that stands for “have a great summer” if you didn’t know. i don’t think you’re all hags.

Well now it’s June. What the hell. It’s almost like time is unwavering and will wear you down like the endless river that creates the deepest canyon. You know what I mean? It’s exactly like that.

Summer Vacation

I’m taking a summer vacation from the ol’ newsletter. That just means I won’t be posting twice a month, but more like less than once a month. Whatever I feel like, really. I’m not leaving for good, it’s just nice outside and I’d like to go out there. Out there!

I hope summer treats you with respect and kindness, and that you get that raise you’ve been wanting. Ask for a raise! You deserve it!

I’m on Mastodon Again

Gonna try and make it stick this time. Follow me here. I’m basically writing about the same things in four different places. Isn’t the internet great? It’s certainly not an existential nightmare!

40 in Retrospect

I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be 40. Like, what was every decade for me? The first decade, 0-9 we’ll say for number’s sake, was learning on a macro scale: how to walk, how to speak, how to not piss and shit myself whenever I felt like it.¹ What numbers meant and how to add them together. How to read. (And, according to my kindergarten report card, how to correct the teacher on grammar mistakes when she would read to us.)

The second decade (10-19) was learning how to exist in the world: how to interact with other people, how to form rudimentary friendships. Learning about my place in the world both in the small scale—friends, family, classmates, and the various locations around my hometown—and on the large scale—U.S. history, geography, cultural differences, who says “soda” and who says “pop.” By the end of the second decade, I was deemed a man and sent off to fend for myself.

The third decade (20-29) was learning on a micro scale: really getting into the nitty gritty of everything. My brain could handle it now, all the nuanced aspects of life, politics, interpersonal relationships. Dating, sex, breakups, moving from home, drinking, drinking a lot. Discovering who my real friends were and who were just people I went to college with. Pursuing hobbies and jobs and theatre and music. Learning how to balance a budget by absolutely failing to balance a budget. This feels like the most important decade, doesn’t it? The one where you’re thrust into the real world, away from school and the safety net of your parents.

Decade number four (30-39) was learning how to survive: the world was harsh and unforgiving, and after ten years of living in it on my own, I was feeling the roughness, like sandpaper against my psyche, sanding my rough edges away. This is probably the family decade for many—marriage and/or children, some perhaps close to if not teenagers by now. This is where I and many others branched off from that group. I tried to survive via numerous avenues: going back to school (it’s what I was used to), weight lifting, meditation, therapy. You know how in cartoons when a character gets thrown a long distance, and at first they’re tumbling, tumbling, tumbling, before the skiddddddd to a stop. My 20s felt like tumbling, and my 30s felt like skidding.

And now I’m in decade number five (40-49), and after skidding for ten years, it’s time to stand up, brush myself off, and start to walk again. I don’t know what this decade holds (I know some of you readers do, in your own lives), but I’m eager to find out, on my own terms, and in my own pace. My rough edges are now rounded, polished a bit, even, but I’m still learning, still discovering things about myself. Like, I know how to balance my budget now. For real!

It’s interesting to be here, now, in my 5th decade, watching my brother in his 6th decade, my mother in her 8th decade, my father in his 9th. What do those decades mean for them? What does it mean to be in your 9th decade? I’m hoping I’ll find out one day, and I’m also hoping it means that my consciousness will be ready to be transplanted into an android or something cool like that.

Running

Hey guess what? I haven’t run a single 5k race since last issue. I’m taking it easy. I’m chill, dudes. My vibe is … relentless. Or something. It felt good to take a break, even if part of it was to rest my stupid calf muscle. So, you’re welcome! No run talk this week.

The Zelda Game

[Note: There are some light Tears of the Kingdom spoilers ahead.]

I’m playing the new Zelda game, Tears of the Kingdom. It’s fun, lots to run around and do, but it is part of a trend now in gaming which is basically that the new games are inserting so many new things that it stops being the game franchise, to me. TotK provides this huge open world sandbox that you can run around in, which the older Zelda games did too, but it also diverges wildly from most of the older games, and even the story is not really in line with the older games.

I think one of my nerdiest things is that I was obsessed with the Zelda timeline growing up. A lot of us nerdy Nintendo kids were, but my obsession was tracking the items from the different games and seeing how they could be timeline related. For example: in the original Legend of Zelda for the NES, Link has a “Magical Sword,” but in A Link to the Past, it’s called the Master Sword. Is it the same sword? In ALttP, Link has a Power Bracelet that lets him lift heavy boulders. In Ocarina of Time, he has Silver and Golden Gauntlets which do basically the same thing. Are they they same? Etc etc etc.

This is what you do when you’re a nerdy kid who likes to stay at home. But the Zelda timeline is now notoriously complex, with three timelines branching off of Ocarina of Time to explain the variety of games in the series, including a timeline where Link fails to defeat Ganon, which is, IMHO, bullshit.

The two new games, Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, diverge from the timeline by placing the games around 10,000 years in the future, with all the prior games representing some sort of, you might say, “legend.” But this only fucks things up more if you think about it. For example: in ToTK, we meet King Rauru, the founder of Hyrule. Rauru is a Zonai, a species we’ve never seen before, who reportedly all descended from the gods and are all extinct by BotW. He’s married to Queen Sonia, who is likely a descendant of the line of Zeldas. (Haven’t finished the game yet so I don’t know if this 100% true or not, PLEASE DON’T TELL ME let me experience it on my own thanks.)

There is a sage in Ocarina of Time whose name is Rauru and who is human. So it has to be that King Rauru is named after this sage. Rauru and Sonia founded Hyrule. But we already know Hyrule existed before they did, because we literally saw in so many games. So what Hyrule did they found?

My theory is that the Zonai were sent to the world after the divergence to converge the timelines, by literally pulling the three separate worlds together into this new Hyrule, which Rauru and Sonia founded. My reasoning for this is, ironically, because you find items from all the previous Zelda games in these ones. For example, you can find the Wind Waker armor set as well as the Twilight Princess armor set—two games set in two different timelines. How’d they get in this game? Simple: when the Zonai merged the separate timelines, the items from those timelines came with, and then were lost to the 10,000 years of additional time.²

This also explains why landmarks are named from various games as well: because the inhabitants of these disparate timelines remembered different things and named landmarks after those things.

I will say this though: the Zonai must be pretty damn powerful if Rauru could seal Ganondorf under Hyrule Castle for 10,000 years. Nobody prior to him could do that!

So, maybe the new Zelda series doesn’t diverge from the old games after all. Maybe it converges them, into a single narrative.

Thanks for letting me talk nerdy to you.

A Thing for You

This is just a funny thing that I enjoyed a lot, both as a fan of these guys, a fan of Hans and Franz, and guy who studied dramatic writing in college. There are two episodes out as of this writing. Check them out!

The End

Life is pretty even-keel these days, which is great. Not much to chat about, not much going on. Hope the same is true for you. Until next time, friends! As my high school drama teacher would tell us every Friday afternoon: Be safe, be smart, make wise choices.

1. still working on that last one tbh. ↩︎
2. Why is Midna’s helmet even in BotW/TotK? Maybe the Zonai were powerful enough to merge the disparate realms as well. Perhaps the Depths are the Twilight Realm converged into Hyrule. Who knows? ↩︎

lordy, lordy, look who is one year older than he was before

Sorry this is a little late. I straight up forgot!

I’m 40

I’ve done it. Forty revolutions around the sun. Fun fact: the year I was born, 1983, was the year the military began the split from ARPANET (the proto-internet), making their own network and leaving ARPANET for educational and public use. 1983 was also the first year the TCP/IP protocol was standardized within ARPANET, creating what is essentially the internet. What I’m trying to say is: if I was never born there would be no internet. I know that doesn’t sound true, but just think about it for a bit. Just … take some time with it, okay?

I never thought I’d be 40. I don’t mean I was planning on dying before 40, I just mean that my brain has yet to truly comprehend what it means to spend four decades with consciousness. Before 1983 there was no me. And now not only is there me, there’s four decades of me! Yikes! I have memories and shit! Memories of stuff—and things!

My 30s were definitely the hardest decade. Living in Portland, away from the majority of my family (and then, eventually, away from all of my family when my brother moved away), has been tough. There are countless videos from people in their 30s who will tell you that your 30s suck so I won’t belabor the point. What I will say is this: I am privileged to be in a position where I was able to have a lifejacket, so to speak, keeping me afloat for the past ten+ years. Therapy, meditation, and exercise helped in the early years, but it’s only within the past couple of years that I realized that a lot of my mental health is in my gut. This isn’t me telling you to go vegan or to do a detox,¹ this is me telling you to maybe take a multivitamin or an iron supplement or vitamin D,² or just get some healthier foods in your gut, if you can. I had a brain fog for years that would not let up and then one day I had a bunch of good quality meats at a Brazilian grill and I felt better almost instantly. I don’t think the meats were curing me, I think that I was getting some nutrient(s) that I wasn’t getting before. That’s all I’m saying.

Also, like, eat an orange. Oranges are so good!

Anyway, I’m 40 and I feel basically the same. The only thing that’s really weird about it is that sometimes I remember something from high school and it feels like it was two or three years ago but no, it was 22-26 years ago. Also I am like 50x more invested in my bowel movements than I was ten years ago.

Instagram is Just Sex Now

Is anyone else’s IG explore feed just 95% hot people? Look, I know I’m single and I enjoy a good attractive woman ogle every once in a while but it feels like IG is trying to mainline hot women into my veins lately.

It almost makes me miss TikTok. At least with TikTok I would get some educational and informational videos among the women. My explore feed is this:

• muscle girls being hot

• hot girls being hot

• POWER RANGERS (I don’t know why!)

• clips of the lead singer from Paramore even though I’ve never listened to Paramore or really even looked up this girl

• clips from podcasts with porn stars where the porn star is talking about sex work and/or a disgusting thing, which can be interesting but the hosts are usually these 20 year old dudes and it feels like they’re 30 seconds away from jerking off right then and there

• star wars shit, obviously

• legos, occasionally

• swimming girls being hot, apparently IG thinks I’m really into that

  ³

• like, people with star wars opinions, not about the series as a whole but you know, water cooler type shit about what type of Crocs Moff Gideon would wear

• memes of course

• medical infograph-esque posts that I very much did not ask for

• fan pages for stuff that i like but don’t like enough to want to look at a fan page for (coughcriticalrolecough)

• oh and also running stuff, remember, that thing I talk about incessantly?

Thankfully it is no longer suggesting dental videos, popping/surgical videos, or videos of guys from India getting shaves. I get it, it’s promoting stuff that I’m more likely to tap on, but knowing that I’m more likely to tap on these things is kind of depressing? I certainly don’t feel great tapping on the nth video of a scantily clad woman gyrating her hips to a sped up version of “Semi-Charmed Life” by Third Eye Blind.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not objecting to people being hot, but there’s just so much of it these days. Everyone’s hot! Everyone has an OnlyFans! It’s just a lot of hotness. I feel like 400 years ago you were lucky if you saw one hot person your entire life, and it was Helen of Troy, and a war was fought over her. Now I see 50 hot women in six seconds of scrolling. We’re not evolved enough for this!

Oh Christ I Ran a Bunch Again

Ha, bet you thought this would be a birthday extravaganza issue, but no, I did THREE 5ks since last we met. I don’t even care about my birthday anymore, all I care about is Run.

The theme of these 5ks is “Josh Needs to Stop Running for A Bit and Heal Up.”

Cinco de Mayo

Blog post. Ran on May 6th, which still aggravates me. Time was 36:20. Ran slower because my achilles tendon was hurting [note: this is foreshadowing], but this was a nice race at a lovely section of Milwaukie, OR, which I had never really been to before. It’s nice!

P&R: Fernhill Park

Blog post. Walked on May 7th. Portland Parks & Rec puts on a 5k every month from May to September. So I signed up for all of ‘em and got a dang ol’ t-shirt too. This was the day after the Cinco de Mayo run, so I ended up walking it instead of running to spare my achilles [note: this is also foreshadowing]. Fernhill Park is lovely.

Pacific Coast

Blog post. Ran/hobbled on May 14th. This one was kind of shit. Which sucks because it was my little birthday weekend getaway! Long Beach is a cute coastal town and the event was fine, and I got some salt water taffy and saw the ocean, but I was way more dehydrated than I realized on race day and I got a bit off track and then pulled my achilles in the final sprint to the finish, which boy oh boy hurt a lot. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Scared me that I might’ve torn something (maybe I did) but the pain subsided a lot after I stopped, and now it feels kind of like when a charley horse subsides and your muscle is just sore as hell. So it could just be a muscle strain instead, I dunno.

My next race isn’t for another three weeks. It’s the Starlight Run, which is a fun run so I will be taking it VERY easy. Then it’s the Redmond Run and then, trumpet fanfare, it’s my Foot Traffic Flat 10k. The thing I’ve been training for this entire time. So, I really ought to let my achilles heal up first.

A Thing for You

So, I think said last issue that I’m big into vlogs now, and I’ve been watching Caroline Winkler’s YouTube channel recently. I think I enjoy her channel because she used to be an actress and so I dig the vibe. She’s also one of those people who’s like “I’m not rich” but I’m looking at her family and she just feels rich, you know? It’s that east coast money thing. Anyway, I’m not one of those people who feels the need to dive into past videos for a channel, but my YT feed has been just awful lately and it kept bumping this video and so I watched it and I really enjoyed it! It’s just Caroline talking about life, really, and explaining what feels like a more nuanced take on “fake it til you make it.” Was an inspiring watch, to say the least.

The End

When next we meet, I won’t have any 5ks to talk about. Aren’t you excited? Instead I will probably talk too much about the new Zelda game. Until then!

1. Please do NOT do a detox, they do nothing for you. Your liver and kidneys do the detoxing folks! That is their job! ↩︎
2. vitamin diiiiiiiiiick ↩︎
3. i probably am ↩︎

or good porn star name?

Before We Begin: I Made a “Day in the Life” Video

Hi so I have been watching a lot of day in the life vlogs and just thought it would be fun to make one. Most of the vlogs I’ve seen are from women and the few men’s vlogs I’ve seen feel less like a daily life and more like they’re trying to prove to you that they practice Buddhism. I think my vlog is somewhere in between that. Why did I do this? I have no idea. Something to do? I think it turned out pretty well.

Sorry for all the technical issues, I basically never edit video and I filmed this in 4k for some stupid reason. Some of the video is jittery and I have no idea why, and the sound volume is all over the place. But it’s fun! I swear. If you like it please give it a thumbs up so I don’t feel like I’ve wasted my life. Okay back to the newsletter…

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It’s my birth day month starting tomorrow. This year is the big 4 0. That’s right, I am turning 40 years old on May 12th. The funny thing about getting older for me is that I don’t feel like I’m 40, but I also totally feel like I’m 40. That’s the thing about aging—nobody knows personally what it feels like until they get there, you know? When I was 20 I didn’t know what 30 would feel like. I had ideas, because of memes and stories and pictures and videos of other people complaining about how terrible it is to be in your 30s, but I personally did not know what my body or mind would feel like at this point in my life. So now I’m about to enter my 40th year and I’m like … is this it?

Fun fact: I haven’t heard this song in years and yet the bass line is still embedded in my brain. I saw the Strokes play … Musicfest NW? I think? Years and years ago and I oh no wait I’m thinking of Interpol. Anyway I saw Interpol play years and years ago and the thing I remember about it the most is that the guitar player would stick his cigarette in between the strings of the headstock. At the time, I thought that was very cool.

Remember when you could smoke inside a building? As terrible as it was for everyone’s lungs, there was just something about it that you can’t replicate. Like, back when I lived in Idaho and we would drive over to Merritt’s Country Cafe on State St. in Boise. They made “scones” there but they were basically elephant ears, but they were tasty, and there was a non-smoking section and a smoking section, separated by … nothing, basically, I think a latticed wooden partition. And that’s nostalgic for me for god knows why.

God I miss Merritt’s. A hole in the wall diner still existing in 2023. God bless ‘em.

Anyway, lordy lordy, look who’s (turning) 40 (on May 12).

News & Updates

Lord help me, I signed up for the Portland (Half) Marathon this October.

I’ve probably already mentioned that I signed up for the Shamrock Run half marathon next March. At the time, I thought, “Well, this is a year from now so it’ll give me plenty of time to train.”

And then … look, I’m not sure what’s gotten into me. I’ve never run more than 5 miles at any one time, and that one time I did was the 2013 Shamrock Run. But thanks to Garmin Coach I ran nearly 7 miles on the 25th (which I talk about in the Day in the Life video) and the day this newsletter drops I’m scheduled to run a 7 mile long run. I’ve gone insane, is what’s happened. Running has suffused my brain with so many endorphins that I am now constantly chasing that high, man. Doesn’t it remember how much I loved sitting on the couch, eating an entire bag of Spicy Nacho Doritos in roughly 10 minutes? Where’s the nostalgia for marathon 12 hour video game sessions where I eat an entire frozen pizza AND an entire bag of Spicy Nacho Doritos?

(This is not to dissuade people’s eating habits, by the way. I still eat entire frozen pizzas from time to time. They’re good!)

Hell, I don’t even know why I like running. I have ideas, but whenever websites are like “Why do you do this?” and there’s a multiple choice answer I just pick “health” because I guess it’s health. I know exercise is good and makes you feel good but why running? I used to love weight lifting—why no more? There’s something about pushing yourself in running that’s different than weight lifting. I don’t know how to explain it, other than to say that physically getting from Point A to Point B in a certain amount of time feels more of an accomplishment to me than lifting a big heavy thing.

I decided on the half marathon because A) ain’t no way I’m running a full marathon this year, and B) it’s a logical extension of the 10k I’m running in July. (In fact, that 10k is technically a quarter marathon.) It’s twice that. A half, for those who don’t know, is 13.1 miles. So now when you see someone with an oval bumper sticker that reads “13.1” you know what that’s all about.

For reference, 13.1 miles is the distance from the east side of the Burnside Bridge here in Portland to Troutdale. Imagine me running from the bridge to Edgefield, more or less.

For my friends from Idaho, it’s the distance between the Danny Peterson Theatre in the Morrison Center at Boise State to Kuna.

Some people run TWICE this distance! In two hours! (Fun fact: 145 people at the latest Boston Marathon ran the 26.2 distance in under 2 hours and 30 minutes. That means they ran under an average of 5 minutes and 44 seconds per mile, for 26 miles. I don’t think I could run a 5:44 mile for one mile!)

I’m thinking about doing a video journal of my experience on YouTube. Not my experience on YouTube the platform, my experience of training for and running a half marathon. Would people be interested in that? Let me know in the comments and don’t forget to like this post and SMASH that subscribe button. (I’m practicing for YouTube.)

In other news, I got my lipid test results back finally from Quest Diagnostics, who took well over a week and an email from me to send them. They aren’t very good. Slightly better than when I checked almost two years ago (and I mean slightly), but still high and low when they should be low and high. Like, I’m not actively dying but I’m probably dying, you know what I mean?

I was a little bummed at the results because I thought all the running I’ve been doing lately would help more than it did. Our damn bodies are just very, very good at keeping stuff like fats. We looooove them fats. And the good news, I suppose, is that it isn’t worse.

Also, my dad had to go back in the hospital because his gallbladder keeps making gallstones, and gallstones can be made from high cholesterol, which means … I really gotta get my cholesterol in order so I don’t get gallstones when I’m 80. (He’s fine, they cut out his gallbladder and he feels a lot better!)

So, I’m trying to eat less meat and processed stuff. You know, the same thing everyone else is trying to do. I think my health trend is getting better though. Nothing apocalyptic for me, but high cholesterol is a cause for concern, and if my running etc doesn’t help drop it by, say, the end of summer, then I’m going to look into taking statins. I could just have the kind of high cholesterol that doesn’t go away with diet and exercise. We’ll see!

Five Fifty Fifty & Lilac Run

Two 5k races in the same WEEK? What is wrong with me?

Here’s the blog for Five Fifty Fifty. Here’s the blog for Lilac Run.

In short: the Five Fifty Fifty is a race for mental health that this guy in Wisconsin put together around six years ago. It’s a 5k in 50 states in 50 days. But there are only fifteen states on my shirt. I guess the rest are virtual? It’s probably fine, but it also felt very slightly like I gave my money to a scam artist. Probably not though! It was fine! To be fair, every race is just money spent on a t-shirt and medal, really, which if you think about it is kind of a scam. I get a shiny thing and clothes but I have to run for it? Anyway, it was a VERY small group, 50 runners total, and was rainy and cold as hell. Took place in Laurelhurst Park which is a nice park, but very hilly. My time was 36:39, surprisingly fast considering the rain and hills. The whole thing was alright, but probably not a race I will run in the future. Sorry, mental health.

The Lilac Run was a much more normal run in Gresham, out and back down the Springwater Corridor, which is just a long paved trail that stretches from southeast Portland to god-knows-where. I didn’t even know it went all the way to Gresham! My time was 35:41, a new personal best and the first time I’ve gotten my 5k time below 36 minutes. This means I have officially beaten 2013 me’s pace! It only took me ten years! Take that, 30-year-old me! Honestly, this run felt very good and I tried refueling as I was running, which had mixed results. Also there was a little Japanese garden island next to the venue! Neat!

This week was supposed to be a recovery week, but then I “unlocked” actual workouts on Garmin Coach, and have been running like a madman ever since. You can read more about that here, or watch the vlog I made!

parkrun #12

I did a parkrun again. It was a hot one! Like seven inches from the midday sun, almost!

Side note: Gen Z is never ever going to know how fucking big this song was in 1999. This album, really.¹

It was a gorgeous day out at Rock Creek Trail and we all did a parkrun. My time was 37:16, which is not bad considering I’ve been running like crazy this week, but it’s also pretty slow, comparatively. It’s cool, the sun was out and it was my first real time running on a sunny morning with temps around 65°F. Which is hot, for me, when I am running okay!

A Video for You

They’ve been releasing series 13 of Taskmaster on a weekly basis on YouTube, but I’ve finally gotten to the final episode. This was definitely one of the best casts this season. Taskmaster is great. Please watch it, it’s very fun and funny. But I guess start with episode one, even though this episode is very, very funny.

I knew nothing about this channel but it came up because of The Algorithm and I love Benny Schwaz. The host of this channel is also named Josh and honestly could maybe play my stunt double in a movie or something. He’s a little annoying to me, not a personality type I like to watch on YouTube, but thankfully he and Ben are a delight together. Ben is almost too good of an improviser. He’s so quick and funny in a way you just don’t see with a lot of people. I really wish we could’ve seen him in a movie or anything with Robin Williams.

The End

When next we meet, I will be … 40. I’ll also have another two 5ks in my belt, because I’m a madman. Until then.

1. Sometimes when it’s cold outside I will say, in a Rodney Dangerfield voice, “Boy, it’s a cold one! Like seven million miles from the midday sun!” This is still much too close for the sun to be, however. ↩︎

this newsletter has nothing to do with oysters, i just thought the image of a bunny that looks like an oyster was funny

Greetings, fellow Belvilleans. Belvillains? Look, I can call you one or those or I can call you Baguettes, which would be kind of funny. Greetings, fellow Baguettes. Welcome to another thrilling episode of The Newsletter. Boy do I have some updates for you. SHOCKING updates about, uh, TERRIFYING things. But I’m going to put them at the end of the newsletter to force you to read through this whole newsletter first. NO don’t scroll down to the end, I was lying, I don’t have any super cool updates, please just like me, okay? Grade me! GRADE ME!

Well, I guess I have one update: I have the Substack Notes thing now. Notes is Twitter but for Substack. I don’t know how it works for you. I don’t even know how to link it. I think it’s substack.com/notes? Does that work? Click that and find out. Maybe you just go there and see the things I’ve written and then you can comment on them? Who fucking knows anymore, people. These apps are tossing undercooked spaghetti at the wall at this point.

I also have the Chat thing but see my small rant above. Feel free to use it to ask me about broccoli or something, I don’t know. How many avenues do you need to access my content? Why would a newsletter app also have a separate space where I can do mini-newsletters? What even is the internet anymore?

News Re: Substack Itself

Well, it happened—another social media app, another buffoonish CEO being an absolute fucking idiot.

I’ll link the article here: Is Substack Notes a ‘Twitter clone’? We asked CEO Chris Best

And then I will show you these two parts of the interview:

So, this is really infuriating. It’s infuriating in the fact that Best is basically inviting people to be racist on his platform, and it’s infuriating that these rich white CEOs keep doing this shit. I don’t want another Elon Musk running a fucking social media company anymore, and I’m sick of the popular companies being run by these weird libertarian buffoons.

Now, if I was a big popular Substack guy, I would probably weigh the pros and cons of staying on this platform. But I’m not. I’ve got like 15 subscribers (hi mom). So, to me, leaving Substack is an easy choice. Especially now that I’ve got my blog up and running. I know people like the condensed version of my life on here, but man am I sick of these dudes running these social media sites and then having a shit response to “Should you moderate the content on your site?”. (I’m also sick of “content as business” right now but that’s a whole other thing.)

I’m going to stick it out on here for a bit but if Chris Best doesn’t reel back what he said in that interview, I’m out of here. I’ll take all your emails somewhere else, or hell I’ll just email you directly from my friggen Gmail, I don’t care.

Random Movie!

Sometimes I want to watch a movie but I don’t know what, and also I have like 50,000 pairs of polyhedral dice, so recently I married these two concepts and started watching movies randomly, by rolling dice. These are the results I’ve gotten so far:

• The Duellists (1977). Not bad! Ridley Scott’s directorial debut.

• The Land of Short Sentences (aka Meter i sekundet, 2023). Couldn’t find it online!

• About Last Night… (1986). Film version of the play “Sexual Perversity in Chicago” by David Mamet. It was alright. Lots of Demi Moore’s boobs and Rob Lowe’s butt if you’re into that.

• Temple of Venus (1923). Couldn’t find!

• Safety Last! (1923). Watched this instead. Pretty good, some neat moments and cool cinematography for the 20s.

• Thank You for Smoking (2005). Somewhat interesting but mostly bland movie. What happened to Aaron Eckhart? What is he doing these days? I hope he’s well.

• The Rocker (2008). Kind of a terrible movie for the first hour, kind of a decent movie for the second because it stops being about Rainn Wilson’s stupid character.

It’s cool because never in my life would I have ever watched any of these movies on my own. How do I do it? Basically I roll for decade, then year of decade, then whether I watch a top 100, worst 100, or cult classic film. If you want more detail, I wrote a Google Doc for it. I recommend it, but please get your movies from the holy bastion of streaming sites. Please do NOT pirate movies, especially movies from 1923 that are making basically no money so who cares but DON’T do it okay? Or else the Pirate Police will come to get you.

If you have any ideas for further dice rolls, fuckin’ … put it in the Chat thing! Or comment or god damn it I don’t know, just send me a postcard.

Race Season

Race season has begun for me. And by that I mean, I signed up for too many 5ks. Between April 8th and July 4th I have eight races. The 4th being my first ever 10k. (That’s a little over 6 miles for you gun totin’ Americans.)

Why did I sign up for so many races? Well, you know how when you’re using a table saw and you accidentally start to saw your thumb off, and for a split second you think, Well, I could pull back and have a dangly thumb that might not ever heal right, or I could just rip right through that sucker and put the thumb in resin and set it on the desk in my den as a little reminder of that time I severed my thumb with a table saw… what was I talking about? Oh, right. It’s like that. I’m the pushing my thumb through the table saw part. Hmm.

Okay, here’s a better analogy: it’s like Katamari Damacy and I’m the ball that keeps rolling over races. That … sounds bad in a different context. Running races. I’m collecting them until I turn into a star from the gravity of all the races—analogies are hard, people!

The 8th was the Lacamas Hop Hop 5k, which is detailed more on my blog. Basically, if you want the more nuanced and technical running stuff, go to my blog. Here, I’ll just say: there was a petting zoo.

I will relate a funny thing that I forgot to mention on my blog though: when I was walking up to the venue, the petting zoo trailer was pulling up. At the exact same time, the DJ at the venue was playing Taylor Swift’s “Trouble” and, I shit you not, I swear on my mother’s grave (after she dies of course), a goat inside the trailer bleated A FEW SECONDS before the popular goat screaming “Trouble” video remix.

Thankfully it was just a bleat and not a scream that would have terrified all of us, but it was still funny to me.

Re: the race, I did pretty good! I still walk a bunch, but not for long each time. My time was 36:57, a 5k PR and a good indication that my time should continue to get faster over the course of the year. I will get a 30 minute 5k. Maybe not in 2023, but eventually. There were mimosas and goats and it felt kind of bougie, but the medal is cute and kind of trippy, like maybe the designer took LSD before they designed the artwork for this year.

Also, my injuries that were a hindrance before are basically gone now, which I entirely attribute to my new shoes. Thank god.

The day after this publishes I am running the Five Fifty Fifty, which I signed up for like two weeks ago on a lark. I think it’s an untimed race but it benefits the AB Korkor Foundation for Mental Health, which, I’ll be honest, I did not do scrupulous research on prior to signing up. I just saw a 5k in Laurelhurst Park (close to where I live) and went for it. AB Korkor is the founder (A stands for Adel, not to be confused with Adele, who is a popular British singer), and the vice-president appears to be his son, which feels kind of nepotic. Let’s not think too much about this, okay? It’s a run/walk so I’m not planning on going all out.

After that is the Lilac Run in Gresham, so two races before my next newsletter. Are you sick of me yet?!

A Videos for You

Here’s the music video for Caroline Polachek’s “Smoke.”

I’m having weird feelings about this video, namely that it was clearly inspired by music videos from the 90s and—are we at a point where 4:3 aspect ratio is nostalgic now? It was only a decade ago! (Not the 90s, 4:3 ratio.) I have screenshots from my monitor from 2008 that are in 4:3. Anyway Caroline if you’re reading this I’d love to take you out for a lovely steak dinner, just shoot me a comment or whatever, I dunno. We have a lot in common: you were born to wealthy parents in Manhattan and lived in Tokyo during your early childhood, and I one time ran down a hill too fast when I was a kid and ran facefirst into a tree. We’re meant for each other.

I’m also going to link this because it was cool to learn Lindsay Buckingham’s picking style but also because hot damn is Never Going Back Again a great song. I tried listening to Fleetwood Mac’s discography from the start but the early blues stuff wasn’t my cup of tea, and really the band didn’t take off until Lindsay and Stevie Nicks joined. Which we all know, because this band has been studied relentlessly.

But seriously, I was listening through the early stuff and felt very meh about it, but once you hear Stevie start to sing “Rhiannon” on their 1975 album, you realize the band has just leveled up big time. Really wouldn’t be too off to say that Fleetwood Mac was really Buckingham Nicks¹ all along.

The End

When next you hear from me I will regale you with stories of not one, but two! 5k races, because I have gone insane. Until then.

1. Yes I am aware that Lindsay and Stevie’s first album was called Buckingham Nicks, I do have google, you know. ↩︎

see cause it’s the end of march. it’s like the … bottom of march.

Spring hath sprung. In Portland, this means only one thing: news outlets forecasting thunderstorms that never happen. I swear to god, they’ve been forecasting thunderstorms for like three weeks now and NONE of them have ever happened. I have not heard one peep of thunder! It’s a travesty, I tell you.

Anyway welcome to the newsletter.

News & Updates & Ut Oh Josh is Being Introspective Again

I have updated my website. Wow, oooh, aaahhh. In short, I moved the blog to the root folder and now my website is more or less a blog. For now, at least. I have reasons for why I did this but the general gist is twofold: first, I was getting sick of trying to figure out the weird HTML/CSS language to make things do things and not look like shit on mobile, and second, I was kind of sick of having all of these projects on my site that went largely unnoticed except by search bots.

As I’ve stated many times, this is my Marie Kondo year, and that includes all aspects of my life. First I looked at all the literal stuff in my apartment, and now I’m looking at my online presence. I don’t really want to get into detail about my relationship with the ratio between the things I create and how they are consumed by an audience, but suffice it to say that it does not Bring Me Joy to review this information or even to think about it for more than three seconds, generally. (I did write a blog post touching on this issue though if you’re truly interested.) Thus, things like Plays and Albums and Music and Projects stuff like that are going into the Disney Vault for the time being.

I know what you’re thinking. “Josh, how can people consume your art if it isn’t there to be consumed?” Well, it’s been there, for many years, sitting like a smörgåsbord of content.¹ Those who have picked up their nibbles did so long ago and either ate or spit it back up in their napkin. To each their own. It’s now just gathering dust on the internet shelf. I’m mixing my metaphors a bit there. Plus, some of it is still around—albums are on Bandcamp and Spotify, for example, for the foreseeable future.

I’m not expecting people to be listening to or reading my shit every second of every day, it’s just that the statistics behind the content is depressing. Back in the day we didn’t have this level of statistical analysis and you could just make stuff and post it on Myspace and if a handful of people liked it, that was pretty good. Like, I heard somewhere that the bast majority of people who write books² sell less than two dozen of them, ever. That’s depressing! Please don’t tell me that information. Ignorance is bliss, you know?

“Josh your newsletter is depressing now—” Yeah yeah I know, this is what happens when you’re about to turn 40. Mi introspección es tu introspección. My life now is about enriching myself and not worrying about how many people are into my shit. Maybe I’ll reupload some stuff to my site later on, but right now I just want to write drivel into my blog and just kind of be. Just vibe, bro. Big on vibing these days. Thanks, Gen Z. Or younger Millennials. I can’t keep track anymore.

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The only other news I have is that I signed up for two 5k races outside of the Portland Metro area. Oh mah gawd. The first is on my birthday weekend in Long Beach, Washington, just across the river from Astoria, and the second is a ridiculous additional 5k I signed up for in June in Redmond, Oregon, which I completely forgot is in central Oregon. I.e. a fur piece away (as my dad would say).³ My reasoning for the Redmond 5k is that the only 5k I had in June was the Starlight Run, which is a “fun run,” aka not timed. Part of my New Years Resolution technically is that I would be running actual, timed, races. So there you go.

Some of you might have seen my Instagram story where I made a poll about whether my 10k Foot Traffic Flat race in July (my only July race so far) counted as a 5k race for the purpose of my resolution, because it is a race which contains 5k, or if it doesn’t because the type of the race is a 10k, not a 5k. Everyone voted for the former option, which I still kind of disagree with on principle, but also am happy because it means I don’t have to run a separate 5k race in July. Thank you.

I got a nice hotel room in Long Beach for the night prior to the May run and a lil tiny cabin home in Terrebonne, OR for the night before the Redmond Run. It’s close to Smith Rock so I’m assuming lots of climbers like to stay there and climb on the houses or something, I dunno. Climbers are weird. I’m pretty excited, to be honest. I like road trips and hotels and stuff and I haven’t taken a proper road trip anywhere that wasn’t to see my parents in Idaho in a while. Should be fun.

Couve Clover Run

I done did it again, folks. A 5k a week after a 5k! Read about it in detail on my blog, but I will give you the TL;DR here. First off, wasn’t a 5k, was only 3 miles. Why? I have no idea. They don’t do kilometers for this run. As far as I can tell, this is the only run Why Racing Events puts together that is not in kilometers. It’s indefensible. It doesn’t make any goddamn sense. I have to turn my brain off thinking about it because it makes me unnaturally frustrated. It’s the principle of the thing! Did St. Patrick hate the metric system?

My time was 38:26. Not too bad considering I’m still running with a knee and leg injury (which is getting better! Thanks for asking). The Vancouver Waterfront is nice but kind of fake feeling. The swag and food wasn’t bad. The medal is large and heavy, a stark contrast to the paltry medal we got at the Shamrock.

I took a long rest and recovery and then ran an excellent (for me) run at parkrun on the 25th, which I talked about on my Instagram AND my blog. I’ve already talked about these things. Let’s move on.

Happy Birthday to My Dad

My dad is 81 years old today and that is a wild thing to think about. Do you ever think about turning 80 years old? Like, we all know we’re going to get older but I really can’t imagine it. Why would you? It’s literally a thing that hasn’t happened yet. I’m surprised I’m 39, for chrissakes. Sometimes I’ll remember something and realize that my memory happened in high school, but feels like it happened a year ago. Time is weird in the ol’ noggin.

Anyway, my dad is an old fart and I love him and I’m glad he’s still around. Happy birthday, Dad.

(Love you too mom!)

A Video for You

Folks, I’m sorry, but I am an Andrew Huberman guy now. I knew nothing about this guy until I was recommended a running video on YT from a woman who was doing Andrew’s routine for a year. I didn’t know what that meant but for some reason I was intrigued so I watched it. I wasn’t a huge fan of her video, but for some reason I wanted to watch one of Andrew’s podcasts, and I found it very interesting! In a way he explains a lot of “intuitive” concepts through science. Like, watching the sunrise, for example. People talk a lot about enjoying the sunrise on occasion and how good it makes them feel. Well, Andrew explains why we like it and how good it really (potentially) is. I like that!

I was concerned that this guy was a Joe Rogan-esque type, but no, he’s just a former skateboarder turned neuroscientist. Very interesting stuff!

I’m linking this video because it’s a great conversation and the later bits about emotional health were particularly enlightening to me. Have a watch/listen!

CRUCIAL UPDATE: I still generally like his podcast but he does say some stuff that I disagree or have problems with. Like filtering out fluoride in your water. I don’t think that opinion is right and moreover I think when his scientific opinions get farther away from neuroscience, they sound more like pseudoscience. So, point being: take it all with a grain of salt.

The End

That’s all this time, folks. Nothing too exciting for now. As always, if you want more in depth Josh-brain-delvings, head to my blog. Which is now just my website! Huzzah!

1. I didn’t need to spell it that way, but why wouldn’t you? It’s much cooler. ↩︎
2. I’m leaving this in here but I just want you all to know that in my editing pass on this post I did realize that the official term for these kinds of people is “authors” and I did, in fact, feel like a dummy. ↩︎
3. I honestly thought my dad made this up as a general malapropism, but no! ↩︎