response to crab's response to my reaction to playing a video game again

 Go read his response first or don't and just read this and try to fill in the gaps yourself. Was going to comment this and then figured it deserved a post.

Very good points and I really appreciate your response. This was a raw first impression and after a couple days my attitude has definitely shifted a bit. I agree that it is good to have things to look forward to. In hindsight, my reaction feels like a bit much but it really did hit me hard in the moment. And I think you're very much correct that that feeling is a special thing. I suppose I was skeptical of it because it felt so overwhelming. Happy to report that my life has not fallen apart even as I continue playing the game. Some other observations

- I have this feeling between my eyes somewhere and I think I'm staring at the screen too intently so that's probably something to watch out for.

-One vivid memory I have from my early childhood, especially between like 8 and 12 or so, was having this really intense inner monologue and imagination. I feel like I spent a lot of free time just being outside and watching my thoughts play like a movie or a show. I also remember getting older and feeling like I lost that and it's something I miss. I'll try sometimes and it just doesn't happen. Anyway, I feel like something about the game has turned that part of my brain on again. Maybe it's the dopamine. It's not like a craving to play the game and it's kind of nebulous but something is activated that wasn't before and it's not a bad thing.

One thing I've learned is that I really value being regulated and I think that's good but it also limits the kinds of experiences I have and seek out.

today I saw a blue chair

 hello everyone. thank you for coming to my reading. I will be reading the piece I have written. The title of the piece is "today I saw a blue chair". 

today I saw a blue chair. It was out by the trash cans. The cushions were in the cans last night and they were taken away. The chair was left. It was a blue lowrider armchair. Just like a regular armchair but on the ground. I decided to take it into my apartment to see if I could find room for it and purchase replacement cushions after the fact. Unfortunately, I do not have the floor space. I took it back outside where it sits to this very day. I hope you all learned a valuable lesson. Sometimes someone will try to get rid of you and they will fail. And then someone else will come along and try to take you in and they will fail as well. I guess nothing can be done. Thank you.

also I'm a bus driver now!

 

batomon showdown: a reminder of who I was once and apparently still am

 About 10 years or so ago I remember telling people things like "Yeah I don't play video games anymore. I have an addictive personality and they end up taking up too much of my life." And that was true. And I lived my life knowing that was true and avoiding things that would lead to that cycle.

Flash forward 10 years later to the present day and I discovered this little game called Batomon Showdown and it was like this pit in my psyche that I knew so well and took care to avoid went unnoticed for so long that leaf debris and clutter had formed a thin covering over the top. And then, brother, I fell in that pit hard. This cute little pixelated skinner box had my dopamine system going crazy. I know what it's doing to. I know exactly how it's pulling me in and keeping me there and I don't even care in the moment. 

Maybe it's not like this for everyone but when I'm hooked on a game like this it drastically changes how I function. I stayed up late. If I'm not playing it, I'm thinking about playing it. I feel like large stretches of time pass while I'm playing. It makes me worry about young people. It's too strong. I get why it feels like certain kids aren't really present. And this game is like, tame compared to other things. But after I stop playing, my mind is still thinking about the game.

I'm not saying video games are bad. Who even cares. But Skinner Boxes are bad. 

me playing video games on the computer

I relearned something about how I'm wired this weekend.

biggest horse ever

 I don't like to delve too deeply into philosophical questions but sometimes you just have to wonder in spite of yourself,

do you think the biggest horse ever wishes it was bigger?

update on the parking lot pumpkin

 it got stoled!

it got nabbered!

ransacked!

disappeared!

Perhaps an enterprising raccoon purloined it and will fashion it into a motor vehicle--not unlike a worm driving an apple car.

shoutout Richard Scarry

Once I read that if you don't have a job that can be drawn by Richard Scarry you don't have a real job. I think my job counts.I do just kind of exist in a group in a very specialized fashion but I think it counts. I wear a green t-shirt every day at least. It has a uniform.

sample of the write-up for the climbing league I run

 The teams have separated themselves into three brackets that I will go over without revealing scores or placings. Teams are listed in alphabetical order in their respective groups.

THE PODIUM CONTENDERS! 

Not Too Shabby Slabby Crabs- No one should be surprised to see that the Funny Animal Name Team is once again vying for a podium spot. Obviously they’d like to get second. Last night it seemed like my sister Erin, for the second week in a row, was going to run out of time to finish a green V4 before Rocky Top closed but she mustered the will (mustard the Will?)--she MUSTERED THE WILL to top it out with the support of her crustaceous teammates. They’re having fun. They’re sending hard. It’s what League is all about.

Melissa & the Danimals- No one should be surprised that a team of Rocky Top employees is once again vying for a podium spot. They work here. It’s like it’s their job or something. Climbing League is first and foremost about the people BUT it’s also about establishing and reinforcing power structures. Remember, kids: The House Always Wins.

MidLife Cruxes- No one should be surprised that the reigning champions of Climbing League are once again vying for a podium spot. A key element to the success of the MidLife Cruxes is strategy. Captain Mike isn’t just trying out climbs willy-nilly and hoping for the best. No. He’s gathering intel. He’s surveying the scene. He’s relaying information and beta to his fellow Cruxes. Climbing League isn’t a game of checkers. It’s that other scary game where all the pieces do different things and they get mad if you call the horse a horse and the castle a castle. The MidLife Cruxes are thinking two moves ahead and that’s what Climbing League is all about.

Papa’s Climberia: Set Fire to the Seventh Plate- The Sequel: ENDGAME- No one should be surprised that the team with the longest name in all the land is once again vying for a podium spot. You should see this team when the chips are down and it’s time to lay it all on the line. They’re fiery and gritty. More than any other team they’re willing to power up and eat an inordinate amount of red meat to fuel themselves to victory. The Papas have Passion and that’s what Climbing League is all about.

Plate Lickers- No one should be surprised that a team as strong as the Plate Lickers are once again vying for a podium spot. Last night, during Shadow Council time, a member of the Plate Lickers came to me and said, “I’ve done the hardest climbs available to me on these sets and some of them are below my base grade.” And maybe some sort of Strawman League Commissioner would have said, “Too bad! That’s what you get for being strong!” But not me. I don’t think you should be penalized if there just aren’t enough climbs available to you. I said four weeks ago that I’d make deals to those who offered them. And that’s what League is all about.

The Space Dolphins- You should be surprised that the Space Dolphins are vying for a podium spot. I mean, they came out of nowhere. They could rival the debut season of PBR. A dark horse from nowhere that stuns the field?? That’s what Climbing League is all about.

thoughts of the rainy first day of fall

 in a Werner Herzog mode

The rain that fell today was like a punishment. The sky knows that we have basked in the light for too long. Bow your heads. It is time to begin the return to the Earth. The time of dying. I live surrounded by a parking lot. Crumbling patches of tar that keep the rain from the ground and shunt it to sewage. Even still, on my walk I saw weeds and happy small plants bursting through the edges of buildings. Life is irrepressible. A man will come with fire and poison to kill these plants. Perhaps the property managers fear that if we don't kill all the plants the people will forget we don't actually live in this hell they've made. Can you imagine a land of eternal damnation where devils and demons run around constantly trying to stomp out the paradise they've built over that keeps finding ways to break through?

It is a comedy. It is my favorite comedy. The comedy of two people who openly hate each other and yet are bound by some force to continue to interact. It is unthinkable to not engage. Jerry and Newman from Seinfeld. Or, from my own life, growing up we had a toy called Bop It Extreme where a man would scream directions threw a poor quality speaker and after a period of neglect he would loudly declare, "I'M GOING TO SLEEP" and I will never forget the time that he yelled this and my mother replied, "yes bop-it go to sleep!"

update on parking lot pumpkin

 

I've never in my life called someone an infidel and meant it but if a person really did rip this pumpkin vine out of the bush it was growing in, straight infidel.

The Time of Cowboys: A Brief Amateur History of the American Wild West

Sometime vaguely in the 19th century after Lewis and Clark hitchhiked their way across the 'Land Pond' as they say in jolly ol' England, America decided that it was so bursting with flavor that it needed to take over the world. To this end, the geniuses in Marketing invented the Cowboy. 

Here was a rough and tumble sack of trouble with scruff and brawn that would tame the vast plains and prairies in spite of people already living there in a thriving ecosystem.

Yes, the cowboy. A man with the freedom to die for anything and by anything. Shooting his gun. Pew Pew. Get the bad guy and then I'm your huckleberry. His powers were many. Horse, gun, hat, lasso, spurs, bandanna, The West Texas Town of El Paso, and the Town of Agua Fria. But like any good historian, we must ask the question: "what puts the cow in cowboy?"

The cow in cowboy comes from the cows. If you can believe it, cows can't just be fine on their own. You've gotta get a feller on his horse to run around and say "HYAH!" and "GET ALONG" and just run em around and kick up a big cloud of dust. It soothes them so. Probably makes the meat taste better too I guess. Cowboys don't work with dairy cows. That's the for softies up in New England. Western cowboys are only interested in thick slabs of beef and making a bunch of cattle stand in a space as if to say, "Yep. That's mine right there. You stay where you are, Kemosabe."

But between running the cows around, the cowboys would also have to sneak around and have adventures and keep their rodeo counts up. Cowboys hated having a low rodeo count so much that they popularized the phrase, "it's not my first rodeo". But really, rodeos were just to hang out with clowns. The whole endeavor was quickly discovered to be ridiculous but by then they were all too invested and embarrassed so they kept doing it for decades until the resale value on their britches and boots went up enough.

At its core, the only profitable venture for Cowboys was the Pony Express. They successfully delivered all of America's mail until the invention of email. Only the fastest horses could compete with the speeds of early Internet connections. Sadly, horses could not get any faster because Henry Ford invented the Model T which put a stop to making horses faster despite all automobiles depending on their power. 

Today all cowboys have moved on to crypto. Many are calling it the Wild West of the World Wibe Western Web. or WWWWW for short. People said 'wub wub wub wub wub' so much that it invented the genre of dubstep which later evolved into its perfect evolution: grime step. 

a million dollars John, I told you, a million dollars, John!

However, even the internet has made everything bad, an unlikely corner of society has continued on the tradition of the bond between horse and human: horse girls. This powerful faction has taken up the mantle and may one day complete the promise of cowboys by creating functional Centaurs that live in the magic wood and give advice to destined teenagers and single mothers who have lost their way.

Dang I keep forgetting to check when my car inspection is due. I think it's this month but maybe it's October. 

Oh nice it is October.

I hope you learned a lot. Be sure to read Crab's revisionist history of the Cowboys in the comments. He'll probably go in on my careless omission of the Dallas Cowboys. Try to claim that everything we know about Cowboys is just lore made up by the football team. It's like that scene in Goodwill Hunting. You know the one.

Coaching Assessment for the Week

 Overall: Pretty Good

Highlights:

-good programming for the competition team. Came up with a good power endurance workout. Ran 2 good end-of-practice workout. Supported the kids well. 

-did a fun icebreaker activity with the training team. good one-on-one interactions.

-confronted a club kid who was teasing some of the other kids. handled it well

-did a good job being flexible with different club groups and changing the schedule to keep them engaged

Improvements:

-woke up feeling low energy today. had some trouble feeling "on" at practice. If I want to be a great coach I should aim to be more inspired at practice and have something important to share. It wasn't a failure of a day but I didn't find my own programming that fun for club. Feels like I'm still trying to get a handle on a lot of the club groups.

-With the Training Team and Comp Team it feels like I can give more and there's more back-and-forth. Largely because they're older and I've known them for longer and they can do more with their climbing but I really want to make Club as good as possible. They're the future.

-I felt like I had a good streak of fun club practices going and this one was a little below the mark so I'll use that as motivation to make something good for next week.

this fella's name is little exertion

 

Little Exertion is a lion type creature. He's got one good eye and the other is an X. He's got a circular mouth with teeth all the way around it like a certain type of worm or leech. His stats are pretty okay. I don't know what they go to but the 7 seems good, right?

Little Exertion's power is Bite and Being Raspy. They normally roam around in packs. It's unclear if all of his kind are missing an eye or if that's unique to Little Exertion. 

 On the one hand,

to look up at the night sky and wonder...

whoa

wait.

I just looked out the window as I was writing this and the moon is like blood red. This is crazy. Like a deep orange-red waxing crescent.

Now I'm scared.

I was gonna talk about how I think it's a little bit beautiful and a little bit dumb to wonder about life on other planets but then I looked at the moon and got spooked.

I don't think I've ever seen the Moon look like that.

Update: I stood up to get a better look and it turns out the specific window I was looking out has like an insulation leak so it's all foggy and cloudy like and that was making the Moon look red. Out of my good window it's just like a regular yellow moon.

Anyway thank you for going on this journey with me. I hope you got as much out of it as I did. 

here's the sequence

if you can be anything, be the best

if you can't be the best, be tragic

if you can't be tragic, be the change

if you can't be the change, be righteous

if you can't be righteous, be kind

if you can't be kind, be the fool

if you can't be the fool, be quiet

if you can't be quiet, be sincere

if you can't be sincere, be interesting

if you can't be interesting, be aware

if you can't be aware, hope someone comes from you

being of two minds. a continuation of my series thinking about numbers

 Human people sometimes say "I'm of two minds about such and such."

To which I say, why not more?

Why not be of three, fourteen, eighty-one minds about the matter. The more minds the better. 

the more mind cooks in the mind kitchen the deeper the borscht

The type of indecision I can't stand is when someone is trying to choose between two options that will both result in good outcomes and yet the person can't decide because accepting one good outcome means giving up the other.

Greed. Absolute biblical greed.

That you would have one fist clenched around fine spaghetti and the other chocolate eclairs and bemoan your fate for to shove one down your gullet is to deprive your maw of the other.

I'm of two minds about it.

Well then let the minds fight and to the victor go the spoils. Surely the minds are not equal.

I can't decide.

Then you lack will. That's all it is. It's nothing to draw attention to. It's not a topic of conversation. Oh my hands are like plastic grocery bags and everything I try to pick up and hold falls to the ground.

Do you have hands? Then use them. If you don't have hands then grow some hands.

In short, be decisive or be colossally indecisive. A towering monument of air.

 

what're you doin'? watchin' football?

 This is a thing we say in my parent's house and my sister and I say it to each other as well. The proper response to 'what're you doin? watchin football' is, "yep. watchin' football.' regardless of whether or not you're watching football. In fact, the answer is more correct if you aren't watching football. 

The way I remember this call and response coming about was one day I was sitting on the couch where my dad watches TV and he came into the room and saw what was on the TV which was clearly not football and asked, "what're you doing? watchin' football?" and I went along with it and said I was watching football. 

I think there's meaning in the ritual. Maybe there doesn't need to be. Maybe the silliness of it is enough. But one possible meaning is that "watchin' football" refers more to the general state one is in when watching football. That is to say, just sitting there staying at the screen. It's bit like the exchange of "how's it going" and "good". You aren't actually asking how someone is doing. And you aren't actually telling them how you're doing. It's an acknowledgment of someone else's presence and your recognition of them. It's letting both people know that you are both safe people who are abiding by the rules. That's a little bit at play in "what're you doin? watchin' football?"

Another element. And at the risk of reading too much into it. Is that my dad and I have pretty different tastes. I know a little bit about football and I've followed it off-and-on but I've never really been into it. Or into cars. Or other sports like UFC. It would be too far to say that my dad and I don't have any shared interests. There's definitely things we both like. But maybe, and maybe just for the sake of writing something interesting, maybe "what're you doing? watching football? yep. watching football" is a kind of way of bridging the gap. It's saying "what're you doing son of mine? the things I imagined my son might be doing?" even though he knows I'm not doing those things at all. And me saying, "yes Father. I am meeting your expectations." And the joke is we both know it's not true and we don't even laugh at it but we absolve ourselves of these expectations.

I don't know. It's mostly a goof.

I try to learn from the grass on the ground

 I try to understand the things it shows.

ah dang I'm just doing Walt Whitman again. I thought I had an original thought started but it's just Song of Myself.

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars,

And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of the wren,

And the tree-toad is a chef-d’œuvre for the highest,

And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven,

And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery,

And the cow crunching with depress’d head surpasses any statue,

And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels.

one thing I did when I was sick

was take an x-acto knife and scrape out all the grime around my keyboard keys. 

it was really satisfying

kind of my new favorite hobby actually

gently scraping away gunk and grime 

would recommend

my parking lot pumpkin

 

god bless ye parking lot pumpkin

 Let me say up top, the Earth is round. It's definitely not flat. It's round.

Now let me say--I think most people (or at least me) would be better off with an imagined antiquated sense of geography. 

I'm open to the idea that some people love to look at a map of the whole world or a globe and know that it's all there and accurate and except for tiny little remote pockets we've basically got it all in satellite images. Maybe to them it fills them with wonder and helps them to imagine what it would be like to go there.

Not me. You know this. I'm a dweller. I want an accurate map of the town I live in and then some extensions for the interstates and highways I know how to navigate. And then 'The Far Lands'. These are places I've maybe been to once or twice or know I could get to if I had to. I know for sure there's at least one ocean. Put a big serpent in the middle of it. Then a lot of 'Great Beyond'. 

I'm not saying I want to be willfully ignorant. It's important that we have this information. I'm just saying scale matters. 

I look at a map of the whole world, that's too much information. I don't live there. I know I do technically but the human animal part of me doesn't live there. 

I AIN'T NEVER GOING TO THE MALDIVES!

But! I did find this map of the place I live and it's not perfect but I feel like it's a good example of what I'm kind of getting at

This tells me something the human part of me wants to know.  This person's humor and viewpoint is kinda 'meh' but this does something for me that like 'maps for navigation' doesn't do. 

here's something that I feel needs addressing

 1- sounds the same as 'won'. perfect. 

2- sounds the same as 'too' and 'to'. awesome. surely the next number will feature even more homophones!

3- is its own unique word?! maybe equates to 'free' or 'tree' given the accent? ok fine. I guess we aren't doing number homophones anymore. 

4- 'for' AND 'fore'. 

And then NONE of the other numbers mean anything else. 

just kidding!

8 and ate!

I don't like homophones. We should do something about it. There's no reason for wildly different meanings to be mapped to the same sounds. It's not like we ran out. Make em different. Surely we can unite in this effort.

Some are okay. Some can stay. Like the word 'can'. But not 'some' and 'sum'. Or 'but' and 'butt'. Or 'not' and 'knot'. Or 'or' and 'oar'

you gotta spend money to eat money

 phrase for grocery store

it's only fun when I do it

 I really like the phrase 'blasted plain'.

Which is me misremembering the line 'blasted heath' from Macbeth.

So I typed 'blasted plain shakespeare' into Google and the AI correctly identified that the phrase blasted heath occurs in Macbeth BUT THEN

it completely hallucinated a line containing 'blasted plain' in John Milton's Paradise Lost. It just mashed together a bunch of different lines from Paradise Lost and then made its own to seem right.

And I feel like now is the time that something has to be done about this.

As an English Major, if someone misremembers a line from Shakespeare and types in 'blasted plain shakespeare' and they are handed an utterly fabricated section of Milton's Paradise Lost, the very underpinnings of society are in jeopardy!

now I've seen just how bad things can get

it sickens and horrifies me

how could we let this happen

it's only fun when I misremembering lines from classic literature and make up things about them that aren't true. THAT'S WHAT HUMANS ARE FOR! THAT'S WHAT MY COLLEGE EDUCATION WAS ALL ABOUT! 

stand down robots

what was the other stuff that rises in the sun also rises?

 bread?

breadcatcher

 a reimagining of Catcher in the Rye by someone who read it once 12 years ago. Holding Cauliflower escapes from his wretched boarding school and is pursued by the relentless breadcatcher. Holding seeks to destabilize the portal between the human world and the duck world by using a mind control technique wherein he labels someone a 'phony' and they must do his bidding. The closer the breadcatcher gets to Holding the more he realizes that he is only being drawn further and further into the web of Holding's mindless drones. 

Edited poem from 12 years ago today

 It was the most awful ship

to ever set sail.

A butt for a leg

and a head for a tail.

Waves crashed and churned,

sick of the nonsense.

The Ocean rebuked 

a boat with a conscience.

Made all wrong. Made all wrong.

but set out regardless.

A prow for a mast-

how could you be so heartless?

And then Heartless from 808's & Heartbreak plays and this kind of sloppily crafted multi-person costume of crudely formed cardboard emerges from the stage as the lights go down and the stage is bathed in red light and I throw Dixie cups of water from a table I've wheeled out from the other end of the stage at the boat-beast as it blindly thrashes about.

the opposite of sparkling is DARKLING

 now tell me that's not the silliest thing you've heard all day

I wrote this 10 years ago (some edits)

A small bedroom with a large window on the eastern wall. The view of the moon is partially obscured by the limbs of red cedar trees. Two twin beds with matching blue and white striped sheets are in the center of the room. A nightstand with a lamp sits between the beds. The lamp is on. McMurtry is underneath the covers of the bed on the left, farthest from the door. He is wearing button-down pajamas with blue and white stripes. The same blue and white stripes as the bed sheets. He also has a blue and white striped stocking cap. He yawns deeply. Kimbrough enters the room and approaches McMurtry's bed wearing identical pajamas and stocking cap. Kimbrough places his hand on McMurtry's forehead to pull back the stocking cap enough to place a tender kiss on McMurtry's forehead.

Kimbrough: Goodnight, McMurtry.

McMurtry: Goodnight, Kimbrough.

Kimbrough tucks in the sheets and blankets around McMurtry. Kimbrough climbs into his own bed and turns off the lamp. After several seconds of darkness, McMurtry turns on the lamp and approaches Kimbrough's bed. He repeats the exact same routine that Kimbrough has just performed. Kiss on the forehead, tuck in the covers, turn off the lamp.

McMurtry: Goodnight, Kimbrough.

Kimbrough: Goodnight, McMurtry.

McMurtry flops onto his own bed, on top of the covers. He writhes on his back in discomfort before peeling off the top of his button down pajamas to reveal his stained undershirt. He tosses the pajama shirt on top the lamp and snores loudly.

After several seconds, Kimbrough exits his bed and places yet another kiss on McMurtry's forehead.

Kimbrough: Goodnight, McMurtry.

McMurtry snores.

Kimbrough flops face down onto his own bed and tears off his pajama shirt. His undershirt is similarly stained. His sheets and blankets are in utter disarray and halfway on the floor. Kimbrough, eyes closed and muttering incomprehensibly, wraps the shirt around his fist and smashes the lamp. It falls to the ground and shatters.

***********************************************

This is pretty good! I was reading it and I was like 'this ain't bad!' I don't know. I like it. 

 One thing that's been really gratifying in this new year of coaching is that all of the kids who started last year and are returning this year have made huge improvements. They move with so much more confidence on the wall and it's highlighted by the kids who are just starting out. It's not just in climbing but also in the movement work we do on the mats with jumping and running too. 

It's surprising (or maybe not surprising at all) how kids who are not comfortable on the wall are also not comfortable doing things like jumping over mats. Moving their body around in space in novel ways. I know there are people, and even other kids, who look at bear crawls and shuttle runs and hurdling over mats as like 'oh that's a fun thing to do for the little kids' or even 'this is embarrassing/just filling time' but I believe 100% that if a kid/person isn't comfortable doing basic athletic movements like running and jumping on flat ground, it's a little crazy to even ask them to climb at all. I think a common mistake adults make is not understanding where kids actually are (physically, emotionally, mentally, etc). Some things look really simple and trivial but are clearly a challenge for some kids and if they don't develop there first, they won't progress in other areas. 

Some examples:

-hopping on one foot three to four times over some low boundaries (some kids have to work really hard to not switch to their other foot)

-shuttle run. kids have to run back and forth while picking up and/or dropping bean bags (kids have to retain a series of instructions while managing moving as fast as possible and starting and stopping and changing directions)

-jumping over a ~2ft tall mat/hurdle from a crouch position (anything that makes a kid stop and calculate what they're about to do is gold in my book. if you have to download a new set of instructions for your body and then execute that move while being unsure of the outcome--that's climbing. that's the essence of climbing)

I was a not-very-good coach for like my first 3 years but I think existing in that chaos taught me what things actually matter and the structure that I've developed is to address those needs. 

I don't think Liberty Mutual wants to sell you car insurance

there's no way.

there's just no way.

there's no possible way they want to sell you car insurance that badly. 

what they want to do

is interrupt my going-to-sleep youtube video so I have to turn the screen back on and hit 'skip'

and I will never forgive them for that

there's no way

tryna go fast

 

asking the right questions

 What would it look like if I really tried to be great at coaching?

so I'll remove the cause by not the symptom

I've been thinking a lot about Tim Curry and today I looked up how old he was when he did the film version of Rocky Horror Picture show and he was like 29. 

I was watching 'Sweet Transvestite' and his presence is incredible. For my money, if aliens or dinosaurs or robots came to me and asked, 'what's the point of film?', I would say, "the point of film was to render Tim Curry's performance of Sweet Transvestite in Rocky Horror Picture Show.' We did it. We won.

That's the big problem. We don't say, 'We did it. We won.' enough. Brennan Lee Mulligan has the Oreo CEO video that says it better than I can but so many things have already succeeded to the highest degree that they can. And yet we keep going. We went to the Moon. We filmed Tim Curry. We wrote Shakespeare. We recorded What a Fool Believes. We invented the grapefruit. We won. 

You can't strive when you've already won. You have to do something else?

What's that, you ask?

Oh I don't know how about dwell?

That's right. You had no idea it's another dwell propaganda post. Dwelling will save us. 

this is one of my favorite written pieces of all time

 BALK RULES! IMPORTANT!

1. You can't just be up there and just doin' a balk like that.

1a. A balk is when you

1b. Okay well listen. A balk is when you balk the

1c. Let me start over

1c-a. The pitcher is not allowed to do a motion to the, uh, batter, that prohibits the batter from doing, you know, just trying to hit the ball. You can't do that.

1c-b. Once the pitcher is in the stretch, he can't be over here and say to the runner, like, "I'm gonna get ya! I'm gonna tag you out! You better watch your butt!" and then just be like he didn't even do that.

1c-b(1). Like, if you're about to pitch and then don't pitch, you have to still pitch. You cannot not pitch. Does that make any sense?

1c-b(2). You gotta be, throwing motion of the ball, and then, until you just throw it.

1c-b(2)-a. Okay, well, you can have the ball up here, like this, but then there's the balk you gotta think about.

1c-b(2)-b. Fairuza Balk hasn't been in any movies in forever. I hope she wasn't typecast as that racist lady in American History X.

1c-b(2)-b(i). Oh wait, she was in The Waterboy too! That would be even worse.

1c-b(2)-b(ii). "get in mah bellah" -- Adam Water, "The Waterboy." Haha, classic...

1c-b(3). Okay seriously though. A balk is when the pitcher makes a movement that, as determined by, when you do a move involving the baseball and field of

2. Do not do a balk please.

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

I can't read it out loud without laughing every three words. It's delightful.

don't give in to false choices

in this world you're either binkus or bonkus

dinkus or donkus

crissing the cross or crossing the criss

no

any dichotomy is itself a trap to bound your experience between two lame poles

you're either a skeleton warrior or a skeleton poet

no

skeleton warrior poet cartographer lover friend confidant disgraced administrator

good first day of coaching club

 I've grown a lot as a climbing coach and I'm still growing and I'm proud of myself for that

do you think 12 atoms is enough?

 will that be enough?

should I bring more?

hepatopancreas

 arthropods and mollusks have a digestive organ called a hepatopancreas that functions as both a liver and a pancreas

hepato- comes from the ancient Greek word for liver 'hepar'

sos basically the crabs have a liver-pancreas

pancreas is a combination of the Greek words 'pan' meaning 'all' and 'kreas' meaning 'flesh' or 'meat'

if you go far back enough in the etymology of the word liver you get to the proto-germanic word for 'to be slimy or sticky'

and that's why isopods store heavy metals in their 'slimy all meat' pouch

Probably most people have a memory from childhood where an adult or someone older than you had a treat or something they were going to hand out to the group and upon learning of this event all the kids present started to clamor "Me! Me! Me! Me first! Me first!" And then, as a way of incentivizing desired behavior the adult would go, "I'm starting with So-And-So because they're waiting quietly."

And all the kids would get quiet and adopt the appearance of waiting patiently. And yeah, I think that is a good lesson. And it's true that if you make too big a show of wanting something you can end up not getting that thing. 

I think it's something that's deeply ingrained in me. At the same time. Sometimes. As an adult you think, "Well, I should just wait patiently." And then another voice says, you are going to die someday and you don't know when that day is and do you want to spend the time you have waiting patiently so you can look back and say well at least I waited patiently for a thing I really wanted and never got.

But! You could maybe argue that that makes the waiting all the bolder. Because you didn't give into that fear or that basic urge of wanting. 

I don't know. What a trip.

another amazing discovery

 I purchased a new car battery today because my car wouldn't start anymore and the sticker on the old battery said 9/18. Which I'm choosing to believe means that battery was purchased in 2018 and I haven't had to replace it until 2026.

That's right. I DOUBLED the life expectancy of a car battery. The average is 3-5 years. I made it EIGHT.

Is it because I'm a good driver? Is it because of all my good deeds? Probably.

updates on the wildlife in the apartment lawn

 we have a rabbit living under the concrete somewhere.

we have some sort of melon/gourd plant growing in the mulch by the parking lot.

this is great news.

if you don't want nature to flourish you have lost the plot.

you ever think something impossible

 Come on out back to the field with me. See the horizon? Where the land meets the sky? It's a place you can see but you can never get to it. 

A lot of things are like that.

And the things you can actually get to, well, you get to them and then you're there. So then you gotta pick something else.

Some stuff, like mountains, you can actually get to if you go far enough. 

You can't get to clouds. But if you get on a plane you can go through a cloud and even that's a little underwhelming if we're being honest. It's just fog.

No but the point is you have to set your sights on something and chances are it's not going to be real and if it is real you'll have to pick something else but that's why you just dwell baby. You realize that you're already sitting where someone else's horizon is. Bada-boom!

bumpus scraw

ringdingling merjerity

burface munion

kerlaptropy wheeznorts

stunbottom mottobnuts

purple eleven

mastle hilarious

cued hegemonicanizer

plafid blurnton

misted lane

obonotched giddididdi

you think anyone's seriously looking into inventing a shrink ray?

 And I know. You're like, "No. That's a bad idea. Why would anyone look into that?"

But, it would be pretty cool. And you miss 100% of the shots you don't take. You're telling me we don't have a single person assigned to Shrink Ray Technology? 

Oh no all the time energy and money's gotta go to surveillance camera and the robot that pretends to have a brain

Would it really hurt anyone to work on the shrink ray?

garden cucumbers and tomatoes are unmatched

 it's like tasting in 3D

It reminds me of the immortal Peggy Hill quote, "If this is food, what have we been eating?"

I'm big into chia seed water right now

 I like the slime.

It's the closest society will let me get to drinking pond water.

The nutritional powerhouse of guzzling frog eggs.

here's a million dollar idea

 big cake.

it's not just a big cake.

it's a crumb. like a single crumb of a cake. but that crumb is the size and weight of a wedding cake. 

suggesting an artifact from an impossibly large cake of a time long forgot not unlike the dinosaurs of yore

Bruce Lee famously feared the man who practiced one punch a thousand times.

Here are some other things Bruce Lee feared.

A big clock with a boxing glove on the end of the second hand and every time it ticks it also punches you.

A bunch of bats flying together in the shape of a fist that punches you.

A special fruit called punch fruit that has edible seeds but the seeds are actually little fists and when you eat them they punch your insides.

A guy with two fists on one arm so every time he punches you he's double punching you.

A bunch of birds flying together in the shape of a fist that punches you.

A bunch of fish swimming together in the shape of a fist that punches you when you're underwater.

His older brother, specifically after his older brother trained a bunch of mosquitoes to fly together in the shape of a fist that punches you and sucks your blood also.

A punch called the dehydration punch that can punch all the water out of you.

An overly large cigarette with a fist on the end of it and when someone smokes it and exhales the smoke it sends out of a bunch of smoke fists that punch you.

A punch car that punches you.

Being held down and punched by a bunch of angry dudes that are good at punching.

Those are the other things Bruce Lee feared that they won't teach you about in school. You can find more stuff like this in my upcoming book.

the invaluable understrapper of the wicked man

 "Picked and prudent sentiments. You are the moderate man, the invaluable understrapper of the wicked man. You, the moderate man, may be used for wrong, but are useless for right."

Herman Melville with some absolute heat

last day of the first season of Rocky Top Summer Camp

 it's small but it's mine

the trick of memory

 the other day I was reminded of the Dolly Sods backpacking trip I led back in 2021. I watched some clips of videos I took and thought, 'wow. that was like the best time of my life. I would give anything to be able to do that again.'

But then! I remembered that I was also like annoyed the whole time. Or, not the whole time. There were a lot of great moments. It was a really special trip. But there were plenty of times where I was annoyed or frustrated. 

But maybe it's not a mean trick that memory plays on you. To only remember what was good and special about it. 

Maybe it's a sign that you should let stuff go more. That all those little things are going to fade away anyway. So why bother getting worked up about it in the first place? 

Hmmm hmmm much to consider

I'll tell you what I did do though that I was rarely annoyed with. WINTER CAMPING. Go find that post from March 15th, 2013. 

I'd run that back in a SECOND.

Trips I'd Run Back (ranked)

-Winter Camping 2013

-Costa Rica 2023

-Dolly Sods 2021

-Florida 2022

-Costa Rica 2020 and Florida 2024

better look for clues

 I try to get the camp bus back at the gym right at 4 so that pick up happens fast and there isn't a lot of sitting around at the end of the day and so I've started this bit called 'looking for clues' where if we're going to get back too early I go to a random parking lot and drive around in circles and tell the kids to "look for clues". 

And then they yell at me, "what are we doing?! are we lost? we need to go to rocky top? why are you doing this?!"

And I go, "I don't know guys there's a lot of mysteries out there. We just gotta look for clues."

And then that kills like 2 minutes at most but it makes me laugh.

I'll tell you what's more fun than social media

 playing hide and sick in the woods and you're lying on the ground behind a log and there's a tiny little window where you can see the seeker perfectly and they can't see you.

that's what social media is trying to be.

except without leaves and dirt and occasional bird noises

 I saw a post today that reminded me of Maw Maw. 

The post said "Likes can never love you like one who does."

I never take for granted that I've got a Maw Maw that loves me.

built a PVC strike zone this weekend

 thanks to shembus for the help

excited to debut it at camp

we were in the woods with camp the other day

 A boy I coach said, "Andy! Come over here and look at this!"

And I went over expecting to see like a cool rock or a frog or a snake or some berries or something and he was pointing down at the ground and my eyes were scanning all around and he said, "Look at the flowers."

And they were the tiniest little pink and purple flowers at the end of these long thin wisps. He said, "they're beautiful."

Dang. Got me in my feels. What a guy.

gonna build a pvc strikezone this weekend

 stay tuned

 yeah so outside is mostly safe. those clouds up there will stay up there. sometimes, very rarely, trees can fall over but that's really unlikely. basically it's safe to be outside. try not to get too much sun. that can be bad. But like mostly it's safe and you don't have to worry about anything.

Oh yeah but sometimes a bolt of light hotter than the Sun will come out of the clouds and explode anything it touches and it makes the loudest noise you've ever heard in your life. 

so watch out for that.

the little crab visits me

 the little crab

but a sad italian boy

he knocks on my door

his face is distraught

tears smeared across his face section

"Andy! Andy! O! It is terrible

I read your blog about grass and whether moving is any good.

I go to streets to hear what the people have to say.

The people

they say nothing.

I ask,

'Do you think moving is any good?'

They look at me like I am crazy.

Yours is a wind that does not blow the leaves upon the trees."

I say

"Now now dear crab.

The wind that blows the leaves upon the trees reeks of bird vomit.

But see the wind that moves the clouds?

Far away. Unknowable. Unfelt.

But moving all the same."

The crab say,

"Oh! Now I understand. Yours is the wind that blows the clouds!"

I say,

"No. No. No not at all. I'm like one of those little fans bus drivers have that just blow on them."

you ever think about what it's like to be grass

 you just stay in one spot all day

with your buds

so much stuff doesn't move around

all I'm saying is

I'm not sold on moving around

it could be a mistake

let's just see how it all plays out

I'm not a gambling man by nature but this was forced on me

by my own parents no less

the 20 rib eyes for $39 truck

 this is true.

from my window, I have seen a large box truck driving around and adorned on its side in massive letters is 20 RIB EYES FOR $39 with pictures of said rib eye steaks.

people love to comment on videos of caves and cavers "this is optional btw"

as if optional things didn't give life purpose

as if a life bereft of optional things is worth living at all

well it sure is awful dangerous

WOE!

Woe unto the man that lives his life out of necessity and safety for he is not a man at all but a worm and an insult to wormkind at that!

I salute you 20 rib eyes for $39 truck

not only for your value

but for your value

the axiom of the universe

because it can it must

because it can it must

one of these days

but never 

two of these days

or

three of these days

or

four of these days

Fermat's Last Theorem states that are no three positive integers x, y, and z that satisfy the equation x^n + y^n = z^n for any integer value of n greater than 2.

In other words, the Pythagorean Theorem, a^2 + b^2 = c^2 doesn't apply to higher exponent numbers. There is no way to make a^3 + b^3 = c^3.

In Goodstein's Only Theorem, there is no number n (greater than 1) that makes the phrase n of these days make sense.

3-5 business days

 I don't like that term. 

Oh it'll take 3 to 5 business days.

It'll take 7 to 10 business days.

Business.

What a wretched enterprise.

No act as deplorable as business should deserve the distinction of its own brand of days.

Say you what you really mean-

NOT WEEKENDS!

It'll arrive in 3 to 5 days NOT WEEKENDS.

Don't count the weekends!

3 to 80 days days not counting weekends.

Oh but business days is more efficient phrasing.

As if I, Shmandy, would be moved by the devil's slippery logic of the tongue.

ha ha

 you guys ever think about the sunset?

where does it go?

the only way

the only way we could ever find out

is if we got a really fast horse

like so fast

the fastest horse

in the world

the whole entire earth fastest horse 

ever

and chased the sun beyond the horizon

then we'd just ask the horse

things I'll remember from today

 hearing the cat-themed parody of Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit, Smells Like Cat Litter

drill a hole in a little rock with a different little rock

we hiked to this waterfall and if you climb up the waterfall there's other pools and things and this boy I was with wanted to keep following the river and find the source and I also feel that same urge to just follow a trail or river and see where it goes

I made up this french character who was visiting American summer camp and the kids didn't like the accent and found it annoying

why is one rat bigger than another rat?

is that fair? is it fair for a rat to be bigger than another rat? how did it get that way? did it eat more rat food? was it more efficient at turning the food it got into more rat? was it some other rat growth factor? is the biggest rat in the world the best rat in the world?

don't worry about these things. they are foolish. what matters is that the rats are friends. instead of thinking about what separates the rats. think about what unites the rats. in this way, the rats can build a house so strong that the cat army cannot destroy it. they bring their cat tanks but it cannot stop the impenetrable walls of friendship fortified by rat ingenuity.

Crab takes a peak in the door to see Andy facing the corner of the room holding things in his hands and talking to himself. Guess he's doing alright. thinks Crab. 

respond to the show ok goodnight

 this song scares me.

it kind of reminds me of Angus the prize winning hog in parts.

In response to the anti-dwelling statements, they seem to suggest that one should go and follow the money instead and pursuing money for the sake of money is clearly an illness.

so, yeah. But it seems like they're doing the thing where they're like 'oh we're what evil people sound like.'

It's a good song.

Another thing I want to say is that this week we have a group that is content to sit and enjoy each other's company and wow does it feel good. It's so nice. like they don't need distractions or mediation to avoid conflict. dang. shoutout chill group.

I need to make more art

 more art for myself. to share with others. but it's for me.

do a person do a thing for their own sake or for the sake of others. 

again this is a question that could be best answered by watching ants.

when you watch an ant do something, is it for the sake of the individual ant or for the other ants it knows?

Neither is true. We do not ascribe these motivations to ants. We say, 'it acts in its own ant nature because that is all it can do.'

So it is the same with us. And we must never make the mistake of removing ourselves from the ant world. We act in service of our nature and make up a justification afterwards. 

In no way is this meant to debase or devalue human action. Acting without thinking is the way of the world. It does not negate kindness or compassion or sweetness. It does not negate growth or change. 

ant mode and dwelling

the weirdness will happen

 one of my all time favorite things about camps is that people feel comfortable being a version of themselves they don't normally show. I've seen glimpses of it this summer but I start to get a little bored or sad when things feel too normal or people would rather be whiny or argue. 

I write this post to remind myself that you can't rush it. If that's the flower, you have to make the conditions right for the plant to grow. You have to let people feel safe and get familiar with what's going on and then they can have fun.

 if you're not tapped in to what kids are doing these days, one thing they do when they're outside are kill spotted lantern flies. they're obsessed. and open invitation to murder without remorse. they treat it like it's their mission. that they're saving the trees and by extension everyone else.

but after seeing the stray lantern flies that end up in roads or on sidewalks or in parking lots and then seeing the hundreds that swarm trees and all manner of plant material, it makes me think that the ones that happen across our path are just the ones that got pushed out due to overpopulation anyway. that all we're doing is killing the ones that were already condemned. the real horde is where we aren't and the cheap bit of solace we take against the castaways is really just a sign of how much they've already won.

But I don't know. Good that kids care about invasive species.

"WHAT DOES CHUD MEAN? WHAT DOES IT MEAN? THERE'S A KID AT GAGA NAMED CHUD KID WHO CALLS EVERYONE CHUDS! WHAT DOES CHUD MEAN?"

said on the bus yesterday.

My favorite part is naming the kid who calls everyone 'chuds' chud kid. I think there's beauty in that. That what you see the world as is what you become.If you look all around and see nothing but chuds, then you are the chud kid. 

you can't have x without y

 I don't think that's true. Because what if you go into X and figure out its components and then artificially reproduce those elements in such a way so that everything is nearly the same except without Y?

Right? Isn't that a great way to live? We've done it. We've won. We've freed ourselves from taking things as they are and now we live in the grotesque amalgamations of our dreams.

But anyway I had a good day today. It was fun.

 I found out today that on Thursday a bunch of teenagers from the YMCA are going to the climbing gym so my plan is to tell my crew of decidedly younger campers that we're going to challenge them to a climbing competition and watch in amazement as these much smaller kids all out-climb them.

my mom digitized our home movies

 I have a link to them and I've started watching them and I really want to watch them but I have this really strong feeling that I'm going to cry if I watch them. Not that I'm sad. I just get too sentimental about them. In a similar way to how I cry watching sports where someone is trying really hard.

But I do want to watch them. 

I found this video of my sixteenth birthday and immediately I seem obnoxious. Like an unpleasant person to be around. It's gross. If I could go back in time I'd say 'stop being a butt.'

But I'm going to try to watch this with compassion.

I'm sorry, Erin. I'm so sorry.

I don't know it's so hard to watch because I have this sarcastic attitude like I'm not enjoying any of it but I know I'm embarrassed and uncomfortable with my emotions. 

I'm burping. Oh jeez. This is terrible. 

I called my sister and apologized.

I also apologize to Maw Maw and Paw Paw.

A heartfelt thanks to my wonderful Mom for recording this moment. In all seriousness. It gives me a lot of empathy and understanding for giving a teenage child space to be a turd and try to figure out all their stuff. It's tough.

I probably would've learned a lot about myself sooner if I'd watched that clip.

I suppose I miss singing the songs

first year in ten years that I haven't been singing songs

maybe I'll start some up again

I can always keep going

 for I am made of keep going

roofball

anytime you make up a game is a good day

it feels good to be outside trying my best

 I like what I do and I do what I like.

we go cool places

 

I am a summer camp machine

 I am a machine that turns food into summer camp.

they discontinued the vegetable marinara rotini in the frozen section

 there's something kind of sad about seeing an item that you sometimes buy get discontinued.

oh I guess I wasn't enough support

oh I guess no one else likes this but me

oh I guess the food I thought was good was actually a failure

Ha! Those are feelings I would have if I tied my identity to things I buy at the grocery store. My identity is wrapped up in...a lot of stuff.

still got it!

 

your boy drives a bus now

the children are fascinated by wemby

 today we went on a hike to a waterfall and there's a jump to the side of it that's pretty tall and the kids enjoyed jumping into the pool below. On the way back one of the kids was describing the jump relative to Victor Wembanyana's height.

If he jumped off the high jump and went straight down his head wouldn't even go under the water.

I love the idea of this impossibly tall man that's a superstar and defies the limits of what a human being should be able to do. The imagination runs wild thinking of what Wemby would do in the face of any tall height or great distance.

That's all I got. Me being amused by a small child's fascination with an incredibly tall Frenchman.

anutha great day

summertime is my time

happy birthday to my sister!!

GREAT FIRST DAY

 WOO HOO WHAT A CREW!!!

before camp

 Starting my new camp tomorrow. I feel ready. I feel excited. I want it to go well.

I want to remind myself that the reason I care about camps so much is that I've seen and felt how important they are to people and it's a gift and a privilege to be part of that. That's why I want to give it my all.

 I think the point of all stories about magical wishes is that they're cautionary tales and that magical wishes are bad. 

But surely that can't be true. There must be some good magical wishes.

I guess Fairly Oddparents featured non-bad magical wishes.

I'll say this right now. And I bet you've never thought of this. I bet you haven't taken this step like I have before now.

I vow that if I am ever presented with the opportunity to make a magical wish, I'm not gonna do it.

And everyone will be confused like what? why not? Don't you want to? It's a magic wish. This never happens.

And I'll be like, 'Sorry. I made a vow. On June 5th, 2026. Look it up.'

Just like that, I'm immune to the magic now.

at rocky top climbing gym

 at rocky top climbing gym you can climb whatever climbs you want.

you get to choose.

if you want to do a climb, do it! if you don't want to do a climb, don't do it!

that's freedom. that's decision making.

we won't make you climb climbs you don't want to do.

we won't stop you from climbing climbs you want to do.

you're free. free as a bird.

at rocky top climbing gym.

you get to choose.

choice is our top priority.

we've developed the entire gym around your ability to choose.

aren't you grateful? aren't you thankful?

for the power of choice?

isn't that great?

don't you love us?

don't you love rocky top climbing gym get a grip?

because of the freedom we give you.

imagine if we stole your freedom.

imagine if you couldn't climb the climbs you wanted.

wouldn't that be terrible.

wouldn't you hate it.

you freedom loving choice creature. you live to choose.

and here at rocky top climbing gym,

you have to choice.

there's no other way.

if you don't decide

then nothing will happen.

it all depends on your choosing.

your choice is all there is.

your choice is the one thing keeping rocky top climbing from disintegrating into nothingness.

I swear it is.

I wouldn't lie to you.

See for yourself.

Training Review

 Looking back over the past year to see if I've improved at the 3 things I've been training. 

Climbing. Overhead Press. Sprinting.

Climbing

On June 1st of last year I picked up 120lbs with my left hand on a 20mm edge and 130lbs with my right hand. At least one time in the past year I've picked up 130lbs with my left hand and 140lbs with my right hand. 

I mostly did these lifts as a warm-up and only did a few dedicated workouts if I couldn't climb for some reason. I'm happy I was able to make improvement with both hands. In the next year I'd like to pick up my bodyweight with my right hand and get my left hand up to 140lbs. 

I don't think this type of finger strength is a limiting factor in my climbing. 

Since August of last year an overwhelming majority of my climbing has been spent moonboarding twice a week. I would warm up by pulling with the tension block and then climb on the moonboard for about an hour while working on completing the benchmarks at the lowest grade available. Through November I completed almost all of the 2016 v4 benchmarks and then when the gym changed over to the 2024 set I did all of the V4 benchmarks and as of today I have 7 6C benchmarks left. That's about 77 benchmark climbs between v4 and v5 since last November.

One feeling I have about the past year is that I think I've topped out my climbing ability with about two hours of structured climbing per week. Training that was essentially moderate to limit bouldering for an hour a session. In running terms, I'm doing the kind of training I was doing in middle school. Low mileage. Short workouts. Racing a lot. 

I feel like I can be very strong for one effort or a single move but that ability decreases pretty quickly over the course of a session. I also don't think I use my body as efficiently as I could. I think both could be addressed by climbing more. More training-style climbing instead of working hard moves. More volume. 

The thing I liked about the training I did this year was that it was easy and simple to quantify and it didn't make me too tired for things like sprinting. A few years ago I would just climbing whatever I felt until I got tired and the next day I would feel wiped out. I've done a good job at being intentional with my climbing training.

That said, when I look at my off-the-wall strength metrics, I should be climbing harder than I do. And it comes back to not climbing enough.

So! This summer the goal is to CLIMB MORE. When I would train for cross country in the summer it was about accruing mileage. It didn't really matter if it was slow or not. It was about making the number go up. And I saw huge improvements from doing that. 

The plan is Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays when we're climbing in the gym with the summer camp to do easy climbing and work on dynamic movement with make-ups. NO PROJECTING! NO TRYING HARD MOVES! NO SPIRALING! Easy, fun climbing that is low stakes so I can still run the summer camp effectively. I'm okay with climbing very little during this time. This time is not about getting fit or even doing anything challenging. It's movement maintenance.

Then on Tuesdays and Fridays I'm going to warm-up on the campus board and then do structured workouts of Wall Crawls where I do climbs on the moonboard and batcave spraywall while holding each position for 5 seconds or a 7 count before moving again. If I could build up to 2 hours per session of this training, 4 hours per week, I think that would move the needle. I can also supplement the time with the batcave traverse wall or the tread wall. We'll see! I think it's going to be really tough but I want to set the bar high and be okay with feeling tired and weak. I'm not going to test my strength or expect any PRs but trust that doing the work on relatively easy climbing will pay off.

Strength

The main lift I focused on this year was barbell Overhead Press. At some point in the Fall I hit 60kg for one and then I kinda lost my momentum due to shoulder injuries and weird things cropping up. I also had a wrist injury in the Spring that made pressing with the barbell uncomfortable. Recently though I hit 12 reps with 95lbs which is also a PR. I made incremental progress towards my goal of pressing my bodyweight but upper body strength training was definitely secondary to climbing and lower body training. I'm okay with that. 

Again, my pressing and pulling strength aren't limiting factors to my climbing. They're fun to work on but it wouldn't make sense to prioritize them more than I do. Also injuries are lame. As of right now I'm completely healthy other than some lingering stiffness in my right wrist so I'm going to continue with the strength training I've been doing.

Lately my routine has consisted of holding one arm lock-offs on each arm for as long as possible. Then pressing 95lbs or 100lbs for as many reps as possible. Then using the pulley system by the hangboard to do as many one-arm pull-ups as possible with 15lbs attached to the other end of the pulley. Then I do as many bodyweight pull-ups as possible. I started with 15 one day and every session I try to beat that. I'm currently at 18 and my lifetime best is 22. So far I haven't had to go to failure because I just beat it by one and then stop but I'll have to figure something out once I can't beat it anymore. Maybe I'll just add a little bit of weight and then start again. Anyway that's been working well. I like those exercises and it's not enough to make me super tired.

Sprinting

On June 3rd, 2025 my sprinting PRs were

50m- 6.14 100m- 12.58 200m- 26.89 300m- 43.25

As of June 3rd, 2026, my PRs are:

50m- 5.94 100m- 12.22 200m- 26.41 300m- 42.29 

I improved! Yay!

If I could make that some amount of improvement over the next year, I would consider my sprinting goals reached. 

I learned a lot about form and changed my training quite a bit from a year ago. My lifts are also completely different. My legs are visibly bigger than they were a year ago. 

Keep going.

 and then one evening everything was fine

and then one evening everything was good

the words that spilled had been put neatly away

everything was met by the warm dry air

it all settled in a way that was easy to make peace with

what was there was there

it could be looked upon

it was all the same

the mind could deal

the soul was at ease

leaves many layers up

waved fluttering green

what I was doing on this day in 2019

 It was a picture.

But on June 26th I wrote this long drawn out joke thing and the opening line was

this guy is burn with a rare mutation that causes his skin to be on fire all the time,

I wrote 'burn' instead of 'born'. 

BUT! It's a joke about a guy whose skin is constantly on fire.

So 'burn' actually kinda fits.

That's like some James Joyce level stuff.

Finnegan's Wake and all that.

I'm really excited to start this new camp. I made all the plans today and I think it's going to be great.

 Maybe I'm making this up or projecting but there's this kid I coach and when we interact I get the feeling that she's thinking to begin to explain to you what's going on in my head would require a tremendous amount of energy and a tremendous amount of faith in you that you're going to listen and try to understand and instead I'm just going to say 'beans'. And then she says 'beans'.

Which sounds kind of pretentious but I don't think there's any like weariness or disillusionment to her. I think it might just be how it is.

do you think we know when the line "get your filthy paws off me" was first said in popular media?

 Oh. duh.

Charlton Heston said "take your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape." in Planet of the Apes.

duh.

But then you look and they clearly have hands

 So that line was really uncalled for.

There's a lot of things that were said and done in the past that we in the present have to make amends for. 

And a lot of things being done in the present right now that the future will have to make amends for.

Maybe we can start--I have the microphone that can speak to all of humanity at once--maybe we can start by acknowledging that this man was under extreme fictional duress and he didn't really mean what he said in that moment. I don't know if they circle back to it later in the movie. I haven't seen it.

your mind is so powerful

 your human brain is so incredibly strong.

never forget that.

imagine anything.

point your imagination ray at anything and watch it transform.

a powerful beam of imagination 

scattering across the sky

to strike all the butter

and call them forth

to coalesce into a giant sphere

that towers over the skyline

the butter orb

hurtling across the filament

I mean

the firmament

to do cosmic battle 

with your greatest sadness

that bubbles up smoking

fumes that take the shape of

balled eagles

I was coaching today and a kid farted and a kid smelled it and said

 "Ew somebody tooted."

And this girl standing next to her goes, cool as anything, "It was probably me. Even though I didn't do it."

And then dropped down to sit on the mats.

I've never in my entire life seen a better way to diffuse that situation before. 

"It was probably me. Even though I didn't do it."

With all the confidence in the world.

Unreal.

 I was talking to someone recently about political caricature and I brought up the idea that humor and sarcasm and irony are good at exposing truths about institutions and established power but that you can't build something useful out of them. And the person I was talking to said that laughter can still be cathartic and useful to help people manage.

It's hard for me to disagree but I don't feel like laughter is helpful at this point in time. Removed from context, Trump is hilarious. On some level, we've been laughing at him the whole time. But it doesn't stop him in any way. 

Patton Oswalt had a joke about the end of the Bush administration where he said people would come up to him and say "Oh man, you comedians are in trouble now that Bush isn't president. You aren't going to have anything to talk about." And he responds

Imagine for the last 8 years there were demons just flying around in the sky and they would randomly swoop down and sodomize people. And I wrote ten killer minutes about the sodomy demons and then the Pope banished them to another dimension and people go 'boy Patton you really miss those sodomy demons'

Much like senseless demons, Trump is formless. He's a void. He doesn't stand for anything. And I feel like the best way to build something is to be sincere. 

Not that humor doesn't have a place--I just feel like in my lifetime we've been in a golden age of political humor and things are terrible. If political humor actually did anything, why are things like this?

ode to the Mets but it's just 'up on his horse, up on his horse' for all the lyrics

dude

 dude

what

oh

I thought

yeah

no I just

ok

That was a poem about a guy who when he was four met a frog wizard and the frog wizard said in ten years I'm going to sneak up behind you and slap you and if you catch me you get a thousand frog dollars and if you don't you get slapped and tough break kid and the kid tried his hardest to remember but then he forgot and wasn't sure about the day and time anymore and then he got got.

reading back my old posts

from 14 years ago

I always feel

like I did too much

but now I don't

scuttling cruttling

scuttling cruttling

scuttling cruttling

the crab who pinches and snips

scuttling cruttling

scuttling cruttling

the crab who pinched a thousand ships

a crab in a bottle

a crab in the house

a crab full throttle

a crab fights a mouse

scuttling cruttling and doodly duddling

every crab has his day

skitter and scatter and tickety tatter

the crab

the crab 

the crab

commander and leader 

enchanté

when it's a blue evening

 it's a blue evening

the engine in the distance

leaves in the wind

why not take a heaping spoonful of black pepper

straight down the gullet

live a little

time unwinds in a cool blue line

always pointing ahead

to where one never arrives

if only a bracing spoonful of freshly ground black pepper

could shake things up

my my my

what a rush that would be

in a dogwood tree

visible from the window

lies a nest hidden

by musty white flowers

boy oh boy

could I over go for a piping hot spoonful of pepper

send my sinuses into overdrive

send my taste buds to the moon

on a pleasant calm blue evening

the range of best

 I love that for some people the word 'best' can mean 'something they think is very good' and for other people the word 'best' can't even be used at all. Nothing of the world can truly rise to the level of 'best'.

People who never use best think that people who use best for things they like are frivolous agents of chaos. They only live to disrupt the natural order of the universe. You can't just call something 'the best' and not even mean it. Oh is that your 'best friend'? Is that the 'best meal you've ever had'? Yeah and what if money was just worth whatever we felt like. If we have no fixed points of meaning then we're adrift in a sea of nothingness. The 'best' is a standard by which all other things are judged and it's not something we can just toss around in place of  'pretty good'. In short, you shouldn't be trusted with anything and your words are the honks and squawks of madness itself.

People who like using 'best' think that people who never use best are just a quivering husk. If all you do is wait for the perfect opportunity you'll have spent all your time waiting, missed the opportunity, and pass through this life too afraid to touch anything. What good is an ideal to the flesh and the bone? Grab the world. Break things. You'll never hit a dinger if all you fear is the swing and miss. We know there is no 'best'. You're not special for being a strict literalist. What persists in life are moments of feeling and words should serve to describe that. 

big? compared to what?

 the first thing to be described as big

an age old mystery

some might say

the biggest mystery of all

the biggystery of all

my vote?

egg

the bite

 one bite will kill you dead

two bites will bring you back to life

three bites will make you go crazy

four bites will make you a

gnawed on scrap of old dusty

beef leather draped over the

banister of rickety crooked

stairs that lead halfway up

and halfway down to nowhere--

three fiends sloughed off

your sorry withered hide into

abyss but there was no

fall. it was a very short drop to

where you were.

those are the bite rules.

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

this is a poem about how growing up there would be kids who would just confidently tell you rules to things. I guess because they learned about the concept of rules and like, cause and effect. But, you know me, a sucker for serious nonsense.

one time, I'll never forget this, a kid told me (who was also a kid) with a straight face, completely serious,

 "did you know? if you can draw a perfect circle, you're the smartest person in the world. but if you draw the circle backwards, you're the dumbest person in the world."

And I remember hearing that and knowing it probably wasn't true but also thinking, "Hmm yeah I guess that makes sense."

a poem about the only thing I still remember from AP European History

 one day we learned about Pope Leo X

who said,

"God has given us the papacy, let us enjoy it."

upon hearing this

my friend Chad said,

"God has given us the Chad, let us enjoy it."

a poem about the rain

 doesn't it feel like

there should be reverse rain?

I don't understand how water moves.

we should put all the water in a giant truck.

and drive it around to everyone who needs it.

which is everyone all the time.

and the trucker is incorruptible.

they are our hero.

our hopes and dreams rest on the truck scheme.

one person to bear the burden of all the wetness.

I believe in the water trucker.

the two things I was bad at in school as a kid

 spelling and math.

I remember I got an F on a spelling test in like 4th grade once. And I realized I had to study to not fail. And I was bad at math for a lot longer. Until like 10th grade.

It was because I wasn't open to the possibility of being wrong about the answer I got. There was no check in place. I'd spell the word however I thought it should be spelled and wouldn't question it. Or I'd do mental math and get it wrong and not question it. 

One of my least favorite qualities in a person is someone who consistently says these with confidence that are factually wrong. Like how I was in spelling and math. 

At some point the education system beat it out of me. It said, 'you are fallible. stop believing everything you think. have oversight on this stuff.'

And I think that's a good quality.

have you ever tended to someone else's obsession?

 what a trip right?

these tasks that give someone else so much purpose and fulfillment and meaning and to you it's toil and tedious.

how's that work?

spell check doesn't think that I can abbreviate "how does" into how's. 

Oh I'm sorry Blogger maybe you haven't heard of the popular TV show that started in 2002 called 'How's that Work' that explains how stuff works.

my sister is a pharmacist!

 yay Erin! good job! proud of you!!

hypocrisy

one thing I've become really ardent about is teaching the kids I coach how to properly greet people when you walk into a space. the words themselves don't really matter but it's letting everyone in the space know that you acknowledge them and see them and are entering with good intentions. there's really not a lot of upside to it but you really don't want to deal with the downsides.

and then I enter a space and people greet me and ask me how my day is going and I think ohmygod why are you asking me all these questions I day is going just let me exist please

And actually I think that's great and having those thoughts makes the ritual all the more important. It's like it's banishing the Me-Spiral-Demons.

I think true goodness exists for its own sake. Nietzsche said that goodness and virtue is an overflowing. It's an overabundance of itself. But decency is a response to a darker nature. Maybe. You could make the argument against it. 

at the dentist

 I was sitting in the chair at the dentist and they had the monitor up where I could see it so I was reading my patient notes and at the bottom it said

"patient is nice."

And I was like "LET'S GO!!" 

Right? Because they don't have to say that. I earned it.

And I do think that what matters, like, the thing that continues to persist in a meaningful way, is how you make people feel. Above everything else. 

And I got officially secret told by my dentist that I'm nice.

gold star for me.

 Have you ever seen a video where someone leaves some candy or food for an ant to discover and the ant gets really excited and goes back to the colony to tell all the other ants about the food and when the ant comes back to it the human has taken the food away? And then usually the voice over is something like "they'll never believe you. hahahaha. they'll never believe you."

Well I have. And I like to think of myself as an ant in relation to the larger world and yesterday I lost my favorite quarter zip that I like for running and working out when it's colder and I looked all over my apartment and then I went to the track with the slightest bit of hope that I could had left it there over a week ago or something. I was not confident that it would still be there. In the corner of the track was a garment that looked just like mine from a distance but up close it wasn't it. So I gave up and went about my business and then I happened to look at the top of the stairs and see another long sleeve shirt looking thing and it was mine! Wow. What a happy ant I was. In both small and large undeniable ways you are at the mercy of forces beyond your control and you gotta celebrate victories when you can.

I know that laugh

 The other week I was at my friend's softball game and these sisters whose mom was playing were running around and playing chase or tag or whatever. And the other older sister was trying to catch the younger sister and the younger one ran past her and just barely got out of the way at full speed and she did this kind of maniacal laugh like "wahahahaha!" 

And I know that laugh. That is the you can't catch me laugh at full speed. I've done that laugh. That's like a universal laugh. 

rating how appropriate it is to state your mental or physical state out loud

"I'm hungry"- this one is pretty appropriate. but it loses its effectiveness and appropriateness the more you repeat it. also, letting people know that you're hungry is a good way to give context to any other behaviors or feelings you might be having. so that's pretty good.

"I'm full of murderous rage and intent."- this one is not very appropriate. if you're full of murderous rage and intent you should probably say something more socially acceptable like "I'm hungry" and then in a very quiet voice, "--for murder"

why is my sister going to czechia?

 because my sister's husband's sister's husband's sister's husband lives there. and is rich.

button experiments

 I don't like button experiments. Things like 'oh if everyone in the world had to make a private vote and if over 50% of people pressed the blue button then everyone survives but if under 50% of people press the blue button only the people who pressed the red button survive.' 

I don't like it. It feels like it tries to get at some sort of truth about human nature or morality by treating people as brains floating in jars. You're not. You're in a body in the world. I don't think it's insignificant to throw that out. It's such a crazy construction that it almost scorns the body and the physical world. 

One time when I worked at the therapeutic boarding this kid was really upset and he wanted to talk to the headmaster of the school and go into his office and the support counselor told him 'no. you won't do that. I am bigger than you and I will stop you.' And then he just physically stopped him for like 10 minutes until the kid gave up. 

And I'm not saying that reason or logic is inconsequential in the face of physical strength or violence but that your body informs your thinking about yourself and the world. 

Imagine. Imagine some Johnny Baskethands trying to tell you about the nature of napkin holders but he never actually put napkins in them.

'Well, if we assume--'

Put the napkins in the napkin holder!

I don't know. And then almost always thinkers and philosophers you had something to say about humanity had a notable relationship with their body. 

And I'm also not saying that to have a valid opinion on something you have to have any specific kind of body or meet any standard of health or anything to have something worthwhile to say. I just think the value of any results that assume everyone is virtually a brain in a jar don't amount to much.

beuatiful found poetry in the bodo's parking lot

 

God is with us

God can you help me

do good at golf Amen

thank you for family

without worms there would be no flowers

 without leaves there would be no leafblowers

what good is it to cultivate an affect where you watch life as if it was hot sand poured into your eyes

what good is it to scream into a horn while buried in the ground

I could go along as a bird does. Sitting in a tree and chirping and singing, with a wide field of vision and moving my head in jerky robotic motions as if fixated on a tiny bug between blades of grass

would it mean so much to try to live honestly? could I do anything different even if I tried?

there are no secrets. everything is on display always. the speed of a bat's wing. a dance overheard. the swirl and turn and pivot of warm evening air.

I can go on this way as long as I please. As long as this way to go on pleases me. 

breaths counted out. languish and bloom languish and bloom languish and bloom.

Fruition is not derived from the word 'fruit'. It's from the Latin fruit to enjoy or use.

it's always the calves, man

 Still trying to get my knee better. Today I had better range of motion and I decided to go to the gym even though I can't do too much and I had a minor 'ah HA!' moment when I went over to the stairs to stretch my calves and felt a lot of tightness in my left calf and then after stretching it out I could almost immediately bend my knee more so that was a good discovery. Today was a lot better than the previous days and I should have suspected the calves sooner. I was doing heavy weighted calf raises with a barbell and I jumped the weight up too heavy too soon. It all makes sense.

Dang. I felt like I had about a week or so where I was really firing on all cylinders and doing so much and then got hit with a one-two punch of wrist hurt and knee hurt and I was really in shambles for a few days. Feels like this keeps happening this year. Oh well. Getting back on track now I think. Ever forward.