take my haaaand, we’re off to ending daylight saving time
Just me, sitting here, eating some discount candy corn, listening to my cat snore, thinking about how 2023 is almost over. This truly is what November is all about. Mostly the discount candy corn part.
Random Thoughts
Family reality TV (that is, reality TV that centers around a family) peaked with The Osbournes and will never regain that level of greatness. The reason behind this is that Ozzy Osbourne was a direct antithetical concept to reality TV, and thus, watching Ozzy be “family man Ozzy”—this man who bit the head off a live bat in 1982—was an amazing juxtaposition, especially because he was still very “Ozzy” even in the context of the show (and by that I mean his brain was addled after decades of heavy drug and alcohol use). Compare this with Keeping Up with the Kardashians, a reality show that is fundamentally fake and full of fundamentally fake people doing dumb fake things. Kim Kardashian will never be as funny or fun to watch as Ozzy Osbourne.
The amount of waste individuals generate pales in comparison to the amount of waste corporations generate, and yet I am still mad at myself for letting a bell pepper wither away in my fridge. It looks so sad! Just sitting there, deflating slowly, the green of its skin turning darker and darker. How do I tell it that I’ve already eaten the onion? That I ate the onion while it desiccated in the crisper drawer? O WOE TO THE GREEN BELL PEPPER
Random thing I learned the other day: the word “handiwork” is not a play on “handy work” but is rather two words, “hand” and “iwork,” the latter of which is the Old English past participle of “work,” made by adding the i- prefix. So “handiwork” more literally means “hand worked,” aka “hand made.” This is more or less what the current meaning is too, but it’s still neat. (Also the i- prefix still exists in Germanic languages as ge-. This all makes sense as Old English is Germanic in origin.)
I’m Going to England (in May)
I have booked my first ever international trip across Ye Olde Ponde to my ancestor’s stomping grounds: London, England. Yes, from what I understand King Charles himself will be at my airport gate waiting to tip a ladle of Heinz baked beans right down my goddamned gullet. (Queen Elizabeth didn’t perform this ceremony because it was thought “unbecoming of a woman.” That’s why you didn’t know about it before now.)
The trip is two weeks in London. The only thing I have planned is to run my 50th parkrun at the original spot, Bushy Park, on May 11th, which is the day before my birthday. Other than that I have NOTHING planned but I’m sure I’ll visit the museums and eat an English Breakfast and a Turkish Delight and a Jammy Dodger and then Greg Davies will see me walking down Trafalgar Square and shout, “You! Boy! You would be perfect for the next series of Taskmaster!” and then I’d do that and become famous and well-known as “The Best Taskmaster Contestant.”
Honestly though I think I’m just gonna bum around London for two weeks, maybe take a bus up to Scotland, maybe figure out how to get to Ireland and try to erase the “London” from the “Londonderry” signs. If anyone has any suggestions, let me know!
NaNoWriMo 2023
I am doing National Novel Writing Month once again. This is my 21st outing, which is impressive, but on the other hand, I’ve only “won” NaNoWriMo three times. So, whatever.
This year I’m expanding on an idea I’ve had for a few years now, about a human created by robots long after humanity has been extinct. The current title is re:human (see, cause it’s re(garding) humanity, and it’s also re(making) humans, you get it? eh? eh?). I thought it would be interesting to try and make the cover art using Dall-e 2:
The prompt is a person in a vat surrounded by machinery. I don’t know how people get such good AI art cause mine always looks like this shit.
If this ever becomes an actual book I won’t actually use AI for the cover, even though it would be kind of ironic because the book is about AI creating humans, and then I use AI to make the book cover … but AI is just thievery right now, so unless that gets better, forget about it, bub. I’d rather pay an artist.
I’m writing this newsletter on Nov 10th, and I’m already at 30,000 words, so … I must really like this idea. In fact, I’m at a point now where I know where the series goes, if it ever becomes a book series. Who knows right now, but it’s a fun thought.
If anyone’s interested, I may post a snippet of the novel in a future post. Just something to wet the ol’ whistle. If you’ve ever wondered how the sausage is made. Is that how the saying goes? Wetting whistles and sausages sounds like a pornographic combination.
Running
Ah, who cares. I’m doing it. Since last newsletter, I’ve run three races:
ORRC Dual Duel 10k – Running 25 laps on a track is hard.
Run Like Hell 5k – Got 3rd place in my age group! Weird but cool.
Mt. Tabor Tar n Trail 5k – Everyone missed a whole .30 of the 5k because of a poorly marked sign, and then the event organizers never followed up on that so I’m not gonna run that one again.
Oh, and we have a new parkrun in Oregon! It’s in West Linn; that Run Like Hell blog link above will talk about it too. It’s nice to have two options now, even if both are far away from where I live.
November’s only got two races, the Hood to Coast Turkey Trot 5k at Portland International Raceway, which is at night and lets you get to run around the raceway track and look at the Christmas lights before anyone else, and the very next morning is the ORRC Turkey Trot at the Zoo, which is a 4 miler. So that’ll be interesting.
After that is my LAST OFFICIAL race for 2023, the Foot Traffic Holiday Half. I am running the half marathon and it will be cold as balls, I’m sure.
I’ll have a more thorough analysis of my Year in Running next month, but suffice it to say: it was quite a year.
Reviews
Movie: Saw X
The Saw series is over …? X was honestly pretty good and had one of the only torture porn scenes that actually made me look away. Plus there was a lot of Tobin Bell and I love that guy. He’s genuinely talented and makes a great “gray area” villain (even if his philosophy isn’t very gray area). Here’s my slightly longer Letterboxd review.
TV: Shoresy Season 2
Very good. Somehow they’ve made a Letterkenny/sports movie hybrid and it’s quick and fun and quippy and all of the characters have their own quirks. Also, for Jared Keeso to make a joke character in Letterkenny and transition him into a full-fledged person that I care about in Shoresy is amazing.
Also, Keilani Rose (Miig in the show) was SHOT IN THE CHEST in LA prior to filming, and recovered and is in the show and I am glad she is okay! She only had a fractured rib and punctured lung. Not great, but could’ve been a LOT worse.
Book: Shift (#2 in Silo Series)
The first book, Wool, was uneven and kind of slow to start. It didn’t help that the first half of the book is the first season of Silo, the Apple TV show, and that the TV show is better than the book. Shift, thankfully, is a lot more interesting, acting as a prequel/sidequel? to Wool and delving into some of the machinations of the silo. Hugh Howey still refuses to write a scene between more than two people, but at least the scenes here are more interesting.
YouTube Share’ems
I don’t think “Now and Then” is the best of the Beatles “post-John” songs (that would be, IMO, “Real Love”), but the story of the two living Beatles making a song with the two dead Beatles using state of the art technology, creating a music video that is, if nothing else, a memorial for The Beatles, is pretty incredible. My only issue is that the song is clearly and painfully an unfinished demo, even from John’s standards. But he’s been dead for over 40 years so there’s not much you can do on that front.
Because this novel I’m working on is science fiction, I’ve found myself down a rabbit hole of science fictiony concepts. PBS Space Time is always interesting to me but I especially enjoyed them breaking down why building a foundation for thinking of time on an atomic level is important.
The End
Well that’s it, see you next month, when Santa Claus descends from the North Pole to terrorize us all with capitalism. Until then!
Leave a Reply