Category: Scarred Brain murmurings

Quitting

For All Mankind

I tried hard, but this discussion kept running through my head as I watched Ep. 1. While I was going to give it at least one episode, I just couldn’t.

The speech about Chicago 1968 finally prompted the stop.

But I could have done it before…

When Ted Kennedy cancelled his trip to Chappaquiddick to deal with the news that the Soviets had gotten there first.

Or when the controlling Navy wife was upset that her husband wasn’t going to go after drunkenly shooting his mouth off to a reporter, and the prospect of him going to Pax River or to Vietnam.

Or the fact that her name was “Karen.”

Yeah, I’m not wasting much more time.

I’m really bad at giving up on things that just aren’t working for me. See: my work history from 2013-2017.

Maybe I’m wrong, but I can’t bring myself to try on that anymore.

Maybe I’m progressing.

Twiddle Thumbs

Furiously preparing for Shmoocon. Um. I guess it’s kind of taking away from me trying to pay my protection racket that’ll let me keep working. Until my vision finally gives up the ghost.

I have until May. The goal is to basically finish this coming week.

And I’m not doing anything for the week between Christmas and New Year’s.

Except take my damned shot.

I was really worried about being late last month. I’m not sure if that was coming across in my writing.

Maybe that sort of thing gets lost in the November writing streaks.

Considering abandoning the November streaks after next year (year fifteen), but we’ll see. Really trying to commit to skipping what I’d been doing in the summer.

Had a pretty good conversation with my wife about the occupational licensing requirements that are pervading the business environment lately. Thou shalt pay union dues, and pay some group’s protection racket, even if you’re not gonna need a degree in MDDR. (It’s pretty lazy to say that every politician with whom you disagree is a Fascist while ignoring the kind Communist regimes from the last century. Many, many, many policies I see floated in Maryland would fit right in in East Germany. But we’re not going to talk about East Germany. Or Romania. Or any of the other nasty places from behind the “Iron Curtain.” Maybe I should make it a point to visit Victims of Communism Museum.)

I should make it a point to do that. I think going to the book signing, and the Liz Phair show was the sort of thing I was excited about moving up here.

We’ll see how the Shmoocon weekend goes. What do I take with me, what do I smuggle back?

Running Late

Didn’t get a Shmoocon ticket, but I think i might have a hookup.

If not, I’ll just take time, and watch online.

Still a little upset that they’re still on with the fu^H^Hmasks.

*wanders away and back*

Yeah, it looks like I’m going. Okay.

They haven’t released the schedule yet. I’m sure there’ll be something interesting.

Aside: the predictive text in the browser as I’m typing is really annoying. I miss the days when I could write my entries in EMACS.

Next week, I get to pay that IT organization’s protection racket. Something to do the week before Christmas. I do have to go in one day for work, but it’s fine.

I’m going to do a few things I enjoy.

Immediate thing is that it’ll give me a chance to write compulsively…which I’m not supposed to be doing.

Oh well.

So little motivation to do anything today.

What I do

Writing on Saturday mornings i sone of them.

Longish week, but I did make it through. Circling in on the things that I need to do for the rest of the year.

I’m tired, but think I will be able to relax some towards the end of the month.

November was really the busy month, and I did get through it.

Still listening to too much Exile In Guyville. I don’t think I actually had that on CD back in the day. I did have Whip Smart, and Whitechocolatespacegg, the latter of which got significant listens going back to and from Carlisle to visit the Form(er)skins training camp in about 2002.

I had one of my vivid disturbing dreams about the vehicle I drove back then. The dream was probably sparked by something I was dealing with health-wise.

I was angry about how I was being treated. Or not, depending on how you look at it.

I revert to my default position of just removing myself the situation, completely. You Can Leave.

It’s probably not healthy, but it’s how I operate. Along with randomly writing things that few people will read.

Sort of getting back into the podcast queue.

So many meetings.

Ugh.

EDIT

I forgot to link the story I saw coming on early today.

It’s about Lake Meade. Shortened version, so you don’t have to try to read that absolutely awful article — it’s not completely barren, as we’d expected, but CLIMATE CHANGE scary, and you should be really, really, seriously, truly worried about it.

You say that when your previous proclamations were incorrect.

Admit You’re Wrong/Oh, no, not yet

So you missed on something. Okay, and?

I guess any self-reflection is a sign of weakness.

.

Okay, then.

Step Away Saturday

I barely worked yesterday, and didn’t succumb to the temptation to do so.

I didn’t completely avoid work, even though I “took the day” off.

What’s an hourlong meeting, really?

Rumors on the Internets that I nodded off towards the end of it are untrue. I did manage to close the close out the app; I couldn’t be that far out of it, right?

Oh well. I’m engaged, even when I’m not supposed to be.

But the extra sleep helped me out.

I should spend time rearranging things here in my office space, but I’m really not finding the motivation to do that.

Thursday night, I watched both the football game, and debate between Newsome, and Ronnie De.

Whoever lost proved my hypothesis — you give up forty points, serve up the Fortyburger, you lose. I still haven’t seen it disproven. Yes, there’s been instances where teams have come back, sent the game to overtime, etc., but I’ve yet to see one come back and win. You serve up the fortyburger, you lose.

Then the debate. Newsome said, maybe in his opening remarks, even, that he and Ronnie De were going to be their parties’ nominees. Agreed.

But I was watching, really, with my own weird political confirmations. With the utter destruction of the Libertarians Party, I’m kind of to the point of where I am really only concerned about voting against someone I don’t like.

But that’s where I am.

It opens me up to live pretty much anywhere. Whatever. I’m going to vote against the worst candidate only in situations where my vote might make a little bit of a difference.

Hm.

Little dog needs to go outside, I think, but I’m going to do my late charitable donation first.

More

Slight apology for the truncated NoJoMo post earlier. I was kind of distracted trying to find a photo of my dad from late in his time in the Army. I did find it squirreled away in social media I’d hidden from public view back during the great de-monetizing of about summer 2019.

That is really the only photo I have of him kind of as I remember him from his time on active duty. He retired from the Army maybe six weeks after I’d finished high school, and, really before the ubiquity of digital photographs.

Attempts at on-line dating in about 1999 were difficult with things like the QuickCam.

Let’s do a camera over the parallel port with power coming from the PS/2 mouse port…

So there’s not lots of photos.

With a good, modern scanner, I might be able to import some things, but that’d require access to the photos (and books) where they reside. Unfortunately, those are split among various boxes at my mother’s house, and various relatives’ houses after they’d scooped up what they could in amongst moving her to assisted living.

Doing much of anything is difficult from nearly a thousand miles away.

But I eventually did find it, and sent it to the coordinator at the facility where she is now.

I’ve also been distracted by various news things that are popping up.

I guess the woke contingent are upset at John Fetterman for supporting Ismael. So, too, I saw something on X that Elizabeth Warren was trending because people came and bothered her at dinner for her support of Israel.

While my initial reaction was, “you reap what you sow,” I’m not going to go there.

It was bad when the BLM protestors were doing it to diners at Le Diplomat.

It’s bad when they’re doing to to Senator Warren wherever the hell she was.

Don’t do that.

Don’t ever tolerate those who do.

Even if your blessed DEI training tells you otherwise.

Leave people alone. If you don’t like what they stand for, you can always leave.

November again

Well, in some parts of the world already, at least.

Am I going to write again? Yep. Have I finished my prompts? Pretty much. Am I open to more suggestions for the blanks? Always.

What I have so far:

 1.  Start
 2.  
 3.  Reader suggestion
 4.  Strange Habits
 5.  What job would you never take? (Flashback to 2013)
 6.  Free-Write
 7.  Bucket List (Flashback to 2013, again)
 8.  Birthday wrap-ups
 9.  Travel Recap
10.  Free Write
11.  Veterans Day
12.  Reason Office Visit
13.  Disappointed (Flashback to 2013)
15.  Walt Book Signing Review
16.  Halfway
17.  Uniqueness (Flashback to 2013)
18.  Terror and Risk (Flashback to 2012)
19.  
20.  Free Write
21.  Thanksgiving Plans
22.  60-years since JFK
23.  
24.  Thanksgiving recap
25.  Small Business Saturday
26.  Liz Phair Review
27.  Christmas Plans
28.  
29.  
30.  Wrap-up

Is it excitement? Um. Maybe my head’s just swimming too much?

But Happy Halloween.

Last Saturday

Today’s the last Saturday in October. It’s almost eighty degrees here on the lily pad inside the Beltway Swamp.

Whatever. Weather. Watching the Bills-Bucs game they were running nearly 70 degrees at something like 8 p.m., and it might snow some Monday night. Erie is still nearly 60 degrees.

The chemistry on this isn’t terribly difficult. One of the pods I’ve been pushing away from over the whole Israel thing is starting off with a rant about how graduating college isn’t that difficult.

*click*

Yeah, don’t need that.

And my wife walks in, shoulder surfs, and expresses her discontent that October is almost finished.

But the calendar is filling up for November. Still not sure what’s going on for Thanksgiving.

But playing along with my You Can Leave mantra, I find it interesting the things I’m really digging back in to. The Fifth Column, Reason, Cato, and so on.

Let’s go.

When I get on the plane for my trip, I’m going to leave. What can i turn off?

Fry-day

Writing today, after forgetting to do it on Saturday, and being “off” today.

There’s a lot more I could say about my grievances about the whole situation. Saying that I’m a bit of a disgruntled employee would be the definition of an understatement.

But I got through my tasks that took half of Saturday, and a good portion of today finishing up the initials brigade with work.

The incredible amount of work I’ve been doing has definitely distracted me from paying my protection racket to the professional organization.

There’s time. I will finish it by the end of the year, though I’m not sure if it’ll be before Thanksgiving, as I’d planned.

Oh well.

Preparing, too, for everything that’s coming up in November. Travel. Visit to the new Reason office in DC. Walt Hickey’s book signing. Thanksgiving. The Exile In Guyville show. (Aside: I am stupidly-excited about this? She has a bunch of visual art stuff entwinned, that I’m sure I’ll miss, but I’m still very excited…)

When can I relax? Can I relax?

Watching the Saints’ game last night certainly didn’t help for most of the game. That they blew it at the end feels oddly fitting.

Jim Mora’s USFL All-Stars probably couldn’t have messed it up that bad.

And I got invited to a work meeting in fifteen minutes. Damnitsomuch.

And I misread that.

Added to the team. But I really need to get work stuff off my personal devices. I am off work. I shouldn’t even be glancing, or getting notifications.

There’s only 10 types of people in the world

Those that understand binaries, and those that don’t.

Rest In Peace, ThinkGeek.

The whole thing with what’s been happening in Israel is yet another example of where the NeoHippie crowd who’ve been right about everything all the time, were absolutely fucking wrong.

It’s been interesting watching on TwitterX how the “blowback” crowd, the RON PAUL(pbuh) crowd, went completely silent yesterday, Sunday, after more about what Hamas did came out.

They’ve done a somewhat-effective job explaining that the major parties’ push of there only being two options being untrue. There are many options. Then they go and get behind quite possibly the worst one in the world.

Whatever.

I’m making a quick list of things to leave behind. Just leaving is kind of what I do.