you think ghosts and skeletons get along?

 or are they always trying to scare each other?

But I think for ghosts, skeletons, ghouls, goblins, frankensteins, draculas, wolfmans, witches, and such, scaring is like their version of being funny

No because then, they would be trying to scare humans. You wouldn't try to scare other scary things. Unless you were the comedian's comedian of spooky frightening things.

So they're like professional acquaintances. They're all in the same line of work. They meet up and talk shop. 

A zombie scaring a mothman but instead of screaming the mothman calmly says, "that's scary" the way comedians say "that's funny" without laughing but it's actually a huge compliment. But both parties are so analytically minded that they forgo the emotional reaction.

The creatures of Halloween are entertainers. Is what we've learned here. They exist to elicit an emotional reaction. I guess that's what Nightmare Before Christmas is about.

This is all the modern versions of course.

Look at this woodcut from 1493

Just some bones having a good ol time. That's really fun.

The thing about Christmas is that at the darkest coldest time of the year when Death feels all around we come together to show the best parts of love and charity and giving. But the thing about Halloween is that the darkness has just come around and so we have wicked fun and dance and evil party hehehe. 

 

moonboard update

 I know you need moonboard updates. I need to give them to you.

So so so close on Hugo Eliminate Clean. My unofficial moonboard coach Max stopped by and helped me figure out a move that I was jumping to that I didn't need to be jumping to. Felt like it was a very helpful adjustment but it was a little late in the session and had burned all my fresh goes. The last two moves of the climb are bigger moves and the first big move affects how you set up for the last move and I never feel like I get it quite right but I'm confident it will go soon. Hopefully Tuesday.

After an hour of trying and failing to send Hugo I messed around on these two climbs that are basically the same, Forsok 17 and Gravity's Rainbow and they both feature this big move to the left that I figured I just wouldn't be able to do but after a couple attempts I stuck the easier version of the move on Forsok and then a couple goes later stuck it on Gravity's Rainbow so that was a great consolation prize at the end of the session. I have two more climbs that I've now done all the moves on. 

The Six Remaining

Hugo Eliminate- so close to sending

TBA Warm Up 1- have done all the moves individually but it still feels hard.

Forsok 17- done all the moves. feels very doable now

Gravity's Rainbow- have done the hardest moves. is definitely doable with work

Problem 2- seems gross. don't want to try it.

Warm Up No. 10- it's got this big move off an undercling that I just plain don't like. tried it a few times today and made a little bit of progress. Definitely the next goal after sending the other 4.

Fingers felt strong today. Ready to be done with this Hugo climb but have learned a lot from it.

happy Halloween!

what I've been working on

 

this is Charlottesville. I started by putting up the climbing gym logo. And then I figured the next logical step would be to make these creepy eyes surrounded by black sludge and ichor and they'd be blasting lasers at the stuff around the Rocky Top logo. And then the laser reached across town and went over to the rival climbing gym that opened and blasted whatever was there and put up our logo. And now that the mission is over the formerly evil eyes will turn into plants and flowers and bugs and spread life and peace instead of death and destruction.

This picture is after the lasers have been fired and mid-transformation into the Tree of Not Making Things Blow Up But Rather Make Them Better

things I've found in wplace

 

very small town of Wallace North Carolina filled entirely with strawberry festival art

this is an island off the coast of Maine that someone has turned into a flower memorial for a lost loved one. we miss you Margaret.

this is a lake in the Upper Peninsula and the art is just a fish someone added but it's crazy how much it looks like a guy in a hat and a big jacket and two Italy boots.

this is on an island in the Northernmost reaches of Canada and there's that beige line that runs from Colombia all the way to as far north as the map goes and so I was scrolling these vast expanses of nothing and I fine this line and start following it and at this point someone has set up an Empanada stand and as people find it they leave a little person to wait in line for empanadas :)

if you follow that line I was talking about this is the end point. most of the line is completely empty alongside it and then at the end there's this little party for everyone who found it.

introduction to climbing league part two of which I am the czar and commissioner

 Gather round ye heathens, ne'er-do-wells and sordid lots. It is time again to compete in the ritual known as climbing league. Where you will meet your betters and your worsers. Where you will come to know that the climb is not your enemy. The climb is the occasion for the dance and the enemy is yourself--your weaknesses and inadequacies and shortcomings. The goal is to, in some small incremental way, banish these parts of yourself by completing the climb and overcoming a past, lesser version of you. Constant evolution. The winnowing of one's own soul and being into a sharp jabby pointy stick that can pierce through all set before it, even the heavens perchance. The transmutation of the will into movement.

WE ARE WHAT WE WALK BETWEEN! WE ARE WHAT WE WALK BETWEEN!

What does that mean?! Does it mean that climbing is the motion between two holds? Does it mean that our being is the conduit between what is and what is not? Does it mean that our existence is the tension between two irreconcilable truths? Does it refer to the self we just were and the self we are about to become? Does it refer to the canyon style walls in the Main Room?

No one knows what it means but it's provocative. It gets the people going! 

We have wiped the slate clean and now it is time for new trios to step forth and make their mark in the history of Rocky Top Climbing League. (name some teams)

And remember, the next time you fall off a climb, sit down on the mats and stare into the middle space between you and the wall or a person next to you and think, What am I doing? Why am I doing this? Why am I here right now? What does this mean? And then think about this quote from a book I read once,

"These questions had been considered a long time ago, decisions were made, answers recorded, and the book closed. If it had to be re-opened every time the going got rough, he would spend more time rationalizing than training."

Best of luck, climbers. May the chalk dry your hands and rest easy in your lungs.

the alliance of little critters

 I think all the little critters and creatures have a mutual unspoken respect for each other. Sure they have their disagreements and disputes. Maybe the don't always outwardly display signs of cooperation that we humans might recognize. 

If the little creatures and critters of the forests and the woods and the alleys and the neighborhoods could only have a little radio station where they could pay for ad space and give little public service announcements about how much the appreciate one another. Then things would be different. 

"Little rat thing. I'm some other little screaming rat thing of the night. And I love you. I love the way you run around with your big eyes, heart racing at a thousand beats per minute, eating crunchy things. Join in the chorus of screams that fill the night air."

The footage of the badger and the coyote going down the tunnel together is everything to me right now. I can dare to dream big because a coyote and a badger are friends.

we must never forget the lessons of The Music Man

why's there so much technology and innovation and so much wealth is being generated but things feel bad?

Harold Hill taught us that a good businessman doesn't sell something to fix a need. He invents a problem that only he has the answer to. They're creating problems. That's all they're doing.

my call to adventure is wplace.live

 there's this website that is Google maps but you can put pixels over it and so you can draw whatever you want and I put the climbing gym logo over the climbing gym and that is the plot that I will tend to.

that's the thing about me. I'm not an adventurer. I'm a tender. I tend to things. That is my natural state.

But I'll say this. I love a website. I love a place where you do one thing. A page for a thing. Not an infinite scroll mine. I hate the infinite scroll mine.

EDIT: CRAB ARE YOU MAKING A CRAB????!!!! LET'S GOOOOOO

 "oh dang dude I gotta get started. A few weeks ago I applied to be a fireman because why not and I just found out I got accepted and I have a three hour test tomorrow that I have to start studying for."

Heard someone say this tonight and that's called answering the call to adventure. 

here's some life advice

there are some things where you are probably too critical of yourself. 

there are other things where you should be more critical of yourself.

And now, I have presented to you two threads and by an act of critical thinking I should weave them together in some way to reveal a piece of wisdom and expound upon it. That's how this works. 

I don't know.

No wait I've got it.

So there's you. Existing.

And then there's the critical you that's watching the first you and being like, "ah that was awful." or whatever. "Go eat ham." "Stop eating so much ham." "Nah go back to eating ham actually."

And then, to address the first two statements, you have to observe the critical observer. You gotta watch the you that's watching you and think about why they think what they think. Why do they care so much about xyz but they don't care at all about lmnop? 

If you've never questioned or thought about your critical observer, that's like going through life and not realizing you had a settings menu the whole time. You could've changed the graphics. You could've changed the difficulty mode. You could've changed all sorts of things.

There you go. Check your settings mode. Turn on aim assist. Turn off friendly fire. Invert the y-axis. You gotta invert the y-axis.

 what you gotta do is think about what part of the story you are in in the story of your life. let me get out the chart.

Where are you here?

I don't know probably the Ordinary World.

I'll be on the lookout for the Call to Adventure soon.

training update

 had a little bit of fatigue today but still good efforts

-did all the moves on Easy Does It on the moonboard. got to the second to last move from the start. 7 problems left. 2 that I've done all the moves on 

-105lb weighted pull-up moved pretty well

-did a bunch of inverted rows on the rings and on a bar instead of pull-ups today

-I need to start doing pigeon stretch because I'm really tight there

-I also added in some one arm hangs from the bar because sometimes they feel really uncomfortable and nearly impossible to hold and that can't be right. they shouldn't feel that hard.

I got a mole (I think) forming on my chest. It doesn't look weird or anything but something about new spots forming on my skin makes me spiral a little. But at least the heart of rock n roll is still beating.

I briefly catch a glimpse of the interconnectedness of things and can't handle it

 Last night Youtube recommended the Ralph Bakshi animated movie Fire and Ice (free with commercials!). So I figured I'd watch it and do another recap like I did a little while ago but the movie is simply not good. I'd sum it up as directionless. BUT!

There's a line at exactly 55:41 where one of the bad guys Nekron says, "I'll squash you like a bug!" 

And I immediately IMMEDIATELY knew that I'd heard that line sampled in a song before and I tried googling it and nothing came up and then the band Pain kind of bubbled up into my brain and in the song 'Fight' at 54 seconds the sample plays.

I'm not saying I have a superhuman memory. I regularly forget important parts of important conversations and people's names that I should really know among other things. I'd say I have a better-than-average long term memory. But I think this particular pull borders on useless superpower. 

But also why? Why instant recognition for a song I haven't heard in at least 15 years and don't even like that much. It's not even one of my favorites. Why is that neural pathway or whatever so optimized and primed? Why can I not help but feel at the mercy of some web and force beyond my comprehension.

No one cares about the 1983 animated movie Fire and Ice which has a 67% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. No one cares about the band Pain from Alabama whose most notable song Jabberjaw was used in a Cartoon Network music video that aired during commercials in 1999- a song about the underwhelming Hanna-Barbara Scooby-Doo clone cartoon that ran for only 16 episodes in the Fall of 1976.

Why must I be the conduit and keeper of this total animal soup of time!?

tonight I had a double soup dinner

 that's right I had a double soup dinner.

you're thinking to yourself, wait Andy that's crazy it's Wednesday why would you pull out a double soup dinner is everything okay

thank you for concern let me assure that I've never been better especially now that I've had double soup dinner

the first soup of course was the progresso chickpea and noodle vegetarian soup with 17g of protein and I hate that without heating it because I've reached a point where I genuinely like canned soup at room temperature

and the reason it was unheated was because I was using the pan in that moment to boil water for the ramen soup that I was making which was of course the second soup in the double soup dinner

and now I feel laser focused and alert and full of energy and I need to tell you about what a powerful experience this has been for me and I recommend every try this as soon as dinnerly possible 

and now you're really in the total animal soup of time

 Allen Ginsberg said that about Carl Solomon. 

And he also said,

"with the absolute heart of the poem of life butchered out of their own bodies good to eat a thousand years"

There are different ways to know something and a lot of them are better than ratty little sentences that grub apart a line and grease it into greebles between tiny verminous clutches. 

 I've already told this story on here but one time when I was in college this girl came up to me in the courtyard outside the library and she had a visual impairment and walked with a cane and she asked me to point her towards the trash can because she wanted to throw something away and instead of pointing her to the trash can liked she asked I said, "that's okay I can throw that away." and she very politely said "no I'll do it can you point to where they are." 

And I remember immediately having this moment of like, because she asked for help I assumed she was less capable than she was and tried to do too much and undermined her ability which was probably super annoying. 

It's interesting how being offered help in a way that's unwanted has this double bind of assuming incompetence and also outwardly appearing like a kind gesture and putting the person who then has to refuse help in a position of seeming rude. 

Complicated all the more by the fact that a lot of people don't ask for help and often silently want someone to proactively help them. And so how does anyone help anyone ever?

I guess accepting that social situations are inherently messy and people will hurt/annoy one another inevitably but that in a lot of cases the positives outweigh the negatives.

That's not a very exciting conclusion. 

Meaningful existence beyond survival is play and everything else is ego.

 from a very young age I've always tended to become overly sentimentally attached to things--like a random toy or stick or anything. I think it was because I tended to lose items a lot and then I'd get overly upset about losing them. But it's funny that I would grow up to live in time when things are becoming seemingly more and more sentient and I hate that. I don't want things to think. I don't want things to do anything. I want them to be something that I can act upon. I always want agency. More than anything else really. But I will never stop hating AI.

 A picture of the light of the setting sun bouncing off a mirror on the opposite wall and illuminating an orange print of a raccoon’s head with the words “LIVE FAST EAT TRASH” as if to suggest some sort of divine inspiration or call

I like to imagine that the last name 'Norman' was an on-the-spot lie combining the words 'normal' and 'man'

 My name?--oh, of course, it's Rodger...Normalman--uh Norman. Yeah. Rodger Norman. That's my name.

moonboard update: 9 2016 v4 benchmarks remaining

 sent Standing Rock today on the 2nd go.

of the 9 climbs I have left: I've done all the moves on Hugo Eliminate Clean. I've done all the moves on La Presa Di Constantinopol. I've done all the moves on Dispensory. I'm close on the starting moves of TBA Warm Up 1 that I tried at the end of the session.

That's 4 climbs that I should get in the next week or two. 

Of the 5 remaining after that--I dunno I'll probly do em.

you got sauce

 I'm gonna invent a restaurant called 'you got sauce' and what it is is we slowly collect sauces from other places, just like extra sauces. We start a campaign where people go through their junk drawers full of unused sauces and clean out their cars of sauce and we'll take 'em. We'll take all the sauces. And then if get food from a food place and come to our restaurant we'll give you sauce. And you're like 'why can't I just get sauce from the place I got the food from?' Well, we will pay you to take our sauce. That we got for free. That you gave us. What we'll do is we'll find all the prices from stuff from the 90s and we'll pay you enough to make what you ordered cost the 90s prices. And throw in sauce too. No if you give us the sauce. If you give us the sauce we'll pay you enough to make it a 90s price. Because 'you got sauce.' And then you can hang out in the lounge and watch ads and create conversational content for other patrons and just hang out there and watch ads. 

One thing I think that doesn't get talked enough about with collecting data is that's stupid and my data is worthless. I don't care about my data. I don't care about what I do on the internet. No meaningful information can be extracted from that that will make you money. It just won't. Look at my credit card bills. I buy gas every 2 months and groceries once a week. That's all I spend money on. What does 'sell my data' mean? My data about what? To whom? For what? That doesn't mean anything.

And maybe this makes me sound misinformed and bitter for no reason but I really think we should just all consider this information useless and stop propping up this awful idea of a business model. Some dumb little robot following me around all day and then going back to some weird guy in a tower, 'oh guess what your wickedness today he watched a video of a guying singing a song about talking on the phone and it made him sad'

'MWAhaHAHA EXCELLENT! I HAVE A BAGILLION DOLLARS NOW AND PULL THE STRINGS OF SOCIETY!'

what are we doing?

I'm gonna make up the plot to a movie really fast. in one thought. ready go

 ok so the movie is called Team Match.

At the start we meet a guy and everyone hates him and he's not good at anything and he has one friend but that friend doesn't even like him that much. Then we find out the the--there is a team and they need one more member to compete in the team match against the other team--the bad team--the bad team that always wins. There's going to be a match and the teams face each other. And so the small team they have a tryout and everyone is bad but the start guy gets lucky somehow and he's the best and so he gets put on the team but the team doesn't like him still and his one friend doesn't get put on the team and is resentful about it so their friendship is ruined. But then! So, later the team is having team practice and one of the bad team guys comes to the practice and he's mean to the good team and the guy like stands up for his teammate and gets magic lucky again and does a cool move that makes the bad guy leave and that makes the good team like the guy a little more. And the guy learns that he is lucky and that people like him when he's lucky so he has to do more of that. And so in the lead up to the big team match the good team uses the power of the start guy being lucky to beat other teams that we don't even care about and it comes down to the big team match against the bad team and the good team and OH look out! the friend from before has now made his way onto the bad team because he used the hate in his heart to grow knives for hands basically and he's knife hands now which is a huge threat. And so the guy before the game is like 'we can't face this team they have a guy who is my ex-friend and now he has knives for hands this is a serious concern. we could really get hurt. this isn't an ordinary team match like we were promised and on top of all that he really doesn't like me so he's gonna want to knife me first.' 

And the ref is like 'man I don't dang know just play the ding dang match or something.' And so they do but everybody just gives knife hands a super wide berth and knife hands at first he likes that he's winning but then even his own team is scared of him and it's ridiculous and he's like 'guys this is ridiculous you think I'm actually going to cut people open in a team match with my knives for hands? you really think I would do that?! these aren't even real knives!' And then he takes off the little covers he had and they were just fake knives he had over his real hands. And the ref is like 'that guy just had fake knives over his real hands! They were just lies he was wearing!' And the other team is like 'Oh man we get fooled and now we're way behind in the score!' So they have to rally and try really hard to win the match and the start guy gets lucky but not quite enough and they lose but then the guy is like 'Hey man! you gotta take some of their scores away because we all thought he really had knives for hands.' And the ref says, 'yeah you're right. minus points for their team because you can't pretend to have knives for hands so that nobody will get near you but then get frustrated that you're unlovable and take off the knives to go back to having hands. that's not allowed.' And so they win by technicality.

the end

did you know that brandy (you're a fine girl) and king harvest's dancing in the moonlight were both released in 1972?

 you know what else was released in 1972?

American Pie. banger.

Lean On Me. banger.

Rocket Man. banger.

I Gotcha by Joe Tex (featured in a Dr. Pepper commercial during my childhood.) banger

Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress. banger.

Garden Party. banger.

Bang a Gong  (Get it On). banger.

Use Me. banger.

Roundabout. banger.

I Can See Clearly Now. banger.

No but the reason Brandy is a good song is because the guy says

brandy

you're a fine girl (you're a fine girl)

what a good wife you would be (such a fine girl)

but my wife my love and my lady is the sea

doo-doo doo doo dodod doodood doooddo 

Not enough songs out there about meeting the love of your life but then giving yourself to the SEA. The sailing life. Tons of songs, and endless parade of songs about how romantic love is the be-all end-all of life. Only Brandy by the Looking Glass was brave enough to say that the life of a sailor is even greater than that. 

me explaining anime movies that YouTube recommends to me

 first up we got Fight! Iczer-1

So let me tell you what this is all about. There's these aliens, right? And they all look like women but the really bad one sounds like a man and they refer to him as a 'he'. And they're trying to conquer Earth for some reason. They think it will be easy because the earthlings are weak but then they realize that a rogue member of their kind named Iczer-1 is on Earth and she's stopping their invading forces. Iczer-1 looks like a futuristic David Bowie-esque intergalactic pop idol. She's got a light saber type thing and she can shoot bolts of yellow energy out of herself. She can also teleport and is generally a one-woman-army.

Then we go to Earth and meet this girl named Nagisa and she's a normal girl that goes to school and stuff but then strange things start happening where these horrible grotesque alien monsters start bursting out of her classmates and eventually her parents. What we learn is that the aliens want to get Nagisa because she is the only person who can 'synchronize' with Iczer-1 and what that means is they pilot a giant robot together called Iczer-Robo. But none of that has happened yet. Nagisa's parents get taken over by the horrible alien monsters and Iczer-1 appears and kills them but then Nagisa freaks out because Iczer-1 has just killed her parents essentially. Nagisa hates Iczer-1. This is horrible news because Iczer-1 loves Nagisa and that's the only reason they can pilot the giant robot together. 

It's unclear if Iczer-1 loves Nagisa because they can synchronize or if it's the other way around. Anyway Nagisa wants nothing to do with any of this but then a full-blown invasion happens in the city and this lady alien we met at the beginning named Cobalt is leading the charge in her own giant robot. And so things are going very poorly for our fair Earth dwellers. Iczer-1 has no time to woo and court Nagisa so she summons the Iczer-Robo and forces Nagisa inside. But then they're getting pulverized and everything is coming up doo-doo when Iczer-1 reminds Nagisa that her parents are dead and that these alien types want to make everyone as dead as her parents. Somehow this clicks for Nagisa even though it just happened this afternoon, this has all taken place in a day so I don't know why she needs to be reminded what the stakes are but in her defense she's been through a lot so maybe I'm being overly critical but Nagisa snaps out of it and her hate combined with Iczer-1's love creates a powerful force that obliterates Cobalt's robot. The Earth is saved for now.

This is the end of part one of a three part series. But for now I think it's enough to consider why the writers thought it would be a good idea to make Nagisa so resistant and angry towards Iczer-1. When everything starts going down she just starts throwing a tantrum but not even in like a, I'm in shock, I'm losing my mind kind of way. She just gets really irritable and grouchy. Iczer-1 has to drag her into the robot and again she's just angry the way a 5 year old would be angry they have to get in the car to go to the cry store that makes you cry. There are lots of reasons a hero could be reluctant in this situation and that would make us sympathetic to the character. Alternatively, it could be fun if Nagisa was like, 'this is awesome'. Shoot, if an alien girl said she loved me and we had to pilot a giant robot together--shooooot. Also, unless I missed it, we don't know why Iczer-1 has defected from her people and wants to save Earth. She just fights stuff. Which is kinda cool. I don't hate that choice to not tell us.

The story has parallels to 2 of my favorite shows, FLCL and Neon Genesis Evangelion. FLCL also features a strange alien girl who falls in love with a human and uses them to further their alien schemes. NGE's main character is a boy who absolutely does not want to pilot a giant robot to fight aliens that threaten to destroy the Earth. Those series came out in 2000 and 1995 respectively while Iczer-1 came out in 1985 so maybe Iczer-1 provided some inspiration and those later shows fleshed-out the characters more and added their own style and humanity to it.

I don't know if that was anything but I wrote it and maybe you read it.

Mr. Bear

Imagine the silliness of addressing a bear, the forest's very own resident mayor, as a Mister. Absurd. Hard to fathom.

But did you know that mister is derived from master which used to be the term applied to boys who were not old enough to be considered mister. Imagine what our bear friend would think of this. He would roar and roar with rage until the water left the river and the trees shook themselves to their bones.

The word master comes from the magister which is latin for teacher or master.

Within magister is the root magis which has TWO etymologies. A fine day for the bear indeed. One hive and double the honey.

The Latin meaning of magis means 'more' or 'greater' while the Greek comes from magos which means 'magician' or 'wise man'.

And now we see our Mr. Bear bumbling his way through the woods. Looking for trash cans to overturn and trampolines to ruin. We know that he carries on a rich tradition of words--words that exist entirely outside of his realm of awareness. Godspeed Mr. Bear.

I was in the same dorm as car seat headrest

 recently I discovered that 13 years ago I was in the same dorm building as the guy known as the band Car Seat Headrest and this is a wonderful thing and I will tell you why. 

People say 'if you think you won't achieve something, you're right. If you think you will achieve something, you're right."

And this demonstrates the power of setting intentions and belief. But in the example of Car Seat Headrest, if I believed I would never meet Car Seat Headrest in real life I would be profoundly mistaken for I had already met him. In fact, I believe I once talked to him about the overflowing toilet and the ground floor near his room. And so I am free from the prison of my own beliefs. The world is far more vast and complex than we can possibly account for and Car Seat Headrest could be lurking behind any corner, even the ones of our past. 

And so I present to you a kind of agnostic optimism, the inverse of Thomas Hardy's poem Hap. 

update on sending all the moonboard benchmark v4s

did we send all the v4's in September?

NO!

But there are only TEN left. Which is less than the starting total of *checks notes* 28 or so.

The plan is to keep on keeping on. This week I sent 3 climbs that I was really happy to check off. There are at least two more that I feel close on that I can probably finish next week.

I think unless I hit a wall where I'm truly stuck and can't make even the slightest bit of progress then I will continue.

Today I did some good self-talk and practiced trying really hard. As I kid I probably did more self-talk than a lot of kids and maybe that's why I've never stopped trying at athletic pursuits. It's just self-talk.

it's October and that means it's spooky time

 My contribution to the field of spookiness for this year is this:

The first thing that people think of when they think of spooky is of course skeletons. But what if other systems of the human body were also animated.

Take the nervous system out of a body and call that a Nerveton.

Take the lymphatic system out of the body and call that a Lympheton.

Blood? Hemeton.

What else? Muscles. Call that a Buffeton.

Skin? Skineton.

I think there's potential and I think that would be really spooky.

today I got a really heartfelt thank you and appreciation on my way into coaching and it was when I really needed one and helped me a lot

thanks craig