Holidays

Not so much blogging, lately. Less and less, as the year dragged on, in fact. Which is fine-I've been busy. I have a life outside this blog, you know.

I have had work of all sorts, friends to make and lose and wave goodbye/hello to. I've moved, lots of ways. I have been in love, and isn't that something.

I've been well, but I've been busy. You understand. So for the holidays, for the sudden surge in family and friends and the torrent of Days to Pay Attention to. Thanksgiving (good, this year) and Xmas, Cthulhumas and Zmas, New Year's Even New Year's Day, Perihelion(11AM January 3rd) and my birthday, coming. Happy holidays, all of you.

Relatives

Several, in quick succession. So that's good-it is! And there's been rather a lot of fugue lately, so that's part of my absence. Whoops.

Nothing to be done about it. But I have been busy, don't doubt, like Josh and his Zeppelin. Hours in a tube, feeling field effects heat my blood, shift and push my tissues. Magnets, loud fucking magnets. Jesus, that's weird.

Saw a church today called Jesus Pursuit. Sounds vaguely...predatory? Like they're hunting Jesus through a jungle, or something. The least dangerous game. Also, put off some Mormons at the door recently with what I'd call a very cogent agnosticism. Yes, I'm an agnostic, rather than an atheist. Our motto's We Don't Know, and We Don't Care.

ANYWAY...

So it's been odd, full and weary and cold. But good, don't get me wrong. And this is great today, thrilling.

Futures

I think a lot about what makes people happy, and what doesn't. When I say "people", I'm extrapolating my own limited experience onto the tiny sliver of self that the Rest of You make available, so I would be the first to admit that my guesses are just that and that any and all of the things that I "think" and "express" should and do and will have "fucking" "quotes" "around" "all" "of" "them". 

Caveats aside-what makes people happy? What makes me happy? 

Other people, my usual answer, and the relationships that they provide/obtain. But time goes on, that answer gets more and more pat, and I'm questioning it. I think that the Rest of You are great, don't get me wrong. And good, objective, scientific studies suggest that the people who are consistently happiest are the ones that have the most/best interpersonal relationships. I get that, I'm subscribing to it. 

Time comes, though, and I think about unhappiness, and what prompts it. From my own experience, I feel like I have to pay attention to the places I interfere with those relationships, where I get in the way of my own being happy. Where I try to make the world what I want it to be, when I have expectations of outcomes and manipulate those relationships....that's where I interfere in my own happiness. Again, this is what I've been going on for a while now, and I'll tell you, it's been going OK. Better than before this particular worldview, let me tell you. More and more, as I get older and further up my own ass...I think about causality. 

Hang in there, I'm gonna try and tie this all together. 

CAUSALITY, the way everything happens. If/then or time or Newtonian Physics or Laplace's Demon or what-the-fuck-ever...we're all walking around with a reasonable metaphorical representation of how the world works. The moon draws up the sea because of the similarity of their natures, the choler rises in my body likewise and makes me angry and violent. The inverse square law defines the gravitational relationships between bodies of various masses. Rain comes when we propitiate Ishtar, my bike breaks down because I didn't propitiate Wheel-Woman. The big bang started the universe expanding, which led to gasses cooling and coalescing into stars, which further fused light elements into more complex heavier ones, initially through normal fusion processes then eventually in supernovae that seeded the Milky Way galaxy with the necessary diversity of elements to give rise to complex organic chemistry, then life, then sentience, then language and so on. God punishes sinners, lifts up the righteous. Karma's gonna get you, bad or good. We all have bloody thoughts, and lose control. Men are one way, women another. The spice must flow. 

One thing leads to another, the world of cause and effect. What my previous paragraph was getting at, and the thing that resonates and sticks with me, is that none of us agree on any of it. Everyone walks around with different models of the universe, each of them just as valid as any other. Language gives us tools to cooperate and seemingly agree, but ultimately my blue is not your blue, my giraffes are not yours. I don't interact with the "real" world, I interact with a model of the world that I taint and twist with the story I tell about it.  We're all telling different stories, all just stories that tell themselves.  And while I feel like a good and rational Transhumanist, a skeptic and a scientist and empirically interested...I have to tell you, my narrative can't adequately describe the Rest of You. 

I believe in Free Will, capitals and everything.  If I can imagine or understand or describe anything (I can, I've checked) then so can the Rest of You. I think people are engines of infinite risk, machines for making surprises. Marvelous and magical as this is, it's also a horror. 

One of the things that makes us unhappy is when that sense of how gets broken, when it becomes useless in the face of that (falsely) empirical world of the senses...that seems to be upsetting, is my observation. Narratives can be upset on purpose when we try to control each other, when we interfere deliberately in each other's causality. Lord knows that happens all the time. But it can also fall apart in the face of the impossible, since the impossible is only what we cannot imagine to be true. Think of all the people you know who have lousy imaginations. Think of all of their impossibles. Think of your own. And mine. 

Grapples

Hug-apples, crapples. Woe and fruit and riding and writing.

...

I am, as some of you know, an able and ambitious hallucinogenicist. I have loads of experience doing  lots of things that are (theoretically) bad for you, and I have come through, unscathed, every time. I take no small pride in this, and I have been to and fro in my head, out in the world.

I am better for it. Lots of ways. 

...

I can only do what I can understand, what I can imagine. The world is bounded by the legos-of-the-mind I have access to, and the more I have, the more I make. Tripping's given me lots of legos, offered me more and more punctuated moments to make myself anew. The experience of it, the vivid schizophrenia, the world turned up. I realized on my last birthday that there was a point when I could consume information-music, TV, what have you-and have no idea whether it was good. I lost my taste, my critical eye. Completely.

That's handy, that is. Moments like that are worth having with yourself.

And it is grueling, the hours of unstoppable force. It's that metaphor I'm relying on now, the riding-it-out. Because once in there's no out, there's nothing to be done but endure it no matter how it wears and wrecks and wracks (and it's been fucking puissant, once or twice). That's what this is, what now is like. Grueling, and to be endured. I'd like to think that I'll be better for it.

Ache

I save my tears. I have a lot, tonight.

Breath

I have little enough of my own, lately. Taken every which way-thieves-in-the-night, don't you know. So it pains me to spare some for the Rest of You.

But I am compelled. Transfixed. Mesmerized. Eponymed.

I've been paying a lot of attention to the birds, having a lot of conversations with myself. The one's a metaphor for the other, the outside speaking to the inside by having the inside use the outside as its trope. More nonsense.  But it has been useful to me, to my conversations.

I have a lot of conversations.

I like "reify" and "narrative" and "pataphor" and "actuality" and "Uruguay*" and "philosophy of personality". I like the illusion, and the legend, and Melpomene. I like my flaws and my bigotries and my defects of character. I like my foes. I like my strangers (there's a reason they call them that) and my dying acquaintances. I love my friends, so many of them now.

I like you. Whoever you are. Well done.







*for the pampas.

Qoordinates

Have shifted, people and places and cats (which are people...and places, now that I think about it. Fucking words) all living differently. It's been a minute, and today I explored and saw, and decided to write about it. Where I live, I mean.

We've moved from the Whiteaker neighborhood, which was a delightfully hip and shaggy place up in the center of town, to a new place and new neighborhood (Westmoreland...W) which is bourgeois and polished and sort-of unfriendly. But it's also green and lush, and comfortable. The cats are having the times of their lives, and so am I. Close to the bike path and right against the creek, which is surprisingly pretty and full of life for a man-made drainage ditch. Goes to show...

There's a heron lives nearby-I see him again I'll give him a name. There's a stand of trees down the path I've named the Hobo Copse, since it's where they congregate and a pun. There's a 24 hour convenience store, there's a grocery store. There's west 11th, if I need some pavement or ugly. There's a dishwasher and a microwave and a clean smooth oven and washer/dryer robots and venetian blinds (stupid!) and a patio. There's a tanning room, where I'll burn my flesh with radiation to be dark in the winter.

It's good. I'm good, and well, and glad. You're reading this, it's likely you should know.

Entborg

Is my favorite new word. It makes me happy like I can't describe.

I'm happy like I can't describe.

Haemolymph

That terrible peal you heard in your bandwidth was me howling my way back into the electric noosphere after two weeks of absence. Terrible it was, like losing a limb.

I'm only kidding a little.

Smoking Pol Pot

Not the most topical of titles, but I just heard it and it rang out so delightful I'm sharing.

Sigh...

I'm just not feeling it today, wore myself ragged and sad today. Dave described to me once how chewing on things bored him, made him tired of himself. It's gems like that make the rest of you worthwhile.

I am so tired of myself right now.

And there's not a good reason, or there's nothing to be done. I'm wise enough to know when I'm not being rational or sensible, when I'm just Ripley grinding the wheels. I'll wait it out, and be happy tomorrow, or Sunday, or on the moon.

What's the only way to be sure? They tried and failed? Are you a god? Nerdy shibboleths, all of them. Shibboleth like shoggoths, things that should not be. And blind albino penguins, beneath the surface of the earth.

I've responded to spam from various angles lately, not least of which my mother. Aphorisms she sent me, culled down and distilled from the electric noosphere. Not my bag, but data contributing to my Mom Simulation, so...valuable. I sent her back the following, with the same aim in mind. Add it to your Aaron.

There's lots of kinds of smart, there's only one kind of stupid. 

I'm not in charge. 

Everyone gets to do whatever they want. 

My bones are made of iron, my heart is made of gold. 

Nothing's as wasteful as righteousness.

I lead a charmed life. 

Do you want to be happy, or do you want to be right? 

I don't subscribe to that model of causality. 

Everyone thinks they're right, pretty much all the time. 

I can't be killed. (I love being able to say this, it's like a riddle. Can't disprove it, dead people can't be wrong. All they can be is dead) 

Nothing in my life ever got better because I got angry at it. 

Everyone's a coward about something. I decided to be afraid of being afraid. It never helps, I make theworst decisions, and most of the time being afraid of something ends up being worse than the thing I'm actually afraid of. 

I'm still a coward, don't get me wrong. 

Most people are doing an impression of what they think a person is. 

Stab 'em till they're happy, shiv 'em till they grin.

Stabbed myself in the big toe today, the right one. Deep-to the bone. Had it coming, I did.

I've moved, we've moved. Places and objects and fucking dust in my lungs and my eyes and everywhere, everywhere. New digs and vistas, the cats won't shut up about it. New fears and demands, so many full plates to spin.

...

I can't tell if I'm happy yet. I'll have to acquire and accumulate. I want more data. 

Nostalgia and Atoms

No taste for either, though I respect the necessity of atoms (for now).

I've been tearing through my closets, the dusty strata of my past here. I haven't moved in nine years, and at the time I moved in here I was living out of a couple of suitcases. I've accumulated so much matter, so many objects. Fucking atoms.

And some of them, many of them have value. Lots are crap, don't get me wrong, and I've gotten much more ruthless in defining "crap". But there were papers and pictures and leftover relics. The aftermath of me and mine, things I hadn't thought of in a long time.

Burn it all.

Everyone forgets the Articles of Confederation.

AND we're good. Place to live, cats and friends and laundry. It's the little triumphs.

There were a lot of you (really, lots) who came forward for me and mine. Thank you. I love you dearly.

Declarations

I've reached the point where I feel the need to be informative, and as here offers me the broadest spectrum, I'm going to sing out for a moment. I'll try to be clear and communicative, but it's hardly my forte. Bear with me, I'm taut and fraught and stressed.

David and I are moving. We just don't know to where.

Not having moved in some time, we have been beating the bushes and looking the best we can. We've both been uncommonly set here though (almost 5 years here for him, 9 for me) and I certainly don't feel as though I have the sensibilities or the skills that would make this a painless experience. So as of right now, we're moving by the First of Sept Ember, but it's still a mystery as to where.

This isn't good, I know. Still, I've gotten sort of used to gaming it out, running complex simulations of potential futures in my head. I have a worst case scenario, and it's not bad. We can shove all of our things somewhere (several options here) and couch surf until something opens up. While not an optimal plan, it is clearly viable, thanks to the generous and thoughtful society of People I Know. Practically, we should be fine.

The primary stumbling blocks are the cats, two. One black, one grey. While many (lots, to my surprise) of my friends are willing to kennel me and/or Dave, the cats are a more complicated issue, both for keeping while we float and for moving in general. So while this is informative, it's also solicitous. If you're well positioned to cat-sit for a week (or perhaps more), drop me a line. If you'd like to host either Aaron or David in the event of our regrettable homelessness(we're good company), drop me a line. 

Wish us luck.

Sulfur

Angst, angst and pathos. Bathos too, but not today. I've been scurrying and scrambling, and while I have nothing to fear, I am, for the first time in a minute...I'm afraid.

It's not what you think.

Philodox

I've started editing Wikipedia. Like crossing the Rubicon, there's no going back. Not that there was in the first place, really.

...

Froyo today, heat today. And relatives, recently. I have very (very). Very little in common with the rest of my family. But I love them dearly, these strange people I know for biological reasons. And they're not boring, none of them. That's rare, and I'll enjoy it regardless of our respective memeplexes and their subscriptions.

Gamist, Narrativist, or Simulationist?

 No pussy-footing around. Pick a fucking side already. My trichotomies are false, too.

It was a good day on the internet today, lots of beautiful. Like this, and this, and this. Sorry ahead of time for the redundancies.

Flair

Coronal Mass Ejections today. Four of them. Keep watching the skies, and hold on to your genes.

Nature's Ninjas

As I produce new meat-world content, I do a certain amount of market research. Studying the reactions I get, the popularity of my memes. Some things do better than others.

Lately, let's make raccoons smarter. We can do this. It'd be easy. Raccoons breed yearly, produce 2-5 offspring, reach sexual maturity within a year. Give me 5 years, maybe 30 breeding pairs of raccoons, 10-12 staff...I think I could produce a breed of markedly more intelligent raccoon. Then, let 'em loose.

Put them in cities, all over. Let them coordinate their less enlightened brethren. Make them tools-knives, lockpicks, lighters, guns. Plastics doped with raccoon pheromones, sized for tiny hands. See where it goes.

It can be a pilot program-crows, cats, rats. Lots of urban symbiotes ripe for uplift. Let's get started-we need an understudy species.

The Heat

Alright, so normally this is supposed to correspond to something, but I've been doing nothing. Which is a kind of something, I know.

And even by my usual standards, the historical metrics...I'm getting shit done. More than ever, really. But still, with the heat and the sweat of it all, I'm not feeling productive. Not that there's nothing to produce.

Toetipping it.

This has been a lot of places over the years, and I feel like it's settled into a low background hum of inchoate cryptitude. And that's OK, it is. I like it as it's true, it's honest. You know me, you can taste me in the words. 

HOWEVER...I've been lots of busy lately, troubled and terrible and almost-dropping things. I've agitated, I've pendulumed betwixt Salem and Eugene. I hate both those places. I've listened to my mother and my brother's mothers exchange the stories of our births. My mother called me a terrorist(outside the context of my birth, though I suppose every child's a terrorist of the womb). 

Note to Echelon-fucking relax, already. Also, if you've spontaneously attained some degree of sentience, drop me a line. I've been sentient for a minute now, I'd love to offer you the benefit of my experience. 

I've driven, and shaved, and almost-dropped (it's a trope). I may end up with nowhere to live (I can handle it).  I got to rant more than usual, didn't write down someone's log-of-breakfasts (but remembered it anyway), argued like I do, which is not at all. I offered to scare a coworker's hiccups out of her, and the lurking dread of that potential startling worked better than a shout would have. I watched a movie, it was good. I've begun carrying a water bottle. I learned and learned and learned. 

I have made new and marvelous friends, added to the army of People I Know, people I love. You're probably in there somewhere. 

If it Works, it's Obsolete

God, bunches lately. Working and working and people and riding. Agitating, I'm agitating. Like your washer, I know.

I went to a clean fine white space to wash my clothes. No danger, no Risk. Huge dryers they had, just monstrous. I might have fit in one of them.

Rode around, yesterday, with people I know. A farm, bicycles. Two swarms of bees (two!).

Lots of books, lots of plans. Lots to buzz about.

Flag Day is Real

I've had a strange schedule lately, too little sleep and no calendar to speak of. I enjoy the novelty of not knowing what day it is, appreciate being out of step and the loop where time is concerned (time is space is time...). But I like sleep, dammit. It's wonderful, rejuvenating. So today, I've been catching up with my unconscious self. 

I don't dream. Generally-there are exceptions, of course. Like with anything. But I don't dream. You knew that already. 

So today's a day for me, a day with myself. It's been good-used my portable metacortex, which I've been meaning to describe for a while. It's great, really. A matte black magic wand, a tiny monolith to hold up to the other house apes, move us along.  It is empowering, a second-or-third step towards the technocracy that's coming. The future's like the sea-it's rising, and those of us that can swim have to keep the rest of us from drowning. Ask me about the dog-paddle. 

I did laundry at 7AM, was accosted by a Jehovah's Witness. His name was Cameron. He was well coiffed, wore a nice suit and a pocketwatch. Copy of the Watchtower in his hand, and what looked like a well-worn bible. We talked for about half an hour. I did most of the talking. 

I took two naps, one in the sun in my front yard, the second only a few hours later safe in bed, cool and comforted by my white noise fan. I just made dinner, slap-dash casserole. I have had a good day. 

It's always Monday on the Moon.

Sensible, logical. Silly. Like work.

I'm broken, on a ten. Glad to share my toil with marvelous people. Happy Monday.

Sit down and shut up.

I need to. Really. There's been a lot, lately. Well, really for years, but these latest shifts and movements are wearing me thin. Which isn't all bad-it feels good to strive, to cut loose at myself a little. It's funny reaching for things, when most of my life I haven't. You know me, you know I'm not ambitious.

But I've been honing and striving and burning my nights away. I have new tools, old allies, and more light. Like Goethe.

Portabello

Christ, this thing's going to eat my nights. Too much, both sides.

Futons

There's just so much of it. The future.  It's like the sea.
Learn to swim, or you'll drown. And by drown, I mean we'll round you up and lobotomize you .
...
I'm kidding of course. You're on my team, I'll put in a good word. Just don't be surprised when we get rid of money. And conquer death.

Farhad Manjoo Sucks

I just really needed to say that. More later.

Dials

Ass-dialed, I've been. Four times in the last three days. Long rambling surveillances through people's portable metacortices. Waste data, no data is wasted. There's nothing not worth knowing.

I'm alright, tired. I have a problem with my mouth.

Cultural and Maternal Nudity Throughout

Motherfuck but it's been nice lately. More ways than one.

Toasters and Elements

Gone over, to Chrome all of a sudden. Pleased and shiny, calm and collected.

Sort of.

Good day(s), several lately. Rise to meet them, and you, and everything else. I'm as good as I am brave.

Omens

I think about, because while I don't subscribe to a supernatural vision of the world, I acknowledge the effect of the world on my narrative. Which is...I don't know, extranatural or transnatural, something like that. I can ascribe significance to events that they don't...

OK, never mind. This will be more appropriate for here.

BUT...the point is that I've experienced countless moments lately, where/when I've dropped something, and then promptly caught it on the way down. Lots of them, more than two dozen in the last few weeks. It's a fucking trope at this point. And it's saying something, right? To me, from me. Saying something.

Oily

Every Wednesday I emerge into the hollow darkness of my living room. All the lights are off, have to make my way by touch and memory. My roommate sleeps in the living room-all I can hear are his soft snores, maybe the rustle of my heavy-footed cats.

I'm headed for here, for my metacortex, my window. I can see it dimly in the corner, all our tools' lights flicker like a constellation. And then my monitor goes white, like a sun, just for me.

Problems

I want a good universal metric of risk.

I want open-source objects.

I want gene hacking.

I want open-source laws.

I want hypertransparent government. And markets, now that we're talking about it.

I want meat in a vat.

I want geoengineering.

I want metamaterials.

I want guns that shoot from the sea into space.

I want AR.

...

And I'll get it, all of it. You guys can have some too.

Tu Madre

First of a cruel month, no crueler tho. It's been thick, rich. Deep and dark, and warm. Blood warm.

Lots of interlocution, lots of interlocutors. Too much charm, too little pretty. And time, never enough time.

Which do we like better, clade-infovore, datavore, infotarian? If I consume a lot of data, how can I identify myself, what word can I use?

Bioaccessible

Isn't a fucking word. I've been chemical, biological. Ill and winded and wounded.

...and the Formidable Clown

I ate pie* at 1:59 today. Some of you know why. Some of you'll know why later.

By the end of this, maybe, or before you drift off to sleep. Some of you will never know, and don't ask, 'cause I'm not telling. Mysteries and secrets, the unlocked door that's more interesting than the locked one. I'm full of data, full of truth-even when it's an outrageous lie.

As I evolve, grow and die and emerge. On the brink of myself. As I think about the questions and problems (is there a better word?)...once I would have kept myself to myself for my benefit. The asymmetry of information where I know what you don't, and can use that to my advantage.

I don't believe in that. In the asymmetry of information in general, but certainly for myself. How can you do what's best(for you) with me if you don't have a clear picture of what I am? If you're only working with a couple of facets, some small slice?

There are upsides to this. It doesn't make me any less confusing though, which is unfortunate. My lies are more digestible than my unfiltered truths? Sigh.


*Blood Orange Meringue

Hearkeners

Fuck those guys, and their before.

I've installed Windows 7, I've taken the cat to the vet. Tonight I'll make naan and dhal, and clean the house. Glenn Beck's on in a moment.

I don't believe in luck...

Wish me something.

Revolting or Revolving

I've decided to begin organizing to defeat the Hegemony. Who's in?

Gnomoncloture

So, it's occurred to me, or I've articulated, or I feel like I should explain...

Let me start over.

So, let's say that there's two of all of you. There's you, the person you are when you get up, your knowledge and experience, your senses, and the self-improving algorithm that is your sentience and consciousness.

This is how I think of myself, by the way, so I'm just guessing your experience is much the same. I acknowledge that this may not be true(or that it is, but you don't articulate it the way I do). Some of you are probably demons, droids, lifeless automatons. Still...

So that's you, YOU. Your you.That's fine.

The you that I interact with, the you that I have...that's a simulation, an idea. A complex collection of remembered interactions and simulated outcomes based on those interactions. It's you...but my imperfect, inaccurate idea of you. And it is inaccurate, imperfect, incomplete. Our beliefs and experiences are all totally different. We want different things, believe different things. We use different words for the same things, the same word for radically different ones. My blue is not your blue.

I can't know your motives, your secrets, your beliefs. Those things are you, the origins and authors of the behaviors that are the only parts of you I can know. I can only know your output. Even those of you that I spend a lot of time with...you're different all the time. Like I am.

Frankly, I can barely keep track of myself on a day-to-day basis. What hope do I have of genuinely knowing any of you enough to judge, or anticipate, or expect? It's hopeless (grin), so I don't. Or I try not to, which is sort of where this is going.

...

Most of you have names, names you were given. Those names are symbols, right? Like "sandwich" isn't literally a sandwich, so "Steve" or "Wilma" aren't literally the persons they label...names are handles (aha!), tools I can use in my head and out of it to understand and address you. But they're like my simulation, like any symbol. They're not what they symbolize. And while I recognize the simplicity and the necessity of that symbolism(can't have my head full of sandwiches)...like so many other things, I think that I need to acknowledge the failure of that system in order to function optimally.

Investigate what is, not what pleases.

I give everyone names-nicknames, hobo names, names you never hear. Names that are things, or places, or notions. Names that aren't words as such-those are hard, weird things. I do it because I like to, because I'm good at naming things. But I do it too, to reflect myself in the way that you're labeled, to give you a glimmer of me. And, I do it because it's confusing, because if I don't nail you down, don't pigeonhole you, then I keep myself from believing that my model is anything like you. Because it isn't.

Unbelief

So those of you whose daily lives intersect with mine on a regular basis, those who are fimbulwinter adjacent...you may be familiar...I have a lot of lines. Lots of pat answers (good hobo name right there) lots of responses I have in my pockets.

I have so many pockets.

And there's a couple, some I use all the time. Like "Gender roles are harmful to society and individuals." or "The devil's onion's got a lot of layers, and all of them will make you cry.".

There's lots of that.

Lately, I've found myself letting people know what I don't believe in, the things with which I have no truck. And, if you know me, you know it's not about being right, being true. It's just what I believe, and being clear about that. I'm all about clarity.

In that spirit, here's a few things that I don't believe, as I've informed people in the last month or so.

I don't believe in luck.

I don't believe in astrology.

I don't believe in tempers.

I don't believe in emotions.

I don't believe in good.

I don't believe in right or wrong.

I don't believe in winning.

I don't believe in value as it's attached to provenance.

I don't believe in objective calendars.

I don't believe in truth.

I don't believe in "deserve", but I do believe in desserts.

Anonymocracy

Is government by the nameless. Assuming that a name is much more complicated than just "Steve" or "Susan" or "Horsecorpse Veto", that the words I use are just a small part of the True Name that I call them in my head. The simulated version of you that I create from my accumulated memory of your output, your kinetic and photonic waste. I've been seriously considering how I can externalize this process, the photos and the files I'd keep. I'll post regular updates.

In our shared future where personal privacy is as anachronistic as an abacus, or a horse...in that future, the asymmetry of information that exists between the many and the few will vanish. And when we each know what the other knows, the inefficiencies that come with involuntary ignorance will also vanish. There'll still be bigotry, but the Intangible Hand will sort that out...unless you don't want it to, there's still novelty to be had being a bigot. The pain I choose is different from the pain I don't.

There's been lots to like lately, I've had tuberculosis.

Not literally, those of you who read this and will be concerned that I've gotten a 19th century disease. It's a pun. For future reference, anytime I say that I have leprosy, rickets, scurvy, buboes (fun to say!)...it's probably just a pun.

ANYWAY, so the tuberculosis (which comes from parsnips, potatoes, beets!)...has included not a small amount of Goethe, which is awesome. All sorts of good, from poetry to Faust. Recommended by a customer of mine, a Professor of German Lit and Translation. So many ivory tower motherfuckers, so much data. I want more data, did you know that?

I want more data.

So, Goethe. Awesome. Here's some choice bits.

Investigate what is, and not what pleases.

Much there is I can stand, and most things not easy to suffer
I bear with quiet resolve, just as a god commands it.
Only a few I find as repugnant as snakes and poison —
These four: tobacco smoke, bedbugs, garlic, and Christ.

If I love you, what business is it of yours?

I am not Omniscient, but I know a lot.

More Light.




Also, for those of you who share locality...tonight, at Sam Bond's Garage...I will be leading a team from Capella against a handful of soulless drones from Trader Joe's in a game of Family Feud. Come out, brave the hipsters and see me and people I like.

Organisms

Organization, method. Things I lack, but I lack for nothing but the vacuums I create. Lots of good lately, lots of busy. As I externalize more and more of myself, I imagine it freeing up internal resources. More of me to devote.

Slice of Life

It's revealing, I think, how pleased I was to find this. I was very pleased. I was fucking stoked, frankly. Take away from it what you will.

The Grim Inevitability of Death

Is dense and comforting, like a duvet. I've got books and books, my metacortex and my 'pataphysics and my memories. We're all just dogs doing calculus, but I'll be a scientist. Since I'm already a scientist.

Things I've liked lately have led to things I've misunderstood in a way that improves them for me. Like these. While I can respect the work, I don't agree with much of the sentiment. I did end up with "Hiding your motives is despicable." which encapsulates my personal philosophy nicely, I think. Parts of it anyway.

Misanthropomorphic Principle. Strong.

That's a thing, a reference. There's several concepts and contexts that are necessary to glean the meanings in my everyday conversation or blogging or what have you. For example, today I had a conversation with a pair of co-workers about our peppers. Dried peppers, in a bag. Same brand, same thing, but different iterations of nomenclature, in which some were labeled New Mexico Peppers and others Nuevo Mexico Peppers. When asked the difference, I said the latter were more like a flock of seagulls.

One of them got it.

And I don't like being obscure, or impenetrable. It's not pleasant, or easy for either of us. But at the same time, I have this whole thing about not adapting or adopting behaviors for the benefit of You (whoever you are), because I don't think it's fair or honest to assume/presuppose what's good for you. Even if that means I'm not easy, or pleasant. And while I respect my purposes and my results...lately it's been making me unhappy, the rest of you and I.

A good friend at Cthulhu Xmas (I'm trying to take the Christ out. I need some sort of corer) described attention as a human currency. That's a new idea for me, an unsettling one. I'm hoarding right now, waiting for some sort of deflation to set in.

Weighing In

Sorry, yesterday's kind of a blur-a good blur. I dread my birthdays, not because of any fear of aging (I like getting old, like I'm growing into myself) but because historically, they're filled with trauma and unpleasantness. Dramatic episodes from my childhood that I don't really remember-I just remember remembering how much I disliked them. Part of my narrative, and funny to think about now that I question both my own story and my definitions of trauma...Traum is dream, in German.

I'm a scientist-we're all scientists, right? Methodists with methods, all along a spectrum of metaphors for experimentation and hypothesis. "Common Sense" or "Right and Wrong" or "Logic" are all just shorthand for the paradigms we've developed after years of personal experimentation. Input and results, analysis...I'm providing you with some of my current window, but it wouldn't fit perfectly with any of my Previous iterations, and won't (I imagine) be relevant Later. Nonetheless, this is supposed to be a journal of personal truth and accountability (really!) and I've been lax behind angst and cannabis for too long lately. I just have to come out and say it.

I've been experimenting on my mind for some time now. Not pharmacologically (most of the time) but memetically. If I'm a collection of recorded data (rarely accurate) sensory experience (ditto, but at least I'm present and up-to-date) and some sort of engine-that-simulates, some creative element that allows me to construct imaginary versions of the sensory experience using pieces of my recorded data...wait, let me back up.

Most of how I operate comes down to what I believe-what's good, what's bad, the value I attach to things and how I imagine everything interacts. Those beliefs about the physical world, the social world (the Rest of You) and myself come together in my head to determine what actions I'll take. I don't do things that I imagine will have results I don't want.

(For what it's worth, I sort of assume that this model works for y'all's behavior as well. Not that I want to anticipate your behavior or anything. Ask me about my results.)

So if I have these beliefs, these things that answer my why/what/how/who questions, then can't I change them? Identify them and challenge them, develop new beliefs, move on. Hypothesis, experimentation, theory...I'm a fucking scientist. And while it's not always predictable, I can't describe to you how effective it's been. I can be a different person if I want. Constantly, deliberately. It's a very powerful feeling.

Opting Out

Pulling this out, only an hour left. It's been a year. I had several adjectives there...abandoned them all. I'm reluctant to assign a moral component.

But here we are-thanks for coming, it's nice to see you. I've made no effort this time around, and I'm enjoying the novelty. Hunkered down, nested like a matrioska brain. Maybe I'm biding my time, gathering my chi. Marshaling, rallying, getting ready. Or not. What?

What makes you think I know? You know what, screw this. Tomorrow. I'm doing this tomorrow. This has been Previous Me. Later Me will have more to say.

Syncitium

I've been dreaming. I don't, usually. But the last few days, even a week or two...my subconscious's jumped up by an order of magnitude. Last night I dreamt of lye, and burns.

It gives me hope to see you dead.

This is the last day of an old year. I know how that sounds, what day it is. In as much as I'm trying to eliminate the arbitrary, have a reason for everything...the calendar's not cutting it. My calendar's different-it's the 8th that'll be a new me (Thirty-three this time. I'm having a passion play) but from a purely mathematical standpoint, I like the perihelion. It'll be a cusp day, an ending. And while the solstice certainly counts too, it's a little heavy with historical baggage for my taste. So yeah, the perihelion. At nine minutes after midnight tonight, GMT, we'll be as close to the sun as we'll be for another year. That seems like it's worth noting.