what makes a good rock?

A lot of people spend time looking for good rocks to keep. they might even have a collection of their very best rocks. Or you might also find a single rock for your journey and say, "I will keep it for my touching." and then at the end of your journey deposit it for someone else to find and use as their touching.

But maybe you've never considered what qualities make for a good rock. Maybe you've wasted every moment until now. Well, I'm going to give you a handy mnemonic device for how to spot a good rock.

Remember, CURSE.

C- Color. A good rock should have a unique color. Maybe it's a nice blue or has a reddish tint. Maybe it has little metallic bits in it. Maybe it's a grey but there's something about the grey that's a little more grey than regular grey. Grey.

U- Unique. The thing to remember about rocks is that they are a product of their environment. They come from a certain place. Who knows how long they've been there. Maybe thousands of years. But your special rock should stand out from the crowd a little. You don't have to compare your rock to every rock you've ever seen. Much like in life and in love, you just have to beat out whoever happens to be around at the time.

R- Round. GOOD ROCKS MUST BE ROUND! THIS IS NON-NEGOTIABLE! SHARP AND JAGGED ROCKS ARE UNACCEPTABLE

S- Small. A good rock should fit comfortably in the palm. Like eyeball sized. A good rock should be eyeball sized. Maybe a little smaller or a little bigger, like 15% either way

E- Excited. Listen, the most important part of the rock is how you feel about it. Because if you aren't excited about your dumb little find then no one will be. So bring some joy and enthusiasm and whimsy to the situation. It's like, if you're going for a hike--you bring water. If you're searching for a special rock--you better be jazzed about it.

And that's CURSE. 

Oh wait no I forgot what S was supposed to be and just remembered just now. I'm not gonna go back and edit it. 

S is for SHINY. A good rock should have some shine to it. Please your ancient crow brain.

Ok so now it's CURSES! 

Well, that's all the time I have for today. I hope you've enjoyed this post and I'll see you in the next one. Be sure to leave a comment telling me about your favorite rock you've ever found or stolen. Also write me a letter if you know where I live. Also send me a picture of your face super-imposed over a cloud. k bye

go down to rocky top and say hi to belt sander. the critter of the month for february

 

the banana peel from my morning walk

 I walking on the sidewalk and in the dead center of the sidewalk was this banana peel

and it was such a golden combination of silly and cartoonish and sad and withered

I feel like society is ready to move past conspicuous consumption

 I think we're so ready to tip over that edge. 

"Oh yeah buy this stuff so you can look like you're rich without being rich."

But I'm not rich and I hate the rich. Don't sell me the idea of wealth to exploit me and prey on my insecurities. I yearn for the certainty of mud.

The Lamb by William Blake

 Here's the cool thing about The Lamb by William Blake, published in 1789. In the poem he's talking to a lamb and asking the lamb if it knows who made it.

And you're thinking, 'That's so cool that he could talk to lambs I didn't know people used to be able to do that.' And yes, he could. William Blake could talk to lambs and they could understand him. 

What else does William Blake tell the lamb? He spends most of the poem calling the lamb a good sweet boy. Saying, 'aw you're so nice. you're a nice lil guy.'

And then there's a big surprise where he tells the lamb at the end who made it and TA-DA! It's God. And God is a lil' lamb too.

I don't know all the background there is to know on the connection between Christ and lambs but I know it's a thing. And I think it's a cool and also absolutely wild idea to be like God the all-powerful and almighty is actually meek and mild. Seeing a little lamb frolicking in a field and being like, "yep. there's God. That's him right there."

Why is that cool and wild?

Alan Watts has a talk about how churches and religious doctrine are set up in a way to make God seem like a king. And the goal of that is to legitimize a monarch. The point of talking about God is to instill the idea that at any level, a man should be in charge. Among other things. 

Which is lame and dumb obviously. 

God/The Universe is not an administrative thing. It's not a separate other that exists to be in charge of stuff. The whole point of the Universe/God is to be generative. It's to be creative and playful. 

A lamb is in a constant state of becoming and exploring. It's not in charge of anything. That's living. That's being godly. 

I think that's what William Blake is saying. And I think that's really cool.

pics from sick walk '025

 

some really ugly snow that I like the texture of a lot

weird pipe thing sticking out the ground and just passed this was a beautiful magnolia tree but you don't get to see that you get the weird pipe

it was so quiet downtown

really cool flowers

emotional vs financial investment

 or

an oral history of YouTube from someone who lived through it and was vaguely aware of what was happening

PICTURE THIS!

The year is 2005 or so. YouTube is a relatively new video hosting site that's seeing organic growth of a community of creators who like making videos. Nobody really knew how to make money off of the internet at this point. You could sell merch? Maybe But anyway the central argument is that the people who made Youtube into a platform where people would go to watch videos largely weren't interested in making money from it. They liked making videos that people watched and they were able to connect with fans and other content creators. Anything was possible and new discoveries were being made all the time.

But eventually a critical mass was reached where Youtube was purchased by Google in 2006 and Youtube primarily became a vehicle to generate ad revenue. And at that point Youtube had to change its relationship to people who made videos. My impression was that before any money was being made, Youtube the company was very much of the attitude that we're all one big happy family and this is a community and everyone is sharing. The moment ad money came in it very quickly became, 'we own what you upload to YouTube and this is our cut and we can run ads on anything we dang well please.' More or less. I'm painting in really broad strokes but I think it is true to say that at some point Youtube felt like a pretty small place and there wasn't that much of a difference between popular creators and the people who ran the company. 

And I remember seeing reactions of people who were upset by this change-- arguing that the only reason Youtube could sell ads was because of the audience brought in by those creators. And they were happy to do that work BUT if money is going to be involved it's kind of insulting to set up an arrangement where they're just getting pennies and lose out on the autonomy they had. 

It seems like a trend that repeats itself again and again in different ways all over all the time. People who love doing something will do it and grow a community until there's a profit to be made and then everyone has to answer to the dollar. And like, a true die-hard enthusiast and business minded people often have opposing interests. 

I think it can be fought. I think it's a fight worth fighting. Fighting the idea of 'constant growth'. What about culture and enrichment  and freaking charm? You wanna know something about charm? People who like charm, love charm. And people who don't find something charming, they don't. But the kind of lowest common denominator, mass appeal, inoffensive as possible, design by committee, constant growth, malaise. Nobody loves that. I guess people can't really hate it either but if you don't have active love and charm and personality then what's even the point?! 

The carcass will blow away into a fine dust instead of thickening into a rich slime that nourishes the dense green hedges of flowers and thorns.

must be that deer blood in me

 cuz I love running out in front of cars to cross the street

some thoughts about a painting

 in 1889, William Strutt painted 'A Warm Response'

It's a lil dog getting snip-snippered by a big ol' lobster. 

What do we think about this painting? What is the narrative we can concoct from it?

Maybe we think- Aw that poor lil dog. He's howling in pain :( That big mean scary alien ocean bug is hurting him :( I hate you dumb bug

That'd be valid. No one wants to see a dog be hurt. They don't deserve that. Also, of the two subjects, most people are going to relate to a dog way more than a scary lobster. I personally think all lobsters are scary and if I saw one outside of a controlled environment I would be scared. 

If we look in the background though we see a lobster turned over on its back and I'm no lobster expert but I think that means it's dead. And on the table we see a bunch of lobster shells and I'm no lobster expert but I think that means they're dead. And so this is not a house where lobsters go to thrive. This a place make those lobsters go graveyard dead.

The dog has emotions that we can see and is obviously in pain because of the lobster--the lobster whose emotions we can't discern. But we know from the scene that the lobster is in a hostile environment. What else could the lobster possibly be expected to do? 

Full disclosure: based on the cheeky title, I don't think ol' William Strutt was trying to get too deep with this one but I do think it's worth thinking about how our biases towards things that are familiar to us can obscure the larger context that events take place in.

I feel bad for the lobster. The lobster is doing the only thing it can do in the environment that it's been placed in. Through no wrongdoing of its own the lobster has been put in a situation where it's going to die and the only action it can take causes a scene and makes the lobster look monstrous. 

Anyway one time when I was in high school this kid I was friends with got mad at this other kid who was harassing him and stabbed him in the arm with a pencil and I remember this younger teacher or substitute or something came over to my lunch table and said something like, "Man did you guys hear about that stabbing? Pretty crazy huh." Which is an insane thing for an adult to say. The kid who got stabbed was fine and is currently a high school football coach. My friend, upon graduating college, moved to the desert and vowed to never return and as far as I know has made good on that promise.  

 

greatest portrait of me ever put to dry erase

 

a talented artist I have the privilege of coaching

[since feeling is first] by ee cummings

since feeling is first

who pays any attention 

to the syntax of things

will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool

while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,

and kisses are a better fate 

than wisdom

lady i swear by all flowers. Don’t cry

—the best gesture of my brain is less than

your eyelids’ flutter which says

we are for each other: then

laugh, leaning back in my arms

for life’s not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

-----------------------------------------------------------

I often present things and claim they're the greatest things ever made and that is because I only present you things are that are the greatest ever and [since feeling is first] by ee cummings is quite possibly the greatest poem ever written

Werner Herzog had the quote about "facts do not convey truth." And, "there is such a thing as poetic, ecstatic truth."

That's what ee cummings is talking about when he says, "wholly to be a fool while Spring is in the world" and "the best gesture of my brain is less than your eyelids' flutter"

So you read stuff like this and the message is "put ecstatic truth at the center of your life" or "feeling is first" and the argument that would naturally arise is, 'well that's not actually practical'. Or, if we didn't have any rules and people just did what they felt like that would be chaotic and scary and wild.

I think Werner Herzog and ee cummings would disagree. I think they would argue that actually the main purpose of rules and etiquette and norms is to justify treating others as less than human. That if you really got to the essence of the thing there wouldn't be a need to mistreat others or see people as different and removed from yourself. Werner Herzog says, "I despise formal restaurants. I find all of that formality very base and vile. I would much rather eat potato chips on the sidewalk." He's saying that if you place a lot of importance on decorum and rules then you allow yourself to treat anyone who doesn't follow all those rules as unworthy and lesser. Oh, they didn't unbutton their jacket when they sat down--they're a simpleton and they're swine. But if you're eating chips on the sidewalk with someone you have to see others as equals. 

At the very least, if you're going to be skeptical of a utopian world based on love without any laws or norms, you should also be on alert for the ways those same laws and norms that allegedly keep things safe and fair are allowed to debase large swaths of people. That's all I'm saying.

a werner herzog quotes collection appreciation post

 "I despise formal restaurants. I find all of that formality to be very base and vile. I would much rather eat potato chips on the sidewalk."

"The trees here are in misery, and the birds are in misery. I don't think that they sing, they just screech in pain."

"What would an ocean be without a monster lurking in the dark? It would be like sleep without dreams."

"The world reveals itself to those who travel by foot."

"Every man should pull a boat over a mountain once in his life."

"Civilization is like a thin layer of ice upon a deep ocean of chaos and darkness."

"Facts do not convey truth. That's a mistake. Facts create norms, but truth creates illumination."

"There are deeper strata of truth in cinema, and there is such a thing as poetic, ecstatic truth. It is mysterious and elusive, and can be reached only through fabrication and imagination and stylization."

things I saw at wegmans and cool Questions and a long hypothetical

 I saw my old roommate that I wrote about a few months ago and when I lived with him he would always be on his phone talking about money and when I saw him at the checkout a few months ago he was on the phone talking about money and I can't make this up the SECOND I walked in the door I heard a voice say,

"Well that's where all the money is"

And I turned my head and it was him talking on the phone and I was like wow we've reached Mr. Krabs levels. A cartoonish obsession.

Anyway and then later I saw a guy and his girlfriend looking for each other in the aisles and there was a big, like massive cardboard box display thing for chips and the guy and the girl did that thing where one person would look on one side of it while the other person would look on the other side and then they'd both look confused and go check the other side but it lined up perfectly that they would miss each other and then go back to the other side and they went back and forth like that like 4 times, perfectly synced up and once they finally saw each other I almost walked over to tell them what had just happened but I kept it to myself and I'm sharing it with you now.

And then when I was driving to Wegmans I thought I was sad but I knew I didn't have anything to be sad about and then I thought about it more and realized I just didn't have any energy and was tired and that made me think I was sad. 

I just thought of the word 'weltschmerz" and I had to look it up and it means a feeling of melancholy and world-weariness and I don't think I have that but I do think weltschmerz is a great word. 

Cool Questions to Ask People

How far can you jump? What's the coolest kind of bug there is? Do you like jumping? Do you have a rock that looks like a face? Which number is the color orange? What's the best kind of magic? When you think of 30 of something what do you think of and why? If you were given a button that, if pressed, made the moon's pull on the ocean so strong that it could rip all the blood out of someone's body and when you pressed the button that would happen to one person on Earth what would you do with the button. Oh, and also there's a skeleton alive and he knows about the button but he doesn't know that you have it but he's trying to get it because the blood will go to him and then if he also finds the skin button and the muscles button then he will be a person again and usher in 20 months of terror. But like he's magically in whatever city or place you are--let's say within a 10 mile radius of wherever you go. And he can talk to worms so if you bury it then he might find out. Any vermin he can talk to. What would you do? And he loves safes. Big safe guy. Safes and vaults to skeletons are like hot chocolate to humans. So consider that.

layers

 ultimate- last

penultimate- next to last

antepenultimate- 3rd from last

preantepenultimate- 4th from last

propreantepenultimate- 5th from last

I think that's as far as it can go.

I'm not going to do this story justice but I will try

 Today this kid, maybe like a 6 or 7 year old kid, was at the climbing gym for the first time and he was trying on his rental shoes and he was with the two adults who brought him and he's sitting on the bench trying on his shoes and he goes,

"Why do they--why do these have two--um, things on them?"

And the guy with him goes, "Two velcro straps on them?"

And the kid goes, "No no, that's perfectly normal. Why do they have these two things on them?"

And he meant the two little pull tabs on the back to get them on over the heel.

But just seeing a little boy go, "No, no, that's perfectly normal." It was the best thing that's happened to me all week. What a guy. That kid is going places.

my favorite type of snow to walk through

 my favorite type of snow to walk through is when there's a thin layer of ice crust over the snow and so when you're walking in it you don't break through right away but as you weight your foot you create this kind of depression--like this shallow circular zone where your foot was. You know what I mean? Like if you were stepping in water (liquid water) and it creates this ripple but it's just one ripple that's frozen in place. It's very satisfying when it breaks only a little bit. I'm going to call this snow 'ripple snow' because of my ripple analogy. 

While we're on the subject, ripple is an underrated word. Let me give you the etymology. 

Ripple showed up sometime in the early 17th century and we just straight up don't know where it came from.

Oh just kidding. The OED says that the earliest evidence of ripple is from 1350 and is inherited from "Germanic". 

Regardless its origins are still a bit murky. Good. Good job, ripple. Keep your secrets.

oh yeah it snowed alright

 

tagline of the #1 movie at the box office they day I was born

 Sylvester Stallone starred in a movie called "Oscar."

In the poster, Stallone is dangling from the face of a giant clock with a city skyline in the background.

The poster reads, "Gangster "Snaps" Provolone has until noon to become an honest man."

And then the tagline is, In Crime and Comedy, Timing is Everything.

According to the website, birthdayjams.com, the #1 song on my birthday was Baby, Baby by Amy Grant. I'm listening to it right now and it's one of those songs that you've heard but have no memories associated with it whatsoever. This song sounds like a song Michael Jackson passed on. It's a nice song though I like it.

Also I'm exactly one year older than noted tall baseball man, Aaron Judge. He has unarguably hit more big league homers than I have but I am exactly one year older than him so there's a very good chance that I heard Amy Grant's hit song 'Baby Baby' before him.

Also, I know that 'baby' is a pretty common word in pop music but, c'mon, I was, at that point, one of the more preeminent babies on the planet at that time. I think it's a fun coincidence.

my folks dressed up for a wild party

 

watching a cat watch a bug

 have you tried watching a cat that is watching a bug?

today I solved a sudoku, made a comic, hung out at Bodo's for 4 hours

 I'm your favorite's favorite favorite favorite

And the other thing I'll say is this: it would be so crazy if everything could get pregnant. People and animals of course but also pencils, mugs, bridges, tables, cars, clouds, lamps, shoes, dirt, and bones.

Walt Whitman would get it. If you told Walt Whitman, "What if everything was and/or could get pregnant?"

He'd be like, yes. exactly. Exactly what I've been saying this whole time.

if I ever wrote anything as good as

if it makes you happy

it can't be that bad

if it makes you happy

then why the hell are you so sad?

Sheryl Crow absolutely destroying me using the simplest words and the simplest structure. I don't know there's certain songs that if I let myself listen to them I'll just dwell on them all day and 'If It Makes You Happy' is one of them. 

The words are pointing to something. They're a perfect example of cognitive dissonance. It's a koan. It's a catchy earworm that also makes you feel uncomfortable. I would go so far to say that if you could crystallize art into a single nugget or gem, you'd be hard pressed to surpass the chorus of 'If It Makes You Happy'. Anyone can understand the lyrics and the words but when you hear it sung, especially by Marissa Paternoster, you don't think--oh what a trite--what a--what a vapid statement. Maybe you do. I don't know. Maybe you're thinking--why's this guy so sad? Is he really sad or something?

No. I'm not sad. And I'm not happy either. I'm some other third thing. The thing that I am when I listen to 'If It Makes You Happy' all day. 

------------------------------------------------

Actually I had a really good day. My family came over and I started the year with my mom and dad and sister and showed them camp and ate good sandwiches and lemon tart! Hooray!

I don't think 'If It Makes You Happy' is about being happy or sad. It's probably about how Sheryl Crow was feeling when she finally had success and achieved a thing she'd been wanting for so long but then it didn't feel like how she thought it would feel but I ALSO think it's about how cool feelings are in general. Like sometimes you might think, oh feelings are stupid and annoying. No. The fact that you can feel feelings is crazy and actually really cool. So just sit and be in awe of that for about 5 minutes.

Imagine the first time someone put red and blue together and made purple. That's what the chorus to If It Makes You Happy Is. 

In case you're curious, the other song that destroys me is 'You Are My Sunshine'. Ohmygosh. I don't even know why I brought it up. Devastated. I'm not even kidding. 

Anyway, tune in tomorrow where I'll be talking about one of my other weaknesses: my conditioned taste aversion to cold pasta salad with feta cheese.