Josh Writes a Blog

Category: personal

  • You Need to Be Here So I Can Make Money

    Opening in 1965, the Karcher Mall in Nampa, Idaho was the first shopping mall west of the Mississippi. This is what I was told, at least, as a child, the type of storytelling common in those days when information was not readily available to the masses, and so people just said things that sounded right.

    This is a photo of the mall from 1985, graciously taken from a Facebook group called Vintage Karcher Mall. Somewhere on the second floor was a space for the long defunct CAN-ACT, a local community theater group in which my mother participated when I was young. I think that Thoroughbred Restaurant Lounge place became a Mexican restaurant at some point.

    Here is an overhead shot of the mall from 1986. And here’s what it looks like today:

    I think it’s kind of awesome that the mobile home park (top left corner of the 86 photo and top of modern day photo) still exists. Among all that new construction, or deconstruction, as they gutted part of the mall to make a parking lot. Joni Mitchell was right.

    I’m thinking about this because I’m thinking about social media again. Namely, how it is used to trap you, using psychology and your own likes, wants, and needs. The concept of “doomscrolling” is carefully manufactured by app developers who require you to stay on their app as long as possible, flicking through posts with your thumb so they can sell you advertising. Because that’s how they make money. And it’s capitalism, so they will do whatever they have to (within the bounds of legality) to get you to stay on Instagram or TikTok or whatever.

    It made me think about malls. Have you been to a mall recently? This isn’t about the decline of the mall, it’s more about a modern mall structure: malls are made to be easy to enter but hard to leave. There are always little things to do, stuff to see. Multiple levels where you can see storefronts both on your level, and the one above or below you. Very rarely in a modern mall do you feel like a store is too far away. It’s always within a bit of walking.

    Contrast this with the Karcher Mall (photo from the 90s):

    Karcher Mall, and a lot of the older style malls, were just big long fucking hallways with stores on either side. Karcher was one floor with a small upper section in the middle that had the aforementioned Thoroughbred Restaurant Lounge and some other, non-shopping rooms. The rest was all one floor. Once you were inside, you were inside; the lights were inside, none of that skylight bullshit you’d get later on. I remember, as a kid, going to the Karcher Mall and starting on one end of the mall and trudging–trudging!–all the way to the other end, like I was marching across Europe chasing Hitler’s army back to Berlin. The JC Penney anchor store on one end was Normandy, and my father and I were the poor Americans destined for one hell of a journey.

    So, when you look at that modern photo from Google Maps and you see they knocked down a section of the mall to build a parking lot, it’s like they destroyed Poland. Or something. Look, I don’t know World War 2 history that well, just deal with it. The point isn’t about the destruction, it’s about the concept of the mall in the 1960s and how nobody had any idea of the kind of psychological warfare social engineering that was to come. Nobody thought to make malls into a neverending spiral of escalators and angled pathways that ensured customers kept walking in circles, keeping them contained longer.

    The Karcher Mall was designed by a bunch of men in rolled up sleeves and big thick-rimmed glasses who smoked cigarettes and, staring at a blueprint of a long hallway, thought, “Just put all the stores next to each other, what’s the big deal?”

    The Boise Towne Square mall opened in 1988 and it had two floors. And skylights!

    You can see from the directory above that it was still basically a hallway, but this time there was a third hallway, and a whole other floor, and the sun shone into the mall and made it way more enjoyable than plodding down a 20 year old carpet with fluorescent lights above. It had a proper food court, and music and once you were inside it was a lot harder to get out. The Karcher Mall had exits, of course, but there were long stretches before you’d find ’em. Karcher’s method of getting you to shop was to trap you inside the building like a jail; the Towne Square mall on the other hand trapped you by confusing you and overpowering you with loud music and Orange Julius.

    Nowadays we don’t even need malls. It seems so alien to take up so much space with merchandise you could just as easily buy on Amazon, spending half an hour reading reviews of a vacuum cleaner that don’t read like they were published by Chinese AI machines.

    I don’t miss malls and never really liked them in the first place. They felt like a place to be dragged around by your mother while she shopped for brassieres. They’re all dying in their own unique ways, while developers take insane risks trying to keep them afloat. It’s just interesting to see the concept of “we must keep you here as long as possible so you will buy things” extend long before the invention of social media and doomscrolling. In the 60s, they made a long tube called the Karcher Mall and you’d go in one end and come out the other a changed man, and by that I mean you had bought a pair of ill-fitting shoes at Payless. In the 80s they made the Boise Towne Square mall, which let in the sunlight and distracted you from the outside world with food, music, and kiosks where sketchy looking men would try to sell you sunglasses. At both of these junctures in time, nobody thought that by the 2000s people would just click things on a computer screen and a haggard man who has 500 more deliveries today would throw them on your doorstep.

    Nowadays, companies use AI to discover what you like and make “personalized” ads, using your own psychology against you. Nowadays, if your screen remains on content for long enough (without even touching anything!), the app will determine that you liked what you saw and will keep showing related things to you. Nowadays, your phone listens to you and gives you ads based on what you say you want out loud.

    Nowadays, you are a brand, and you are a consumer, and you are an influencer, and somewhere, deep down in there, past the exfoliated skin cream and the muscle relaxing massage gun and the probiotic infusions and the multivitamins–you are a human being.

  • Teeth

    Been trying to think of stuff to write about for ye olde newsletter. It all feels lackluster, so here’s a blog about my teeth.

    So I was at the dentist. The dentist is one of those few places where the “Find Out” portion of “Fuck Around and Find Out” reveals itself in a slow, permanent sort of way. Oh, you mean I shouldn’t have drank liters of soda for years as a child and teenager and young adult? At least if you drive drunk without a seat belt and get into a wreck, waking up without a leg the next morning feels earned. The slow, inevitable decay of one’s teeth is a visual representation of the slow, inevitable decay of your own body into eventual wormfeed. Welcome to my newsletter!

    My teeth have been bad forever, and as a child I was terrified of the dentist. There was a dentist a couple blocks from my childhood home and I remember three things about it:

    1. They had a sit down Pac-Man arcade system that I enjoyed playing,
    2. The children’s play area entrance was an archway very low to the ground–the height for a kid to crawl into, basically. The top of the archway had padding so kids wouldn’t bonk their heads. I always thought that was crazy. What if a kid was choking in there? Would a parent have to army crawl into the room?, and
    3. The last(?) time I went there I was so terrified of whatever they were going to do that I had to rush to the bathroom to dry heave and ended up not getting any dentist work done that day.
    Fun fact: the place still exists and is still a dentist!

    My parents took me to this place when they could afford to; when they couldn’t, they took me to Terry Reilly Health Services, which is where poor people got their teeth fixed. You could tell the difference, even as a kid, between the “rich people doctor” and the “poor people doctor.” It’s all in the waiting area: the latter is louder, more chaotic, more children climbing over seats. More ethnic diversity at the poor clinic; lots of poor Latinos in southwest Idaho. Growing up, I always felt a kind of kinship with the Latino community, not because of music or culture or food (though the food is very good), but because we were both broke and just trying to get by, and I guess I saw that more with the Latinos than I did with my white friends and classmates. (Also it was Idaho, there were no Black kids to commiserate with about being poor.)

    As an adult, I could probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve been to the dentist. The breakdown of why I didn’t go very often is simple: I was poor, and mandatory health insurance didn’t exist when I was young. There’s more to it than that–a bit of bad dental genetics mixed with a much worse hygiene regimen–but the simple fact is that I couldn’t go get cleanings and whatnot because I couldn’t afford it. If I could have, I would have, even if I hated it. I distinctly remember a day in college where, over the course of a few hours, an abscess grew in my lower jaw, enough that my girlfriend at the time warned me about it. The type of rock hard fluid trapped in a space it’s not supposed to be in. I think I got it taken care of, likely at Terry Reilly, though I can’t remember, because I’ve also had abscesses that I “took care of” myself because I A) didn’t like the dentist and B) couldn’t afford the dentist. I didn’t poke my gums with a needle, if that’s what you’re wondering about. But if you press against a pressured space enough, it will pop, and you will spend the next few minutes swishing water in your mouth constantly to avoid the taste. I won’t say any more than that, but I will say that if you get an abscessed tooth, please go to the dentist. That shit can get into your bloodstream and seriously harm or even kill you. I do not endorse anything I’ve done, tooth-wise, or also probably just anything in general about my life.

    Then, in my 20s, my wisdom teeth came in. They didn’t hurt so I let them be, until they crowded my mouth so hard that they cracked molars further ahead in my mouth. I remember a very loud cracking sound when one of the molars broke. I didn’t even know that sort of thing was possible, until it happened. I had teeth shards sticking out of my gums until grad school, when I finally attended the dentistry school attached to Portland State University. I went there only because one day I was at the Cheerful Tortoise (PSU’s nearby shitty dive bar) and I took a bite into a cheeseburger and one of my teeth broke. I went to the dentist and told her that and she said, “Yeah, sometimes eating meat can cause a tooth to break.” In hindsight, I think she was being sarcastic. They pulled my teeth shards as well as one of my back wisdom teeth and the tooth in front of it; the wisdom tooth grew in at an angle and basically grew into the tooth ahead of it, ruining it. Lots of fillings in my back teeth, lots of ruin that could’ve been prevented.

    Speaking of hygiene regiment … the 2010s were quiet but also likely the worst for my oral hygiene simply because there were times–weeks, months, years?–where I just didn’t care. I remember Patrick Rothfuss saying once that he has had friends who lost teeth due to depression and I get it. It’s hard to explain, that lack of desire that prevents you from accomplishing even the simplest tasks. Empty the dishwasher. Take a shower. Brush your teeth. And then the cycle of depression and anxiety, where you know you’re supposed to shower but you don’t care, but you know you should and because you’re not it’s making you anxious, which perpetuates the cycle. It’s not that I didn’t brush every day for years, it’s that I brushed more often than not, which was usually once in the morning. Once in the morning, sometimes + Portland’s lack of fluoride in the water = the gradual and continual decay of my mouth.

    Then, the pandemic came, and you can just throw all the rules out the window. Whatever depression sat heavy on my chest starting around 2014 melted into my bloodstream by late 2020. I don’t think I need to go on.

    A couple months ago, I was eating popcorn and one of my teeth broke. I knew it would happen; I knew that popcorn would betray me one day. It wasn’t the microwave kind either, it was the bagged pre-popped stuff. I don’t know why, but pre-popped popcorn always has the most egregiously dangerous kernels. The bottom scraps of the bag are like playing Minesweeper with your teeth, and I eat popcorn like someone in a trance.

    A week after the Popcorn Incident, I was eating almonds and another tooth cracked, this one a fillinged molar. I knew popcorn would betray me, but almonds?! Now where would I get my easy source of protein and magnesium?

    At that point the die had been cast. I had to go to the dentist. My work doesn’t offer a dental plan1, so I bought my own, because you have to have insurance, right? Why else would you get work done without insurance? Well, long story short is that my dental plan is one where you don’t get all the stuff right away. An “incentive” plan which has incentivized me to drive off a cliff. It makes the entire point of getting a dental plan for the purpose of dental repair absolutely fucking worthless. It did pay for my cleaning though, so there’s that. I basically have to have it for a year before it really kicks in, and the big stuff I need to do (crowns, root canals, etc) aren’t covered for at least six months, and then when they are covered they only cover 15% for the first year. Wow! Such luxury!

    Insurance is the capitalist mafia, by the way. The only difference is that while the actual mafia breaks your actual knees if you don’t pay them, the capitalist mafia breaks your financial knees if you don’t pay them.

    So anyway, I’m sitting here now, writing this with a root canal done and likely another one on the way. TV shows and movies really made me nervous about getting a root canal. They always presented it as if it is the worst thing ever, but mine didn’t hurt at all, even after the lidocaine wore off. I’m going to get a couple of crowns placed, but after the root canal my gums were too inflamed so they had to wait to seat the crown. The doc then drilled out the filling from the tooth behind my root canal tooth because of a cavity, which is where he discovered that there was a crack in the tooth and that it needed a crown as well. So currently I have some temporary sealant stuff on my teeth and will be back in a couple of weeks to get it fixed.

    I dunno why I’m writing this. I find the entire experience incredibly embarrassing; it feels like stuff I should’ve dealt with decades ago, but I couldn’t because I was poor, which is also embarrassing. For some reason, writing about embarrassing things is cathartic for me. I guess. Or maybe you’re embarrassed about your teeth and me writing about it allows a bit of kinship in that. Teeth are absurd. We only get two sets and the second set we get until we die, and then we discovered how to basically inject sugar into our gums via the sticky tack that is Swedish Fish. Teeth have been bad since the Egyptians, for fuck’s sake, and probably before that too. We should be commiserating about our fucked up teeth!

    That’s my life right now. Teeth time and car repairs. My car has been repaired, by the way, and I took it in to get some anti-theft thing installed on it the same day I went to the dentist.2 This is how it works for me: I have a whole lot of nothing most days, and then everything suddenly happens on the same day for no reason.

    Anyway. Hi. Welcome to 2024.

    1. Lisa needs braces. ↩︎
    2. They also gave me The Club for free. I’m surprised these still exist but they do and lots of people in Portland use them. ↩︎

  • D&D Roll for the New Year

    This morning I began a little Dungeons & Dragons new year tradition.

    First, I rolled a d20 to see how 2024 would fare for me.

    A 19! Not bad at all.

    Next, I pulled a card from the Deck of Many Things. (The OG deck, not the new one.)

    The Idiot: Permanently reduce your Intelligence by 1d4 + 1 (to a minimum score of 1). You can draw one additional card beyond your declared draws.

    Since I could draw an additional card, but didn’t have to, I rolled a d20 to determine if I would. 1-10 = yes, 11-20 = no. I didn’t film it but I rolled a 12.

    So, what does this mean? Well, nothing, officially or unofficially. It’s just a fun thing to do. But since the human brain loves to extrapolate from nonsense, I can presume that the 19 on the d20 roll means that 2024 will be a good year. Not the best year of my entire life, but one of my better ones. If anything, the number represents my ability to cultivate a good year this year, not necessarily that “good” will be handed to me on a silver platter.

    I choose to interpret the Idiot to mean that I should refrain from acting or trying to be smart this year, and instead trust my instincts and intuition. I may make some stupid decisions, but overall if I trust my gut it may make my year better.

    For the record, I also pulled (read: clicked a thing on a website) a tarot card for 2024. I got The Moon.

    Which, upright, apparently is all about intuition and “trusting the moonlight to guide you.” So the Deck of Many Things and the tarot deck are in alignment? Or, maybe the Idiot just means I’m going to be a goddamn idiot this year, but it will be a lot of fun.

  • Garlic Festival 5k

    Location: North Plains, Oregon
    Distance: 5k
    Chip Time: 31:32
    Pace: 10:09/mi

    North Plains is a cute little town situated right off US-26. Every year they have a Garlic Festival which, for some reason, also has a race attached to it. The event is hosted by the Oregon Road Runners Club (ORRC) and is a very no frills type of scene.

    Pre-Race

    In general, my 5k times have been decreasing a lot over the last month. My last six parkruns have all been PRs, my time going from 34:54 to 31:17. How did this happen? I … don’t know. I’m just running a lot? I guess?

    Point is, a sub-30 5k time is within sight and I have made it my mission to attempt it whenever I run a race, starting with this one. For the record, a 29:59 5k time requires a 9:39/mi pace, which I have discovered, I cannot sustain. But we’ll get into that later.

    Lately I’ve been feeling really blah about running in general. My motivation is low and despite my faster times, I get out of bed in the morning usually not wanting to go out. But I do it, because that’s what you gotta do.

    This morning felt a little different. Races are like that; instead of a solitary morning slowly drenching myself in sweat, I get to slowly drench myself in sweat among other sweaty people! Hooray. My races earlier this year made me anxious and prevented a good night’s sleep; this one I got up like I was on week 8 out of a 12 week run of a play. I know all the ins and outs by this point, which is a lot nicer than fretting.

    I left home with just a few essentials: towel, snot rag, regular water bottle, handheld water bottle, sunglasses. My handheld bottle was empty because I didn’t think I would need water during the race itself. I was wrong.

    Funnily enough, North Plains is just a few miles from Rock Creek Trail parkrun on US-26. Farther away from Portland, but it’s a nice little drive.

    Atmosphere/Swag

    ORRC was founded in 1970 and touts itself as the second oldest and largest running club in Oregon. I’m not sure what the oldest is but based on a cursory google search I presume it is Eugene’s Oregon Track Club, which has been around since 1958. Wouldn’t this mean that ORRC is the oldest road running club? Who knows.

    Anyway, because it’s one of these old timey clubs, the atmosphere for this run felt very chill in an old time way. Like, some races are flashy and “exciting” and this felt like you were going on a run with a bunch of old timers. Which wasn’t true at all, there were all ages there, but it just felt less like a “look at my cute running kit!” group and more of a “the bush halfway between mile 7 and 8 is a perfect spot to take a shit” group.

    Everyone was mingled together more or less; the 5k began right as the fastest half marathoners were ending. It just seemed super chill, is what I’m saying. I like a chill race!

    The swag was very simple: a pair of socks and, afterward, a head of elephant garlic. It is the Garlic Festival after all!

    The Race

    So, like many runners, I went out way too fast in the beginning.

    Or, rather, I went out at a pace I thought I would need to sustain to get below 30 minutes. But as you can see, my pace dropped pretty much the entire time, with two walking points which came about due to me trying to catch my breath after some inclines. (I won’t call them hills–it was only an 89ft total ascent but each ascent felt like 5,000ft.)

    Having an average pace of 10:09/mi is great though. And my first mile was 9:28, which is a new PR for me. Being able to sustain that pace for a mile is just an indication that I could sustain it for two miles, and then three, eventually. My body is still adjusting to this runner lifestyle.

    My feet went crazy numb over the run though. I’m going to have to see a doc about it at this point, to at least get some ideas of what I can do to alleviate it. I’m going to have to stop a lot during my half if my feet keep going numb.

    The course was pretty plain, just running alongside a road for the majority. Wasn’t very exciting or pretty. Again, the ORRC is like “Okay it’s run time” and they measure out the distance and it’s not like near a beautiful waterfall or anything. It’s just miles, dag nabbit.

    The 5k had 171 participants. I placed 59th overall. The guy who placed 55th was 78 years old; 57th was 71 years old. That’s … humbling.

    I was 4 out of 10 in my age group (only 10 40-44 year old runners?) and 42 out of 88 men. So pretty average, as always, but just sliiiiiightly above average. Story of my life!

    (There were 200 10k runners and 137 half marathon runners. I’m not counting the people who signed up just to walk.)

    Post-Race

    This was most certainly not after the race.

    I was so fucking exhausted after the race ended, I can’t remember the majority of it. A lady gave me a medal and a head of elephant garlic, just like the prophecy said, and then I sat down in the dirt and caught my breath. There wasn’t any good place to sit in the shade except the dirt, and I’m not above sitting in the dirt. I’m a great dirt-sitter.

    When I was rested, I grabbed snacks and a Sprite and a very tasty breakfast burrito. I wish I knew who made the burritos, like if it was a company or just a nice family or something (or both!). They were good. Then I sat down on a mat thing they laid out for people, ate my burrito, kind of stared into the middle distance for a bit, and then headed back to my car and left. I did change shirts, too. This is a new summertime routine, bringing an extra shirt to change out of. Born out of driving home from one parkrun and then going to my car a couple of days later, opening the door, and feeling like I stepped into a steam room. The sweat embedded in my car seat with my car just sitting out in the hot sun for days can’t be good, right? Like, that’s just mold waiting to happen.

    Hence, shirt change.

    And that was it! I Drove, I Ran, I Ate a Burrito. (Apparently that’s eieci, cucurri, edi, burrito in Latin, in case you were wondering.)

    Tomorrow is the 4th Portland Parks & Rec 5k fun run, this one in Westmoreland Park. I plan to run it very easy, but you know how I get. There will be a blog about it, don’t you worry.

    Next timed race is the Beaverton Half 5k, part of the Run with Paula set of events. I think it’s my first one of these!

    Then, dun dun dunnnn … the Portland (Half) Marathon.

    Until then.

  • Cholesterol

    CW: Definitely going to be some food and weight talk here.

    After I switched over to my new insurance plan (which in itself is just an update to last year’s plan), my insurance said, “Hey, if you go get a blood test, we’ll give you $50.” Didn’t have to tell me twice. The next day I was watching a new hire at Quest Diagnostics stab a needle into my arm. This is what older is: getting stabbed with needles all the time.

    A couple years ago, while still living at my old apartment, I got a lipid test at the behest of my PCP at the time, a woman whose first name was Honey, which meant that I had to call her Dr. Marques because saying “Hi Honey” to a complete stranger felt bad. She isn’t even a doctor, really, she’s a physician’s assistant, but even knowing that I still called her Doctor, because what else do I call her? Ms. Marques?

    Anyway, that first test, in May of 2021, was bad. Mainly in the triglycerides, but it was all pretty bad. A good triglycerides level is below 150 mg/dL.Tangent: Is a blood test the only place where people use a deciliter as a unit of measurement? Mine was over 600. I remember shortly before my grandma, a stubborn-as-hell woman who continued to eat sweets and processed foods long after the diabetes had cost her both of her feet, died, had a reading of around 600, and I don’t remember if that was triglycerides or glucose. Both options are bad.

    This was a year after covid hit and my second year into what I can only describe as Pandemic Panic, where I had exorbitant amounts of DoorDash delivered to my apartment on a regular basis. Here is a picture I took of my feet in June of 2021:

    I took this photo because I thought, “Are my feet super swollen or what?”

    They were. At this point in my life I betrayed myself by doing something I swore I would never do: weigh over 300lbs. See, the problem with being 6’5″ and someone who used to do a lot of weightlifting is that 300lbs kind of sneaks up on you, visually speaking. Nobody really mentions weight anymore, which is good!–a very few people in your life should be allowed to tell you you’re fat, and even then they should be nice about it–but it also meant that I didn’t really see the difference in myself at the time, except in my feet. Or maybe I did notice and just didn’t care. I’ve spoken at length about the constant battles between Lizard Brain and Rational Brain, and I think the pandemic lockdown really threw my entire consciousness off balance, to the point where Lizard Brain felt the need to declare martial law.

    Doctor Honey was a stern woman, the type of PA you find at urgent care–quick with info, quick to get you out of the door. But she was also kind behind that need for speed, and she offered me a statin medication or lifestyle changes, and I opted for the latter. Three months, she said. Come back in three months.

    I went home that day and got my ass in gear. But it was an uphill battle due to my apartment neighbor being a meth-addled psychopath who was maybe one terrible trip away from beating my head in with a crowbar. Gone were my daily walks because I feared running into him. I eventually moved; that was good. I ate better, I walked a bit more around my new apartment neighborhood, I took fish oil supplements.

    In August I went in and got another lipid test. It was good, in the sense that my triglycerides went down by half. Still to high, but not so high that I should fear for my life. I don’t think I talked to Dr. Marques about these results, or maybe I did. I had moved at that point and so had she, from that clinic to who knows where.

    Since then, my weight ballooned back up to over 300 and has gradually come down by then. As we all know because I won’t shut up about it, I run now and I’m getting more exercises these days than I’ve had since covid started.

    So, of course: these results. These new lipid results are essentially the same as from August of 2021. They appear to be slightly better (my cholesterol-to-HDL ratio was 7.6 in May 2021, 6.6 in August 2021, and now 6.0), but it’s all still the same to me. It’s clear that I still have work to do. I may end up getting on a statin if these don’t drop over the summer. Statin or not, I need to watch what I eat and lay off the saturated fats. Most of which I consume as part of breakfast…

    I don’t have a moral or anything to end this post on. My cholesterol is too high; welcome to the United States of America. I was hoping it would be lower because of my exercising but I should’ve remembered that it’s your diet which really influences these numbers. I’m going to give myself another three months of running and exercise and eating better to see where I end up. Hopefully with better results.

  • Vegetarianism(ish)

    18,000 cattle were killed in a dairy farm explosion and subsequent fire in Texas on Monday. That’s … mind boggling, but according to that article, that’s around 20% of the cattle who are slaughtered every day in America.

    Now, I’ve never been huge on the moral quandaries associated with eating meat. I understand that the meat industry is shady as hell. I understand that male babies are often killed because they’re not as useful as females. (I’ve seen the baby chicks being put in the grinder, thanks.) I’m not sure how you can decouple eating meat with knowing how animals are slaughtered. There was that whole thing a few years back about teaching kids where their chicken nuggets come from, but I think most teens and adults understand slaughter. In fact, more often than not, rural communities understand slaughter way more than urban ones, because they deal with it first or secondhand.

    I’ve never lived rurally enough to experience slaughter firsthand, but my family did live relatively close to a now closed slaughterhouse and when I would drive to college every morning I would pass by it and the conveyor belt plopping steaming intestines and other internal parts into a big truck. Man that place stunk.

    Truthfully, I think the consumption of animals is crucial for human development. Specifically, it’s theorized that the cooking of meat is what jump started human brain development, tens of thousands of years ago. Cooking breaks down tough fibers into more easily digestible ones, which meant that prehistoric humans suddenly were getting more nutrients from cooked meat than from raw. Plus it was easier to chew and probably tasted good as hell to homo erectus.

    That said, at some point our brains got big enough that we became self-aware and empathic toward the thing that got us here in the first place. The moral and ethical issues involved with eating meat, to me, are more entwined with cruel-free practices of raising and slaughtering animals than they are with the eating of animal meat itself. Cows are an animal meant to be eaten. If not us, then wolves or other predators. We’re just very good at killing animals, and, more recently, much more interested in consuming as much meat as humanly possible, it seems.

    So, when I see 18,000 cattle dead (and ranchers lamenting about how they’ve lost around $2,000 per cow) due to, arguably, poor living conditions for the animals, it makes me take stock in my own meat, dairy, and byproduct consumption and how possible it could be to make it more ethically and morally appealing in the future. There is no ethical consumption under capitalism, but perhaps I can lessen my impact.

    I’m not here to make any promises, but here are some thoughts on forward progress:

    • Reducing meat consumption.

    This one is a no-brainer, obviously, but is also worrying for me mostly because it was meat (I think) which helped get me out of a depressive slump. More specifically, I think I was lacking iron and/or B vitamins that we can only get from animal consumption, and then one day a coworker left and we went to a Brazilian grill for her last day and I ate all the meats and felt better than I had in months afterward. Another friend of mine was basically prescribed a weekly meat meal by her doctor to combat low iron.I know you can get iron in plants (what up spinach) but heme iron is supposed to be much easier for us to absorb. For me, then, I would prefer to find locally sourced meat once or twice a week, and supplement the B vitamins (B12? Is there another one?) with the multivitamin I already take.

    I expect this will be way more expensive than the meat I buy at Safeway, but if I reduce the amount I consume in the first place, it should even out.

    • Ethically sourcing dairy and animal byproducts.

    Again, this is like the above point. I’m slightly less concerned with some byproducts, like honey, which I don’t think is as unethically collected as, say, eggs and milk. But I like eggs and I like milk and I’d like to get them both from local sources. Especially eggs–factory farmed eggs are so shit compared to fresh, free range farmed eggs. Gotta get that orange yolk. Milk is the same. Honestly I think I can fix this by taking trips to Market of Choice instead of Safeway; their commitment to animal welfare page makes me feel more comfortable with purchasing meat and dairy there.

    • Ethical consumption and/or vegan consumption outside the home.

    This one will be tougher. Portland restaurants are pretty good about letting you know where their meat comes from, depending on the quality of the restaurant. But in the end you just never know. So I think outside of my home I’d like to try to consume less or no meat at all, and maybe go vegan entirely. I don’t know if this will stick; obviously I want my restaurant experience to be better than my home cooking, and for me that includes dairy and/or meat. YES there are excellent vegan foods out there and I will absolutely go that route if I see something I like. But I am not a vegan or vegetarian really so I don’t feel the need to limit myself as much there.

    • Giving back to the community?

    If I’m going to eat another animal I feel like I should at least use that energy to better myself or the community. I don’t know if this will be financial or actual volunteerism (I am terrible at volunteering), but I want to try to put the energy I receive from another living being into bettering the world as a whole.

    Again, I live in Portland so these things should be easy to implement. At the very least though, having a clear concept of the impact I am having on my environment and how I can adjust it to be more ethical and conscious is a good start.

  • Statistics are Depressing

    Today I looked at my Spotify artist profile. I discovered that my most streamed song is “You Don’t Really Care,” the first song from my first album, Kittens & Puppies.

    I think I’ve had my music on Spotify/other sites for about two years now? You want to know how many streams my most streamed song has?

    54.

    What’s weird is that my song with the most listeners is Noelle, from my Songs for Autumn EP. Spotify shows it as #1 in my Most Popular column.

    You want to know how many listeners it has? 22, and 27 streams.

    “Attaquin Beach,” a song from Going to Boise, has 35 streams but only 4 listeners. Why? I guess four people really like that song.

    Overall, K&P is my most streamed album on Spotify, with a whopping 314 streams as of this writing. I genuinely don’t know why this is. Nostalgia? People who heard it almost 20 years ago still like it?

    Amazon Streaming shows my demo CD, How I Remember You, has the most streams, at 163. “Henry Meloy” is the most streamed son, with 94 streams. (I don’t know how to embed songs from Amazon, sorry.) Why is that one so popular here but not on Spotify, where it only has 10 streams?

    Last Night in America, one of my two “rock”/”distorted guitar” albums, has 90 streams on Amazon, and 83 of those are “Row You Row Your Boat,” which … why THAT song?

    It’s surreal how some of my songs do better on one site than another. I wish the Amazon people and the Spotify people could meet up and exchange notes. What’s strange is that “Henry Meloy” and “Row You Row Your Boat” are my two most popular songs on Amazon but a wide margin — the third most popular song, “Here, I Found Your Stupid Bike,” only has 32 streams.

    YouTube isn’t much better. There’s not much there to be honest. We won’t go into it.

    All of this is really depressing. And it has been for years. I remember burning CDs of Kittens & Puppies and then playing a coffee shop to my family and selling no CDs. That was in 2007. But at least I made the CDs, and some people did buy them, and that felt like some type of progress. Putting music on DistroKid and only making $18, nearly two years later, is almost worthy of despair.

    A lot of it is my fault, honestly. I could’ve been more proactive. I could’ve marketed myself more. Could’ve played more open mics and coffee shops and all that. But there truly was, and still is, if I’m being honest, a part of me that hates my music. Hates the stuff that I’ve written. Thinks it’s sloppy, lo-fi garbage. I know that sounds weird, considering I have a bazillion albums, but it’s true. I feel lazy, like I make something and then run away from it, like a cat taking a shit in the litter box. It’s embarrassing. I assume people don’t like my stuff because I can kind of prove that they don’t because of the statistics. The stats on my latest albums that I really actually do like and am proud of are abysmal. But a bunch of people like a parody song I wrote about The Decemberists 17 years ago. Oh well.

    39 views on YouTube, by the way.

    And then there’s stuff like this:

    Somebody from some point in my life uploaded a song of mine on YouTube back in 2016. Who? I replied in the comments, got nothing back. But this is nice. A nice little acknowledgment. I appreciate that.

    I’ve said before that I don’t create because I want to, I create because I have to. I make music or write poetry or design worlds for D&D because I need a creative outlet. That’s still true, to a certain extent. But I’m learning that just because I made something doesn’t mean everyone needs to see it. But, on the other hand, if you write a song and nobody hears it (or wants to hear it), what’s the fucking point?

    As you can tell, it’s been one of Those Days.

    There’s a 50/50 chance I will release one more album before I’m done. I’m trying to finalize a track list and decide if I want to make a demos/unreleased album as well. It doesn’t really matter–no one will listen to either. But it will have been something I made. And that’s something.

    I guess I just wish the statistics didn’t exist. There was a time when you’d make things and have no idea how they did, and that was okay. How many people went to your website last month? No idea. But now, everything is statistics, and it really goes to show you how terrible statistics look. Reminds me of a thing I heard a while back, about how a large percentage of people who publish books sell less than two dozen, ever. What a life.

    Anyway, I’m not done creating. I’m just going to be a little more thoughtful about it. I think. And of course, thank you to everyone who has ever streamed a song of mine or bought an album. I am grateful for you, I mean it.

  • Artists & Bohemian Lifestyles

    This morning I read this article from OPB on Milepost 5, an low income artists community that I lived a block away from when I first moved to Portland, which happened to be a year after Milepost 5 opened. The article addresses the decline of the space over the past 15 years, particularly after the space was sold to an investment company in California. Ain’t that always the case.

    I have a bit of history with Milepost 5, particularly in that I have visited their communal art space, the Art Haus, and even auditioned for a performance of Romeo & Juliet by a Milepost 5 theatre company, that was to take place in the interior courtyard. This was back in 2011. I was cast as a “musician,” which meant not as an actual character in the play. That, coupled with the general sort of vibe I got from the audition process, was enough for me to pass. It wasn’t bad, it was just … bohemian. The whole space felt bohemian. It felt like I was audition for R&J within the context of being in a production of RENT. Again, that’s not a bad thing, it’s just not my thing. I often find that these pseudo-DIY, bohemian plays come with erratic and often poorly organized rehearsal schedules and, sometimes, very self-important directors. (To be fair, most directors are self-important.)

    Milepost 5 was meant to be a place where low income artists could have a home, but for some reason, that also means that the space itself has to be kind of a shithole. I’m not sure why this is. I don’t understand why so many artists feel the need to be dirty bohemians. I get it, in part–the rejection of capitalism, the communal lifestyle, but why do these things require artists to live in hovels?

    I know, I know, I’m turning into Don Draper here. It just always seems like there are two artistic camps: bohemians and yuppies. It’s all class war stuff, of course; we’re all under the thumb of capitalism. But when the government says, “Hey, we’re going to provide you with low income housing so you can do fun art stuff,” why does that housing have to be shitty? What if you want to do art but don’t want to share a kitchen, or a bathroom? Why are artists either packed into apartments like sardines, or living in the Upper East Side?

    The answer is: it’s not a dichotomy. It never is. There are obviously middle class artists all over the place. There are people who live in suburbs and act in community theater, and there are people who attend those “drink wine and paint sunsets” classes. But it seems, to me at least, that the cultural concept of artists is one of bohemian hovels. Brick walls, a giant canvas with paint splattered all over it, either hung up or lying on the ground. A woman doing performance art where she drips her menstrual blood on a canvas. None of that is bad! Art is art. I’m just curious why art is often culturally considered poor.

    It sucks that Milepost 5 was lauded as an artistic community and then sold to capitalists who have since run it into the ground. It’s obvious that capitalism hates art, unless it makes money, and low income artist hovels will never make money. So they abandon it like a carnivorous amoeba searching for a new meal to suck the life out of. So, bohemia is a response to that. I get it. I just wish the government got it, and invested more into it, I suppose.

  • Heart to Start

    Another month, another 5k. This was the Providence Heart to Start, part of the Hood to Coast … family? of events? Collective of jaunts? I don’t know. It took place at Cook Park in Tigard, Oregon, about 20 miles southwest of Portland. It was a lovely day for running, overcast, temperature in the mid 40s, the tiniest sprinkle of rain at times.

    Getting here was easy, so I don’t have to belabor you with any commute issues. Cook Park is lovely and has lots of trails that I would like to walk on someday, but today is not that day! Today we race!

    Atmosphere was chill, not a lot of people for this race. Sometimes races feel like a Big Deal (Shamrock Run) and others feel like a group of folks getting together for a thing (Tar n Trail). This one was kind of in the middle. There was a kids run before the 5 and 10ks, so lots of little warblers running around.

    When I got my bib a couple days before, there was no swag. I think there were free passes to one of the big athletic stores, but neither of the women at the station were like “Here these are free things,” so I just left with my bib. At the event though, they had a few bits of free stuff, which included:

    • Protein bars. Lots of different kinds of protein bars,
    • A stress ball in the shape of a heart (remember, this race is for heart health),
    • A pin that read, “Think With Your ❤️”, which, I’ll be honest, I personally think is a bad idea,
    • A beer or seltzer after the run (10 Barrel Brewing IPAs or Michelob Ultra Seltzer, to be precise). Probably could’ve had a lot of beers/seltzers if you wanted to, I dunno,
    • Bottle openers (there were no bottled beers or seltzers, only cans).

    I think that was it. Not too shabby, but not my favorite group of swag. Again, I really do think you should think with your 🧠, not your ❤️. Lots of bad decisions have been made thinking with your ❤️.

    Anyway, the Big Discrepancy! I started Strava right at the start line and I had this corroborated with two friends of mine who were at the race: the race was likely only 3 miles [but probably was actually a full 5k]. I know, I know. Please sit down. We’ll get through this, together.

    When I passed the finish line, Strava showed 3 miles, so I stopped briefly to grab my medal and then started running again, to pick up the other .11 of a mile, but was flagged down by a guy who needed the chip tag thing on the bottom of my bib, so I gave that to him and then proceeded to run the additional .11 of a mile. Ultimately, what I’m trying to say is that I think my time would’ve been slightly faster if I didn’t have to stop. I’m not mad at the event for short changing us a 5k, but it is frustrating to get your results and see that they are 38:01, only to discover that that’s your 3 mile result.

    Although … if you reverse calculate a 12:15/mi pace (which is on my official results) into a pace calculator, for a 5k, the result is 38:04. So … maybe Strava fucked up on this one. WOULD NOT SURPRISE ME. I wonder if Strava gets nervous out in the woods or something? I mean, chip time is literally just the time between when you cross the start line and when you cross the finish line. I can’t imagine it being out of whack, especially since it’s a company that has set it all up and whose job is to set up chip timers. I think Strava’s GPS just screwed up somewhere.

    Either way, I’m taking the chip time. 38:01! A very good run!

    Running-wise, I think I did pretty good. Obviously we can’t completely rely on the damn Strava app for this, but we’ll use it anyway.

    I really hoofed it out the gate, mainly to get around all the slow people walkers. The “track” was a thin concrete trail, maybe 5ft wide at most, and was a nightmare to deal with for the first 8th of a mile. A lot of us ended up running around in the grass, and I think I ran on some parts where plants usually grow, which probably was a bad idea. The start of the race is always a clusterfuck like this, but this one seemed especially annoying. I appreciate the Shamrock Run, which organizes runners based on their pace, with slower runners towards the back.

    I only stopped three times, with the longest gap being a suddenly sharp hill that I absolutely did not want to run up or down. You can also see that dip at the end of mile 3, where the race ended [which was probably actually 3.11 miles, maybe]. Annoying. Meanwhile, when I run my pace is all over the place, which is something I’d like to work on, but I’m glad that the difference between the first mile and the third mile is only little more than a minute. That’s progress; my first mile pace at Race for Warmth was 11:53, while the 3rd mile was 14:13, a 2:20 difference. Slow and steady wins the race, as they say.

    The weirdest part was at the end: when I decided to run the extra .11 of a mile, I felt like I could keep going. That’s dangerous territory, folks. That’s long run territory. Maybe we’ll talk about that some other time.

    A very good idea I did before the race was massage my feet, specifically my left foot. Doing this virtually eliminated the numb foot I’ve been getting around mile 2. Plus it just felt good! I also moisturized my feet a couple days ago. This was nice, but I think it also made my feet slightly slippery this morning. Could be my imagination though. My feet were happier with me overall though, which was good!

    After the race and the little extra run I chatted with a friend and commiserated over Strava, and then I went to the taqueria truck that was making burritos and ordered a big and delicious chorizo burrito with the works and a champurrado. I always forget how weird champurrado is. It’s good, just different. Could’ve gotten a horchata, but a warm drink felt like a better option.

    And then I drove home! The end. See you at the Shamrock Run!

  • parkrun #5

    Despite what the image says, I did very well on this run. In fact, finally ran a 5k under 40 minutes. My time on Strava was 39:41, my parkrun time was 39:47. I haven’t ran a 5k under 40 minutes since April of 2016. Obviously, it’s a milestone for me in my exercise resurgence.

    I’m not sure what to attribute this boost in speed lately. Sure, I could blame the sprints I ran on Monday, trying to push myself harder. But I could also blame the entire frozen pizza and two bags of chips I ate on Friday night. (Side note: Kettle Chips makes air-fried chips now and they are soooo much better than regular chips. Less greasy, taste the same!)

    I also rode my bike 11 miles on Friday, which makes my result at parkrun so ridiculous to me. I honestly thought I would run slower because my legs were aching from the ride. But I didn’t!

    Even despite all those walking bits (and a couple points where I had to stop to regain feeling in my foot) I still managed to get below 40 minutes. This is a good sign. I even felt more rejuvenated during the downhill bit (basically running back to the start). I’m not sure where that spike of energy came from, but it bodes well for future runs.

    Even the last bit to the finish line is fascinating me. I’m running under 11 min there, around 10:45. At the end of the run. I did that because I was coming up on 39 minutes and I had to get below 40. So I actually pushed myself more than I’m usually capable of. This is a good sign. These are all good signs.

    I should also mention, tangentially related, that I purchased Pixel Buds and this run was my first with them in my earholes. Resounding success; I got the pro version which has that cool Transparency Mode so you can hear stuff around you. These things don’t have hooks for your ears or those little bits that press up against your ear fold thingy, I don’t know ear terminology. You just put them in your ear, and they stay there. I don’t know how that works. Magic? Sound quality was great, the best I’ve ever had with earbuds. I normally hate earbuds, but these are good. I guess I needed quality ones. I even wore them while doing all sorts of apartment chores today. The little charging case looks like an egg. Oh and I can charge the case on my magnetic charging thing for my Pixel Watch! TECHNOLOGY!

    So, I said last week that I was going to rest this week, and then I didn’t, but I think this week I totally am going to rest, at least for an extra day. This is because I have a race on Saturday and I want to be fresh for it. Time for some walking and strength training instead.

    Until next week!