Slow muscle up
one arm chinup
iron cross
break upper door frame
#3 gripper
bend something in half

Once again a bit of not sleeping so good. Here and there have periods where my sleep is too short and too light. Seems definitely related to night shift. When I attempted a one arm chinup everyday I certainly slept like a rock. But trying it everyday was too much. Started feeling like just passing out all the time. Was also starting to get weaker. Wonder if it was hurting my heart also. But, must sleep a bit better than I've been managing recently.

So much goes wrong without proper sleep. So many things. Noticed lose ability to appreciate music. Not that that's maybe so high on list.

So not every day then but shall two or three times a week.

...I think just feeling physically not as well makes me fearful/tense. I can see how people get drug addictions in this way. One constantly doesn't feel well and thus is constantly fearful/tense. This is a constant anxiety that ends up wearing them down mentally off into the direction of 'panic attacks', etc. One increasingly, in desperation, turns to various drugs for even a day of relief, something to let loose the relief valve just to survive another week at work. Depending on the extent to which they don't recognize the danger of the drug, they start taking more and more.

...there is additionally something of the fantastic about attempting extreme feats of strength. It is a sort of fantastic dream which means a sort of hope, the attempt to aspire to something remarkable. Silly though it is and really just to exhaust nervous system enough to overcome insomnia.

Liked my new job so much in part because it seemed to me so much better than my previous jobs. Whether or not this was even actually true doesn't matter. Just the perception matters. Lately haven't been thinking in such terms. The newness has passed. No longer comparing it to whatever rebuilt memories of past jobs I had.

Anyway, to think, it could be worse, can work quite well for standing bad situations.

-

hope replaced by fear.

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Bob Dylan is freakishly overrated. I do like his music OK. He used to have a nice voice, which he's since lost. Lyrics and composition are nothing special. Emperor's new clothes effect. Which I think occurs so often. So nice to believe in something. Not just to brown nose to the powerful but even just to agree with a group about something and to build something up.

-

Need some fantastic dream. Or just some dream. Something to keep me going forward. I've no children. My dream was to write. Lost that. Think it just doesn't matter. I guess need to find a way to bring that back. Need a dream to give me hope. Without hope negative things fill the void. But I've lost all belief in the fantastic.

What are good uses of the internet?

1. wikipedia is better than a encyclopedia.
2. can store music in case house burns down
3. could be used for people with common interests to find each other and come together. But this is hardly happening. Trying to use it for this purpose is like endlessly surfing 300 channels of crap for something worth watching. The time wasted isn't worth what little one finds... I've found one worthwhile person online in a decade. Of that I'm very glad. But, I'm not going to spend another decade in order to find a second. Just the time wasted would be bad enough, not to mention the ugly memories, the knowledge of the existence of so many crappy people.
4. Free software/cheap software. VSTs, Reaper, etc.
5. Getting news of the world through a medium not completely owned by billionaires.

There is a lot though which is a waste, a time waster at best, and often worse. The thing it could be used for, is just not happening, I keep expecting it to change. It's not. Maybe someday society will change. But for now best just to turn away from some things.

Thinking of deleting self from facebook. What worthwhile thing has occurred there? I've got in contact with people I knew in the past. Which confirmed how utterly hopeless they were/how bad my situation had been. That was worthwhile to know, to confirm, as I had forgotten. I had turned it into largely being my own fault, when it wasn't actually.

Now though, just thinking of Douglas Adams immortal character who's goal is to personally insult every person in the universe. Comically was thinking of using facebook for that. Would be sort of nice to just send an insult randomly day by day to crap people I haven't seen in 10, 15, 20 years.

I think that's the only useful thing left for facebook. So off to delete self now. As a statement. Not that anyone cares. But also because it's just wrong. The way it's used. The way people interact. The time wasted.

The internet has primarily been used to increase people's isolation, not their knowledge. It is best to avoid using it to communicate/interact with people. Any exceptions must be very very carefully considered. Like using email to find a cello teacher for example. Or occasionally some short email to someone I communicate primarily by phone with. Or to mail pictures or short stories, etc.

There is on the one hand, incredible frustration with this society, with it's social norms, and the feeling of the need to utterly reject it, to furthermore make a statement, to take symbolic actions to express my disgust, my anger, to make it clear... to who? To me, at least, to some imaginary god perhaps, to others I think I must think, but ought to know better.

There is on the other, the reality that all others are just trying to adapt to it, and utterly oblivious to what I'm thinking, what I'm feeling, utterly clueless that it's the entire whole of society to which I'm reacting. People just trying to get by from day to day who would be baffled at best if I showed anything of what I'm feeling. To these people I can it seems at best just hide everything, and keep things pleasant, albeit forever meaningless.

Pleasant and meaningless while I know the future holds absolutely nothing. Pleasant and meaningless while I want to randomly scream in every direction.

I want to make a statement that it is nothing. I want to expose it. This is like... I see the golden dream in the distance, I want it, and instead get something meaningless. Always just the meaningless. The dishonest. Anti-truth. The empty. But I can pretend this meaninglessness is something else. And in pretending it can give some nourishment. So do I accept it or throw it away?

Without it, will I starve?

And, will I hurt others in the process?

Will anything good be accomplished?

The thought is that by rejecting it I might reach the golden dream someday, that I will reach truth, the meaningful, that even if I don't, I'll be true to myself at least...

But I'm just starving, and possibly hurting others. Albeit probably not really. Mostly just appearing bizarre.

To speak the truth when it will do no good?
To instead lie?
To just say nothing at all.

Qualities to look for to better avoid more crass treatment by yet another person.

1. Book reading. (Or corporate TV?)
2. Ethical stances above the status quo. (Or primarily concerned with fitting? Pleasing others or pleasing over-I?)
3. Lack of demonization of others. (Furthermore do you tell someone when you disagree with them or just say nothing and avoid them in the future?) This means being intolerant of intolerance in a way.

Spent some time in the spare bedroom in bed with J with both windows open with the wind and rain. We both had a book and snuggled close to stay warm. My latest song wafting in from the other room. All very nice. J is always so warm while I'm usually quite cold. I was trying to read Proust's In Search of Lost Time. Beautiful book but I was quickly falling asleep... Trying to stay awake as I've got to switch back to night shift after 5 days off.. Ate a bunch of chocolate but still fell asleep very early and am here up by 5AM next day... So now the possiblity (again and again and again) of having a 27 hour day. At least (as it happens over and over) not bothering as much to stress about it. This time will go out for breaky and then take sleeping pills.... Which I bet probably aren't so good for me. But what else to do?

Well anyway, this was supposed to be a happy post. Have been running at least 3 days a week. A max of 4, work stops me from any more than that. And have been sleeping very well. Managing to sleep deeply for 6 hours instead of waking up after 3. That is The Reason for the running. Knees and hip joints holding up very well thanks to set of lunges and toe raises after each run. Side effect has been that I'm running much faster. Running with 5 pound weights also.

Anyway, so nice to fall asleep while reading with J. With hohner 26 melodica glitchy reggae coming from other room and the rain and wind and three kitties. And Proust.

Also read Hobb's new Dragon book. Read the entire 400+ page book yesterday. It's both really enjoyable and incredibly absurd on some level. Kept on imagining a friend as being the main character. A lady described as having red hair and freckles and being very scholarly...

And a vikingish Weis and Hickam fantasy that was slapped together pretty badly.
And Black Hole by Charles Burns which was extremely depressing. I suppose the disfigurements were symbolic... It maybe is a good representation of high school...
And The Genius in All of Us, which is I guess what I've mostly thought... That it's a matter of wanting it and then practicing hard enough and smart enough. And that virtually anyone can achieve virtually anything. But, the thing is, the wanting it part in the first place is no simple matter... Nor practicing smart enough...

Trying to find a cello teacher somewhere in the area. The one's listed online have moved/disappeared. Cello is so expensive. Online the talk is you must spend at least 2000 dollars or otherwise not even waste your time. Also must get a teacher they say... I've never bothered with teachers. Past music teachers only seemed to be trying to make me hate music and were quickly discarded. Might end up just buying an electric cello... But for now still looking for a teacher and hoping to rent a 2000 dollar cello...

The quality of keeping it light and fluffy. Has it always been this way or is this an adaptation to a world of so many people where everyone is regularly moving to a new job and new house, etc such that it's just very rare to have anyone other than a few relatives that you're really keeping in touch with over the long term? Instead you learn to treat even what few people that you keep in touch with for a few years as if each meeting is the first and last time you'll see them.

And how do you treat someone/have a good time with a total stranger that you're meeting for the first and last time? You keep it light and fluffy. You crack stupid jokes. You keep it meaningless. You don't talk about anything 'personal' or 'private'. This is just how the well adapted people are such that even if you know a person for years you're still acting this way.

Or is 'light and fluffy' The Optimism? Is showing anything 'private' or 'personal' being 'negative' and dark and thus to be avoided?

I'd rather just stay home and read a book than associate with the light and fluffy. These people really annoy me. I respond to their idiotic exuberant hellos with a frown. I'd as well watch some corporate garbage TV, some reality show as associate with these people. And understand the saying, 'the difference between a wise man and a fool is that the wise man learns something from the fool.' I think it quickly quits applying when the fool is a marionette. When their every action is just an act and there's nothing at all real occurring. The real them is buried so deep they can't even find it anymore. They're buried in layer after layer of meaninglessness. Nothing that isn't a complete and utter waste of time ever comes out of their mouth and they're defiling the truth. They are a lie.

Unfortunately this all means that it's always best for me to just stay home.

A bunch of people successfully caught and shipped off to a concentration camp because they're insanely optimistic such that they refuse to face the obvious. But at the concentration camp they keep their optimism. Making jokes and having a grand old time as they starve to death and/or are killed by their tormentors. A heart warming story for the whole family.

I see the holocaust in how you say hello.
I see the holocaust in how I'm spending this beautiful Saturday.
I see the holocaust in facebook.
I see it at work.
And I see something even worse.
I see a world where we might as well kill each other, because we don't know how to do much really of anything else anyway.
It's horrible but true... I read Night by Elie Weisel and I think that trying to survive in a concentration camp sounds like about as much fun and meaningful an existence as any other. And I have real world experience. I look back fondly on basic training in the military. Being threatened constantly with jail and physical violence. 3 hours of sleep max each night. Pushing my body to its limits daily. People attempting suicide around me.
And I look back fondly. Finally, on something a lot worse than all that. The silent scream. The creation of a malevolent god that I was beating simply by going on.

All of this, I see nothing more worthwhile than it.

I see the holocaust in you and you and you. Over and over again. The way you've treated me. Each and everyone of you. The holocaust makes perfect sense. I look forward to the next one. Because, come on now, let's at least be honest... There is nothing worthwhile in this world. There is nothing that matters. The most impressive thing about humans is their ability to kill one another. Everything else... there isn't anything else really. Just resting periods between massacres.

My kind was finished long ago. I've tried to be an angel amongst these demons and how really was that going to turn out?

First they gathered up the foreign Jews. Took them all on a train out deep into the forest, had them dig ditches and then shot them. One survived and through great hardship made it all the way back to town. Where he told all the others what had happened. They didn't believe him. Said he was nuts. Laughed at him.

When they gathered up all the Jews onto the cattle cars, one woman screamed that she saw a fire, they gagged her and finally beat her to make her shut up while her very young son held on to her.

What sort survived compared to what sort didn't?

It appears things didn't work out so well for the optimists. But then for sanity's sake, one must become an optimist. And they so routinely faced persecution that all this, at first, must not have seemed so new. And with their optimism they assumed that surely the Germans were basically still human...

So you ignore the negatives. You ignore, you ostracize, you dislike... those who aren't optimists. And usually this makes life mostly tolerable.

Is it moral for a slave to be happy in his slavery?
Is it moral for a nonslave living in the vicinity who isn't directly connected to slavery to be happy?
Is it moral to be happy in this world?

I have thought that it isn't for many years.

This morning the thought was completely foreign to me. Lately I've been feeling a fear, a stress that is really making me unhappy, to the extent that I just want it overcome so that I can be happy. The idea of the immorality of happiness was forgotten and seemed just bizarre to me.

Does one need to be unhappy in order to want to make a situation change?
Does being unhappy help make a situation change?

Made quickly. Could easily be made a lot better. Can you imagine a world where it would matter? My imagination is failing me on such matters. Still I like it quite a bit.

I built a bunch of bookshelves that are attached to the wall. Something like 140 feet of shelf space. Maybe barely enough for my books. But then I didn't quite finish putting all my books on them. Why? Not quite sure entirely but it may have something to do with feeling like I won't be living here long. Then also night shift has me not spending much time in the room (would bother sleeping wife). This all ties into feeling though like the space I live in, that it just doesn't matter much to make it nice. In this world it just doesn't matter. Work is way too much chop chop savagery. Not to mention even without the chop chop something essential is missing... Such that nice spaces don't matter.

Writing a beautiful piece of music doesn't matter.

Recently I was thinking that 'good music should not be written in this world'; instead music that sounds like it can hardly bother. Music with blatant mistakes. Music that doesn't have any polish in it's production or original composition. For that matter, if you can overhear someone flushing the commode in the background, etc, that's a good idea too.

Where would it matter?

Where having beautiful spaces mattered.

Where for that matter, living or dying actually mattered.

What would such a world look like?

There is a lady at work who seems pretty wonderful. My wife met her at a party with 10 or so people. Upon leaving (I had never mentioned her at all) she immediately mentioned what a wonderful person she seemed to be. So we both independently came to this conclusion.

She sort of looks like me. Large head. Reddish hair. Angular face. Large nose. She's the one who suggested the book club at work. The book club it's looking like may actually have an inagural meeting. From at least 50 people at work a grand total of me, her and two other people just might show up. There's nothing to understanding why I like her. Not like my weird attraction to S. With K it's perfectly obvious and nothing to go on about.

A world of such people as those by the way. Where one simply gave up on the rest. Where one made sure to spend absolute minimal time associating with those other kind of people.

Well, in such a world as that, I suspect it might matter a bit. Simply by gathering together people who existed more. (I think therefore I am. The more I think, the more I am.)

It's not such a horribly complex idea. I'm around such people and I immediately feel so much better. As if someone put my shoulder back in it's socket. As if sensory deprivation has suddenly ended. The world is just so much more when around such people. K in particular, at least it seems.

It's startling. No amount of philosophy seems to me anything at all for human happiness compared to simply being around the right sort of people. But there are so incredibly few.

...Fredrik Douglas barely survived slavery. Rather than take another whipping he attacked a white man. I think most such people were killed. His circumstances were just exceptional. I strongly feel that being an intelligent man didn't make it easier for Douglas to survive his brutal existence. I think it made it much harder. I strongly think that most such men as him, were removed from the gene pool. I know it's highly verbotten to mention but the evidence of the result is there.

That evidence would not be worth mentioning except that the same thing is still going on around us. There is something very awful to learn from slavery which no one is allowed to admit.

"Darkness has descended upon mankind."

A many headed blob of all that's dark, all that's wrong, all the fear and hate and isolation. All massed together into one creature. This creature looms, this creature sits there in your memory. Sometimes you forget it. But it returns again and again.

Imagine a second creature, it's opposite.

Which of the two will win out?

The very end of Ran, where the blind boy is playing the flute while standing on a precipice is my favorite bit of movie ever.

Saw Kurosawa's The Lower Depths a couple nights ago. It's maybe nothing original but it's the most blunt, fundamental presentation I can recall. So starkly laid out. The Predicament. How to cope with this life. Sad to know after all those good films he tried to kill himself, slashing his wrists more than 30 times just because he couldn't get funding for movies after already making so many masterpieces. The miracle was that he ever got to make movies in the first place that were so cerebral and dark. Wonder if WWII had something to do with it...

Also watched Gilliam's 12 Monkeys again. Rewatching a lot of old movies on netflix that are free and instantly available online. Sort of a memory test. Who was I back then? Howard the Duck was interesting in trying to remember who I once was. Awful, absurd movie that I still liked. And I remembered why as I watched it.

Gilliam's 12 Monkeys is a lot more like Brazil than I remembered. The time travel thing, watching his own death, is just too gimmicky though.

I've tendency to misremember my intelligence when younger in the sense of thinking myself dumber back then then I actually was. My main 'lack' back then was actually just having too much hope in me. Being too optimistic. Thinking there might be a way forward. A point in trying.

..on a subconscious level I was wishing for death the other night. Was thinking about how people slowly kill themselves, not just with alcohol or illegal drugs, but even with junk food. Or for that matter by destroying relationships, perhaps. All not necessarily with even realizing just what they're doing. In a sense in the face of the typical obese flat affected hospital patient I'm seeing a nihilist who's been slowly killing themselves for years.

(Not that it's entirely all that bad. There's two levels. There is the one where indeed it's that bad. Where, indeed, there is no hope at all. That humans are awful, disgusting creatures. Where the number that break through, the true revolutionaries, the ons who manage to show compassion, concern, friendliness to people outside their family or prospective family are so rare and so setting themselves up for pain that one anymore wishes them to just not even be that way....etc.

But then there's the mere survival, moment to moment life. Where there's some security, some jokes, decent health. And hardly any hurry anyway. It's all a short blink anyway.)

I've been looking forward to death for at least a few years now. The feeling though has definitely increased, recalling back to a poem someone read a few years ago. Since then still more negative information has been uncovered.

It all worries me. I'm afraid I'll have a moment one of these days, where I suddenly feel too 'artistic' and I slash my wrists 30 times. Try to remind myself there's hardly any hurry. And my health's good. I can go jogging for a bit yet before my joints give out. My wife is very very nice. My parents are too. And I have some slight association with a couple beautiful people, to the slight extent they're not locked into barbaric social norms. Anyway there's no hurry and nowhere to go anyway.

Try to withhold honesty on the topic of suicide because I know of quite a few on the political left who have been 'suicided'. Steve Kangas comes to mind. Getting Jack Daniels forced down his throat in a bathroom while he bled to death from the hole in his head. Or perhaps Gary Webb. I surely don't matter at all though and have nothing to worry about there.

No. It's just interesting that my subconscious is thinking about such things. While my conscious has almost completely ignored such questions. Or I should say my conscious has only thought of such things theoretically and generally, but not personally. At least in the last 18 years. Consciously I don't go around thinking about killing myself. If it were to happen it would very sudden. Which is what worries me.... Sometimes I'm driving and it just pops into my head how wonderful it would be if I just suddenly jerk the steering wheel...

What to do?

Remember there's no hurry I guess. And not bother stressing too much during chop chop times.

Cutting off all that is pretend. Cutting off all that is meaningless. Left staring at a wall....

Close to deleting my facebook account. Close to destroying email account. Soon I'll not exist at all.

Soon free to be nothing.

And... running 5 days a week. Really trying to get up to a minimum of 6mph. Feels like a return to youth. A pretend youth that never actually was. Now I can go back and remember it all insanely different from the hell it was. Back then my achilles tendon, my grievous injury... I remember imagining the euphoria if this grievous wound ever healed. But of course there was not really much euphoria. Did that which didn't kill me make me stronger? If at all, only for absurdly useless activities. But the euphoria didn't happen in part because I've forgotten. Through (faster) running it's like I'm going back... ?? (This is a paragraph safely misunderstood, for all of time.)

The problem with music is that it's not supposed to be such a spectator sport. The massive concert of people just watching is the height of the sickness. If at least they were watching some freak, some Vladimir Horowitz at least, that, although also wrong, would be a magnitude better than Brittany et al.

Playing a musical instrument well shouldn't take years of practice. Practicing by yourself 8 hours a day is sick. Music should be a participatory endeavor. It should not consist primarily of bystanders.

Musical instruments should exist that the average person can pick up and immediately play a half decent tune on, immediately improv with others. There shouldn't be pain involved. There shouldn't be the need to toughen up the finger tips, etc.

Plucking/strumming strings is no good. Brass instruments no good (hard on the mouth, takes too long to learn to play, too much spit.) Keyboards too unweildly. Plus 12TET set-up too difficult for novice. Reed instruments too difficult.

And the embochure of the flute is too difficult for the novice. The one I built from PVC, I have to change the shape of my mouth for each note. Then instead the fipple of the recorder and the irish penny whistle, etc... still the issue of overblowing. Will construct a micro-orifice upstream to limit the max flowrate. But still, such a small max volume. How else to reduce overblowing? How to get a louder sound?

Will learn the physics of the whistle next.

Will tinker around. Watched Scanners and The Deadzone last night. Put 5 60's and 70's Godzilla movies on my netflix. Watched short thing on how Monty Python got together (I never had a chance in this life). Will tinker. Will run. At the same time that I cut off everything meaningless, everything pretend, such that I don't exist. And life is such a quick blink of the eye. There's hardly any hurry for what comes immediately after...

I'm of miner stock. A bit of genetic inertia of something else. It's painful to watch. My epigenetics are miner stock at best. Maybe a lot worse. Me not having children is no loss whatsoever.

The woman sweating her ass off beneath her burqa in Saudi Arabia convinces herself this is the best of all possible worlds just as the slave did, just as the man struggling to survive from paycheck to paycheck in capitalism just as the aging hippy who used to have a nagging sense of loneliness about the lack of community but now but manages to drive hours away in his car 6 to 9 times a year for festivities like going rafting or to the Burning Man festival and just focuses on that.

It's so easy. You fall asleep, you forget. The goal is to be happy. Utilize your stupidity. If someone points out how wrong it is, demonize them.

Everyone's a pangloss. Everyone ensures that this world will never change. That it will always be insane. Everyone has learned how to be happy by being insane.

It's simply evolution. He best adapts who believes this is the best of all possible worlds.

And so you have children and then, simply evolution, the person who exists for their children, for their family, for their welfare and no others, best passes on their genes. A morality that doesn't go beyond one's own children. No sense of community beyond one's own relatives. Even if, by some chance, you don't think this is the best of all possible worlds, you just turn away from everything but your family, you turn away from all else. And your children flourish and reproduce in turn.

And these people are the only people alive at all now.

For better or worse, this is it! (He says as he flashes a big dumbass smile at his 'masser' whom whips him for his own good.)