Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

 

In a rash gesture of fiscal irresponsibility, I purchased a new MacBook. It's set to arrive today. The machine I'm currently using is from 2017 and its days are numbered. For as long as I've had it there's been something defective with the keyboard and Touch Bar. Keys sometimes don't respond when pressed and the bar flickers, which is an assault on the eyes while using the computer at night. Bright flashes of white emanate from the top right corner of the keyboard like a kind of erratic flickering heartbeat from inside the machine. This model sports the much reviled keyboard design with keys that are flat and lack that tactile bounce which makes typing enjoyable. On the topic of battery life, there isn't much to discuss. The battery is shriveled and wilted and cannot hold a charge. Whatever reading is shown to me by the battery indicator in the menu bar is a lie. Left unplugged the battery will show a charge of over 50% and still spontaneously die. My speakers have recently started making distorted tinny sounds which require a reboot to resolve. Performing simple tasks like running Photoshop or Lightroom while Safari or another app is open have become grueling ordeals as each app battles fiercely for whatever scant RAM it can beg borrow or steal. 

When I used to work in an Apple Store back in New York, we'd talk about how it takes 5ish years for a computer to start to feel old. Exceptions apply of course, if you buy the top end and max out the specs. Under those circumstances you might even be able to get 7-10 years depending on your use case. For most casual users, those who browse the internet, check email, write papers and use a few messaging and productivity apps, you'd be sitting pretty for a long time to come. But if you find yourself in the position of a power user, and you routinely work inside professional photo or video editing applications, or require robust processing power for AI or machine learning tasks, then you'd likely still find yourself in need of replacing the device every 5 or so years. I'm curious to try out these new MacBooks now that Apple develops its own silicon. Everyone I've spoken to raves about the improvements in terms of speed and efficiency. But what I'm most excited for is the return of functional ports for things like HDMI and SD card connections. Personally I hated the move to remove these ports, forcing me into carrying around additional superfluous connective equipment. Who the fuck likes dongles? Living in a dongle-free world sounds wonderful. I'll see for myself in a few hours. I can't wait to plug directly into my TV to watch The Last of Us tonight.

Unless I encounter some delivery complications, of course. Getting anything delivered in Germany is a nightmare. The deliverymen must play a game where they randomly skip certain deliveries and destinations in a kind of naughty-list lottery. Recently I had DHL claim that they tried to deliver my package at times while I was working from home - on the same days when I received successful deliveries from Amazon. One day in particular I was in front of the building throwing out some trash when a notification appeared on my phone that they had just attempted delivery but I was unavailable. A scanned the block looking for a DHL delivery truck, but none were in sight. What's even worse than failing to deliver an item is when they don't bother ringing your doorbell but instead leave your package with a neighbor conveniently located somewhere else in your building, sometimes without telling you with whom they've left it. Then it becomes your job to leave letters in the hallway asking if anyone has your package, or knock on each of your 13 neighbor's doors until you find the right person at the right time. If you can't tell, it's one of my favorite German pastimes. What if they left your package with a neighbor that's insane, never home, or one that you're on bad terms with? 

I remember my downstairs neighbor in San Francisco. He looked like Charles Manson. He smoked meth in the house. At all hours of the night he'd be in a meth-fueled frenzy laughing and screaming and huffing and groaning while consorting with all sorts of unseen evil spirits. I had listened to his sounds with a seething sleepless dread, dreaming of doing things most people ordinarily would not admit. Imagine having to retrieve a package from this man? One time, after days of being subjected to his binge, and after being ignored at his 3:00AM doorstep, I found myself pounding with my fists on the floor, howling back at this howling man. When you peer into the abyss, the abyss peers back into you.

His favorite chocolate was Hershey's Special Dark. I bought it for him at the convenience store down the block one time. Good old Gary. He's probably dead now, floating around somewhere in biker-meth heaven, screaming not at a cloud, but from a cloud, looking down at all of our silly little lives from that epic high. 

Rest in peace Gary, for you knew it not in life.

A Quick Recap

 Morning came early. 6:45. I stayed in bed reading for a few hours and then decided to get up once my stomach startled rumbling. From under the covers I could see that it had snowed. Only slightly, gently dusting the tiles of the roof in uneven patterns. The skies were blue. It was sunny. Slowly I got up, made breakfast and scheduled a call with my friend Kim. An hour or so later I was watching the moonrise in Australia. The wonders of modern technology and video conferencing. We spoke for hours, until my phone battery had had enough and threatened to end the call. There was talk of a visit later this year, to celebrate their wedding. This would be the second wedding set for this year. In July there will be a trip to New York, to attend my brother's wedding. It will be fun to take Asia and show her the mean streets that made me. And introducing her to real pizza. Taking her to Australia though, that would be something else. I think she'd love it. She'd love Kim and Simon, too. 

I was there for their first wedding. Okay, it was a Burning Man wedding, but still. It was officiated by a witch. I probably wrote about it here after it happened. That was the year that I attended the burn with a freshly broken spine after having fallen out of a tree in Golden Gate Park. I remember walking all the way out to the Temple to meet them, armed with my trusty camera wrapped in a protective ziplock bag to keep the particulate dust away from the sensor and other mechanical parts. I managed to capture some great photos, and maybe even a video or two. It was a lovely atmosphere and the second Burning Man wedding I'd ever attended. The first was equally lovely, and happened a year or two earlier when Seamus and Krista renewed their vows. That's what it's called when you're already married, right? I don't know if that's the correct term, but I think it is. Burning Man weddings are special, somehow more sacred than what comes out of a stiff and stuffy chapel. Weddings in the real world are usually indulgent and overly formal, expensive. I guess Burning Man isn't cheap either, but it's definitely cheaper than a traditional wedding.

Kim and Simon will have their wedding at a festival near Christmas time. In Australia it's warm and gorgeous in December. The festival I've been to once before, the last time I was in Australia, which will have been six years ago by that time. What an odd sentence. Language sometimes struggles to drape itself over or bend around discussions of time and tenses. Maybe the way I wrote the sentence is incorrect, but if I speak it aloud it sounds right and makes sense. Technically that still doesn't make it right I guess. Language is an imprecise tool, but it's the best one we've got.

It's hard to imagine what my life will look like by the end of this year. This February marked my five year anniversary in Germany. I expect big changes are to come this year and it's unclear if they are to be positive or negative. There's still the war looming, which you seldom hear people talk about these days unless it's in the context of advocating for American isolationism (namely my father and many Republican senators). But ignoring the tragic loss of life and general destruction that war entails, there's the threat of nuclear war. Germany is two nations west of Ukraine, but still not so far away. It's uncomfortable to sit with the idea that a handful of people have the power to blow it all away. It seems stupid and illogical and senseless. But what else is war?

I spoke to my dad earlier. After ranting about how climate change is a hoax and how Bill Gates and George Soros are going to take over the world, he started to prattle on about Ukraine and Russia and how America needs to mind its own business and stop sending money and military aid to Ukraine. It's a talking point he's probably heard on Fox News from his buddy Tucker Carlson, or maybe one that found its way to him via his cursed YouTube algorithm. I asked him how he felt about World War II, and whether he believes the US shouldn't have gotten involved. I asked if he thought it was okay to stand idly by while one nation invades another and proceeds to enact genocide and commit war crimes. His response was that he wants to avoid World War III. I asked him "if Hitler had been stopped sooner due to quick and immediate action, would World War II would have been shorter and less deadly, or would it have started at all if Hitler's advances were swiftly squashed?" 

He mumbled something about us needing to protect our own people and then remarked that our borders are wide open and immigrants with HIV and no skills are just pouring in while Biden busies himself with countries across the ocean.

Doomer, it rhymes with boomer.

Instructions Unclear

I was too absorbed in Midjourney yesterday to take a break and write something. I wouldn't say I was in a creative flow state, but rather a struggle against the machine to have it draw me a character pointing "this way." At times it's absolutely fucking maddening to work with this program. I spent hours on single panel last night and couldn't get it to give me what I wanted. Granted, I am trying to get it to give me something very specific - a character in the same outfit and hairstyle and of a similar background environment and in a similar artistic style to what's been used so far for this point in the story. It doesn't make it any less frustrating though. At times it gets so close to being usable while still remaining totally unsuitable. I'm trying to avoid using Photoshop to correct things when possible to preserve the authenticity of the claim "AI-generated graphic novel." I'll make exceptions to fix a missing eyeball or edit out an extra limb or phantom figure in the background, but I only permit these occasional minor tweaks instead of extensively manipulating the image output. In a sense, my suffering is self-imposed. Isn't it always though.

The weather outside is frightful. Rain and clouds for days. The only brief glimmer of joy is watching the birds outside flit from branch to branch or wrestle with the bird feeders on my neighbors' balconies. During lunch I watched a red-headed woodpecker shoo away a small sparrow as it pecked and plucked seeds from the feeder, whirling around in a merry-go-round sort of way. The sparrow hopped a foot or two away and watched with quick irritated head movements while the woodpecker dined on what was only moments ago the sparrow's feast. After a few long seconds of deliberation the sparrow made another attempt at getting at the seeds but once more the woodpecker drove the sparrow off. From the hours of 2 - 4 the small birds seem especially active. They're more vocal, though not quite as vocal as the early hours of the morning when their songs signal the start of a new day. In the afternoon they seem more curious and eager to survey the state of the backyard. When it snows, from my window I can see their small tracks stamped in the area around the long beer-garden table there. Some of the birds are large, and some are predators. Often times you can hear the high pitched sound of some type of hawk or falcon and, on rare occasions, they even land on the branch in front of my balcony. Beyond the woodpeckers, sparrows and blue tits, there are wood pigeons, crows, nearby peacocks and roosters, and at times owls. None of these are quite exotic as say, a kingfisher, or as magical as a hummingbird, but being able to glimpse into their hurried little lives and listen to their songs lends a profoundly peaceful quality to what would otherwise be a grimy, noisy neighborhood in Berlin. Right now I feel like I'm in a cabin inside a nature reserve. That's how isolated it is from the city sounds.

Years ago, when I first moved here, around this time of year actually, I'd been out partying all night and had returned from the club after accidentally snorting speed. How does one accidentally snort speed, you might ask. Well, it's easier than you think. All it takes is for someone to hand you the wrong bag of white powder and, then, what you thought a second ago was ketamine turns out to be something else entirely. Needless to say, I needed sleep. The girl I was dating at the time, a German girl who lived just outside of Berlin, was arriving to visit. She found me in a ruined state in my bedroom, hungover, kaput, fried. She eventually forced me out of the apartment so that we could go get something to eat for lunch. She was vegan and I didn't have anything at home to eat. We walked down the stairs, made it through the courtyard and the long hallway that opens out onto the street. As soon as I pulled the door open I was met with a blast of sound and spectacle so sudden and sharp that I was momentarily disoriented, stunned, disabled. The entire street was consumed by an enormous party. There was a sea of people and all the sound and fury. 

"Oh yeah," she said, "it's carnivale." 

I couldn't believe what I was seeing, and how we hadn't heard even a hint of it from my apartment. German soundproofing. It's important for shielding the screams of the children imprisoned in your basement from alerting the neighbors. Actually I think Fritzl was Austrian, not German. 

Well, it's about time I get back to the grind and try to get an image of my comic book character pointing. If I start now hopefully I'll be able to get the panel sorted out by bedtime!

Skin Oil Salesman

 Right now I'm wearing a hat and a Patagonia fleece to pair with my pajama pants. It's actually too hot and I'm going to have to take the hat off now. Maybe I'm getting sick. Last night's sleep was uninterrupted and marvelous. A solid eight hours. Before bed I was practicing for the German naturalization exam and I believe this contributed to a tired mind. The study materials for the test consist of 300 questions, plus 10 or so questions specific to your Bundesland (German federal state). The exam takes a subset of these, 30 I believe, in the form of multiple choice questions. So to prepare I've been memorizing all of them. There's no other way to do this short of taking an intensive German integration course which I don't have the time for. The challenge with the approach I've taken is that my level of German is only A1. The exam is in B2. This means I can't understand most of the questions and answers and need to learn a whole new vocabulary. Unsurprisingly, this slows down the process. I'm making good time though, and I've been able to pass the mock exams I've taken. It's just that when studying and memorizing these questions, they engage your mind in a more demanding way since you're trying to encode and understand not only new facts and ideas, but also a new linguistic concepts and grammar. It's more exhausting than regular exam preparation. 

But, so is life in a foreign land.

Every day I feel like something is a little bit off in my body. Sometimes it's my mind, wrapped in a kind of subtle fogginess, and other times it's my body, with an odd ache or stiffness, low level inflammation or malaise. Today it's slightly swollen sinuses and a light cough. Just as every good meal comes with a wine pairing, my symptoms are paired with a cottony warm lassitude which makes me want to put my head down and nap. Except I can't. I need to busy myself at the computer with work, I need to run to the store because my small fridge is out of supplies and sundries, and after that I'll need to cook dinner and shower and study. No rest for the wicked. I'm sad that I haven't been able to read the Steinbeck book I'd started in days now. Maybe tonight. Or tomorrow. The story just seems to be taking hold too, so it's vital for my enjoyment that I allow it to hook me and give it the continued attention it deserves. Once I finish it I'll write some half-assed review of it here. Stay tuned!

What else is new? I'm considering buying a 3D printer. When push comes to shove, I know I won't, but the daydream is fun. They're pricey - between 800 - 1000 euros. The concept is fascinating though. It will be interesting to see how new AI's overlap with 3D printing to start generating unique physical objects and tangible abstract art. There's a piece I want to print that looks like something out of a video game. A sort of magic pixelated potion that shimmers when light hits it. I'd like to place it on a rotating disc so that it creates a mesmerizing illusion of transformation. Local printshops in Berlin have quoted me around 50 euros, far cheaper than buying and maintaining my own printer. This is what I'll do. 

Are you ever able to smell the oil on your skin? I suspect it collects at the base of the hair follicles in my mustache and beard and then the soft smell wafts up into my nose with certain movements of the head. It's not an unpleasant smell, but it isn't particularly pleasant either. It just smells like skin oil. Which sounds disgusting, but why? I wonder if someone else paced their nose directly next to mine if they'd be able to smell it too or if the smell I'm smelling is just the scent of my nasal passage; of dry boogers and hairy little mucus membranes.

Know Thyself

 

I realized once I was already in bed last night that I hadn't written a post. Briefly I considered writing one from my phone, but then I thought "let's not be too rigid about this." Sometimes there won't be a post. Life goes on. Hell, there have barely been posts this whole time I've been in Germany.

Nothing noteworthy or remarkable happened yesterday, I just forgot. Perhaps the compensation situation was still occupying too much real estate inside my mind. I had a followup with my manger on the topic earlier this morning. It was purely perfunctory. No real steps were taken to remedy the issue. My manager just told me the same thing as before, except this time with more details. The short of it is that, what's done is done. Oh well. No use crying over spilled milk. Unless that milk was 15% more expensive due to inflation.

Asia leaves for Poland later today, which saddens me a bit. It's always unpleasant when she leaves, but with the gloomy weather and all it's especially noticeable. When two people pair up, it becomes customary to spend most of your waking hours together, even if not in direct or sustained contact. Usually we're both in and out of meetings and phone calls and miscellaneous tasks throughout the day, one of us will make breakfast or lunch or both, the other might handle dinner. An unspoken teamwork emerges organically and you both become accustomed to this rhythm. Once it breaks, it requires readjustment. Long distance relationships simulate a multitude of miniature breakups, of a sort. Each time you separate for an interval of more than a week, the body must get confused and send unconscious signals of worry and danger. Perhaps this is why my gumline is eroding. Embodied stress. Isn't stress always embodied? 

There are advantages to the distance though. We get extended time to spend on our own, peace and quiet, the chance to exist in our own space and cultivate a little sense of self which exists outside of the context of the relationship. In a way this adds a resilience to the relationship that might not be felt otherwise. I'm not sure if I've felt it before. Never have I lived with a partner before. I was always a commuter student in love and romance. Having to dorm together teaches you new skills and lessons about yourself; where your tolerance is for messiness in the kitchen or bathroom, how much solitary time you require for balance, how much you (knowingly or unknowingly) have come to depend on your partner. The clearest observation I've made, having spent all this time with her, is that her presence in my life enhances it. It is better when she's around. Life feels somehow easier, lighter. I smile more. And laugh and sing stupid songs. 

Later, after my final meeting of the day, I'll escort her to the station where she'll catch a night bus back to Poland. The trip takes about 4 - 4.5 hours. Not terrible, but not exactly cozy either. It's right at the edge of bearable. Lucky for us. No, really. Being in a relationship for four years encourages you to notice (if you're willing to pay attention) the little things. Things that can begin to add up to a death-by-a-thousand-paper-cuts kind of phenomenon. Imagine how many relationships would fail because it's just too inconvenient to keep making a 5+ hour trip every weekend to see your partner. Or how people might find it too impractical to see your partner only briefly on a weekend, or every other weekend, or every three. You begin to learn how to temper yourself, how to deal with your inner child that wants things and is willing to throw tantrums if it doesn't get them. 

I think most of the challenge of being in a relationship is dealing with that very thing. The better you can sort your own self out, the easier time you'll have trying to work with someone else.

Bends and Bands

 

I'm fresh out of a meeting with my manager. He's back from a week in Barcelona, where senior leaders and salespeople met to kick off the year. Everything went as usual, except for the last minute of the meeting. 

"By the way," he said, "has anyone told you you won't be getting a compensation review?"

No. Who would have told me that? That's typically something a manager would tell a direct report, right?

He proceeded to explain that because I was already at the max for my band, that I wasn't eligible for an increase, despite the fact that inflation has raised the cost of living significantly across the globe. The reason, he said, was that I'm still on paper as a QA Engineer, even though I moved out of that role two years ago. I explained I wasn't happy with this explanation. Why should I be penalized because of some clerical error? If someone failed to move me into the correct role, then move me and apply a compensation increase retroactively. This seems rather simple, no? 

Apparently not. He's arranged a followup meeting for us to discuss this matter further.

Let me point out that I'm not upset with him. He's just the messenger. I'm upset with whoever the decision-maker here was. I was clear to indicate this to him, in the interest of transparency, but I wasn't hiding my dissatisfaction either. I was perhaps too candid in my disapproval. Oh well. At least I have a job, for now. Part of me wonders if this is a not-so-subtle hint that I won't have a job for much longer. The tech industry has been hit with massive layoffs recently. Several of my friends are currently unemployed and looking for work. In my case, a layoff would be more complicated and carry additional consequences given I'm in Germany on a work visa. Perhaps it's time to start tidying up my resume.

Otherwise the day has been rather shite. I slept abysmally. I woke up at 4:30 and couldn't fall back asleep. I can sense I'm irritable. When I was making breakfast I slammed my head off the counter after picking up a fallen strawberry from the floor. The weather is wet and cold and very windy. Trees outside are bending and swaying a little too much for my liking, and probably theirs. 

I wonder if a tree fears strong winds. 

The tree risks being uprooted, losing its limbs or even snapping under the force. It can't be pleasant. Then again, a tree might say the same about someone staggering drunk across an uneven sidewalk. I'll need to go to the store to get a few things, water mainly. 

The world outside seems so uninviting.

What Jack Said

 

"I need donkey therapy because I was raped by a dolphin as a child," he said. The therapist looked at him with a stoic solemnity. Others in the therapy group looked on with similar facial expressions. They had been witness to many intimate sentences, some revelatory, some confessional, but none ever quite like this. A certain hush had fallen over the room like a spell and no one knew how to lift it. So they sat in extended silence. There was the idea that maybe they should try giving the sentence the space it needed to expand and slowly dissolve. The room however, was not large enough. The utterance had already stretched itself from wall to wall, ceiling to ceiling, much like it had inside each of their skulls. 

"I said, I need donkey therapy because I was raped by a dolphin when I was a child," he repeated.

No one expected a repetition. It had the same effect on the audience the second time. Stunned silence. Some people shifted uncomfortably in their seats while trying hard to convey empathy. Others held their breath as they waited for something or someone to make a move. One woman's eyes began to dart nervously from left to right as she searched the room for an assurance that there would be a way out of this. When a reply finally came, it didn't give them the relief they'd hoped for.

"Go on, tell us more about that, Jack," Timothy said in a moment of blundering desperation. Everyone looked at him, momentarily trying to hide their contempt before flashing encouraging smiles toward Jack.

"Well," Jack started, "I was nine years old, and my parents decided to take us on vacation, to Seaworld. There was this special event that year: a chance to meet Flipper the dolphin. You know, the one from TV?"

Just when everyone thought the air in the room couldn't get any thicker, Ellen blurted out the words "Flipper, the famous dolphin raped you?"

Jack seemed surprised not only by the candid nature of the question, but how dispassionately Ellen asked it. To him, she seemed more interested in the scandal than his trauma.

"Yes Ellen, Flipper, the famous fucking dolphin raped me," Jack replied.

The therapist's hand rose slowly to his mouth and his eyebrows signaled a brief wrinkle of tension. What was unusual about this situation was that for the seven months of group therapy leading up to this moment, Jack had never spoken a word about himself. Sure, he'd listen attentively, often showing great emotional sensitivity, and he'd even offer terrific insights and supportive words to others, but he never once volunteered any information about himself. This wasn't compulsory of course, Jack was paying for these sessions after all. In private the therapist had gone over this with Jack, urging him to participate more, reminding him that in order to get something he needed to give something - that it simply wasn't enough to just sit and listen to others. If Jack wanted help, he would have take a chance and overcome this fear of vulnerability. This was a safe space, he'd said.

And now Jack had finally spoken. No one could tell if this was a credible statement, or if Jack's real issue was that he was a compulsive liar. Or maybe this was some strange power trip, a way of getting the group to focus all of their attention on him so that he could say it was just a joke. But what if what Jack was saying were true? Could that happy dolphin really be capable of something like this? Yes, it was a known fact that dolphins and humans had fornicated. Yes, it was a known fact that dolphins were very intelligent, very sexual creatures. In fact, they are the only other mammal known to have sex solely for the purpose of pleasure. Most other animals have sex to reproduce; and the sex is brief, sometimes painful. 

"Any more questions, or can I go on?" Jack asked.

Ellen's face flushed and she crossed her arms over her chest and softly sighed. The other ten people dared not say a word.

"Well, when I finally met him, I was so excited. As you could imagine, right? I was a little kid. This was the first real celebrity I'd met. I was starstruck. Seeing a star like that up close and personal, it was a real rush," Jack said.

"I wanted an autograph," he went on, "so he took me back to his trailer where he kept a stack of glossy publicity photos and pens."

"Just a second, Jack," Gregory interrupted, "Flipper had his own trailer?"

"Are you calling me a liar, Gregory?" Jack asked. "Did I call you a liar when you told us about how your wife left you for another man and you assured us she was 'completely' sexually satisfied?"

"Hey, that's an ugly thing to say," Gregory yelped, "it's a reasonable question. I wasn't calling you no liar."

"Gentlemen," the therapist finally said, intervening, "enough."

"No, it's not enough," Jack shouted, "I've been patient for seven whole months, giving everyone my attention, every session, every week, every time, trying to work up enough courage to tell my story, and the first time I open my mouth I have Ellen the klepto over there asking dumb questions and then I get Gregory the stud insinuating I'm full of shit! No, you know what, I have had enough. I gave this a try doc, I really did. Do you know how close I was to blowing my fucking brains out? How many nights I'd lie awake and just think about ending it all? Even to this day, I still can't function in a normal relationship. Do you have any idea what it's like to associate sex with a slimy cackling fish with a hard-on? I can't even jerk off without thinking of his elongated face and all those teeth. The smiling. He abused his celebrity to take advantage of a gullible young boy. I was ten years old, doc!"

The room, once more, was stunned by Jack's speech, until Ellen said, "I thought you were nine."

Jack's face twisted into a messy, teeth-gnashing Picassoesque contortion of rage. 

"You know what," he said, standing up, causing the small plastic chair to crash back loudly against the floor, "fuck this shit! I'm out of here. Good luck you bunch of god-damned loonies!"

"Jack, wait," the therapist called out, but in one large stride Jack had grabbed his coat off the hook and exited through the now slamming door.

The silent room was still silent. Exasperated glances and confused imaginations struggled to make sense of what had just happened. The inviolability of the safe space had been shattered. There was the feeling of something having been deeply fractured.

"Anybody here actually believe that?" Gregory asked.

"I didn't understand. What was the part about the donkey?" Pauline asked.

"He dropped something," Alex said from the back of the room nearest to the door. He bent down while the room waited to see what it was. Alex picked it up and turned white as a ghost.

"I, I think I'm going to be sick," he said in a daze.

"What is it," the therapist asked, getting up and walking toward Alex. Alex placed the item in the therapist's hand. 

It was an old polaroid photograph of a young boy and a dolphin inside a trailer.

Maybe It's ...

 

I can feel Magic the Gathering eroding my sanity. I simultaneously loathe the game, and love it. I've been playing it all fucking day long and I can't seem to get enough. Yet I can feel my contempt for it building. The game has a way of screwing you over in ways that seem not only statistically improbable, but often absurd. I'll spare you the boring details, mainly because it would take time to lay out the rules, game mechanics, deck archetypes and compositions, card types, and all the other bullshit that comes along with it. Let's just say that the way some of these games play out can be absolutely uncanny. For instance, you can only have 4 of any given card in a deck (except for basic land cards). Imagine an opponent drawing 3 of those 4 cards in the top 20 cards of their 60-card deck. Then imagine the likelihood of them drawing the 4th copy in the following few turns - when drawing that card would be precisely what they'd need to win the game on the spot. You might say it seems pretty damn unlikely, but you'd be wrong. The number of times things just like that happen on any given day are definitely eyebrow-raising. 

Lots of people believe the game is rigged. I'm not in that camp, but I understand why people feel this way. I guess it's like this with any kind of conspiracy theory. All you need is a little bit of doubt, a few odd coincidences, and a group of people wanting to make order out of chaos. There's comfort in thinking that someone must be behind the curtain designing a grand scheme. It takes away that deep fear and mystery of the unknown in all our hearts. Sometimes there are conspiracies though, that's the quirky bit. This isn't one of them, in my opinion, but others do exist. The fact the some conspiracies are real is enough to send the conspiracy nuts spinning off the deep end, right off the flat edge of the earth.

I went out for a trip to the store earlier. The weather was wet and nasty. The kind of weather that's just constantly spitting a raspberry in your face. Everyone wore wincing expressions as they lugged their groceries home or pushed their pedals through the hissing bike lane. I was happy I didn't have far to go to get what I needed. Just a few things. Asia and I did the larger grocery trip yesterday. I'll be starting dinner sometime soon. Asia finishes her woodworking workshop at 18:00 and I'd like to have something ready for her when she gets home. I'd gotten her a voucher for the workshop maybe a year or two ago, for her birthday, or Christmas, or some other anniversary. I'm curious to see what little wooden object she's made.

Later tonight there's to be a show. A friend of ours is performing. I'm likely not going, though. I may have mentioned this before but the bars in Berlin are notorious for allowing smoking. It's disgusting and literally illegal. But no one enforces the law. Gradually I've grown to be repelled by the smoke. I don't know how I used to do it the first few years I was living in Berlin. Even if you didn't drink, and you made it home at a reasonable hour, you still wake up the next morning with a cough, your eyes are unusually dry and scratchy, you have a headache and your entire body and bedroom stink like cigarettes. It's awful. These days I'd rather just skip it. I'm going to have to ask Asia to get her ass in the shower when she gets home, to wash that foul stink off her skin and head. I'd like to go and support our friend, but not when it means I need to inhale thick second-hand smoke for 4 hours straight and feel like dogshit the next day.

This is what getting old is like, for anyone reading this who's under the age of 30. Buckle up! 

I didn't sleep so well. I woke up at about 7:00 but went to bed around midnight. Given Asia will be going to the show tonight I expect another night of the same. At least I don't have kids. Imagine not being able to sleep for a year? At this age? Maybe when I was 25, but now? I'd be dead. I can barely put my shoes on now without blowing out a disc. I did pushups earlier, a few sets of 10-12. My heart rate didn't really return to normal for what felt like an hour. Not that it was racing the entire time, that's not what I mean. It just was a bit elevated. This kind of shit didn't happen when I was in my 20's. 

Maybe it's long Covid. 

Maybe it's Maybelline.

Inherently Idiotic Idioms

 

Super short and sweet today. I don't know when Asia's friend Magda will return, but my suspicion is it will be any minute now. She arrived yesterday and is staying with us through the weekend. It's nice to have another person around, I just want to get the writing out of the way to avoid the appearance of being rude. Why is it rude to take 20 minutes for your daily writing practice, you ask? Well, it probably isn't. But it feels like it is, and that's enough. I imagine someone sitting in my living room thinking, oh, this person doesn't want me here. Why else would they leave me sitting here while they hang out in the next room typing away on their computer? Of course most people probably don't think this way. Some might even enjoy the time to themselves to check on the things they didn't get a chance to. A moment of focus time can be a gift.

It's weird, the stories we tell ourselves about what's right and wrong, what's appropriate or inappropriate. 

I was just talking to The Profuser while doing the dishes after dinner. He was much less profusive today given he had a root canal yesterday and said he couldn't talk much. That didn't stop him from speaking at length on all varieties of topics near and far. One thing that came up was the phenomenon of calling someone that you haven't spoken to in a long time; not because of a falling out, but more of a falling away. There are friends I simply lost touch with due to time and distance that I would still like to be in touch with, but to me there's this feeling of 'well, if I haven't made an effort to stay in touch, then they must have released me from their circle of friends and would see my move to make contact as odd.' Too little, too late. I think I have this belief because it happened to me once with an older woman I was in a kind of romantic relationship with. She accosted me with the fact that I hadn't spoken to her in months, which sent the signal that her friendship wasn't very important or valuable to me. She'd said something like, "I prefer to have friends who call me more than once every eight months." I'd have to go back and see if I could locate the exchange to find the exact phrasing, but it was cutting. I've even heard friends talk about other friends in a similar way, "X reached out, she hasn't texted or called me in years...now I'm good enough?"

The Profuser urged me to ignore this type of thinking, and I think he's right. If everyone acted that way it would drive everyone further apart instead of bringing them closer together. We should seek to build bridges, not walls. If someone is offended by your lack of communication, it's their responsibility to tell you and to establish boundaries / expectations - just as my more mature female friend tried to do. I've always thought myself mature (and it's true, I am and have been more mature than most people my age) but man was I too immature for that relationship. She was a smart, beautiful, cool woman. I think on some level this must have intimidated me. That and the age difference. She had nearly 20 years on me, if I remember correctly. Maybe my mind did some future accounting and started ringing unconscious existential alarm bells that said: in the best case scenario she'd die at 80 when you're 60 and you'd be left alone to live out your end years a grieving widower. 

Perhaps it was a mix of those things and the fact that I was still in my 20's sowing my wild oats around San Francisco. Sowing my wild oats. Where the fuck does that phrase originate? Another one The Profuser and I talked about was the phrase cold turkey. So many combinations of words like this in our heads that, when examined in isolation, have absolutely no meaning. Is this why idiom has the same root as idiotic? 

We'll need to ask Mr. Owl.

For the Birds

 

Sunny days here. I woke up early this morning, around 6:00. I'd heard a noise and felt some movement in the bed. As a light sleeper, it doesn't take much to wake me. So I sat there listening, trying to determine if Asia was just tossing and turning or if something else was going on. The sound persisted and so did the movement, so I turned over. Asia was sitting up in the bed, turned away from me, her feet on the floor. You okay, I asked. No, she said, something is wrong with my back. She was crying. I sat up and went near to her. What's wrong? I can't move my head. Okay, the pain, is it sharp or dull, in one spot or radiating out? I can't describe it, she said. I began touching her back trying to gently massage it, asking where it hurt. When my fingers touched between her spine and her shoulder blade and she said, there, that's where it hurts. You probably tweaked something while doing yoga earlier. Maybe, but why am I feeling this now? Yeah, I don't know, but that happens sometimes. After some light massage and Googling - to make sure it wasn't meningitis - we went back to sleep.

A couple of hours later, just after 8:00, I woke up and she still looked like she was in pain. I got up, massaged some CBD balm onto the muscles in the area and got her some water and ibuprofen. I put her on a regimen of 20mins periods of cold compress. It's nice to take care of the person you love, but the older I get the more I worry when someone is experiencing some acute health condition. Should we go to the hospital, I ask myself, is that crazy? The doctors would probably laugh at us and show contempt for taking up a bed a person with a more serious issue could have used. But then what if it were meningitis? Failure to take prompt action could be fatal. She had no fever, no nausea, no other symptoms that would suggest meningitis so perhaps just a day of ice, anti-inflammatories and rest?

We'll see. I have her under close supervision. She seems to be doing better already. I think just having someone caring for you and being sympathetic to your pain can do wonders to help you heal. Feeling supported is important. This is true not only when it comes to your health, but also at work, in your relationships, or when trying to learn a new skill. It is especially useful to be mindful of this when speaking to yourself. Often we are too cold, cruel, judgmental, impatient...unforgiving. Be careful of this and try to summon empathy for yourself when struggling or in pain. We have the capability to be our best friend or worst enemy, and it is all in how we treat ourselves.

I think we'll go for a brief walk soon, to get her blood circulating a bit and promote some light movement. Our walk yesterday was lovely. The weather was cool, not cold, sunny, almost autumnal. It seemed lots of other folks had a similar idea. We saw people walking dogs, jogging, bike riding, and even more obscure practices like practicing archery and even falconry with a young crow. The man with the crow was unintentionally attracting a small crowd of picture takers. It's not every day you see someone with a crow on their wrist. Corvids are extremely intelligent birds. I'm surprised you don't see them as pets the way you do parrots. Maybe because they don't speak like parrots do. The ability to mimic human speech is a novelty that makes them desirable. That is, until the bird starts saying words you don't want it to while guests are over for a dinner party.

Fuck you, bitch!

"Oh, that Ronald, who knows where he gets it from?"

Oh yeah, fuck me!

"Well, I've never!" you say as your face flushes beet red.

Eat my ass! Eat my ass!

"Honestly, he's never said this stuff before," you exclaim, but you can tell no one believes you.

Put that big old dick in me, daddy!

"I'm so sorry" you say as you rush toward the bird, "he's never done this. I'll put him inside, give me a minute."

Oh yeah, oh yeah! I'm cumming, choke me, choke me!

You struggle awkwardly as you try and lift the heavy bird cage, and one of your guests asks nervously if you need help.

"No, I'm fine," you say, exasperated, "I've got it."

You don't got it. You stumble after fumbling for the door handle with one hand and go crashing to the floor, bird seed scattering across the floor in all directions as the parrot screeches and escapes the tumbling cage.

Fuck you, bitch!

You lie on the floor, defeated, humiliated, your partner looking on at you in baffled horror. You wonder why you ever wanted a parrot in the first place, why you didn't get a bird that couldn't repeat your private filth to your friends. 

Why didn't you get a crow?

You like that, you fucking slut?!

Glorified Gambling

 

Ok, not much time to write. The weather outside is gorgeous and sunny. I haven't been out yet so I can't comment about the temperature, but from inside it looks heavenly. I'm hoping to go for a quick walk after writing this, so I may be brief.

I woke up to the news that a stock I invested in mysteriously tanked over night, after the stock market closed. What's weird about that is that during the day I'd considered selling the stock since it hit an all time high and I made a couple hundred dollars off of it. Instead, what I did was raise my stop-loss to just above my break-even point since the stock had been performing so well. This way, I thought, I'm minimizing my risk and locking in a meager profit as I let the stock keep climbing. I patted myself on the back for the mature investment strategy and didn't think any more of it. I couldn't believe my eyes when I woke up to the news that the stock had toppled 50% in after-hours. In a single day I went from making hundreds to losing hundreds.

Let this be a lesson to you all. If you're considering investing in the stock market to make a few quick bucks: don't. 

What really irritates me about this is that I took so much care to be careful. I researched the stock, analyzed the technicals, saw that the company had good earnings and great relative market strength. I watched how it performed for a couple of weeks before investing and set up tight stop-losses so that my losses would be confined to only 3% initially, and then locked in a profit after a week of it performing well. I did all I could to make sure I wasn't taking unnecessary risk. The only thing that could happen, I knew, would be a massive gap-down which would cause my stop-loss not to trigger. When looking at the stock's history, something like that would have been highly unusual, so it wasn't worried about it. Well, it happened. Go figure. 

Every time I try to jump in on a stock, without fail, something like this happens. I'm officially giving up on investing in stocks. From now on I'm just plugging that money up in high-yield savings accounts and IRA's. Fuck throwing money away. 

That loss could have paid for all the dental work I'll need over the coming month to repair my rotting teeth.

Cannibalistic Teeth

 

It turns out not going to the dentist for a few years perhaps isn't the best strategy. The good news is that I have no cavities! This was only a little surprising because I largely stopped drinking wine and beer, I seldom eat sweets, and I brush and floss regularly. The bad news is bruxism, my tendency to grind my teeth - both while awake and while sleeping - has caused serious gum recession on on the front 6 of my teeth. Now, I recall years and years ago a dentist telling me that I grind my teeth. I never paid any attention to it because the dentist made it seem like this was just a thing that some people do and I should try to stop...even though I do it unconsciously. Sometimes during the day I even do it mindfully, when nervous or focusing. Well, now I need a mouthguard to wear while I sleep and I need to get fillings on the tops of my gums where the roots of the teeth are exposed. All of this will cost me close to a thousand euros I'm sure. For some reason this kind of thing isn't covered by German health insurance. Not so dissimilar to America, aye?

So yeah, that's a bit of a bummer, but what can one do now? Except for getting a mouthguard of course, to help combat future damage. Much like my hairline, my gums are also lost to the passage of time. Time heals all wounds, true, but it also erases the hair and gum line. Let this be a lesson to any of you who might be clenching your teeth as you read this post. 

It's surreal, body tension. Like, I can almost guarantee you that your shoulders are tensed right now. Mine always are. There's probably similar tension in your abdomen, almost as though you're always preparing for the possibility you might get unexpectedly punched in the stomach. Relax your jaw, drop your shoulders down, relax your stomach. Now for the hard part: realize you have tension in your anus. That's right, your pooty pucker is clenched up tight. Let. It. Go. Don't worry, you won't shit yourself or shart, you're not in danger. This is how I'm going to conduct my mindful body awareness yoga practice on Zoom later tonight. I've tricked a bunch of unsuspecting prenatal women into signing up for this course by promising a one time free session with no strings attached - a value of $100. Who can beat those savings at a time like this when inflation is so high? People - and businesses - are cutting costs wherever they can. 

While writing this post I've caught myself with my teeth clenched repeatedly. It's going to take a lot of mental muscle to break this habit. 

There's something dehumanizing about having to wear a mouthguard. I know it's the functional equivalent of the 'cone of shame' a dog has to wear after a surgery, but maybe that's what I'm getting at. These types of protective apparatuses are for animals that lack the sense to not gnaw away at their own flesh. Then there's the heady aspect where you realize I'm using my mouth to devour my mouth - doesn't it seem like that shouldn't be possible? Yeah, we've all heard of the snake that eats its own tail, but isn't there something worse about the teeth that eat their own?

Dentists and Doctors in Deutschland

My humblest apologies for the abbreviated post last night. I expect it will happen sometimes that I have less time, or less enthusiasm than normal when it comes to keeping up posting. I am only human. But to make up for it I'm writing today when I'm free and recharged on a full night's sleep. The day is still largely ahead of me and the weather is grim, but I'm chipper. Maybe because Asia is here. It's nice when a woman is around. They bring a different energy, enhance the Feng Shui. My apartment becomes a multicultural remote meeting room space where English, Polish and German perfume the walls. 

I have a dentist appointment later today. The appointment was made a month ago. That's how long it takes to receive medical care here in Deutschland. At times I truly wonder what the benefits of this 'universal health care' are. Sure, there are the obvious benefits, notably not bankrupting yourself over a costly medical procedure or a life-threatening condition like costly cancer chemotherapy treatments, which is certainly nothing to scoff at, but that's about it. The other misleading thing about the term universal health care is that it implies it's free. It isn't. You have to pay for it, and it's illegal not to be insured. So it's effectively the same configuration as in the US: you either split the bill with your employer, or you pay out of pocket if you're unemployed. The level of care I receive when going to a doctor here compared to the US is night and day though. There's no bedside manner, the doctors are all slammed, you're always waiting even when you have an appointment, the doctor spends a few minutes with you before rushing you out the door, and you never quite feel you've gotten the treatment you need. The worst of all though is the scarcity of appointments. 

When I first arrived in Berlin, nearly five years ago to the day now, I was having some stomach problems. Not a surprise for me, given my lifelong issues with GERD and acid reflux, but this time I was having some unique pain and discomfort I hadn't experienced before. Maybe an ulcer, I thought. Ulcers can be life threatening, so it's good to get a prompt diagnosis and take steps to treat it before it progresses to a worse, more serious state. In Germany you can't just go see a specialist, you first have to go to a primary care doctor. This, I think, is not so different than in the US (but honestly I can't remember for sure). After seeing this initial doctor, the appointment having taken several weeks at minimum to secure, now, armed with your referral, you can embark on the journey of finding a specialist - in my case, a gastroenterologist - who could perform the necessary examinations. I would need an endoscopy and a colonoscopy to inspect the entire length of the GI tract. I've had quite a few endoscopies before, as is common with my condition, since they need to monitor your tissue and check for mutated cells. The acid has a damaging kind of carcinogenic effect on the esophagus which, over time, can trigger a condition called Barret's Esophagus. Esophageal and stomach cancer are notoriously difficult to treat and also painful, so preventative care and early detection here are key. Needless to say, I've had my share of endoscopies, so I expected the normal walk in the park you might associate with taking your car in for a quick routine inspection. I went for the consultation with the gastro, and he confirmed I'd need an endoscopy but also recommended a colonoscopy since I was nearing the age where I'd need one anyway. Great, I said, let's get it done. When can you do it, I asked, two weeks or so? The doctor looked at me as though I'd said something outrageous. Oh, no, you have to make an appointment and it can take some time. Okay, I said, so, what, like 4 weeks? He seemed impatient with my questioning. Please speak to the nurse at the front desk and she can arrange the appointment. Okay. When I went to the nurse she told me the next appointment was 7 months away.

Seven months.

I was dumbstruck. She couldn't be serious. If there was some problem that needed urgent intervention, like an ulcer waiting to rupture, for example, I could be dead by then. I implored her, asking if it were possible to get an appointment sooner than that given I was experiencing acute symptoms. No. 

You can imagine the rest of the story. I had to wait. 

Luckily it didn't take quite as long as they said due to someone canceling their appointment and me being able to take their place. I think it wound up taking a month or two, but I can't remember now. 

I'm suddenly getting the feeling I've told this story before. I hope I didn't because then I'm repeating myself. I'll check back after I post this and maybe I'll owe you another apology tomorrow.

Mid-30's Guys!

Writing this one late today. It's nearly my bedtime. I'm tired from walking around cemeteries with T-Man. Asia is on her way here now from Poland. I'd like to meet her at the station where she's getting dropped off, to escort her home, but she won't be there until 23:00 and I'm already starting to fade. I do feel unusually fatigued from just a few hours of walking. Maybe it's this weird ear infection my body is fighting. That was a topic T and I discussed today, our failing bodies. For about the past year or so he's been experiencing weakness in his limbs that he can't explain. The German doctors haven't been of much use in determining the cause. I told him about my experience with frozen shoulder last year, and how I spent the better part of 7 months unable to lift my left arm. We could be a new dynamic duo, a crime-fighting superhero team: Mid-30's Guys! Our adventures could involve battling life's famous villains such as waking up with a headache that doesn't seem to go away, or mysterious back pain, spontaneous hemorrhoids, the sudden dizzy spells from getting up off the couch. Erectile dysfunction would of course be the eternal enemy, along with generalized existential dread and an unshakable sense of malaise. Have you noticed that I changed the settings on my computer to stop the British from colonizing my keyboard? It's so nice to not have it hijacked every sentence.

Back to the story of the day. 

There isn't much of a story, really. It was a pretty chill Sunday. I cleaned up my apartment some more, bathed my stinking mid-30's body, cooked, and went to meet T-Man. I'm finding it hard to focus my attention on writing tonight. Perhaps this is a lesson for me, to make sure I write early instead of late. You'd think that writing later in the day would free up the mind since it's sleepy and not too opinionated on sentence structure or form, but it doesn't seem to work this way. In the last sentence for example, I wrote since as sense. That should tell you where my mind is at. It's approaching dreamland, but without conferring any of the benefits to my stream of consciousness. No fluidity, no lovely poetic associations one might encounter while crossing the threshold into sleep. That brief window is called hypnogogia, by the way. Those brief, fleeting moments of weightlessness and easy mindedness you feel as you get whisked away to your nightly unconsciousness. It's a lovely place to float.

(Sittin' On) The Clock of the Day

 

Man, Saturday seems to have come and went. Anyone noticing a theme this week? Today was spent running errands and cleaning. Luckily I woke up early enough to spend a bit of time graphic-novel-writing in bed. It's import to steal away those seconds wherever you can. After that, I got up, brushed my teeth, made breakfast, ate, browsed Reddit, played Magic, went grocery shopping, came home and did yoga, cut my hair, took a shower, cooked lunch and ate while listening to a podcast, sat down to generate some panels in Midjourney before realising I had to restructure some earlier pieces that would prevent me from actually moving forward with the story itself, abandoned that for a bit to play a few games of Magic instead of working, vacuumed my apartment, cleaned the windowsill in my bedroom as well as the inside and outside glass, then did the same for the kitchen, cleaned the bathroom, the toilet bowl and the sink, and now it's after 17:00 and practically time to cook dinner. It's been dark all day. It feasts on my mental health like some fungal overgrowth, this combination of speeding time and daily darkness and errands. I'm not sure if it was the yoga or the window scrubbing, but I've tweaked something in my neck on the left side. Did I mention I might I have an ear infection? 

Technically the day was productive, you might say. Why do I feel as if the time has been squandered? When I was cleaning the window there were two spiders that were somehow alive in this bleak Berlin winter, clinging to the space where the window joins the frame. Probably living in that peripheral zone where the warmth from the heater in front of the window provides a temperature habitable enough for these friendly neighbourhood spiders to survive. One was small and green, probably a little spiderling, and up top, too close to my freshly shaven head for comfort, was a fuzzy grey one that was very curiously eyeing my manoeuvres. Man, I hate this British English autocorrect that's enabled on this computer or my web browser. I need to change it. It's making a mockery of all my Z's, turning them into S's. I'm sure you've noticed. I try to correct them manually but I miss some of them. What's worse is when it starts adding U's to the O's, like it did back there with our friend maneuvers. I'll try and get that sorted out by tomorrow.

Tomorrow I'm meeting a friend I haven't seen in ages. He's a soft-spoken German guy, a biologist I think. We lost touch during the pandemic. We share some mutual friends so we run into each other on occasion, but I haven't sat and talked to him since my friend's birthday two years ago. I'm looking forward to catching up. I just hope the weather smiles on us and it isn't raining. I'll take bitter cold and clouds, but keep the godawful rain away.

Yesterday I left off writing about Midjourney and other AI art generation tools. The two other notable ones are Stable Diffusion and DAL-E. Personally, I find Midjourney to be the most artistically capable of the bunch, but I think Stable Diffusion takes the lead in terms of flexibility. It's kind of like comparing an iPhone to an Android phone; one offers streamlined ease of use and solid design while the other offers customisability and neat integrations and configurations that aren't possible on iPhone. But who'll win the race is anyone's guess. Right now, my money's on Midjourney. Microsoft has been investing heavily into OpenAI, the parent company of DAL-E, so there's a good chance that longterm they emerge as the victor, but for now Midjourney has them beat. This isn't particularly interesting, I know, I just wanted to paint the landscape a bit to explain that there are a bunch of scrappy startups racing to get out in front, not just in terms of AI art, but also in terms of language interfaces like ChatGPT (also owned by OpenAI) which, if you haven't heard of or played with yet, I strongly encourage you to. It's truly remarkable stuff. Higher education institutions and highschools alike are wrestling with how to handle the fact that students can now outsource their essays to AI and hand in written work that is generally indistinguishable from a piece of work written by a human. It's a brave new world.

The stuff that interests me most though, particularly in terms of AI art, is the philosophical / social / ethical questions that it raises. What is beauty? What does it mean to be able to control that narrative through this technology? How can we avoid bias? What about how to handle the bias that's already present in the reference material? The AI looks at millions of pieces of data in a dataset to understand how to 'draw.' When someone asks it to generate [a beautiful woman], and the vast majority of the source material it pulls from depicts young white women, is that problematic for a modern world which prides itself on inclusion and diversity? I think it is. Beauty standards are fluid and they change with the times. Which version of beauty is the AI presenting? What skin tone is being used when we prompt [a beautiful black woman], light or dark? What Asian country does the archetypal [well-dressed Asian man] belong to? These may seem sort of trivial at first glance, but I assure you they carry enormous weight which only snowballs once you start considering how to deal with graphic imagery or child pornography.

I don't want to end the post on child porn, but I'm out of time. I even gave myself a bit of extra minutes today since it's the weekend, but now it's approaching dinnertime and I need to start cooking. Maybe starting with a rant about the things I did today and how ransomed the day felt wasn't a great way to start. It was cathartic though, which I guess is my primary aim with this blog. No one reads it anymore anyway. It's effectively become a public-facing journal that I can look back on and wonder what I was thinking and doing when I was in my mid-30's. The answer is simple enough though and probably doesn't justify the existence of this blog: work and errands and watching the time drift away.

Can Androids Draw Electric Sheep?

 

Friday came around fast this week. It seems like Monday was only yesterday. Growing up I remember my mother marvelling at how the older she got the faster time seemed to move. She'd always caution us to enjoy the speed at which time moved for us in our youth. "One day you'll realize you're 40 and wonder where the time went," she'd say. It really does fly, whether you're having fun or not. It's a bit unnerving, honestly, how it whizzes by. From a scientific perspective it makes sense. The older you get, the more your reference interval increases: when you're 5, each passing year is 1/5 of the time you've been alive. This is why waiting for Christmas to come always seemed to take ages. But when you're nearing 40, you've sped things up 8x. Jesus. Days start to feel like weeks.

I know this isn't the topic I promised yesterday. I'm supposed to be telling you about my graphic novel. A little detour is okay sometimes. Everyone should take a moment to appreciate what little time they have on this planet and try to cherish those moments spent with friends and family. In a roundabout sort of way, that's one thing the graphic novel talks about. What started as a piece of environmentalist propaganda has metamorphosized into a 90-something page piece of madness that I never intended it to become. I was letting the story narrate itself without forcing anything. It was one of the things I enjoyed most about it - how I was never commanding it. It had a life of its own. This is what caused the genre to bend into something resembling a post-dystopian dieselpunk sci-fi horror fantasy adventure...with zombies. 

The reason it's even possible is because of a game-changing artificial intelligence service called Midjourney. In simple terms, it's like hiring an artist. You tell it what you want, and it tries to draw it. It has some significant limitations, and it really doesn't replace real artists who can draw anatomically correct, well-proportioned human bodies, complex scenes, situations involving more than one or two subjects, and things as essential as hands. Midjourney can't do any of those particularly well. I struggled for hours one day to try and get it to generate an image of a dead bee, for example. The tool is crude, but evolving rapidly. It is absolutely a technological breakthrough and if more people were paying attention, an entire industry would feel threatened. Not the art industry, but advertising, marketing and design. To me, this shift runs parallel to how computers and synthesisers in the 80's changed not only the sound of music forever, but also the way we think about music. This tool does the same. It democratises art by putting it into the hands of those who lack the draftsmanship to create content. Anyone with a decent sense of art direction, however, can now use this tool to do something creative. It's incredibly empowering.

For really simple things Midjourney (and other AI art services in general) works amazingly well. Asking it to draw a cat or a tree or a city skyline are a piece of cake. But getting reusable characters wearing the same set of clothing and hairstyle is much much more challenging / impossible. That's why the process has taken so long. I started this months ago and didn't realize it would be this time-consuming. Granted, I do it as a hobby and not as a full-time job. Sadly it's sat lifeless since mid-December until about now. Once I finally finish it, in who knows how many more months, I'll post a link to it here. 

I'd tell you more about the story, but I'm out of time. There's also the pesky problem of figuring out how it's going to end. I'm committing a cardinal sin according to the great Alan Moore. He argues you should know exactly where a story begins and ends before you start writing it. Maybe if I had known that I wouldn't have started writing it in the first place. I'd have missed out on a lot of fun and learning. 

I have a newfound appreciation for graphic novels as a result of this experiment. There are so many micro-decisions to make on each panel and each page that it can be maddening. As a reader I never thought about it before.

More about this and AI art tomorrow!

Asleep at the Wheel

 

Managed to sleep better last night than the night before. I know whoever still reads this blog likely doesn't do it for regular updates on how my sleep is going, but this is where we are. While we're speaking of sleep, a phrase has been stuck in my head for the past few days and I'm not sure where it came from, or why. Asleep at the wheel. What imagery. I struggle to think of things more dangerous than barreling down a highway at 60 or more miles per hour and drifting off to take a nap. Even closing one's eyes for a couple of seconds could be deadly. I think the phrase is in my head in a grand metaphorical sense. Like how the world's governments seem to be asleep at the wheel in terms of taking any real action against the climate emergency. 

But even if we take it down to a more personal level, there are things to be learned.

How many of us are asleep at the wheel of our own lives? Working jobs they hate, studying something only because their parents expect them to become good doctors or lawyers, staying in a relationship you've checked out of emotionally because you're comfortable. There's no subtext there on that last one (if you're reading Asia)! I'm happy in my relationship. Contented, even. Asia is an excellent partner, a kind of Buddha. She inspires me to grow and deepen my sense of awareness. She is patient and kind, prone to spontaneous fits of laughter, adventurous and hopeful, and she sees the good in situations with a sort of optimism I admire. She makes me want to be more like her. It's funny how that happens. When a partner inadvertently causes you to take a look in the mirror and notice your tension through their relaxation, your frustration via her calm, your skepticism through her assumption of positive intent. Even at the risk of sounding too fawning here, I'd say that I've never been with anyone like her before. That line from As Good As It Gets comes to mind, "you make me want to be a better man." We actually watched that movie sometime last year. I was re-watching it and she was seeing it for the first time. Let me tell you, it doesn't hold up. I know it won awards back in the 90's, but man did it seem dated. Never mind the wild political incorrectness, misogyny, homophobia and liberal use of the word retard, the movie just kind of fell flat. If you haven't seen it, just watch that one scene on YouTube and save yourself the wasted time.

Anyway...talk about being asleep at the wheel! Here I am drifting off-topic and dipping my toes into love letters and movie reviews. There was some point I was trying to make! Ah, yes, how when we apply this AATW (asleep at the wheel) idea to our individual lives, metaphorically, we can begin to realize there are a bunch of things we're not realizing. As children we kind of have an excuse, given our lives are, for the most part, not being piloted by us. I mean sure, you have to do your own homework and get your own grades, but you've been set on a course and are expected to comply. Did you pick your kindergarten or dress yourself from the ages between 0 - 5? Motherfucker, you couldn't even tie your god damned shoes! It's not until about the time you finish college that you start to develop a true sense of agency. Unless of course you did it earlier by electing to drop out of highschool and pursue your dreams some other way. I don't mean that in a disparaging way, to be clear. There are plenty of people who said screw this, I'm picking up a brush and becoming a painter, or, this sucks, I'm going to be a car mechanic. There's great power in knowing what you want. 

But once studies are done, you're in the workforce now. Even then you might say there's still a track everyone is on: climb the ranks! Develop a career and become successful. What successful means, of course, is different from person to person, but the rat race is underway. Some might even say that you're still on yet another track if you're going for the white picket fence, wife, kids and a house kind of deal. And then you're in the parent track after that for at least 18 years. So when the hell are you doing anything that you want to do instead of what they told you you should do?

Are you on autopilot? Are you even in touch with the stress in your shoulders? The fears keeping you awake at night? Are you asleep at the wheel, grinding out your days playing the game they told you everyone else is playing?

Hard to say, because I'm out of time.

I think 20 mins is becoming a bit harsh of a constraint. As soon as I begin to get started, it's time to go. Granted, I did manage to do some writing this morning for the graphic novel I've been working on. I can write more about that tomorrow.

A Frustrating Mess

 

Another day another delay. This time it wasn't work related - it was due to a new set release for Magic the Gathering. Yes, it's my dirtiest little secret I've just let you in on: I'm addicted to a collectible card game made for children. 

Well, maybe that isn't the most honest way to put it. A huge portion of the game's target demographic is definitely teenagers, but as I get older I realize another, perhaps larger segment, are those who used to play as children but still play as adults. It's crazy to think that this game came out 30 years ago. It had this reputation back then of being darkly occult. It wasn't, of course, we were just riding on the coattails of the end of the satanic panic, an era dominated by an irrational fear of satanists and black magic. Conspiracies surrounding Aleister Crowley and playing Led Zeppelin records in reverse to uncover their evil hidden meanings were in vogue. Come to think of it, this was probably one of the early birthplaces of the modern day QANON nonsense. Because of all of this, when we came into our teenage years there was something rebellious about playing this nerdy card game. I think it was still too early for the game to be considered nerdy, actually. This was before the absolute craze that Pokemon caused, and all of the subsequent copycats that would follow.

Magic the Gathering was a fun strategy game for kids who might have been bored playing chess. Personally, I liked playing chess too, but that shit was nerdy as fuck. Magic was edgy and cool and grownups were saying it was evil and we shouldn't play it. As a side note, I think adults need to be more careful of this type of thing because it doesn't deter kids, at all - it encourages them. But that's another discussion for another day. I think part of its popularity back then was that a card game was simply more transportable than a big bulky board game. We would just stuff our decks in our schoolbags and play during lunchtime, or after school. It gave us a more mentally stimulating way to pass a rainy day before video games would boom at the start of the console wars. When we got older, we'd meet at someone's house and we'd spend hours drinking beer that we illegally procured. One of the most interesting things about the game was that there were so many different combinations of cards that could be used. A thing that surely promoted adoption was that it could be played 1:1 or in a large group. It required careful decision making and strategising in order to win.

Now, all of this happens digitally. I haven't bought paper Magic cards in over 20 years. Today you can have an entire library of decks and dozens of different sets of cards in your pocket, and you can play anywhere you have an internet connection. Times have changed. None of us would have imagined that back when we were playing this as pimple-faced teenagers hissing through our metal braces, there would come a day 20 years into the future where you'd be able to play with someone across the world via a little glass tablet in your pocket. 

Shifting the game into a digital space does come at a cost, however. As I mentioned, one of the best things about the game was playing in physical space together - it was very social. Playing a game on your phone with someone who isn't in front of you is something substantially different. It's solitary. The game manufacturer also figured out how to squeeze every last drop of adrenaline and dopamine from the user during the gaming experience. The game quite often has me squealing, screaming, flying off into a fit of rage or, at other times, howling with triumphant glee, proud to have figured out the puzzle to win the game. They've figured out how to make it intensely swingy. This, when paired with the hurried pace of the turn-clock, the snazzy animations and colourful flashing lights, all encourage an addictive kind of interplay between the user and the game. You find yourself queueing up for game after game, like a chain smoker. Each blast of dopamine and each blast of frustrated anger propels you into the next match. 

They've changed the game. And not, I suspect, in a good way. 

I find I'm happier when I'm not playing. There's probably something unhealthy about rapidly fluctuating between episodes of mania and depression for several hours a day. This is a cry for help.

I'm out of time for today.

Stiff

 

Jesus. I just realised I didn't write a post today. Typically I'm able to set aside time in the morning, before (or just after) any work meetings begin, but today there's been a series of them, with a few even running over. Before lunch I had to quickly steal away to the store to get some gnocchi (and various other groceries) to throw in the pan and scarf down just in time for a 1:00 meeting. I haven't even had time to enjoy the fact that it's sunny today.

Last night (or early this morning, you decide) I got up to take a leak. As I made my way back to the bedroom I noticed something odd about the living room, so I ventured in. I saw a window-shaped shaft of light stretched across the floor and didn't understand what I was looking at. It took me a second to realise that a setting full moon was casting its eerie light onto my rug. It peered at me through the trees as it sank slowly down. When I got back into bed I checked my phone to see what time it was. 6:45. Oh well, I thought, I'm not likely to fall asleep now. And I didn't.

I still managed to squeeze in a bit of yoga, some mindfulness practice, and even a brief workout. Since I don't have any weights in my apartment, what I do is wrestle with my demons. I take a backpack and fill it up with as many 1L bottles of water, wine, whiskey and mezcal that it can hold, and then use it to do bicep curls, overhead presses and squats. I need to get ready for bum fights somehow. At the moment I'm just a scrawny bald guy with a scraggly beard. Bulking up is the only way that I'll stand a chance against the riff-raff here.

Right now I'm aware of some tension in my spine. It's calling out to me. Today's yoga session incorporated a lot of twists. Look back through my previous posts to find the one about when I broke my back. I remember the doctor recommending that I avoid twists. Surely she didn't mean for life, did she? Given the way my back is feeling, perhaps she did. Imagine sustaining an injury and never being able to do a thing like twisting again. 

This daily yoga practice has increased my awareness of my inflexibility. Certain parts of my body feel so stiff and rigid that I can't believe it. At times my bones feel like brittle pieces of wood that are liable to snap if I leaned too deeply into a stretch. What a draaag it is getting old. It makes me wonder if part of the mental hardening which occurs as we age is due to the physical structures of the brain experiencing the same elasticity challenges.

I don't think there's much left in me today. I'm suffering from resource depletion. Sustained cognitive load due to work sapping all of my creative juices. Work should be considered a crime. I'm hopeful that in the future, whatever nightmarish dystopian future humanity finds itself in in the year 2123, that people will look back and say "people used to work?" I hope they marvel in astonished stupidity at their ancestors who twiddled away their youth and the prime years of their lives just to make scraps - struggling to pinch pennies and stressing to make ends meet so they could pay off their mortgages and retire with their wrinkled, ruined bodies - while the rich exploited their labor and meticulously accumulated all the world's wealth. For me it's either universal basic income or the complete collapse of society, whatever it takes to topple the concept of a career.

What an ugly word.

Cracking Up

 

In yesterday's post I alluded to a happening at a nearby train station in Berlin a few years ago, before the Covid pandemic. These events are true. It happened on a sunny Monday morning, at approximately 8:30AM.

After my usual routine of morning exercise, I took a shower and got dressed, ate breakfast, and brushed my teeth. I collected my belongings and made my way out the door to get to work. The walk from my apartment to the train station is rather brief. On this walk I would commonly use my phone to send a voice message to Asia to give her a morning update before beginning the workday. The length of this message generally corresponds to the length of the walk, and it ends as I approach the train station and begin descending the steps to the underground platform. The street is typically littered with garbage, especially in the late night and early morning hours before the street sweepers arrive. Broken beer bottles, paper pamphlets, magazine pages, streaks of stepped-on dog shit, puddles of spilled white paint and the matching series of white footprints, cigarette butts and bullet shells. A subtle danger pervades the streets there. Not any kind of real danger, but rather the threat, or possibility, of danger. A roaming bum, depraved or disconnected from reality, wildly gesticulating and hissing, or a group of three of four troublish looking Turkish men who walk and talk with a cosa nostra kind of whisper. Never have I seen anything worse than a street scuffle, but there is still the lingering sense that something could happen.

Upon entering the station, once you go down the first flight of stairs, there's a brief passage which leads to another set of stairs terminating down at one of the station's two train platforms. On this morning, I'd climbed down the first set of stairs and, while placing my phone in my pocket and glimpsing an incoming message, I was admittedly distracted and had veered slightly off course, which placed me closest to the wall on my right side. The wall reaches a right angle that connects with the passage to the second set of stairs, so in order to reroute myself and get to where I was going I would have to turn the corner at the closest point to the wall, effectively creating a blind right turn. Glancing up, I noticed this, reoriented myself, stuffed the phone hastily back into my pocket, exhaled in mild annoyance, and proceeded to turn the corner.

Awaiting my inhalation, on the other side of the corner, directly in line with my face, was a cloud of freshly exhaled crack smoke. The toxic plume spilled all over my face and eyes as the bulk of it blew straight into my mouth and nose. Wincing, I staggered back slightly, choking, gasping, completely dazed by what I'd just walked into. The taste was noxious and harsh, like burnt plastic. As the cloud began to clear I saw a homeless man, about my age, slack jawed and holding a smoldering scrap of tin foil. His eyes had the look of hard boiled eggs, white, shiny, swollen. In slow motion, with bent knees, he appeared to be finding his way to an invisible seat, completely oblivious to my presence or what had happened. The convulsive coughs coming from my throat didn't make it to his ears. I stumbled down the stairs past him, hands to my throat, still reeling from the acrid smoke, and a deep panic began to whirl energetically around me - in stark contrast to the blissful calm that seemed to envelop my homeless friend. 

I wondered whether I too would soon find myself sinking towards a non-existent seat. How would I explain this to work? The event sounded unbelievable were I to attempt to relay it to my employer, terminable even. The panic, or perhaps the lack of sufficient oxygen, made me dizzy. Not like this, I thought. If I was ever going to smoke crack, I wanted it to be on my terms. I leaned up against a wall and decided it would be good to wait a few moments before walking along the train platform where a fall would prove deadly. Probably, I told myself, it wasn't enough to really give me any sort of effect beyond what I was already feeling. The effects would be immediate, I thought. Just breathe, relax, you're mostly just stunned. I glanced back up the stairs towards the homeless man and he was exactly where I'd left him, commuters taking wide circles around him as they poured into the station. 

As the initial shock began to wear off and my lungs and esophagus started to cool down, my composure started to come back to me. I didn't feel so worried anymore. Suddenly what had struck me was the novel humour of the episode. What are the odds, I wondered. I felt myself a character inside an absurdist black comedy, probably written by a French filmmaker. My breathing was much more relaxed now and I felt a sublime sort of smile spread across my lips. Except it didn't. They were placid and calm and relaxed. It didn't matter that I wasn't smiling on the outside, I was smiling on the inside  - and that's all that mattered. The smile spread down my spine and into my hips and knees and continued to move all the way down to the corners of my feet and toes. 

See, it's not as bad as you thought. You're fine. Take a minute to collect yourself and get back on the horse. Time for work. Yes, time for work. In a minute. A feathery image of being back in bed, under warm blankets, heavy with euphoric sleep, reaching for my alarm to snooze it for just a few more moments, the thrall of dream as intoxicant singing me softly back to sleep. Comfort. Completely adrift. Safe. At ease. Pure peace.

A moment later I was back in the station and it seemed emptier than before. Must have missed the train. Another train had just pulled into the station and I got on. When I got off the train it wasn't light out anymore. 

I pulled my phone out of my pocket. 18:00, it said. Below it a series of texts and missed calls.

I turned around and got back on the train to go home. When I got to the station and climbed the stairs I saw my friend was just waking up. 

Hey, I said, you don't know me, but I know you. I've got a favour to ask you.