy for its own good.

If you have any ideas, let me know.

-Cril

My mast ain't so sturdy
My head is at half
I'm searching the clouds for the score

My lady avails herself
Of marked down freedom
Forever cashed out to no more

She put the blam in the blame
Bullets bearing the name
Of each tigress who's left you a tooth

Save the skins for a pelt
And the rest for a belt
That can't open
No nothing
Can't open
No nothing

Young liars
Thank you for taking my hands

Young liars
Oh thank you for taking my hands

TV on the Radio - Young Liars

De-pressurized Theory

I've been feeling better. Or, as others might put it, I even feel good. We could chalk that up to meds or therapy or sunlight or simple fact of having a convertible car for the summer. But what I think it really comes down to is momentum, and not of the driving variety. I've been busy, I've been making progress, and perhaps more importantly, I've been under a bit of pressure.

There's a drive to finish up some self-directed projects. It might be my first meaningful addition to my portfolio in... too long. I'm also trying to get the mechanical side of a project car finished by the end of the season so that it can be safely tucked away before the snow starts intruding on my ideal daydreams of sunny, open roads. Truth be told, the car thing is starting to piss me off; I've been chasing a particular mechanical gremlin for months now. Today I might've made a soft breakthrough. Who would've guessed it a variable inertia charging system could cause (or exacerbate) a low-RPM stutter? But if it's as fixed as I think it is, it's more than enough to suit my purposes. That means I'm just left with a bunch of secondary, mainly cosmetic tasks. I can deal with that. Oh, and I can't forget to mention that my estate management gig is starting to heat up. It's slightly horrifying, but I have a team of lawyers that I don't need to pay out of pocket, so that helps me sleep at night. That whole shebang is keeping me on my toes and learning new things.

The main hurdle before me, though, is the fact that a week ago we discovered we had three weeks to move out of our current abode. To add some flavour to the situation, the permanent residence we'll be moving into won't be ready until near the end of the year. Cue the domestic chaos; our household has become a rhapsody of cardboard and tape guns, punctuated by an eclectic mix of plastic, air-filled packing materials. One set of belongings is being dutifully placed aside to see us through the next four months. A larger, more imposing set, is accumulating in our garage so that it can be picked up in a truck and put into storage until we're ready to take possession of the new, final destination. And somewhere in there we have to sign a lease for new tenants and prepare a basement suite in a relative's home. Chaos, true chaos. And I'm loving it. It reminds me of the last month of school in New York, when I found out I couldn't renew my lease and had to find a new place to live while preparing for the portfolio show. 

Maybe things would've turned out differently had those circumstanced been a bit different, but that's a musing for another time.

The point is that under the gun of light existential threat I'm energized, productive, and happier for it. So let's open up our field of view here a bit and transition from the personal to observational.

My uncle told me about this young woman who was big in the DIY community some years ago. Her parents aren't well off, but she shone through as a young talent in the hobby world, and was offered a full-ride scholarship to an Australian university. Instead, she decided to turn that down in favour of finding herself and her identity. Obviously this second pursuit is important - I think it's great that mental health is more important now than ever and that it can be a full priority. But it's odd, in a way, that it takes precedence over practical opportunities to secure one's future.

And thus my uncle's theory: as a society, we've become too far removed from the challenges of being alive. If you want to bounce back to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, it's almost as if the basic needs (physiological and safety) are such a given that the psychological and self-fulfillment tiers become more dominant. We don't need to worry about where our next meal comes from our becoming the next meal for some other creature, and we haven't for generations. So now we take those mental cycles and focus them on the individual and subjective experience. People get bent out of shape over the casting of Jeopardy's host and political discourse is akin to morally opposed blood feuds. The lack of physical pressure creates mental strife. Humans evolved as bald apes, and now we've been spending too much time staring into our collective (hairless) navel.

Rewind the clock even 100 years, and what do we have? Farmers who toil in the fields. If the crop doesn't turn out, we die. If our homestead burns down, we die. If we get a fever, we die. Average people were living much closer to the knife edge that separates life and its end, in a very fundamental way.

I've recounted my anecdotal story of moving stress, a relative's anecdotal story of someone he doesn't even know personally, and now it's time for an anecdotal musing on something society is currently grappling with. I'm pretty sure that three subjective anecdotes equals one peer reviewed study, so buckle up. Are you ready?

COVID.

There is no way that this should be up to interpretation. People are dying. Even more than that, people are dying and denying the very thing that's killing them. Impressive, isn't it? Huge swaths of North America's population seem to fit into a mixture of delusions that either vaccines don't work or that the pandemic itself is a hoax. Fascinating. Something tells me that this kind of debate didn't exist around measles or smallpox, back when we were closer to focusing on living for a living.

Social media could make an appearance here. It's like a fantastic macro lens that enables whole world to look into your navel along with you. Maybe we see lint, or skin, or who knows what. But you bet it's dramatic and exciting and comes along with a clickbait title and cringey thumbnail to rack up those views.

Eventually, though, it boils down to the fact that we're spending too much time finding drama and threats where there are none. I can't decide if that's because our lizard-brain is hard wired to look for and avoid these fundamental dangers, or if it's a mentally-masturbatory activity because it taps into some kind of adrenaline-like fight-or-flight response. Either way, we create problems where there (essentially) are none in order to stimulate ourselves. 

The pandemic shouldn't be a debate in a rational world. Yet here we are, where it's a subjective and immovable truth based on one's political or sociological leanings. We're not fighting for our lives in any real sense, so we find other things to fight over. In this case, it's a fight over if the struggle even exists in the first place, despite any display of scientific evidence. Sure, many change their mind once they land in ER and are on oxygen for days on end, but up to that point COVID is an abstract matter that's up for debate. It's that physical, first-hand experience where one fights for their life that really changes minds.

What the whole COVID ordeal does for me, however, is grant solace in regards to what will happen with climate change. If we can't as a society get our collective survival instinct into gear over a direct threat to our well being in the shape of a pandemic... there is no way in hell we'll galvanize to prevent climate change. So rest easy, folks, in the knowledge that Earth is quite fucked. We're too splintered and petty to make any meaningful alterations to our course. Why save for our future when you can mortgage it today for those sweet, sweet likes and retweets?

And maybe once we cross that apocalyptic threshold we will again be aligned as a people and a race in an effort to survive. Maybe we'll all pull together and make it. Maybe we won't, and march in lock step towards oblivion just like all the other extinct species that have acted as a canary in our coal mine up until this point. The signs are there, but I guess we just have better things to do.

I've drifted around quite a bit here, so let me try and wrap this all back around with a thesis-like concluding paragraph. As a species, we've matured and strayed too far from the essential, every day pursuit of physical survival. This makes us kind of miserable and under-stimulated, so we seek out conflict in other areas of life like entertainment and politics. We're so good at finding (or inventing) that conflict that it's ultimately divorced from reality. That's why the concept of a pandemic is more polarizing than the reality of a pandemic. And as a real life threat is socially abstracted away from its physical manifestation, our resiliency as a species decays. Something has got to give, and I have doubts that we have the self-regulating threshold we need to recalibrate and save ourselves in time.

It's coming, one way or another. The oceans roll up the street to bathe us in our kitchens, dens, and dining rooms. Fields will turn to dust in an eternal autumn; Thanksgiving Day will have it's very last harvest, and then there will be nothing to give thanks to. The sun will beat us down with its heavy rays and make off with the glaciers and water tables that keep our lawns green and our thirsts quenched.

And all the while we'll be squabbling over if this is really just how the planet is supposed to work anyways. It'll have the same 'aw, shucks!' attitude as if it's just a TV we've long lost the manual for. But it's actually the manual for being alive.

-Cril

Reading Pornhub's terms of service, going for a drive
And obeying all the traffic laws in Grand Theft Auto V
Full agoraphobic, losing focus, cover blown
A book on getting better hand-delivered by a drone
Total disassociation, fully out your mind
Googling "derealization", hating what you find
That unapparent summer air in early fall
The quiet comprehending of the ending of it all

There it is again
That funny feeling
That funny feeling
There it is again
That funny feeling
That funny feeling

Hey, what can you say?
We were overdue
But it'll be over soon
You wait
Hey, what can you say?
We were overdue
But it'll be over soon
Just wait
Ba-da-da, ba-da-da, ba-da-da-da-da-da

Bo Burnham - That Funny Feeling

Small Spices

Beyond Van Gogh was pretty neat. I felt like some of the descriptions and copy was trying a bit too hard to wow the audience, when they should've let the visuals do that. Artwork room itself was lovely and hypnotizing. It was like being inside a dream that sauntered through the artist's life. I liked how it was punctuated by instrumental versions of Vincent and Here Comes the Sun. Having the vocals would've been too much, and the restraint was appreciated. It let you soak up the visuals happening all around you.

And then there were teens and young women who just used it as a selfie opportunity. Snapping a photo in front of something cool is one thing, but the elaborate poses and angles just seemed to take things too far. It goes from being about you having an experience to I'm super interesting, you should subscribe!! Felt like it made a mockery of the artist somehow.

It would've been a borderline meditative and emotional experience otherwise. I don't know why I let those other people decay my capacity for enjoyment in the moment. Maybe because that was my first time in a crowded social setting in more than a year. But who am I to dictate how people experience an experience? Maybe the world is just one huge selfie booth and I'm lagging behind. After all, look at how many self portraits Van Gogh produced.

---

Went over to some friends' place for dinner. At one point that evening their oldest cat, Dexter, waltzed into the room and sniffed around the couch and an activity table for the kids. He's black and a bit chunky. When he first came home with my friends those years ago and I was still living with them, I laid down on the floor outside his small cat carrier and had a nap. He came out, crawled onto my chest and went to sleep as well. Ever since then, I've been the only one he'll get into the lap of for cuddles.

Fast forward, to that summer's evening a couple weeks ago. I made eye contact with him and the most extraordinary thing happened: In an instant of widening feline facial expressions I could swear he recognized me. Without breaking eye contact, he jumped down, came to my feet, and hovered in my vicinity for the rest of the visit. It was a happy reunion. It startled me to see just how strong his reaction was to seeing my face. Cats are quiet critters, and it's easy to take for granted what's going on behind the scenes.

---

I watched Bo Burnham's Inside. A lot of the discussion online seems to be reduced to "OMG he captures how much lockdown sucks lol!!!!!!" It felt more menacing than that to me, though. It's like he took a drop of modern society, and let it fester in a petri dish of physical isolation. Almost as if to see just how it'll morph and adapt and abstract with just the nutrients of our digital lives. The result is ugly. He makes it funny and catchy, of course, but there's no mistaken that it's a grim take on what makes us all tick.

I think about it often. It's like a pine needle in my sock.

---

There is something that lives in the shadow of Neptune, where fuzzy aliens and half-baked urban legends go to dance unsupervised. I dare not send a probe, let alone a five second gaze through a telescope. Let it stay in the far away darkness.

---

Doug Demuro has filled a niche. He has a great concept for a show, and clearly has the attention to detail required to execute it. It's brilliant - all standard car reviews only focus on the handling, acceleration, and livability. None of them mention the little details or idiosyncrasies that give a vehicle character.

But despite that and his success and subsequent ballooning subscriber count, why does his show suck so much? The camera work, editing, and general production is generally amateurish. You can tell he's a one man band trying to play something meant for a fifteen piece orchestra.

AND THE WRITING. Or the lack of it, rather. Oh man, what a pain in the ass. He is so repetitive. You can tell he jots down notes about a car and then just freestyles the delivery without much attention towards how shots begin, end, or fit together. It's so frustrating to listen to. I just feel like there's a total lack of journalistic and presentation craft.

Don't get me started on the DougScore. I see what he's going for in concept, but it's so obviously flawed at a rudimentary level.

I guess this is where concept is king - the idea is good, so we'll put up with all the other shortcomings.

---

Some of the Best

The Beatles Rock Band intro video hits the spot every time. And into the Spiderverse is brilliant. Did you know the same guy, Alberto Mielgo, worked on both?

Chicken Paprikesh from a local Hungarian restaurant and the Chicken Athena from a local Greek joint (don't forget the Spanikopita).

Reclining on the deck, reading a book, and Mozz jumping up. He rests his head on my chest for a nap, and I keep reading.

---

I think social media and targeted online content are the cigarettes of the 21st century. So good. So cathartic. I love taking those 5 minutes out of my day again and again to take a long drag. But deep down we know it has little-to-no benefit compared to the mirage-like benefits. 

---

Dance, Bishes

Dance, dance, wherever you may be
Okay, the double dance is repetitive but I'll

For I am the Lord of the Dance, said He
Now we've established that this is a third-person POV. 

And I'll lead you all, wherever you may be
We've already established the 'wherever' bit. And I guess the Lord of the Dance instructing people to dance makes for a pretty obvious command, but whatever.

And I'll lead you all in the dance, said He
This is just straight up redundant. What else would he be leading?

I attended a United Church of some sort with my family as a wee lad when we were living in a remote community and it was the only religious show in town. I was exposed to many trite and contrived hymns, including that gem from above. Recently it's resurfaced into my life through Irish dancing, of all things. And while it's strictly instrumental in this conjured form, I can't help but fill in the blanks.

I hate the lyrics. Truly loathe them. How the hell does dancing relate to Christianity? Couldn't this derivative, repetitive thing be half the length and encapsulated in saying, "Screw you, dance because I say so"? And for the literary and poetically-inclined of you keeping score, you might have even been impressed by the subtle use of an A-A-A-A rhyming pattern. 

Are there actual verses to this song? I honestly don't remember and don't care to look it up. If this hot turd of low-effort, praise-Jeebus, hallelujah-wurshup is the chorus, it can't possibly be redeemed by merely stuffing more words between repetitions. Jesus may have healed the deaf and dumb, but obviously he skipped over the dufus that wrote this garbage. He was obviously too far gone to in order to stop and think, "Ah, yes, I think this lyric is done!" after rhyming 'be' with 'He'. Twice in a goddamn row.

-Cril

Warm Summer's Eve

 Hello there, again, dear blorg. I wish I was contributing more to this space, but it isn't for lack of momentum; every day I write in a physical (gasp!) journal, record my diet and skin condition into a log, and contribute to a Tumblr with my design project progress and relevant thoughts. Don't worry about the last one, I'm quite confident you won't be able to find it unless you already know. That's a lot of writing each day that I typically do as I slow down for evening. Alas, none of those things are prayers for She of the Written Art. I fear I'm becoming an idle worshiper. 'Inactive' if you will, according to the tenants of a certain organization of Mormon persuasion.

I guess I also write for work regularly, but those are rendered in thin blue lines, evenly spaced across a white page. It seems that when my superiors look at what I produce, all they see is loose leaf. A perfect landscape for them to disregard everything I've done and proceed to cram as many selling points as they can into a tight space. Why take your time and treat your audience as having their own priorities when you could construct the hardest of sells known to man? 

There's another kind of revision that often happens to my writing when produced in a professional setting: pointless changes. Did you know that a "Services Newsletter" is entirely different from a "Services Communique"? Why not make it the "Monthly Internal Services Communique" for good measure? We'd certainly hate to mislead all those people by using the word "Newsletter" in a monthly email about news and updates.

I haven't been writing for the sake of writing for a while. It's like a dance with your keyboard to the persistent rhythm of the flashing text cursor. Blink, blink, blink.

Right now, as the season has rolled over a hot summer full of possibility, I feel like I should be doing my dance on a regular basis. Even though I don't use it to wax poetic, my journal usually consumes all the writing fodder I come across. Sure, I'm recording more of my life for future record, but it's more formal and to the point. I don't get the space to properly bounce around and think through things.

It would be nice to write a little bit more regularly. So I may attempt to do just that, at least in bite-sized pieces. I've discovered that a secret key to improving productivity is to commit to the absolute bare minimum and allow yourself to go beyond as inspired to do so. Case in point: I only set out to jot down a sentence or two, and here I am five paragraphs later.

This evening I was sitting on the deck with my cat in my lap. We had just completed the mother of all Costco runs and put everything away, and I just wanted to cool down in the fresh air. So I sat there, and watched the light disappear from the clouds after turning a rich fuchsia. And Mozz, normally a standoffish and secluded retiree of a feline, was happy to lay down in my lap. And turn around, and lay on my chest so that I could scratch under his chin. And he purred, and he purred. A pretty rare occurrence on its own, but he kept it up for a half hour. And my girlfriend read a book in the chair next to me, and the young men on their raucous motor bikes drove by, and the breeze cooled my ravaged skin. I didn't have my phone with me, or a book to read, or music in my ears. But in their absence I found a little slice of beauty and peace.

I'm worried about self-improving myself to death. On top of those daily tasks I mentioned at the beginning ('chores', as I like to call them), every day I make sure to also go for a walk, strum a ukulele, and do some pushups. None of these are particularly time intensive, but they add up.

And I still feel like there are things left undone; read a few pages of a book, do some creative writing, meditate, sketch. They all just feel... cumulative. Before you know it, there's a solid hour or two a day you need to devote to the betterment of the self, while I feel like I'm craving the ability to have unstructured down time and space away from my responsibilities. Therein lies the madness: I know that if I completely take up the mantle of hedonism, I'll be left unsatisfied in other ways. As with most of life, there's a delicate balance somewhere in the murky depths. Maybe it's not meant to be found, but just sought after.

My eyelids are slowing a bit and my fingers stumbling around the dancefloor. It's time for bed. I just need to strum some chords and record my epidermal observations. Then pet the cat on my way to brush my teeth. And then bed. Let's get to it, then.

-Cril

People concertina to my private magic lantern move for me
With the senses all inclusive
In the theater of triggered memories

Motioning still

They stand inside me
And moments until
The one I leave
The one I leave

Frou Froud - Flicks

v=d/t

Hello, step into my mind. It lives in a beige house, on a beige street, where it talks about the weather to all the beige people it meets. Sometimes I wonder if small talk is the lowest acceptable means to maintaining the minimum social balance. It's the sawdust in your favourite fast food burgers.

I'm so bored right now. Critically understimulated, perhaps. Sure, there are some freelance projects to work on. I'm also employed by an estate to handle affairs, and there's an unlimited supply of paperwork to sort through. For as many folders, labels, and paperclips this particular deceased had amassed, they were utterly terrible at being organized. Imagine devoting a lifetime of collecting and cultivating orange trees while simultaneously appearing as a cover model for Scurvy Monthly. My teeth aren't that great, but at least it has nothing to do Vitamin C.

There's so much to do, and so little I want to do. This could be the general malaise of COVID-flavoured lockdown - there are a few articles online that detail the general 'fog' that people have been trapped in as a result. That's what I'll chalk my dwindling mental horsepower to at least. When an MRI declines to open up an avenue for your fears to run down, it helps to have another street to turn onto. Even if the street name is just the title of an article you didn't really bother to read in the first place.

But what about this general unrest? Yes, I'm sure it'd help to have a more open world to go and be exposed to for a bit. As fun as it is for my face mask to go sauntering around with my shuffling body strapped in for the ride, the whole symbiotic partnership is getting a bit old-hat. The mask itself isn't the issue, but the what-ifs that it signifies. What if I only sanitize my hands after removing the mask? Will I get it then? What if I make just one extra stop today, will that increase my general exposure? At what point do we start inserting more shells into this chamber of mundane and tedious version Russian-roulette?

I'm sitting here at my desk on a Friday night. I have a Lego Porsche kit sitting on the dining room table, 2/3 of the way to completion. What happens after I finish it, give in the customary inspection, and set it nicely on the shelf never to be touched again? I can't take it apart and rebuild it - that's just not what grownups do.

There are many games I could be playing just for the sake of it. A few new ones I could purchase too - I'm slowly realizing that, as a bona-fide grownup, I can afford to buy the games I want, when I want them. Sometimes it's just better to try something new than retread ground on a game (or whatever) that's just so-so, in order to whittle away the hours. Perhaps there's a different sort of price to be paid for spending your time on something that is neither stimulating, satisfactory, or enjoyable. The monetary price for a new game could very well be less expensive. I wonder what the conversion is on that exchange.

But what happens when that shiny glow of consumerist magic gives way to a patina of 'been there, done that'? Is this what life is reduced to, just paying in $50 increments to entertain yourself through life, one title at a time? I owned Flight Simulator 2004 as a teenager, and I'm a bit embarrassed to admit that I only used it to toodle around the area where I lived. The entire world at my fingertips, and I was perfectly content to just stroll around my yard a couple times before losing enthusiasm and going back inside and look to the next thing to amuse myself. Entertain me, peasants!

This winter I bought a decent joystick and throttle setup this winter so that I could play the new Microsoft Flight Simulator in VR. It's wonderful. A game-changing experience that's helped me realize just how much potential VR can have. A rich experience and attention to detail draped over, quite literally, the entire world. And yet I set out to fly across Canada and have lost not fuel, but steam, by the time I reached the Great Lakes. Here I am repeating the same ambivalent crimes of my youth.

What really bothers me, deep down, is my lack of desire to want anything. "Ah, yes," you say as you adjust your glasses and softly stroke your chin, "this would be a classic symptom of depression." Yes, of course, but it doesn't make it any less horrifying. And at the same time underwhelming, because, well, depression.

I had to pause and do a solid Ctrl+F on my blog for "depression". I was worried I had covered this exact reader-as-patronizing-therapist bit before, but I don't think I have. That illuminates one of the darker corners of this whole ordeal, though; I feel like I've been here before. Whether it's the COVID fog or not, I'm worried that I've been travelling in circles along this particular forest path. A path of total, all-encompassing lack of enthusiasm. I'd be making more progress if I were to be folded up into a half-assed little paper boat and set in a gutter. At least when the rains come I know I'd be headed away from where I am now.

Do you know what the difference is between speed and velocity? Speed is measured as the amount of distance covered in a unit of time. Velocity is the measured displacement covered in a unit of time. Displacement, as in distance from the point of origin. You can be pushing along at a violent speed for hours and hours, but if you come to a stop exactly where you started you will have achieved a velocity of 0km/h. Or 0 mph, for the depressed population to the South. At least the conversion would be non-zero if speed/velocity was measured in units of temperature (Farenheit is a messed up unit of measurement, man).

Friday night. It's Friday night. Even as a metaphorical card-carrying introvert, I used to look forward to Friday nights. Scarf down some dinner and curl up to game my face off until 1am or 2am. Nothing but pure entertainment indulgence fueled by the knowledge I could sleep in. Then I'd wake up the day after, do some chores, and game s'more. If there weren't any any freelance deadlines breathing down my neck, I'd game during the week after work.

We are truly blessed to live in the golden age of distraction. Tired of gaming? Take a break by watching a movie. Or browsing the internet; I hear that thing is pretty popular these days. I had a teacher in high school that tried to get us to call it "The Information Superhighway". A much more dignified title, wouldn't you say? If that name had stuck I wonder if we'd treat it with more respect and reverence.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go re-check my RSS feeds and open up Reddit for the 14th time today. I bet there are some new cat photos or cringey stories I can binge on until bed time gets off its ass and shows up. It's Daylight Savings Time this weekend, so we're already losing an hour. I wouldn't mind losing a couple more while we're at it. Lord knows I don't have anything better to be doing.

-Cril

Dave Brubeck - Unsquare Dance

Parade of Ghosts

I typically don't dream much. Or, if you want to get all technical, it's rare for me to retain my dreams to the point where I realize they exist once morning rolls around. Lately, though, my late night apparitions have been common and consist of people I once knew.

Such as Tyler, from highschool. He was a pretty optimistic guy, even though he never seemed to get the vertical growth spurt the rest of us were entitled to. He was always short, but it never really got to him. He had menial jobs from time to time, saving up what he could. One week he came to me and asked if I could drive him into town to hit the grocery store; his parents had both lost their jobs and food was running thin. We took the afternoon and overloaded a shopping cart with all sorts of essentials. The cashier remarked something along the lines of, "Wow, you guys have got this all figured out!" when we approached the till and Tyller emptied his savings account. We drove back to his house and I helped put all the food away. I remember sitting there playing Goldeneye, as awkward as a teen can be, when his mom arrived home. She cried and cried and hugged her son in the kitchen. She thanked me too, and I offered a sheepish "no problem" or something. I didn't really do much to contribute. Tyller stood pretty damn tall that day. I haven't talked to him since graduation.

OTIS! Not a person, but a cream-coloured teddy bear hamster. He got the name from looking like, well, oats. And from the Christopher Reeve's first Superman movie, in which Luthor's henchman was Otis. He had his own theme music and everything. Anyways, my sister and I both got our hamsters one year for Christmas. At one point he made an escape from the cage and went missing for about a week. I had almost written him off when my oldest sister came knocking at my door late one night. There, in her hands, was my cream-coloured fuzzball looking like Steve McQueen after a failed attempt in the Great Escape. Apparently he was found rustling around in some boxes. He died after a long and uneventful life, as hamsters tend to do. He was buried in the flower garden. He was my first pet, in a way.

Elissa, the New York Girlfriend. I don't know quite how to frame this one; she was a sweet girl and I was overwhelmed with life. I was in an incredibly terrible headspace to have a relationship, but I still feel decidedly lucky that our paths crossed the way it did. Having someone else to see the world through really helped me better appreciate where I was and experience the city around me. I think we had a lot of good times. She had an amazingly cute smile. I remember when she scored the job she wanted, and when we went to see A Gentleman's Guide to Murder on broadway, and when she took me to this niche little dessert cafe and we ate something that looked like a small potted plant. I remember kissing her on the cheek before she got off the subway. One dark and rainy night toward the end of our time together, I got out of an Elbow concert and went over to help her pack up from her dorm room.

I think it was a relationship of circumstances, and it dissolved shortly after I left. A lot of that falls on my shoulders - I was pretty overwhelmed with my life, and I wasn't capable of handling things particularly well at the time. A few years ago she told me she doesn't want to have anything to do with me, and I don't blame her. I still think fondly on our time together, though. It really added a bit of magic and richness to those 10 months of my life. I hope she's well.

Then there's the Chicken Lady. Through some winding circumstances, I've found myself in her home and sorting through every conceivable type of personal belonging. I fished out some unmarked cassette tapes from the bottom of one box, and after a bit of mental-reorientation, I figured out how to play them on a stereo I found in a bedroom closet. Lo and behold, it was her voice. Reading some novel, I think, as a way to practice her English. She sounded younger than I remember her, and the last time I heard her was on a voicemail she left me. Despite my effort, it got deleted from my inbox. Hearing her voice hit me like a brick. It made me feel self-conscious as I rifled through the leftover fragments of her life.

I've been learning a lot about her as I pass over every single item she owned. She liked her stationary - I have a giant box of pens and pencils and have at least a dozen pairs of scissors. I've turned up at least two-dozen notebooks, not a single one that had been filled more than half way. Most consist of notes from school, random phone numbers, and simple tasks to be completed. Some of them were more like journals. She must've been really lonely, she talked quite a bit about how she shouldn't love or trust anyone. And yet in life, I noticed how she'd find a person and cling to them as long as they'd let her. Myself included. I found one passage that simply reads, "I am short, argumentative, stubborn." I had a chuckle at that one, with how blunt of an assessment it was.

Apparently she was also quite a reader. I've been uncovering stacks of books. One of which was a paperback copy Of Mice and Men. On the back is a little seal that reads, "John Steinbeck - Winner of the Nobel Prize". In blue ball point it has been authoritatively crossed out with a note reading, "Stupid, Stupid, Stupid, Stupid, Stupid + Stupid". What a great little window into her psyche. It's odd how I'm getting to know her better now than ever before, even though she's gone.

-Cril

Efforts of lovers
Left in my mind
I sing in the reaches
We'll see what we find

People they come together
People they fall apart
No one can stop us now
'Cause we are all made of stars

Moby - We Are All Made of Stars