Partch

The others (the Partch stuff with vocals) at this link sounds awful but Delusion of the Fury is really refreshing.
http://artofthestates.org/cgi-bin/piece.pl?pid=199

Scenario: A huge volcano has erupted and lava is fast approaching. You see a hill you can run to and run up away from the lava. But you also see that the lava will quickly overflow the top of the hill. The last rescue helicopter has already left totally full of passengers. From radio communications you know that no one else is left to rescue you. Logically you know that you're going to die.

Do you bother to run up the hill away from the lava? Or since you see that the action is futile and will only prolong your life a minute or two, do you just stand there and let the lava kill you now?

Of course you take off up the hill. And it turns out the going is quite tough. It's muddy. You keep sliding and falling. You're getting out of breath. The going is really quite tough indeed. By the way, why exactly are you going up this hill anyway?

You realize you're hoping that another helicopter will appear and rescue you. In fact, running up this hill is so tough and you've wanted to stop so many times, that in order to continue running you've gone beyond hoping and into believing in the existence of this helicopter.

Whoa! That's illogical! That's ridiculous crap worthy only of derision.

So... how is running up the hill in the first place not illogical?

Such is life. This is the predicament we're all in. There is no logical action to be taken. The fact that we're going up that hill at all is illogical. It is the belief that the helicopter is coming. It is a futile action much like all of life which just has nonexistence waiting at the finish life. And if you do anything other than just stand there, no matter what you say, by what you do, you are showing quite clearly that you believe in the existence of that helicopter.

And so atheism is a contradiction.

It's maybe a very small point. And contradictory atheism certainly appears better than organized religion. Certainly the belief in the helicopter doesn't mean you have to be against evolution, intolerant of homosexuals, etc. And you certainly don't have to run up that hill chanting praises to the great helicopter god and persecuting anyone else running along whom you notice isn't singing.

But this contradiction of atheism. The problem is that in the attempt to know one's self. In the attempt to understand our own subconscious and unconscious, pretending that there is no contradiction in atheism really makes such knowledge impossible. It keeps us instead just floating on the top of our minds, ignoring what is in the depths.

Because so much of what actually makes us happy from day to day is tied into subconscious symbolizations which aren't logical.

But what would happen if these things are uncovered?

Would that not just destroy them?

Is it perhaps better to pretend they're not there in order to keep them there than it is to instead see them, and see how illogical they are and thus destroy them?

Maybe. Perhaps it's more that I just wish my fellow atheists would at least give a bit of respect to the nihilism which is inherent in atheism instead of pretending it's not there....

Why do they pretend it's not there?

I think because they feel locked in a battle with an adversary. Admitting the nihilism would be giving a point, a very big point, to the competition. And, unfortunately the competition, in attempting to combat nihilism is also doing incredible harm. They are against science. Which is a horrifying thing.

Is it actually possible to stand on the fence between the two?

The one trying to combat nihilism but turning earth into a dystopia along the way. The other simply turning a blind eye to their own subconscious, in other words kind of not truly being scientific. The one wants to believe a fantasy. The other wants to ignore crucial data...

36 TET

36 tone equal temperment. Was somewhat difficult. Seemed to take a while. Fought the understanding of the randomness a bit more than usual. To make it longer/better would have taken a long time and not been very much fun. Prefer to start over and this isn't quite so bad to just throw away. I do like having more notes to work with. And 36 was a multiple of the standard 12 note scale thus not quite so foreign... Could potentially just write normal music in it. Near the end I think I came close. Not that that's the goal of course. But ending the song that way felt like having a nuanced resolution of the conflict.

Want to do much more. Slowed down by the fact I don't really like homegrown piano. Really not a very good sounding VST, in my subjective opinion. Just haven't gotten around to buying something else.

I did buy 135 dollar Bose headphones. They're amazing. Although I suspect they'll quickly just become the way music is supposed to sound and everything other than them will just sound like crap.

Another Wonderful Christmas

Eating breakfast at sister's house on christmas morning. It's me, my mother, my wife, my stepfather, my sister, her husband R, her seven year old son T, her one year old son, her mother-in-law, her father-in-law, and her brother-in-law.

I brought a couple of cans of curried lentils and am eating one with a biscuit while everyone else eats bacon, sausage, chili, etc.

7 year old T says, "Why are you eating that?"

I reply, "What do you mean?"

"Why are you eating that?" he repeats.

I respond, "What do you mean? I'm eating it because I'm human and humans have to eat food."

T continues, "But why are you eating something different than everyone else?"

"Because I don't eat meat."

T asks, "Why not?"

"Because I don't want to take part in the killing of animals."

T replies, "But they're already dead so it doesn't matter, right?"

I reply, "When you buy meat it ensures the continued demand for the killing of more animals."

T asks, "Do you wish that everyone would be a vegetarian?"

"Yes I do wish that everyone would be a vegetarian."

T asks, "But why isn't everyone else then?"

"uhh... you'd have to ask them." I respond evasively. I know exactly why but I'm sure his rightwing father doesn't want me to talk to him about all this. This whole conversation has been really awkward for me. T is just now getting old enough to ask intelligent questions.

Later I'm in the kitchen finishing breakfast with my stepfather. My sister's rightwing husband, R, comes in and with a threatening look says to me, "Don't you ever talk about politics with my son again! I don't want you indoctrinating my son to any of your politics!"

It is his son. It may take a village to raise a child in theory. But in practice the parents own that child and no one else is allowed to take part in the raising whatsoever unless they consent.

So I start to say, "I'm sorry..."

And am cut off from anything futher with a very threatening, "That's your last warning!" as he points a finger at me.

I calmly finish my food and then go to the front room and very quietly try to inform my wife and mother that R has again threatened me, thus I don't feel very welcome here and will go ahead and go home now. In truth I really don't respond so well to force. Not well at all. It's seriously in everyone's best interest if I just leave and do so quickly.

My mother exclaims, "What?! Oh come on can't everyone just get along for christmas. R?! R?! What's going on?"

I say quietly to her, "Mom just let it go. Please."

Mom continues loudly, "R? What's going on? T was asking about him being a vegetarianism, isn't he allowed to answer?"

R comes out of kitchen and says, "Well if he'd just keep his mouth shut about politics!"

And suddenly I decide it's time to make it clear that this rightwing dick is not going to force me to shut up. I point at him and with a raised voice say, "You don't fucking tell me to shut up buddy!"

I say it in a scary way. Hard to explain this with words. It's hard to really give the real flavor for all of this I think. Hard to explain how this person tries to control people. Anyway, I don't get angry often. But when I do it's scary. Not to mention I'm a big guy. A former boxer. Six foot four and half, 235 pounds. Very wide shoulders. R is 6'2" 260 but just a big marshmellow. I say it as I sharply backhand punch the door with my right hand as I stalk toward him. R's mom grabs the youngest child and runs out of the room. R stands there looking scared yet idiotically trying to raise a false bravado, the dumbass is acting as if he's preparing to actually get it on with me.

My mom and wife yell, "Emphryio! No!!!"

And he's too stupid to even know how to turn away from a fight. One he'd have no absolutely no chance in. Instead he thinks he's somehow impressing someone with a display of bravado...

And so I quickly turn to pity for this scared idiot. I shake my head and walk out.

With some people it would be possible to reach this point and then civily go back to talking. Talking is equally impossible with him at this point as it's always been from any point. Very generally speaking the Leftist talks things out, explores all options, tries to learn all the facts. While the Rightwinger wants to shield his child from anything that might make him become anything other than a rightwinger. And when unwanted information is spoken, that person must be made to shut up by a show of force. It's essentially just like the O'Reilly Show.

So he tries to do to me, and when I respond by saying, "I'm sorry...", he mistakenly thinks that's the time to be that much more forceful. But the dumbass is a marshmellow for one thing. And way too dumb to understand that although I'm smart enough to get away from such people before I end up in jail, I don't actually just sit there and take crap from them.

I think the anger I showed was the proper response. It's all well and good to talk about reason instead of force. But when someone believes in force, they just use it if they can. Why would you give them the impression that using force works by acting meek in the face of it? Why reinforce that such displays work?

I didn't just scare him though. I'm sure everyone was scared. It's not like a normal person getting angry. I've learned to be extremely careful about ever showing anger. It's possible R's mom will be afraid to ever be near me again just on the basis of that one sentence and those few steps.

Was I right to show anger? I think so.

After I leave my mother continues to slowly go through the roof at R. Turns out that a big part of his problem is he's mad about the health care reform bill passing. Claims I was rubbing his face in it when actually I think the bill's a disaster. But he's far too big a dumbass to comprehend that actually the Left is appalled by this "reform". My mom goes on and on with him until eventually she also gets so mad she decides to leave. But my father-in-law has left to drop off someone. So my 60 year old mom stumbles off through the snow. Till he finally picks her up a mile down the road.

The night before we went to another christmas party where an 86 year old man left in anger because he said someone wouldn't let him sit down. He's hard of hearing and gets confused so nobody is too sure it even happened or who it even was. His daughter left in anger also after yelling the f word a few times.

Just one more christmas party to go.

But there was already a wide gap between his practice and his theory, between the simple painted canvas and the load of ambitious meanings it was expected to shoulder. What a picture was and what it was supposed to be were increasingly proving to be two distinct and irreconcilable things.

As I worked on building a perpetual motion machine I did of course reflect upon the absurdity of what I was doing and what it meant.
Here I was with a BS in mechanical engineering and working on a MS. And I spent some of my free time building these wheels which would hopefully have gravity, the earth's magnetic field, and centrifugal force working against each other like gravity and evaporation work against each other with dams. Absurdity I knew. I knew it well. But still, to effing dream. Even if it didn't work, so what? The wheels were kind of marvelous to look at. And I like making things.

And what did it say though about me? It said that my opinion of humankind was incredibly low. And... at least somewhat justifiably so. Humans are incredibly stupid. But, the thing is, the stupidity really shows when they get together. Working alone, they manage to be pretty intelligent at science. And surely back then, when experiments didn't require millions in funding, if it were possible, many people would have done it. But again, my opinion of mankind was incredibly low. And it was somewhat justifiable.

But I used the same thinking to invent the kokopelli later. A third type of aerosol impactor (first invented 130 and 60 years ago) which worked so well they stole it from me.

What if I today did successfully make a Bessler wheel?

I wouldn't share it. I wouldn't try to tell the world. I'd use it to make a bit of extra electricity for myself. Otherwise... I really don't see any point on giving it to mankind. They wouldn't use it wisely.

not only is it tremendously time consuming but perhaps not all that fulfilling....
In her coming book, "Alone Together"....
wasn't merely a distraction, but it was really confusing him about who he was....

"Alone Together". Post-industrial living. Awful. But people do still desire some aspects of how they once lived. A world where there was far more face to face interaction. Where your house wasn't a fortress and you didn't even know your neighbors. Where instead there was some meaningful connection and you interacted on a daily basis with the people whom live around you. A world where you felt connected to both nature and other people. Facebook and some other things online reveal this desire in people to have such a connection with others. But trying to get it there is like already being dead.

But, it's a good way to keep in touch with all the people that don't live close?

Industrialized society again. Always moving. And walled away in your fortress. TV, internet, car, no one you work with even lives anywhere near you.

What reason is there for me to speak to anyone ever?

Go to work. Slap on a smile. Go home. I don't exist.

...Van Gogh's unoccupired chairs pay respect to a tendency to avoid represtentation of the human figure. Gauguin is there, seated in his armchair, even if we cannot see him - according to this formula.

The breat in the two artists' friendship had become inevitable. When Gauguin decided to leave, he left the ruins of van Gogh's dreams of an artists' community in the South behind. "As you know, I have always considered it idiotic that painters live alone. It is always a loss if one is left to one's own devices", van Gogh had written to his brother, describing his longing for solidarity amongst painters.

"....sooner there will be nothing left... but empty chairs."

"In the 19th century there was an altogether new type of suffering artist: the lonely, lost, despairing artist on the brink of insanity...

"The 19th century was the inhuman century par excellence; the triumph of technology mechanized our lives totally, rendering us stupid; the worship of Mammon has irredemably impoverished mankind, without exception; and a world without God is not only the least moral but als othe least comfortable that can be conceived. As he enters the Present, modern man reaches the inmost circle of hell along his absurd and necessary path of suffering."- Egon Friedell

Best reverb I've found although CPU heavy:
http://www.knufinke.de/sir/sir1.html

But I've got a new laptop which for half the price seems a lot more powerful than the desktop I got 3 years ago. Still neat to me that except for the computer this song cost nothing at all to write.

What is it about S anyway?

Is it that she's somewhat androgynous? Like the character from Clive Barker's Imagica or Hobb's Fool? They both though seemed essentially male but just barely. She is definitely female. Anyway the important thing being this androgyness(sp) quality symbolizes the universal. Such a powerful symbol to me. Like being The Chosen One or something...

There are other such people. She has a ton of lesbian (manly) friends. But she is such a unique person it seems. Is that it? Why does she seem unique? Is she actually? It does seem a lot of people like her. Well, a lot of women. And they can't believe she's straight.

I can believe she's basically straight. Is it that she's almost 30 and practically never been kissed and this arouses my pity?

Is it just that she so clearly likes me? Without saying so. But in the way she moves, her expressions, etc....

Is it solely that I've got a blackhole of nihilism in me, inherited from my biological three times married father and a typical solution is to search for meaning in loving additional people? And if not her, just the next most likely suspect?

Is it that our mothers look so much alike... And in turn we also somewhat are simply alike? Both mothers look strong. Big boned, long faces, potentially very stern German look. Although my mother is like a unicorn. Her mom is sterner. My father is like a snake. Definitely would have been a Slithering. Looks just like it turns out he was. Comically so. My mom would have been a Griffendor. Not necessarily the brightest. But idealistically courageous. Cried every day for a year when snakeman left her. Her father... more like my wife. Her father and her mother looking like me and my wife. She probably looks like...

..the child I'll probably never have. Perhaps that's it?

Hopefully I'll get over it soon. It's one thing to recognize that everyone is beautiful... and some a bit more so than others. But I'm downright lusting a bit now though. I don't want to be like my father. Ridiculous as strict monogamy seems to me, surely this is no answer. It's as if I've forgotten something quite important. But it seems all I've forgotten is how to avoid being human.

I wonder if my attraction to the angrogynous speaks of something similar within me? Do I appear androgynous to others? No one has ever said so. But would anyone honestly admit to such a thing? The women I've slept with have said I'm like an uber man raging with testostorone. But, they're a bit biased perhaps. And more likely to lie. And there's not really that many of them. I ask my wife and say is this like you asking me if you look fat in those jeans and she says it definitely isn't.

S is absurdly honest. Goes on about how her ass was bleeding from hemmorhoids. I'll have to ask her if she thinks I'm effeminate. Maybe after a bottle of wine this Saturday... It would actually make me happy if she said I was. Being in a work environment that's 85% female and more than half the men being effeminate maybe it's rubbed off.

The person who trained me to be a nurse, I knew him for three years previously and clearly remember him being effeminate. And my social conditioning kicking in, feeling that ugly disgust albeit just slightly, what a sick feeling although it never controlled me and I must say I seem to not have it in me anymore... Now, he doesn't seem that way at all to me. If anything he seems like he's trying too hard to be a caricature of stereotypical pigheaded manliness. No one really arouses that feeling in me anymore. Instead I see effeminate men and think, "well he's sort of cute for a man." For this one guy though, it doesn't even seem to be that I'm doing that. He just truly doesn't seem even the least bit effeminate anymore. He's in his late 30's. Surely he wouldn't suddenly decide to start putting on a manly show? But who knows, his wife recently left him. Maybe it triggered something in him... Maybe he thought she left him for not being manly enough and now he's got to prove her wrong in his mind...

But I want my very own Fool to love. The universal person. A KD Lang or that Men At Work lead singer. They do symbolize to me exactly what Hobb's Fool is supposed to be. The Prophet who comes and tries to change the world. Set it back on it's course. Avert The Fall.

But perhaps I am a Fool myself just looking for another me.

Corn is a rare C-4 plant which means that it takes more carbon from the air than other plants which are generally C-3 plants. This means it grows more efficient. A smaller area is needed to grow more calories. Corn though also then needs more fertilizer then the usual.

Fritz Haber invented the process by which nitrogen is taken from it's gaseous form N2 and split and combined with hydrogen whereby it can be used for bombs and also for fertilizer. Along with making bombs Haber made poisonous gases to be used in WWI for Germany. Haber's wife committed suicide apparently in horror at what he was doing but he continued to be quite proud of the contribution he had made to the war effort.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Haber

His process takes nitrogen gas and hydrogen and puts the two together using very high heat and pressure which is produced using electricity. The hydrogen is taken from fossil fuels. Oil, coal and most usually natural gas. Before Haber's process fertilizer only came naturally from bacteria feeding off the roots of legumes and from lightning. (Surely not just legumes??) Thanks to Haber's process produce yields have exploded. And the population of the world has exploded. How will we continue to feed all the people when we run out of fossil fuels?

The crop which has benefited the most from Haber's synthetic nitrogen is corn. Along with using more carbon corn also uses more nitrogen and as a result of synthetic nitrogen, corn is now an extremely cheap crop. Made even cheaper by government subsidies.

Without government subsidies, corn simply costs more than can be made selling it, despite how cheap it is. Why exactly is this? It's not entirely clear to me. It seems that the farms which grow corn are just stuck. It's the only thing they know how to grow anymore (they had to grow only it in massive quantities in order to survive) and so instead of growing something else that could sell better, they try to grow more and more corn in order to make enough money to now continue surviving. And some continue to survive (or they don't and the land gets bought up into fewer and fewer and larger and larger farms) because they receive just enough government subsidies to do so.

Why the subsidy?

It does make sense to buy up and store excess food for emergency. Much better than seeing periodic famine hitting your country. This was the main original reason. But things have twisted now. Now the incredibly cheap subsidized corn is ultimately bought by Cargill, one of the most powerful corporations in the world. And because the corn is now so incredibly cheap, it's used for a ton of things it otherwise wouldn't be used for. Again, though, it's the subsidies in part which made it so cheap in the first place... But still it would probably be the cheapest thing all the same... And the idea of the subsidies was originally related to an emergency store in times of famine, etc.

But now it's being used for factory farming. Cows are fed a diet that is 75% corn for 5 months to very quickly fatten them. If instead they were left to eat grass it would take 3 to 5 years. Instead they eat this corn which their bodies can't really handle. Their guts become too acidic and so they receive a constant supply of antibiotics as otherwise they'll simply die before they can get suffciently fattened.

Using antibiotics in such a manner causes bugs to develop resistance to antibiotics.

The cows are also feed cow fat and cow blood. Before 1997 they were fed basically everything from other diseased cows. This led to mad cow disease. Still today cows are fed cow fat and cow blood. Still today other animals (chickens, pigs, etc) are fed whole rendered cows.

Does all of this make meat cheaper for Americans?

Yes, definitely. By subsidizing corn, (60% of which is fed to animals) meat is made cheaper for Americans. There are actually people who (mistakenly) think being vegan is more expensive than eating meat thanks in large part to such subsidies.

Just how sick is the system when such ideas are common?

So meat is cheaper. So we're developing bugs that are resistant to antibiotics.

On the old traditional farm, the manure from the live stock was used to fertilize future crops. Now in the animal factory farm you have shit everywhere. In fact if you drive through the towns near where these places are in the midwest, you can smell the shit for miles and miles. (I've have personally done so. It's beyond me to live like that.) It's disgusting and all that shit isn't used for anything now. Not used for fertilizer (we just use synthetic fertilizer instead which requires fossil fuels). This animal shit is filled with antibiotics anyway. And it pollutes everything. The run off goes everywhere. Asthma in children continues to rise. And it runs down into the Mississippi and then out into the Gulf of Mexico where there's a 8000 square mile zone so starved of oxygen nothing but algae can live in it.

The average factory cow consumes/uses 35 gallows of oil in it's lifetime.

One of the problems which happens to cows fed corn is excessive gas. To the point it presses on their lungs and they suffocate. The solution is forcing a tube down their throats to get out the gas.

The only reason we feed corn to our animals we're planning on murdering and eating, is that it's basically the cheapest food per calorie that we've got. We also then of course have looked for as many other uses for it as possible and so it's everywhere else in our foods.

The reason it's not the "war machine food' is that it was only developed to this level (the massive size it now is) just in the last couple of thousand years, while grain and rice were well developed 10,000 years ago. The extra 5000+ years meant that those lucky humans had a lot more time to develop their bureacracies and invent guns, etc with which to kill Native Americans and Africans, etc.

...what else? In 1975, the amount of corn and soy fed just to America's cows, was enough to have fed the population of both India and China.

Trying to summarize this in my head a bit:

Originally a cow on a farm eating grass. It's manure is used to fertilize the other crops being grown there.

Now, instead, that cow is fed corn. Because the corn is incredibly cheap in large part thanks to synthetic fertilizer made from fossil fuels which we're running out of. The corn makes the cows sick and antibiotics (along with hormones, etc) are put in the feed. Super-resistant bugs are bred. Not even to begin to mention corn fed cows are apparently far less healthy to eat, lower levels of omega 3's, etc.

And instead of that cow out grazing in a pasture. It's crowded in a shit infested hellhole basically. The shit that previously was used as fertilizer now just polluting the environment.

And thus meat is cheaper.
--
Mostly unrelated I accidentally ate a potato chip that contained chicken fat in it last night. I ate one single chip and immediately noticed it tasted... funny. Funny in a bad way. A real bad way. And right there on the list of ingredients: chicken fat. Effing disgusting. And you see, I can taste chicken. I wonder how much is just in my head... I could never eat eggs because... they always tasted just like chickens to me... I asked other people if they noticed this. No one, it seems, did.
I can't explain it really. It is like the essence of the creature somehow is there. And it's awful. It's not my overwhelming love for chickens. It's just an awful thing to be putting into my body. Making my body into.

Once a roomate gave me a bag of meat jerky, long before I was vegan. I took a bite and immediately thought... it tastes very strange indeed. Cobweb like. Some creature that hides in shadows... My friend had just gotten back from Mexico and it was indeed tarantula jerky, which is certainly no more disgusting than chicken fat in a potato chip.

I gave the bag of chips to my work colleagues who all later reported stomach aches. Ugh. How can anyone eat chicken.

Michael Pollan says that 'eating industrial meat takes an almost herioc act of not knowing, or, now, forgetting.'

I'm reading this book for a book group. This book isn't actually advocating even vegetarianism by the way. Will be interested what the reaction will be of the meat eaters in the group. A herioc act of forgetting. Pretty much all of life is already exactly that.

I had to delete that last post as there's a limit to what even I can stand. Here's a song though:

So then Vancouver...

Best place I've ever been.
So here's some meaningless pictures. They don't explain at all why it's the best place I've ever been. No picture could.

Just a typical looking city on a dreary day.



This was this strange halfway in halfway outside area of the downtown library that had some coffee, etc shops. Great parking for a downtown. Not an impressive selection at the library really.


Redrum.

As per previous post, not a fan of pictures of any people.


Meh.



I guess that's grass growing on that roof. This is taken from the window of an expensive hotel (wife's work paid for it). (Grass isn't normal on a roof here.) The nickel and diming of the expensive hotel was funny I thought. Breakfast was 30 dollars each. Parking was 30 dollars a night, etc.



I do love being by the ocean... Although still it depends. My parents live a three minute walk from a large river but all the riverfront land has been privately bought so it means nothing where I live. And I've been many places along the ocean where the same is the case. Here, some public land, lots of people jogging. When you go to the South of the US, most redneck states, people don't do things like jog. They don't exercise. They're stupid, racist, disgusting people generally. (Not that not exercising makes a person such, lol.) And it matters even if ultimately you just go home and read the same in Alabama as in Vancouver. You've got to venture out sometimes and it matters. The knowledge of it. What kind of people are out there. Like with the internet and managing to just find a few interesting nice people scattered here and there. It's both meaningless and yet it does matter.



Somebody's car in Vancouver. Is it not a tad depressing that people so very rarely ever do artistic things with their cars? I had wanted to when I was younger and more determined to be oblivious to conformity. Wife wouldn't allow it though.


It's a cheap camera. You push the button and it takes a couple seconds before it finally clicks the picture during which you have to carefully hold the camera very still. This dog popped in the picture perfectly.


This bird was repeatedly dropping an oyster on the concrete path to break it open. I had never seen such a thing in person...


It's a city. Whoopee.



My wonderful fake fireplace back home. At first I hated it. Almost singlehandedly stopped me from buying the house. You just flip a switch and gassy flames pop up amongst fake bits of wood. Even the stone isn't real stone. Yet still, it satisfies some need in me to sit by a fire. To see flames out of the corner of my eye which are actually emanating heat.

My house and a couple neighbor's houses. All the christmas trees in the window are kind of touching to me. And actually right next door they have two large trees. One in front and one on the side (no pictures of them.) I just think my street is kind of cute that the houses are all decorated. We've even actually talked to three of our neighbors after only living here two months! And two even came right up to our door to welcome us and give us brownies and some other slightly crueler food!!!! It's like Mayberry or something. Don't they know you're not supposed to do that anymore? No where else have I been where people are still like that... (Well, Vancouver...)





What was nice about Vancouver was that the people didn't have as much fear in them. Noticed for example that young men didn't do the whole acting tough thing very much at all. People in general did less acting and more just being. It was a relaxed place. A big city where people routinely start conversations on the elevator with total strangers.

I lived in a suburb of Washington DC for a few years. It was not like this. Road rage everywhere and just very unfriendly. Also lived in California, three places in Texas, spend time in Florida, Alabama, worked as an engineer in Kentucky, Crete, visited the UK a couple times, lived in Germany for half a year... I'm forgetting places I'm sure. Anyway, Vancouver wins. Yeah I forgot New Mexico despite having lived there for 3 years. ...and I lived a year in Mineapolis, Minnesota. Also spent a decent amount of time Pittsburgh, PA. None of those places remotely compare to Vancouver.

...and a few weeks in Massachusets. A few more shorter vacations... Toronto, various place in Ohio, etc, etc. Enough that I've an idea what I'm talking about I think.

It was depressing at first. Because although I've been around a bit. I grew up in West Virginia. ...eh it's hard to explain all the details. Pointlessly time consuming anyway. Basically I couldn't help but wonder who might I have been if I had grown up in say Vancouver instead? I don't think I've touched upon the potential of who I could have been, or at least the happy life I might have lived. Such thoughts really depressed me the first couple of days in Vancouver. But then I ran through a number of different ways to overcome such thoughts. Had no idea which was the best way. Did seem like I might as well join the positivity cult somehow though on this instance. Finally settled on the obvious fact that I could be entirely wrong. Maybe things would have actually gone much worse for me. Maybe I needed shitty WV. Not much sunlight or water in order for my roots to grab hold. Who really knows.