Brain Smarts for Your Brain Smart.

All Day

Roommate Appreciation!

Making things!

Made a Little List

worries. you gotta bring them to the light.

I Had an Idea Today

Since I now live at a summer camp, I thought that it would be nifty keen to engineer some camp magic for this upcoming camp season.

Yesterday, my roommate Maddie and I collected some rocks on the trail down to waterfront and we spent the better part of the afternoon painting them.

It was really good. And later we climbed on the rock wall which was a super awesome time. Especially when my foot is making running painful and I am hard pressed for activity. The rain is not helping either :/

Anyway, the idea I had is that I would have a large rock with a simple face painted on it in a prominent location at camp and then a sign telling people that the rock's friends (or campers or children or something) have gotten lost and are all over camp! Oh no! So then as the kids go about their day at camp they can be on the lookout for these little rocks with faces on them and return them to the rock spot. Could be fun.

Another thing I'd like to do is make signs in the mode of obviousplant who you can check out here:

https://www.instagram.com/obviousplant/

The View from Here

the best!

Getting the Ball Rolling Again

New Running Plan!

I haven't been feeling none too good about my running lately after I hurt my foot a few weeks ago.

So I guess this is time to make a new plan and try to make the most of it.

May: try to run 6/7 days a week and hopefully with no foot pain by June.

June: no running.

July: start 20 week block of lots of miles. I think I got injured from trying to do supplemental strengthening and hard speedwork. Stuff just does not agree with me. I saw really good results and was healthy and relatively happy doing lots and lots of miles in the winter/early spring. I'm going to worry less about workouts and focus on just running. 

take 2 weeks off in November

Start another 20 week block from December to Late April.

Yeah! Maybe do a 50k or something.

WHAT DID I LEARN?!

STICK TO WHAT WORKS!

TAKE BREAKS!

INJURY IS THE WORST!

Thoughts on this Robert Goulet Album Cover

Question from Roommate, M-Dawg: What do you think Robert Goulet's dog's name is? sub-question: Is it his dog or a model?

Answer: The dog was probably a model. After the photo-shoot Robert Goulet begged and pleaded with the photographer to let him take the dog home and pinky promised he would feed him and walk him and clean up after him. All the while, Robert Goulet's hold on the dog is becoming tighter and tighter, the dog is clearly becoming uncomfortable. At this point, Goulet's handlers realized he was overstimulated and needed a nap.

After his nap, they decided to let Goulet take care of the dog, perhaps named Frankie, for a trial-period.

"You know how he gets," whispered one handler to another in a voice loud enough for Goulet to hear but Goulet never seems to care or understand. "If we don't let him have it, he'll never shut up about it. He'll carry on and use it against us whenever he gets fussy. If we let him have it, he'll get bored in a week and we can give it back to the photographer. We'll tell Goulet the dog ran away if he even bothers to notice."

This is Where I Live Now

Living Room

The Backyard

Crab at the Edge with Fused Tube Televisions

playing around with paint and paper cut-outs.

Crab's like "ah-HA! I have reached where the rocky crags are battered by the raging tide! Spines and waves and the deep moans all around!"

Good job, Crab. You did it. Where the sun is blood red and the clouds are all, 'meh. we're clouds. it's okay I guess.'

Here are some other plots for stories I had:

#1- Pixar-like movie.

A village of crawdads is under siege by an unsupervised and under-medicated 4-year-old. A plucky young crawdad who can't seem to find his way in the community is accidentally taken home by the behaviorally challenged child-beast. The crawdad finds a copy of Machiavelli's The Prince and, for reasons unexplained, knows how to read and is able to befriend and then ensnare the stupid, evil child. The young crawdad returns to the village with makeshift reins across the child's neck and face. Young crawdad is heralded as the new king and the child becomes their war machine. This sets up for the sequel where the village becomes an empire and the young crawdad becomes a ruthless paranoid dictator.

#2-

A boy in the 4th grade is allergic to grapes. A pretty red head girl sits down next to him in the cafeteria and offers him some grapes from her lunch box. The boy has a moment of inner conflict before he decides to accept the grapes. Just as he's about to take a bite a teacher slaps them out of his hand and reminds him of his allergy. The girl is instinctively put off by the boy's lack of self-preservation and finds a new seat. The boy is ashamed and heart-broken.

The teacher returns. "What? Are you sad now?" She's in his face. "Because I kept you alive? Brian! You don't even have the cognitive capacity to imagine the consequences of your actions. The public pays me to do that for you! You have a deadly grape allergy! What did you think was going to happen? That you would take a bite and your throat would swell up and your face would turn blue and that would be your big shot? That was going to win her over?! Your hopes were dead from the get-go with that one, buddy. Don't eat grapes. Don't. eat. grapes. That's like your one rule. It's just one more rule than most people have. Get it together!"

End.

On

This is a drawing of a person crawling out of a stack of oddly shaped pancakes lying on top of a mountain or a cliff somewhere. Maybe in Pennsylvania. I visited Pennsylvania one time and there were these really cool cliffs by a river and some train tracks. And I got to watch a bird fly in and out of clouds. That's probably what the guy in this drawing is doing. Watching birds. He seems really content in a simple way. He's not even bothered by the tentacles rising up behind him and even if he saw them I don't think he would consider their full implication, if there is any. 

I think it can be good to be unassuming. Sure, sometimes you'll miss things that appear obvious because you haven't considered alternative motives but it frees up space in your brain for doing nice things like checking on the progress of the plants in your flower bed or compulsively checking your phone while buying groceries. 

I don't think I fully understood when I used to write a lot on this blog how hard writing is. Writing is hard.

Anyway, so the guy is crawling out of the stack of pancakes, or maybe he's not even crawling out. Maybe he's just resting his upper body on them while looking at the birds and clouds.  And at this point, you can make the story about whatever you want. 

But, what I think happens, is the guy is resting there, relaxing, and then there's a flash thunderstorm and it starts to rain really hard and conditions become really treacherous. And the guy is panicking and he's really struck by how fragile his happiness is. Like in an instant it was all taken away from him and he didn't really have any say in the matter. He was enjoying his day, lounging in giant pancakes as one does in his native country, Pennsylvania, and now he's not sure if he can get down and he might get struck by lightning and the pancakes are getting soggy. Fortunately it's one of those storms that only last for about 10 minutes and once it passes the sun comes out again and it's a beautiful day just like it was and the birds are back and he can see the dark storm clouds receding into the distance. 

But now he can't throw himself into the weather the way he did before the storm came. He doesn't trust it. Underneath the warm, it's got a little bit of sting to it because it made him soft and vulnerable. So, what he does is he climbs off Pancake Mountain and he goes to a hardware store and he buys a can of spray paint and he finds an underpass by a Waffle House and he writes TURD in big red letters on the walls of this little tunnel. And that doesn't really make him feel better but it makes him feel more in control of whatever the feeling he has now.

Blog about Blog

a hoje-poje

(like hodge-podge but with a long 'o')

(the long 'o' is like 'home' as opposed to 'hot')

(the parentheticals provide clarification for the line above them)

(see line above)

Hello Blog,

lately the comics have been feeling kind of stale. I think it might have to do with the fact that I'll draw 5 or 7 in one go and then spread out their posting over a week. I have a feast-or-famine relationship with my free time now. It's an adjustment that is ongoing. But maybe there isn't much excitement about posting when the comics aren't fresh out the brain. I suppose it might not make as much of a difference to a reader unaware of the process. But, as we all know, this blog has never been about the reader. It's about me. The reader.

I like posting to feel significant. Like I'm making a deposit in something that makes me a better person--if that makes any sense. I don't think the comics that have been posted lately are bad. I think some of them are pretty good. But lately the blog has been feeling more like a void than ever. I mean, it's always been a pretty void-y blog. That's part of its charm. 

Now that I'm writing this, this post is also just a way of asking for attention. That's another thing this blog is really all about. Getting your attention. And hopefully using your attention in a way that is positive. You'll think Ah, what a decent use of my attention. Except it's never that thought out. It's more like a quick pump of dopamine to the reptilian hind brain (editor's note: that's probably not how dopamine works! go with it!) and then you start clicking wildly and, before you know it, 3 hours are gone.

Unrelated note: I haven't been able to sleep much lately. 

Here's the point: sometimes when I get really really tired and I'm in a rush, like I've worked a few long days and have to get up early again, instead of quickly getting through my morning routine I'll feel the uncontrollable urge to arrange tiny things just so in my room and bathroom instead of actually being productive. I'll start folding pants or lining up things on my desk or buttoning and unbuttoning my shirt. As this is happening, the conscious part of my brain will be watching my sleep-deprived self and think Hey, if we're doing this now, that means we won't be able to eat breakfast before going to work which we're going to be late for anyway. But, the Conscious Talky-Brain isn't really in the driver's seat by this point. It's more like he's shouting from the trunk of the car. Other times, while I'm fixated on small, meaningless tasks at the expense of urgent needs, I'll have small direct thoughts. Like if I'm thoroughly trying to pick out little grubbles and gribbles out of my toothbrush bristles I'll think: Hey, I should start writing on my blog again.

So that's what I'll do. Back to writing for now. Hope you've enjoyed this leisurely brain stroll we took together. I feel good for having written it and I want your attention. Yes. We'll explore other quirky side trails to the human condition and try to give some thoughts about things. 

Life is made up of the things. But life is also outside of things, or a force within things. It's kind of like light. It's a particle and a wave. I don't know if light (or life) is actually a particle AND a wave, a contradiction like that might just mean our words and ideas are missing something pretty significant. I don't think we can look at our words that we use to describe the universe and then think we're marveling at the universe itself. We're just marveling at the words we used to describe it. The universe is beyond our words. Being amazed at our words about the universe is like trying vanilla ice cream for the first time ever and thinking it's incredible. But you don't even know about all the other kinds of ice cream out there. Like chocolate ice cream. 

So, always remember that there are more ice creams.

And the only emperor is the emperor of ice cream.  

And I love you.

And ice cream.

And &.

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table too tall

What The People Want