No Happy Nonsense
average neocities site: Warning, you are about to enter the most dangerous, fucked up place on the internet. You should not hit enter, but if you do, I'm not responsible for scarring you for life.
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average neocities site: about shrines blog links buttons
[blog]
average neocities site: 03-22-2023 - so today i forgot to bring in all of my homework because i didnt do any of it and then during lunch todd told me he liked christina and he is going to ask her out but christina is my future waifu and i got so mad but i said oh okay cool and when i got home i fell asleep for three hours and then ate mac n cheese.
reading is a lot of fun, hot dang
i forgot how much i dislike deadlines
well,
i like watching them come and go, drifting on by.
* * *
new weirdy wordy sometime tonight, or later than that.
[coffee shop, 2005]
my friend: hey do you have any Frou Frou music on your iPod?
me: uh yeah, just one song though
my friend: yeah, everyone has that one
oh, weirdy wordy, i just can't quit you.
i think it's funny that youtube will be like "we really think you'll like this song" and you know in the background of it's algorithm-brain-thing it's all proud of itself for having this absolutely perfect recommendation for you and is so excited for you to listen to the song and then you click the video box link whatever it's just a fucking death cab song you've been listening to for the past 19 years and like, yeah, no shit i like this song, ya fucking idiot robot.
Mentions/Quotes Ursula K. Le Guin:
How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe ☑
Road to Nowhere ☑
Ways of Being ☑
A friend of mine reads a ton of fantasy books. Me, not as much. But recently I polished off the first Earthsea book and we got to talking about it.
He said, "Earthsea was such a refreshing read...it's good to read something where the solution isn't just 'throw a fireball' and the hero wins. It felt like reading a pure fantasy book."
I didn't really touch on this in my review for the book but, yeah, basically every conflict in the story is solved by discussion, or self-sacrifice. Very little "let me cast my spell of chain-lightning."
As I was reading Paris Marx' 2022 Politics + Technology book Road to Nowhere the other night, Le Guin popped up, notably her talking about how fucking dumb it is that narrative fiction ends up coming down to physical conflict:
I agree. We should be using our back packs more, and our great swords less. Also, autonomous cars are never happening, sorry techbros.
Had an interview today for a job I don't want.
It went well, I hope they don't make an offer.
January was a pretty good month:
• I ran 198 miles (if I realized this yesterday, I would've jogged out the extra two, but alas)
• I read 11 books:
• I met up with my brother in law on three weekends, we went for easy runs through trails.
• I found a new big trail system somewhat nearby my house.
• I watched 12 NFL playoff games, and constantly wondered why I did.
Some habits that I still need to get off the ground:
Not a bad month, though. I haven't read this many books in a month since my college days. I have had more free time than usual admittedly, but most of my reading has been super early in the morning and then later on at night after dinner. Some of the books also really grabbed me so I decided to dedicate more of my free time to reading as I really enjoyed them.
Ideally my mileage would be closer to 250mi/month but Winter is always hard, so I'm happy with this total.
I'd like to start tracking obscure things about my life for these monthly summaries, that could be fun. I'll have to keep a log.
Onward, onward.
Yesterday I surprised myself by putting up 14 miles during a run. I ran 5 miles out to a small park + trail system to meet my brother in law, then ran ~3 miles through the trails with him, then ran another 5 miles back home, taking a detour at the end to get the extra mile.
I've run longer distances before obviously, but I was feeling pretty worn down from this week and it felt good to push it. It's been 30's and 40's most days, so running has been relatively easy from a weather standpoint so far.
This Winter has been mild for the East Coast, a few days of snow and maybe a week/week and a half of temps 20° or lower. I wonder if this is part of the new normal now. If the cold snaps and months of snow on the ground will no longer be something I experience while living in my home state. It's great to not have to deal with ice and snow and slush and your breath in the air, but it also feels like a scary harbinger of worse things to come.
Apparently NJ is warming up faster than any other state in the US.
Fuck.
"I support disruptive protests, but..."
Does it seem like it's time for another massive site overhaul in here, or is it just me?
I've been putting together lots of tiny, tiny little fixes/tweaks to the "other room" that we have, which I have somewhat taken over as my library/workshop. Too small to really document for the blog, but maybe I'll video them in a quick little thing and post it, or something.
And I'm testing shit out.
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being only motivated by deadlines, i will be spending most of tomorrow writing things that are far, far past due, and preparing my life for THE YEAR 2023, THE BEST YEAR OF MY LIFE (according to my new years resolutions that i've just jotted out)
i'd say i have big plans for this site but that'd mostly be me lying to you. so let's just say we'll meet each other at the diner after we graduate and see what happens.
Happy New Year errybody, keep on making weird shit.
say it aint so, digital love
everything is delayed due to lazy
upper brain: hey write that thing
lower brain: world cup 3rd place
upper brain: hey write that thing
lower brain: nfl football
upper brain: hey write that thing
lower brain: world cup final
upper brain: hey write that thing
lower brain: redzone
upper brain: hey write that thing
lower brain: i have no time
makin' progress; progressively making.
can you have writer's block without being like, an actual writer?
mood: trying to make lots of things and be a really cool book-reading-and-reviewing person and then TF2 in my steam library (literally a 15 year old game that i have played for thousands of hours) decides to invade my brain and i drop all my free time into playing it despite not even really enjoying it like i used to.
me at 2am after re-organizing all my books: okay, okay, you have 500 books and over half still need to be read. no more buying books until you only have ~50 unread.
me the next morning after seeing bookshop has a sale: loooooooooool
this drought is making me thirsty
i can't stop eating donuts
i got a new(ish) smart phone, and actually signed up for a plan for it. first time in about 2.5 years i've had that kind of set up. it makes going for spontaneous walks/runs a lot easier, as well as being able to just pop on any old podcast or song i feel like, instead of the pre-planning i needed to do previously with downloading things and uploading them to my mp3 player.
it lets me live a bit more spontaneously, even though i still don't do much besides read and go outside.
new ear rat slinking through the webworks, though still tbd. more info soon.
6 months to write a book review, what a joke. an invisible brick wall, feh.
weird-word continues onward, approaching issue 100. nearly 2 years of weekly posts. was it worth it? hard to say.
so after trying to aggressively "get into" mastodon/the instance i signed up for, i just decided to delete my account and remain off of social media entirely. writtte it is.
so i've been on twitter for about 2 or 2.5 months now. aside from finding some cool indie authors/poets to buy books from, it's mostly just a never ending ocean of noise and nonsense. i tried to follow accounts of people i was interested in and suit the experience to what i was looking for, but the algorithm just keeps shoving stuff at you. relentless.
all the musk shit obviously doesn't make it any more appealing, either.
so, I've joined the fediverse, or whatever. mastodon. it's a lot slower, and hopefully not as brain-meltingly-loud. you can find me here: @mikev
In other news, I've basically been only eating candy, donuts, and chips for the past two weeks. It feels...bad. Very bad.
about a month and a half ago i made a twitter account to better follow an ultra marathon race i was interested in.
as the saying goes, "the rest was a slow and steady spiral into the algorithmically-crafted hell spiral of the worst social media site that exists."
i guess i'll have to change the little about me on here
i just want to walk around cities and try out their coffee shops
new death cab album
i can hear them in the walls, in the floors, in the ceilings
all week i've felt like i'm chasing a to-do list around, barely getting anything done on it. i'm still getting things done, but it feels like i'm moving through mud the whole time.
new ear rat mag releases in 2 days. (it might be very late on saturday night just fyi)
This issue looks interesting...
Amazing fact: Mel Brooks slices his bagels in threes. Is this a thing? Do people do this? I'm trying it asap.
"I was in charge of bagels. They liked the way I cut them into three thin slices instead of two thick ones and toasted them to perfection."
- Mel Brooks
All About Me!, pg. 410
2021
Have fun out there, bring a hat and snacks!
Dumb and exciting thing: after about a year and a half without it, I have resurrected the random quote generator. The little running xuxxy brain man had to get resized (and locked in place) but it was a noble and worthwhile sacrifice.
If you have a quote you want added to the big ol' list of possible random quotes to pull, figure out a way to get it in front of my eyeballs.
Thanks again to Rios for writing this code for me.
Has it really been over a month since I updated anything? Yes. Yes it has.
More content coming soon, including things I owe for other sites, and things other people made that I had little/nothing to do with.
Hey, look. This is slightly new.
Haven't been doing much creative work lately. Work moved me to a new project. Family things. House things. Running.
I owe a way better website than this one a book review, and I owe a bunch of y'all a magazine. It's coming, it's just slow.
If it's stupid and it works, it's stupid...and it works.
Everything's coming together. Now to actually create some things.
Ear Rat is still in the works, never fear. You can call the exterminator but you can't really kill all the little ear micey.
I've put together so much flat-pack furniture lately that I've started to appreciate the relative high-quality of Ikea vs unknown overseas sellers. It's subtle but you definitely start to notice it. I've also never had a problem with any Ikea furniture I've bought and used in terms of functionality or durability; I usually grow to hate the obnoxious orange colored thing I buy because at the time I thought it would work with the rest of the decor in my home, but I don't have any actual decor sense because I'm basically just a monkey with access to coffee. So now I just have this out of place orange desk and it looks horrible.
Still holds up fine, though.
I haven't been running as much as I'd like, it's hard over here. Way more ascent per mile than in the flat suburbs a few counties over, where I used to live.
House is slowly taking form. It's been hard to have the time/energy to make small fixes and put together furniture etc. Work has been a pain in the arse.
Stepping outside now to do some yard work. I'm an adult now. Shit sucks.
I finally went for a run again today after roughly two weeks off from the move and packing and yadda whatever.
My new route is littered with hills, and I hit the streets at entirely too fast of a pace from all my pent up running energy. Somewhere at the 2 mile mark, as I was cresting over a steep hill that felt tall enough to roll down, I felt my lungs surrender to the pain and I just started moaning and saying "fuck" to myself over and over.
Barely squeezed out 2.5 miles. Could barely breathe near the end. Felt great. Can't wait to get stronger from all these hills.
why do people buy houses? it's just like having to do chores, but forever.
safe access to abortion is a universal female right and should never be restricted. the right to safe and legal abortion prevented me and my partner at the time from being unprepared 22 year old parents with no savings and no careers all because a contraceptive device malfunctioned.
i fucking hate this country sometimes.
lol emusk bought twitter for like 40 billion? bro i made my own version for free in twenty minutes. dumb.
life has been hectic lately, which is the state i least enjoy for my existence. packing endlessly, throwing away/donating things we never use, trying to keep up my running & reading & writing, failing spectacularly at reading the ear rat subs, working a gig with lots of things going on, and whatever else i've been up to lately. it sucks/is fun.
ear rat coming soonish (soon being relative compared to, say, when the dinosaurs were last on earth.) me updating this site more often also coming soon (soon again is very relative here.) miss you guys, hugs and kisses, etc.
running is funning
recycled some previously used things to make this nifty little microfeed thing. now i have a place to post all my reactionary hot takes without supporting a giant tech company, WE ALL WIN NOW!